The journey corporate video production has taken over the years has been an exciting and innovative evolution. The following article takes a brief historical look at the changing financial climate of corporate video and what its position is shaping up to be in the future:
Where It All Began
Nowadays a corporate video is within the budget of most businesses, but it didn’t used to be so universally accessible. Way back in the 70s it involved expensive celluloid filming. These days you could churn out a corporate video with a cheap Flip camcorder and some basic lighting for well under £500, but back in the day a simple corporate ad could cost you anything from £50,000 to £150,000. So not quite within the yearly budget of the majority of budding businesses…
The Madonna Years
Madonna and MJ weren’t the only ones having a blast in the 1980s. Corporate video was also having a feel-good time and as too were the businesses, as the price of video finally began to drop. Admittedly corporate videos were still costing over £10,000, but it was a darn sight cheaper than the 50k price tag seen across the 1970s. This falling cost was put down to universal technological advances in the field of film and video and the growth of independent, more financially approachable filming and editing studios.
The Price Is (Almost) Right
The 1990s may have been a terrible decade for fashion, but the price of corporate video couldn’t have looked better. Personal Computers (PC) were starting to reshape the filming and editing world, video cameras were finally becoming more affordable to independent cinematographers, making the price of corporate video production finally fall to a more manageable price – under the 10k mark. The cost of recording video was becoming so commercially accessible by the end of the 90s that even families were starting to enjoy the affordable nature of video productions with personal camcorders.
A Brand New Century
The state of video in the 00’s was certainly alive, affordable and planned on staying around a lot longer than the Millennium Dome. This brand new century ushered in a decade of DVDs, High Definition, Blu-Rays, Personal Video Recorders, Webcams, Plasma TV, Video Calling, Online Video and so much affordable video technology that a corporate video could be within the budget of small businesses and wealthy blue-chip companies alike. This was perhaps the first era in history that opened up the world of video production to the universal masses.
Looking Forward
What does the 2011 era hold? Well 3D TV is beginning to make its way into households around the country, 3D films are being widely attended at worldwide cinemas and the constant technological advancement of video equipment and video software is not only lowering the price of corporate video, but improving the quality too. The future of corporate video looks bright, affordable and very exciting.
