‘Tis the season, friends! We know-it’s barely October and we’re all still upset that there’s Halloween candy and Thanksgiving decorations out. How could we possibly be telling you it’s time to start thinking about the winter holidays?! Feel free to keep your pumpkins and your spiderwebs out, but when it comes to your video production needs, you should definitely start thinking about your company’s winter holiday video for this year.

“But Motion Source,” you say, “it’s only September! We haven’t even had our first pumpkin spice latte! We have PLENTY of time to throw together a video in time for the holiday season!” And to that, I have two things to say to you. Number one, go grab your first pumpkin spice latte of the season. And number two, you don’t have as much time as you might think. Holiday videos are an important tool for your company’s marketing strategy. They can be used to remind old clients about the work you’ve done together, or to introduce yourself to new prospects in a way that reveals your company’s values. You can use this video to show a different side of your company and add some personality to your brand. It makes you more relatable and more familiar.

Let’s make a plan!

1. Back to Basics

When you are getting a quote for your holiday video from Motion Source, it would be a good idea to have a handle on a couple of things:

• How long of a video are you looking for? Perhaps you only want a 30 second video to get your greeting out; short and sweet. Maybe you’re looking for a longer video that summarizes everything your company have accomplished in the last year.

• Consider the timeline for your video project. This is also important for finding a location that you’d like to shoot in, especially if you’re looking to do something outside with winter weather, or if you’d like to avoid that entirely we can come indoors to your location or shoot in our production studio. We also can make the winter come early! Here are a couple photos from a Motion Source production shoot last week in Naperville where we covered the front yard in fake snow! 

If you have an idea of when you would like your video finished and ready to send out we can build a production schedule around that date.

• For budgeting, we can either build a project around a clearly defined budget or we can work together to develop a concept for the video and then inform your team of what the budget would be for that project.

2. Ho-ho-ho or No-No-No?

The next thing to start thinking about is the vision for your video. Motion Source will work with you to find something unique to make for your company’s holiday greeting video! But it’s great to have an idea on what you’re looking for in your video. Are you looking to create a specifically holiday-driven theme, i.e. for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s, etc, or would you like to stay secular and focus on winter/holiday themes in general? Through this, we can decide together what kind of message you’d like to send with video. You could be detailing what your company has done in the last year, or what they plan to do in the new year to come, or sending happy holiday wishes to your clients. We here at Motion Source love to work with our clients to come up with video ideas that are uniquely theirs, and we would be more than happy to guide through the fun process of creating a video!

3) Who’s On Your Wish List?

Think about who or what you would like to feature in your video. It’s always nice to have a simple, clean video with a tree of falling snow, but maybe this could be a fun opportunity to get your staff involved. You could all come together in the creation of this video and make more memories for yourselves in the process! Your video could include anything from footage of your employees doing what they do best, or even small moments where they talk about your company or just send their holiday greetings to your customers. It is the holiday season, after all-so the more the merrier!

Here is the Motion Source 2014 Holiday Video which we used as a platform to show off our newly renovated studio.

Call us at Motion Source today-we would be more than happy to get started on a wonderful holiday video for you and your company!