Built fast. Forgotten faster.
We’ve sat through a lot of corporate films. The same four habits keep killing them. None are your fault they’re how production is sold. All of them are fixable before the lens cap comes off.
Founder. Office. Talking head.
Three minutes of someone reading the about page out loud. Set up in twenty minutes. Earns its keep in nobody's feed.
Stock-music. Drone. Done.
A drone over the carpark. A faceless montage of laptops. Music from a library nobody pays for. Filler, professionally lit.
One video. One use.
Goes on the homepage. Stays there. The same shoot could have fed social, SEO, print and the website rebuild but nobody planned for it.
No B-roll. No subtitles.
Hard-cut talking heads, no cutaways to breathe. No subtitles, so it dies the moment it hits a phone on silent. The platform's already told you 85% will watch muted.
Seven steps. Two of them before we shoot.
The film industry calls it pre-production. We call it the bit nobody pays for and everyone needs. Steps one and two happen weeks before the kit comes out and they’re why the shoot day pays back four times over.
What's the film actually for, who's it for, and what happens after they watch it? If we can't answer those three in one sentence, we don't shoot. The single most-skipped step in the industry; the one that saves the most money.
- , One-sentence brief
- , Audience profile
- , Outcome (the after)
- , Single success metric
Before we storyboard the hero film, we map every other asset the shoot will feed. Social cutdowns. The SEO long-form. The stills for the website. The print catalogue. The behind-the-scenes. One shoot, four channels and planned that way from minute one.
- , Asset matrix
- , Channel-by-channel cuts
- , Aspect-ratio map
- , Subtitle & copy plan
A storyboard your finance director can read. Every scene, every shot, every line. We don't turn up with a mood board and pray, we turn up with a list and tick it off. Boring on paper. Saves a re-shoot.
- , Scene-by-scene board
- , Shot list (numbered)
- , Script + line breakdown
- , Time + location plan
B-roll is what stops a film looking like a Zoom. We pre-list every cutaway: hands at work, the kettle on, the product close-up, the warehouse wide. Edited around the talking head, the talking head finally breathes.
- , Numbered B-roll list
- , Detail shots map
- , Cutaway sequencing
- , Texture & "breath" shots
Cinema-line camera, fast primes, three-point lighting, lavalier and shotgun audio. While the kit is up we shoot the still photography for the website and the print collateral. Same day, same set, half the cost of two separate bookings.
- , Cinema-line camera + primes
- , 3-point lighting kit
- , Boom + lav audio
- , Stills photography piggyback
A cut where the audio leads the next shot (J-cut) or carries past the last one (L-cut) is what makes an edit feel like film and not a slideshow. Pace cut to the music, not the script. Two rounds of changes on the house.
- , Picture lock + colour grade
- , J/L cut pacing
- , Music selection (licensed)
- , 2 revision rounds inc.
85% of social video plays on mute. We subtitle everything as standard — burned-in for social, sidecar SRT for YouTube and your site. Then we deliver every cut in every aspect ratio you need. Tomorrow it's live.
- , Burned-in social subtitles
- , SRT for YouTube + site
- , Every aspect ratio cut
- , All raw footage handed over
One shoot. Thirty assets.
Most studios charge you for the hero film and bin the rest. We map the harvest before we storyboard. We look for every social cut, every still, every BTS clip, but we planned it into the shoot list from day one. The day costs the same. The output looks like four projects.
Shoot
Day.
60–90 sec · 16:9 · web hero, sales pitches, exhibition loop
3–5 min · YouTube + site · SEO long-tail bait
15–30 sec · 9:16 + 1:1 + 4:5 · subtitled, burned-in
45 sec · Instagram + LinkedIn · the trust shot
Web hero, about page, product, team, print catalogue
Static image + caption · LinkedIn carousel, IG feed
Edited from interview audio · podcast feed or radio spot
Handed over — yours to re-cut, archive, re-purpose forever
Production lighting is studio lighting. A photographer brings a body, a lens, an hour. Two dozen usable stills for the website, the print catalogue, the LinkedIn, the brochure not a separate shoot, not a separate fee. The kit’s already out.
See the kit list →A measuring machine. Made to feel something.
QCT make Coordinate Measuring Machines, it's precision metrology kit that sits in some of the most demanding manufacturing floors in the UK. Beautiful, technical, easy to film badly. We didn’t. We storyboarded, we lit it like a film, and we let the machine do the talking.
Got any freebies? Yes.
We’re not scared of sharing what we know. Take our advice and implement it yourself, brilliant. Watch these and think “I need someone to do this for me,” even better. Either way you’re winning, and the tools are free.
30 days of CEO marketing tips
A short film a day for thirty days, aimed at directors who need to understand what their marketing team is actually doing.
