Answers to the questions we hear most about cost, timelines, and how we make films for brands, fundraisers, startups, and more.
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Our creative studio produces films and television for brands, businesses, missions, municipalities, lobbyists, startups, and fundraising. We are not a full-service agency. We don’t do web or print, shine your shoes, or wash your car.
We do offer full video production services in-house and on location, from concept to production, generative AI, 3D animation, special f/x, audio mastering, and the only senior certified color grading studio north of Boston, exporting for social media, large format, broadcast, and Times Square (really).
Yes! Great question. We are a unique video production agency with deep marketing roots. We know it’s easy to take a picture, but harder to have every image contribute to the goals of our clients. Our marketing expertise helps our clients fundraise, launch their startups, and build their brands. We’re here to create movement that transforms business.
We have made moving stories for many companies, from Amazon and Ben & Jerry’s to IBM, Vestas, and Burton. We have helped institutions like Shelburne Farms raise $50 million as they teach both children and teachers where our food comes from. From sporting goods to aerospace, our specialized video productions have also helped state governments, academic institutions, and local municipalities improve policies and grow their local economies. Startups like Future Genius and MYTI have come to us to help launch their dreams. We love helping you build your brand.
Yes. We are safe, certified FAA Part 107 drone pilots. A drone is just another camera to us, just hundreds of feet in the air. A typical TV commercial may have over 100 shots, and likely only one or two will be an overhead drone shot. But that’s enough to provide a unique perspective and a unique look to every one of our productions.
Someone once said, ‘How long is a string?’ The answer is pretty straightforward. After 200 productions and countless repeat clients, we know without a doubt that the cost is always dwarfed by the value our work returns. We have made films from $10,000 to $100,000 that have taken from hours to months to produce, running on the web, on TV, in theaters around the world, and even in Times Square.
Anything that creates change takes work. Yes, you can take a picture on your phone, but that won’t help you raise a million dollars. Any budget is a fraction of the value we return for every client every day. To survive, every company makes investments in whatever can best grow their brand, increase their sales, and scale their business.
It’s not the size of the screen; it’s the value of the story. What affects pricing?
Filming can take one day, or a week or more. What does 10 to 20 dedicated days or more of your company deliver to your audience?
Our creative video agency has produced political and crisis management campaigns in 24 hours. Typically, we work in weeks, but longer-form films have taken months. We have the experience and tools to meet any deadline.
Our video production campaigns usually produce one-minute, 30-second, and 15-second TV spots for broadcast, streaming, and the web. Locations, special effects, generative AI, talent, and specialized cameras, lights, and lenses all affect costs. In the last year we have had campaigns from $20,000 to $60,000. Regardless, the goal is always the same: to have the value far outweigh the costs.
It’s not great till the client says it’s great. Revisions are vital to turning good ideas into meaningful change for our customers. We have learned that the more we educate our clients every step of the way in our unique storytelling process, the fewer the surprises down the road. From the creative brief to every shot on location, to the rough edits, to the final color grade and audio mastering, we share every step of the process with every customer. It’s our work, but at the end of the day it’s their story. We don’t love it till they love it.
Corporate videos are staged, ‘happy talk’ PowerPoint events. Strategic brand storytelling is video for business. It creates change. Our creative services create brand films that share real-world challenges and opportunities and look behind the scenes at what makes up a company’s values and direction.
Explainer videos are dead. They’re dated, often AI-generated whiteboard videos that do not connect. Strategic brand storytelling creates movement and change. Our video production services use cinematic storytelling to make the audience want to know more about your brand.
Our video productions are compelling brand films that use powerful storytelling to quickly and clearly present the value of goods and services. In only a few minutes, a strong brand film uses cinematic video production to answer the questions: Why should I care about this? Why does it matter to my business?
We are all experts at watching YouTube, television, and the movies. We know a good film when we see one. Stories may be complicated; it’s the video production team behind the scenes that can unravel that complex ball of yarn. We work very hard to make the story easy to follow and feel great about it at the same time. Complex issues are just a series of simple stories strung together. If we make the audience laugh or cry as the story unfolds, we have done our job. This is the power of video.
A long time ago, Kellogg’s came up with a brilliant idea to have customers try old, existing products. ‘Try it again, for the first time!’ was their slogan. It was a huge success. Video is the fastest medium to create change. One 60-second commercial or a 3-minute video production can quickly re-introduce existing goods and services to your audience. Let us help you make the old new again.
