Most corporate video shoots do not go wrong because of the camera. They go wrong because the conference room has an air conditioner nobody is allowed to switch off, the managing director is stuck in a meeting that overran by forty minutes, and nobody can find a current vector copy of the logo.
A film crew can solve lighting. It cannot solve a locked gate, an unapproved talking point, or a spokesperson who did not know they were on camera today. Those are client side problems, and they are the ones that quietly eat half a shoot day.
This checklist covers what you prepare in the week before the crew arrives. Work through it and shoot day stops being a gamble.
What the crew handles and what you handle
Before anything else, be clear about the split. Crews rarely spell this out, and most overruns happen in the gap between the two lists.
The crew brings cameras, lenses, lighting, sound kit, stands, cabling, media and the people to run them. They decide framing, exposure, mic placement and how the room is lit.
You bring access, people, decisions and information. Specifically: who appears, what they say, which rooms are usable, who can approve a shot, what the video is for, and every brand asset the editor will need.
Nothing on the second list can be bought on the morning of the shoot.
Lock the purpose and the final format first
A corporate video is not one deliverable. The same two hours of footage can become a ninety second company profile, a thirty second ad, six vertical clips and a fifteen minute internal training film. Which of those you want changes how the day is shot, not just how it is edited.
Decide where the video will be published before the first frame
Aspect ratio is a shoot decision, not an edit decision. A website hero video and a YouTube upload want 16:9. Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and most in feed placements want 9:16. LinkedIn and Facebook feeds favour square or vertical.
If you want vertical cutdowns from the same shoot, say so before the crew sets up. They will frame with extra headroom and place the subject slightly off centre so a vertical crop still works. Retrofitting vertical from a tight 16:9 frame is just a crop, and crops cut off heads.
Write down the one action you want the viewer to take
The ending of the video is built around this. A video that ends in a website visit needs a legible URL on screen for long enough to read. A video that ends in a phone call needs the number spoken as well as shown. A recruitment video ends somewhere different again.
Write one sentence: after watching this, the viewer should do X. Give it to the crew. It will shape the last fifteen seconds and the on screen text, both of which are hard to add convincingly later.
Walk the location with your ears before your eyes
Everyone inspects a room by looking at it. Sound is the thing that ruins footage, and it is the thing almost nobody checks.
Stand in the room in silence for two minutes
Do this at the same hour you plan to shoot, because the building sounds different at 11 am and at 4 pm. Write down every sound you hear.
- Air conditioning, and specifically whether the compressor cycles on and off
- Ceiling fans, exhaust fans and air curtains
- Tube light and ballast hum
- The lift lobby, the lift chime and the pantry
- Road traffic, horns and nearby construction
- Announcement systems, bells and shift sirens
- Machinery on an adjacent floor or shop floor
Then split the list into two: sounds that can be switched off, and sounds that cannot. For the first group, find out who has the authority to switch them off and get that agreed before the day. Switching off the air conditioning for a forty minute interview in a glass cabin is a real decision with real consequences, and it is better made in advance than argued about while the crew waits.
Room tone: the crew will ask for thirty seconds of complete silence in the room, usually at the end. This is genuine recording time and the editor needs it. Tell your team it is coming so nobody walks in talking.
Audio does not forgive the way light does. A grading pass can rescue a slightly dark shot. Nothing cleanly removes a compressor humming under every sentence.
Check the light you cannot switch off
Mixed colour temperature is the usual problem: office tube lights sit around 4000K, warm downlights around 3000K, and daylight through a window around 5600K. Put all three in one frame and skin tones go green on one side of the face and orange on the other. The crew will often ask to switch the overheads off entirely and light the scene themselves. Agree to this if you can.
LED flicker is the India specific one: on 50Hz mains, inexpensive LED panels and tube light retrofits pulse rather than glow steadily. Recorded at the wrong shutter speed this appears as rolling bands across the picture. Crews working at 25fps with a 1/50 shutter avoid most of it, but a badly driven fixture can still band at any setting. Tell the crew in advance which fittings are LED retrofits so they can test a shot rather than discover it in the edit.
Windows change your exposure every twenty minutes: a cabin with glass facing the sun will drift from bright to flat across an interview, and matching those shots later is tedious. Blinds that actually close are worth more than a nice view.
Find the power
Lighting draws real current. Two or three fixtures plus chargers on one tired circuit will trip the breaker in the middle of a good take.
- Which sockets in the room actually work
- Which circuit the room is on, and where the breaker is
- Which sockets are on the UPS and which are not
- Whether you have generator backup, and what happens during changeover
If the site runs on a generator, ask how long the switchover gap is. Lights dipping for two seconds costs you the take and, on some cameras, the clip.
Sort out the people, because that is what runs late
Equipment delays are measured in minutes. People delays are measured in hours.