The harvest checklist
Every asset one shoot day should produce. Hero film, social cuts, stills, BTS, raw. Print it. Take it to your next shoot.
Cost-per-lead calculator
Tap in your spend and your leads. See your true CPL across every channel in seconds, the number most agencies hope you never find.
What are we thinking?
The real stuff. Not “10 tips to boost engagement” clickbait. We call out the BS in our industry and share what twenty years of doing this has taught us. Here’s the last few.
Why AI Tools Shouldn’t Have Paid Adverts, but they are going to…
Google’s testing ads in AI Overview results. Perplexity’s considering sponsored answers. ChatGPT’s exploring “promoted content.” We’re about to ruin AI the same way we ruined everything else. We’ve Seen This Film Before There’s a brilliant video from The Naked Brand where B. Bonin Bough – PepsiCo’s head of digital – talks about the early internet: […]
SEO is NOT dead
Ladies and Gentlemen, SEO Is Still Alive I’m writing this today because, quite frankly, I’ve seen blogs and threads sent out today that are already out of date. I’ve seen one particularly about the history of Google – how it went from 10 blue links to position zero, then moved to AI overview, and how […]
Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to… flip flop marketing
What on earth is Corbett on about now. Well unfortunately people I’m seeing this happen so much at the moment because everyone is looking for their silver bullet. Something has happened to society, personally I blame Amazon, but in reality it’s the internet and social media. We can get our groceries delivered, we can buy […]
Day. Production. Or a series.
Most clients open with a Shoot Day. The brands using video properly tend to be on Production. A Series is for the ones who’ve seen video earn its keep and want a quarter’s worth of it. Scope, kit and crew differ, the doctrine doesn’t.
Shoot Day
One day on set, light crew, one location. Hero film + four social cutdowns + 12 stills. The shape most clients open with.
- , 1 day pre-production
- , 1 day on set · 1–2 scenes
- , 1× 60s hero film
- , 4× social cutdowns (9:16/1:1/4:5)
- , ×12 still photographs
- , Burned-in subtitles · SRT
- , 2 revision rounds
- , Raw footage handed over
Production
Two days on set, full crew with audio, multiple locations or scenes. The harvest doctrine at full tilt. What we built for QCT.
- , 2 days pre-production
- , 2 days on set · full crew
- , 1× hero film + 1× long-form
- , 6–8× social cutdowns
- , ×24 still photographs
- , Behind-the-scenes reel
- , Picture lock + colour grade
- , Burned-in subs + SRT
- , 3 revision rounds
- , Raw footage handed over
Series
A campaign of 4–6 films across a quarter, planned together, harvested across every channel you run. For brands who want video to do real work.
- , 4–6 films across 90 days
- , Single narrative thread
- , Channel-by-channel harvest
- , Quarterly content calendar
- , Stills library refresh
- , Per-piece reporting
- , Day-rate cap agreed up front
- , Charity rate −20%
The bits everyone asks.
Eight questions we get on every shoot-brief call. If yours isn’t here, ring it in.
Because we'd rather show one film we're proud of than ten we're not. QCT is the proof. The process and the kit list are the rest of the answer. Both are the bits most production companies don't talk about because they don't do them.
Yes, when it fits. Production lighting and studio stills lighting are siblings; one body, one lens, an hour at the end of the day. That's usually 18–24 usable stills for the website, brochure or LinkedIn. We'll know on the scope call whether it's worth piggybacking.
Editing tricks. A J-cut is when the audio of the next shot starts before the picture cuts to it. An L-cut is when the audio of the current shot carries over after the picture cuts away. They're the reason a film feels like a film and not a stitched-together slideshow. Costs nothing extra, you just have to bother.
Yes. Most of our work is on location. We bring the lighting and the backdrop kit. If your space is awkward, we'll storyboard around it. If it's genuinely impossible, we know two studios within an hour of Loughborough.
Often we don't need one — the brief and the storyboard do most of the work. When we do, we interview the people on camera first, transcribe, then build the script from what they actually said. It's why nothing sounds read.
If you have a licence, yes. If not, we license from Musicbed, Artlist, or Audio Network. Commercial-cleared, no copyright strikes, the licence stays attached to the film for its life.
You do. All raw footage handed over on a drive at the end. We keep a back-up for 12 months in case you want a re-cut, then it's yours alone. We don't hold the masters hostage.
30% off the published bands. We've filmed for Molly's Gift and a couple of others. Quote your charity number on the brief call.
Tell us the brief. We’ll bring the storyboard.
An hour on a call. We’ll get the why, the who and the after, and tell you whether it’s a Shoot Day, a Production, or a Series. No deck. No retainer pitch. Just the brief.
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