David Ogilvy, the grandfather of advertising, answered this question decades ago by saying, ‘A film’s going to be as long as a film’s going to be. If you have something to say, say it!’ Our average brand film is under 3 minutes, but when the story calls for it, they get up to 7 or 8 minutes.
Television is more alive than ever. Distribution has changed. Broadcast, streaming, digital, and the web: there is no more immediate medium on earth when you need to make the biggest splash in the shortest time. Apple’s legendary ‘1984’ commercial only aired once nationally, but it’s the most memorable TV commercial of all time.
A great story is a great story no matter the distribution medium. We make commercials for broadcast, streaming, digital, the web, retail franchises around the world, and even Times Square. We only work in the best cinematic quality, regardless of the size of the screen, where the audience is, or how they consume it.
We don’t set out to win awards; we set out to move the goalposts for our clients. Our proven, trusted process, honed over 13 years of making television, starts with the real-world problem or challenge facing our customer. Commercials are not cheap, so they better make a difference. We have 60 seconds, maybe a hundred words, and a few dozen shots to paint a picture that creates the change our clients seek. Occasionally, this alchemy does win us awards.
We begin at the end. We work backwards from the change our client wants to make with the investment they are making. Making a film is a very deliberate, collaborative process. The actual filming is the least important part of the process. We start with story. What is the story we want to paint to create the movement we seek? We sit and listen to the stakeholders, location scout, shot plan, hire the talent, and plan for all that will inevitably go wrong on set. Our client is involved from the beginning, on set, and through all the postproduction, tone, and style decisions.
In 11 years, our specialized video productions have helped our clients raise over $68 million. Fundraising films are the secret weapon of fundraising. With the right fundraising film, in only a few minutes the audience is separated into two groups:
This helps you focus your energies where they will be best used.
You are the expert in your mission. As a unique video production company with 11 years in the fundraising business, we are experts in telling stories that move audiences. If you know the targets, together we can be very successful securing major grants for your institution and mission.
Launch videos offer a sneak peek into the future. Creating a film to launch your big idea is a killer good idea. Only video can quickly paint a picture and tell a story of how good this just might be. We have done dozens of successful fundraising films that have dealt with objections as they succinctly present all the details, from features and benefits to the market opportunity and its size.
Most fundraising films are shown to small audiences that may or may not have the interest but do have the resources. In only a few minutes, our storytelling expertise builds excitement for the journey and the opportunity you are offering. The audience is separated into two groups: ‘That’s interesting, but not for me’ and ‘I’m interested, tell me more.’ These are your investors.
3D pre-visualization is for clients who need to see the future, to be able to sell the idea before it exists. We blend our video production expertise with 20 years of 3D animation and generative AI to pre-create products in three-dimensional digital space. We used pre-vis to help Burton get buy-in for their revolutionary Step On binding with 800 dealers around the world before the tooling costs of manufacturing, help Nordica present a dramatic new idea in the ski boot industry, and help Gifford Medical pre-visualize the architectural plan for their new hospital wing and raise $24 million before construction.
Animation helps show the world what’s not yet real. In the right hands, generative AI and animation are powerful storytelling tools that can uniquely and clearly present very new ideas, products, and processes. We have over 20 years of 3D animation experience for feature films, the automotive industry, manufacturing, and architecture. Let us help you show the world the future.
Yes, we can create photorealistic 3D product animations by importing manufacturing CAD files into our animation pipeline using Autodesk Maya. From there, we have your detailed geometry, so we can animate the moving parts of your product to show your customers all of its functions and features in a photorealistic, engaging way.
We animate client logos in 3D all the time! Adding movement to a logo to grab your audience’s attention can be a great tool for closing out a video, adding to social media, or using as a custom title. Movement can be subtle and minimal, as seen in our animated logos for a few of our latest clients: Shelburne Farms, Community National Bank, and the Vermont State Police.
We have actively used AI for five years. It’s an important creative tool in our arsenal. It started with simple improvements to the twinkle in someone’s eye, then to improving a voice, then to synthesizing the emotion in a voice. Today we run most of our writing through some AI tool, to tighten it, to add to the intensity, to give us options. What AI will never do is tell a new story. It will never listen to a client complain and offer a path out of the mess they are in. That’s our job. AI is a tool. We have many tools; we keep them sharp and we know how to use them very well.