Confirm who is appearing on camera, in writing
Send the crew a list before the day with three things per person: full name, the designation exactly as it should appear on screen, and a time slot. Spelling matters. A designation typed wrong in a lower third means a re-export, and re-exports are where goodwill goes to die.
Also confirm who is the backup if someone cannot make it. A senior leader cancelling at 10 am with no alternative is a wasted shoot day.
Brief them on what to wear
- Avoid fine patterns: tight stripes, small checks and herringbone create moire, a shimmering interference pattern that crawls across the shirt on camera. A 2mm check is the worst offender.
- Avoid pure white and solid black near the face: white blows out and loses all texture, black loses all detail. Mid tones and muted colours sit far better.
- Avoid other brands’ logos on shirts and caps unless they are deliberately part of the story.
- Ask for one spare top in a different solid colour: this lets the editor cut two interviews from one sitting into two separate videos without it looking like one long take.
- Remove swinging items: lanyards, ID holders and long necklaces knock against a clipped microphone and the noise is audible.
- Glasses with anti glare coating help. Without it, the crew will adjust the light angle, which takes time.
Tell them what the interview will actually feel like
Most discomfort on camera comes from surprise. A short briefing note removes it.
- A small microphone will be clipped to your shirt and the cable run underneath it
- You will be asked the same question more than once, and that is normal
- Answer in complete sentences, because the question will not be in the final video
- There will be pauses while the crew adjusts, and they are not a sign anything is wrong
Send the questions two days early, not the script. Five to eight questions is enough. People who memorise answers sound like they are reciting. People who have thought about the questions sound like themselves. If you genuinely need a word for word delivery, say so in advance so a teleprompter can be arranged, because it is not standard kit.
Get consent on paper before the day
Anyone recognisable on camera should sign a simple appearance release: their name, the date, where the footage may be used, and for how long. This includes employees, and it includes people visible in the background of a shop floor or office wide shot.
Collecting a signature on the day takes thirty seconds. Chasing one six months later, when the clip is about to go into a paid campaign, is a different experience entirely. Have your own HR or legal team approve the wording, since this is practical production advice rather than legal advice.
Clear the frame before the crew walks in
The camera does not see a room. It sees a rectangle, usually the one directly behind someone’s head.
Remove the visual clutter: dead plants, expired notices, a calendar from last year, stacked cartons, overflowing bins, a crooked clock, competitor products sitting on a shelf.
Remove anything confidential: whiteboards with client names, pricing on a monitor, open files on a desk, dashboards with real revenue figures, name plates of people who are not part of the video.
Check what is behind the chair, not what is in front of it. Walk to where the camera will sit and look at that specific view. A room can be spotless and still have one shelf that ruins every shot.
Leave depth behind the subject: two to three metres of space between the person and the back wall lets the background fall softly out of focus, which is most of what makes footage look professional. A chair pushed against a wall flattens everything.
A clean wall mounted logo is useful. A peeling vinyl sticker with a lifted corner is worse than a plain wall, and it will be visible in every single frame.
Hand over your brand assets before the shoot, not after
This is the single most common cause of delay after the shoot, and it costs nothing to fix in advance. Put everything in one folder and share it when you confirm the date.
- Logo in vector format, which means AI, EPS or SVG, not a JPEG pulled off your own website
- Brand colour codes as HEX for screen and CMYK for anything that may also be printed
- Brand fonts, or the licence details if the font is a paid one
- Two or three videos you like and one you do not, each with a line explaining why
- Approved product names, taglines and any mandatory legal or disclaimer lines
- Pronunciation notes for brand names, product names and technical terms used in voiceover
- Existing footage, product photography or drawings the editor can cut to
This folder is the difference between an edit that looks like the rest of your marketing and one that looks like a template with your logo dropped on top. If your identity is inconsistent across your own materials, that is a graphic design problem to settle first, not something an editor can resolve in a timeline.
Clear access and permissions inside your own building
Camera equipment arriving at a security gate without prior approval is one of the most common reasons a shoot starts two hours late.
- Crew names and ID numbers submitted to security in advance
- Vehicle number and parking arranged for the crew vehicle
- An equipment list for the gate register, since camera gear is usually logged in and out
- Lift access for cases, stands and tripods, and whether the service lift is usable
- Landlord or facility management approval if you are in a shared or managed building
- On a factory floor: protective equipment for the crew, the safety induction slot, and a clear list of zones that cannot be filmed
- Drone footage, which needs its own permissions and cannot be assumed
Tell the floor a day earlier. People behave very differently when a camera appears with no warning, and an unannounced crew generates complaints that reach someone senior by lunchtime.
Build a schedule with honest slack in it
The most useful thing you can do for a shoot day is stop over scheduling it.
