Visit the grocery store, Michaels or The Home Depot and see how it’s not too early to start deciding on this season’s Halloween decorations. One of our favorite holidays (Is Halloween an actual holiday?) is still weeks away, but creating creepy content for customers and employees should be a monster part of your to-do list. Maybe you plan to post your product in the shape of a pumpkin. Or maybe you dive into a project much more daring such as a fun, Halloween-themed video to hopefully help your employees holler in laughter. If the idea doesn’t scare you, consider the following suggestions and questions to shoot and edit a company Halloween video that someone might actually share:
- Select your team. Who will oversee the video project? Who will shoot and edit the video? Who will need to approve the video’s final version?
- What’s the budget? You generally get what you pay for, so what’s the value of this video project?
- Outline a timeline. Do you have sufficient time to properly see through the idea? When and where will you shoot the video? When is the first draft due? When will the leadership team need to review the video? Will you post the video prior to Halloween?
- Do you plan to write a script? Will the video include dialogue or simply visuals and grunts from someone in a Frankenstein mask?
- Will you include employees or actors? Will you ask them to sign a waiver? If you hire actors, can you find them at a local community theater? What if the actors later ask to share your internal video on their reel to help them land in Hollywood?
- Consider the costumes. Will people simply be donning Dracula masks or will you hire a make-up artist?
- Allow sufficient time for scheduling. How easily can you coordinate everyone especially if you plan to shoot the video at night?
- Discuss the music. Are you planning to include copyrighted music and watch your attorneys sweat or will you instead purchase royalty-free tunes?
- Do you actually plan to do this right? We’ve all seen corporate videos that are a horror to watch. Humor and creativity are hard. Do you plan to simply slap something together with a skeleton plan and hope at least you laugh? Or is your goal to shoot and edit something that reminds your employees how they genuinely work at a cool company?
