Explainer Video Production
If your sales team spends the first twenty minutes of every call explaining the same thing, a good explainer can do that explaining before anyone picks up the phone, so the call starts further on. We take something hard to understand, a product, a service, a process or a change that's coming, and make it clear in about two minutes, as animation or filmed live action, often mixing the two. Every one starts with the script.
A thirty minute conversation with the team. No obligation.
What does an explainer video do for a business?
The most useful explainers answer the questions people ask before they're ready to talk to you. If your sales team spends the first part of every call explaining the basics, a good explainer does that work before the call happens, so the conversation starts further along.
They also travel. A film on a landing page explains the product the same way at three in the morning as it does in a meeting. It says the same thing to a prospect in another country as to a new starter on their first day. That consistency is most of the value, because the explanation stops depending on who happens to be giving it.
Why we write the script before anything is drawn or filmed
The script decides whether an explainer works, far more than the animation style or the voiceover. A great script with plain visuals makes a good explainer, and a beautiful film built on a crowded script is an expensive way to confuse people.
The explainers that cost the most are usually the ones where the brief kept growing. So before any drawing or filming we agree the one thing the viewer needs to understand by the end, write the script backwards from that, and read it aloud, because an explainer is heard before it's seen. Two minutes is usually enough, and if the script needs much longer we'll say so at this stage and suggest two films.
Animated explainer video, or filmed?
The subject usually decides this, rather than the budget. Animation suits things that can't be filmed, like software or a process that happens inside a system. It's also the right choice when a brand needs a visual language of its own, and our animated video production page covers how those films are made.
Live action suits anything tangible, and anything where trust matters more than mechanics. A real engineer showing how a part is made, or a customer describing what changed, carries a credibility that drawings struggle to match. The hybrid version films a person explaining the idea and adds animated diagrams over the top to show how it works. For a complicated product with real people behind it, that's often the best of both.
How an explainer gets made
You don't need a brief, only the thing that's hard to explain and who needs to understand it. We have a thirty minute conversation about who's watching and what they need to do afterwards, write the script and agree it with you, then record the voiceover, either with your own presenter or a professional voice artist.
For an animated explainer, a storyboard and a rough animatic come before the full animation, so you see the timing while changes are still cheap. For a filmed one, we plan a shoot day around the script, film the demonstration and any interviews, and cut it against the voiceover. Both end in the same place, with a grade, a sound mix and music, and versions with burnt-in subtitles for anywhere people watch on mute. A filmed explainer is often quicker to finish than an animated one, and we'll give you a realistic date when we send the proposal.
Where explainers get used
Most explainers sit on a website or in a sales deck. They're especially useful for professional services that are hard to describe in words. The rest explain how something works internally, for a new partner or a new member of staff, which is where they start to overlap with training video production.
When trust matters more than mechanics, put a real person at the front. Dojo's card machines could have been explained feature by feature, and in our films for Dojo most of them put a merchant at the front instead, with the product appearing as part of how they run their business.
FAQ
How long should an explainer video be?
About two minutes is usually enough. If a script needs much longer, the brief is usually trying to say several things at once, and it works better as two films.
Should an explainer video be animated or filmed?
The subject decides. Animation suits things that can't be filmed, like software. Live action suits anything tangible or anywhere trust matters, and a hybrid adds animated diagrams over a filmed explanation.
What matters most in an explainer video?
The script. A great script with plain visuals makes a good explainer, and a beautiful film built on a crowded script just confuses people.
Related services
Explainer video production is one of our video production services. If your subject is clinical, video production for healthcare explains how we handle accuracy and approvals.
Send us the thing your sales team explains on every call, in a sentence or two. We'll show you how a film could do that explaining before the call starts.
Work in this area
All the work. Films like these often sit alongside animated video.
Three things people ask
- What does it cost?
- Most production companies won't tell you until you've had a call. What things cost
- How long does it take?
- Four to six weeks from brief to delivery, for most projects. How we work
This is one of the ways we work, and the whole range is on the video production services page. People reading about explainer videos often go on to animated video and training videos. You can see the approach at work in the Dojo case study, and for a sector where something complicated has to be made clear without being made simple, read video production for healthcare. Guides that go with it: how to write a video script.
Tell us the problem.
We'll tell you honestly which kind of film would solve it, or whether a film is the answer at all. Thirty minutes with one of our team.
A thirty minute conversation with the team. No obligation.