Digital signage is everything you see, from the moving menu boards at Wendy’s to the giant dazzling lights in Times Square. We’ve done digital signs from the center of Times Square to hundreds of food and hospitality franchises in 30 countries around the world.
Technically, digital signs are smart, remote, linked TV screens connected to your marketing team, so the exact same content plays and updates simultaneously in all your locations.
Our video advertising work has produced digital signage for ice cream, coffee, breakfast, cars, and banks at hundreds of franchise locations for Ben & Jerry’s, Wendy’s, Coffee Culture, and financial institutions in over 30 countries around the globe.
In-store digital displays are a secret weapon for multi-location retail, academic, and public spaces. They have been called the silent storytelling sales masters: always on, 24/7, always right in front of potential customers and anyone quietly wanting more information.
It’s video production that is connected to the internet, delivering your story uniquely to each location, wherever your location is, remotely from your marketing HQ 24/7 around the world.
Digital signage is video production, but with a twist: there is no audio, so our visuals must work even harder to tell compelling stories, silently. As a specialty video production company with over 11 years in digital signage, we love the challenge of making silent commercials around the world for our clients.
In-store digital displays are a secret weapon for multi-location retail, academic, and public spaces. They have been called the silent storytelling salespeople: always on, 24/7, always right in front of potential customers and anyone quietly wanting more information.
It’s video production with content very specifically targeted to the audience, often day-parted to support real-time purchasing decisions. All monitors are connected to the internet and updated remotely, delivering your story uniquely to each location, wherever it is, from your marketing team.
Walt Disney said, ‘First you entertain, then you educate.’ Every film we produce, we go deep. We move in with the story. We ride the tractors, harvest the fruit, and listen to the stories of those who have dedicated their lives to changing the world. Adults are often skeptical about helping the planet, but kids get it. They are clear-eyed and mission-focused on doing whatever it takes to slow down climate change so they might grow up in a better world.
Our video production company has produced videos for both the solar and wind energy industries, working with IBM Research, Renewable Energy Vermont, and Vestas, the largest wind company in the world.
Films about helping the planet are the most rewarding films to make. True stewards of the land lay down their hard-earned money to share all they have learned as they quietly work in the trenches of powerful forces. These environmentalists know they must reach a noisy, jaded world, telling their story about how we really can change the world, and we really can reverse climate change, if only we all work together.
Our video production agency has worked with many municipalities and city governments to help them bring about change in their communities, from hyper-local fundraising to real-world issues including health care, gender, and race. It’s generally one quietly passionate individual who may not understand our world, but who has a powerful story about their world that the world needs to hear, and they trust us to bring that story to the larger world.
First births, ERs, operating rooms, nursing homes, and end-of-life care: our video production specialists have had the honor to tell powerful stories and help medical organizations raise millions for new facilities. We are considerate videographers operating quietly behind surgeons and nurses as they operate on patients. If you need a video production house that knows your industry, we are it.
Our video marketing expertise creates viral stories that spread public awareness about your cause and educate viewers about a policy before voting. Informative, emotional, and engaging, they grab attention and help viewers understand important issues. We have worked on one Congressional amendment and three state bills that all became law.
A great music video is just a great story with a soundtrack. Music videos are a unique marriage of story, sound, and visuals that together make a brief, perfect little movie. We have made 7 music videos in the last 7 years. Every time, the artists we film stretch us creatively. Every song hopefully contains a story. It’s our job to find the essence of the story the songwriter had in mind and paint a picture of it, woven into and around the band in a way that best serves the music.
Music videos are a unique marriage of sound and visuals that together make a brief, perfect little movie. The less experienced the band, the greater their expectations. At the same time, there are fewer creative limits, as they don’t know what is easy or hard to produce as a film. It’s a pleasure when we get to work with emerging artists to bring their story to life.
A great music video is a great story. Few live in the dance between lyrics and the pictures we paint. Music videos can be anything, but unfortunately most end up as stereotyped visuals of broken hearts and unfulfilled hopes and dreams. It’s our job as experienced music videographers to push the boundaries of art to help propel musicians and bands to the bigger stage.
Tell us about your project and what you want it to change. We’ll get back to you with ideas and a straight answer on cost.
Excellence in Cinematic Storytelling
VT, NH, ME, MA, CT, RI, & NY
Filmed Across the Northeast
Of Visionary Video Production