The first setup of the day is always the slowest. Lighting and sound for a seated interview is not a five minute job, and the crew is learning your room while they do it. Build this in rather than treating it as a delay.
Every location change costs a move: pack, carry, re-light, re-level, re-test sound. Three rooms is not three times one room, it is three times one room plus three moves.
Schedule senior people in the middle of the day. The first slot absorbs all the setup overrun. Putting your managing director there guarantees they wait, and they will not wait twice.
Decide the lunch arrangement in advance. A crew that has to leave the premises to eat loses an hour. Feeding them on site is cheaper than that hour.
Name one person who can approve things on the day. One person, physically present, who can look at a frame and say yes. Approval by group chat does not work on a shoot floor, and a crew waiting for a reply is a crew being paid to stand still.
Tell the crew your hard stop. When the building closes, when security leaves, when the floor needs to be clear. Crews will work to a deadline they know about and resent one they discover at 7 pm.
Decide what happens after the camera stops
Agree these points before the shoot, while everyone is still agreeable.
- Who reviews the first cut, and by when
- How many rounds of changes are included, and what counts as a round
- Final formats and destinations: website, YouTube, LinkedIn, in house screens, a looping trade show file
- Subtitles, and whether they need to be burnt into the picture, since most feed video autoplays silent
- Where the raw footage will be stored and for how long, because a single shoot day can run to several hundred gigabytes
- Music licensing, including which platforms the licence covers
If the finished video is going into paid distribution, the people planning that campaign should see the brief before the shoot, not the final cut afterwards. A video built for a website homepage and a video built for a social media feed are not the same video, and the difference starts at the framing stage.
The short version to print and circulate
- Purpose and publishing platforms confirmed, including whether vertical versions are needed
- One sentence on what the viewer should do after watching
- Rooms walked and listened to at the planned shoot hour
- Noise sources identified, and sign off obtained for the ones to be switched off
- LED and tube light fittings flagged to the crew
- Working sockets, circuit and breaker location known
- On camera list sent with exact name spellings, designations and time slots
- Wardrobe and interview briefing sent to every participant
- Questions shared two days in advance
- Appearance releases printed and ready to sign
- Frames cleared of clutter and confidential material
- Brand asset folder shared
- Security, parking, lift and safety clearances arranged
- One on site decision maker named and available
- Hard stop time communicated
- Review and delivery terms agreed in writing
Where to start
Pick the room you are most likely to shoot in. Go and stand in it at the hour the crew would be there, stay quiet for two minutes, and write down what you hear and where the light is coming from. That single exercise surfaces more problems than any other item on this list.
Then do the people list, because names, availability and consent take the longest to collect and depend on other people’s calendars. Brand assets and clearances can be done in an afternoon once someone owns them.
SRS Pro offers photography and videography alongside video creation for digital campaigns, so this checklist is worth sharing with whoever is briefing your crew. If you want to talk through a specific location or shoot plan before you lock a date, get in touch.
Frequently asked questions
How long before the shoot should we start preparing?
One week is comfortable for a single location interview shoot. Two weeks is more realistic if you need senior people on camera, approvals from a landlord or facility team, or access to a factory floor with a safety induction. The constraint is almost never the production side, it is how long your own approvals take.
Do we need a full script for a corporate video?
Not for interview led content, and usually it makes the result worse. What you need is a clear purpose, a set of questions, and agreed key messages. A word for word script is necessary for voiceover, for anything with legal wording that must be exact, and for scripted scenes with actors, and in those cases it should be approved before the shoot day rather than during it.
Can we shoot in a working office without stopping work?
Partly. Wide shots of people working are generally fine and look better with genuine activity. Interviews are not, because they need quiet and a static background. The practical approach is to block a quiet room for interviews and shoot the activity footage separately, with the floor told in advance that a camera will be moving through.
What if our office does not look good on camera?
You need far less space than you think. One clean wall, two to three metres of depth in front of it and a controllable light source is enough for a professional looking interview. A small tidy corner photographs better than a large cluttered room. If no interior works, the alternatives are a rented studio or an outdoor location, both of which should be decided before the date is locked, not on the morning.
Do we really have to switch off the air conditioning?
For interview audio, usually yes, at least during takes. The workable compromise is to cool the room hard before the crew records, switch the unit off for each take, and switch it back on between setups. Tell the crew the room gets warm quickly so they plan shorter takes. A compressor humming under a spokesperson’s voice is noticeable to viewers even if they cannot name what is bothering them.
How many people from our side should be there on shoot day?
One decision maker who can approve shots, plus one coordinator who can open doors, find people and chase the next participant. More than that tends to slow things down, because an audience makes the person on camera self conscious and a room full of opinions turns every framing choice into a discussion.
