Dear Slow Clap: What Should I Expect on a Corporate Video Shoot Day as a Client

May 27, 2025

Dear Slow Clap,

I’m the marketing lead for my team, and next week, we are planning to film a promotional video about a new product launch. I’m honestly nervous and confused about what to expect for the filming shoot day since it’s the first official video shoot that my company is having with a video production company. Could you give me some information about what to expect on a film shoot day?

– Anxious Launch Leader

Dear Anxious Launch Leader,

That’s so exciting that your company has decided to professionally film a product launch video! There’s definitely some great benefits that come with working with a professional video agency to help create your next video. No need to worry about anything—your video production partner should have things all under control, but we totally understand that the more you can know what to expect, the more prepared and at ease you’ll feel.

Here’s what to expect:

Your Role

When working with a video production company for the first time, one of the initial steps is to define roles and responsibilities. You'll want to clarify who on your team will be involved in creative direction, feedback, and approvals, and what you’d like the production company to handle.

Most video agencies are equipped to manage the entire process, but it’s important to align early on about who is doing what. This discussion will help determine the exact scope of work and the role the external team will play.

Whether you prefer to maintain full creative control, hand it off entirely, or collaborate closely with the production company is entirely up to you. A capable video partner should be able to support you through every phase—from creative development and pre-production, to filming, editing, and final delivery.

Another key part of a successful shoot is ensuring your video production team has everything they need on the day of filming. If you're filming at your company’s office, make sure the crew has access to all necessary rooms and spaces. You may also need to connect the production team with your building management to coordinate logistics like access permissions, certificates of insurance (COI), parking, and other requirements.

To help your team prepare effectively, consider sending photos of potential filming locations within your office. This will give the production team a sense of the best spots to shoot and help you plan ahead to reserve any shared spaces.

Additional considerations may include providing Wi-Fi access, making available any company-branded props or demo software, and prepping internal stakeholders—such as executives or subject matter experts—who will appear on camera.

One other helpful tip is to inform your office coworkers about the planned filming days so that your coworkers can plan accordingly. This helps ensure the quietest possible environment for recording high-quality sound. On shoot days, it’s often best for coworkers to work remotely or avoid making noise near filming areas. Common sound disruptions include conversations, video calls, door openings, fans, loud typing, and other ambient office noise—all of which can affect the final video.

Here’s a summary of the Before Filming Checklist as a guide:

Access permissions
Reservations for filming spots like conference rooms or shared areas
Connecting your building management/facilities team with your video team
Sending your lunch orders to the video team if they are handling this
Parking permits for your video team
Visitor badges for your video team
Creative shot list (a list of different shots that will be filmed especially b-roll to help visually elevate the story of your video) if you have any specific ideas in mind or review the shot list your video team should have put together
Scripts locked
Making sure talent is prepped with info (talent is any of your company colleagues or customers who are being filmed whether they are speaking or are just extras for b-roll scenes)
Send location photos to your video team if it’s being filmed at your office

Your trusted video partner should be handling all other aspects of your production including the logistics, cameras and gear, crafty, and directing. Curious to know exactly what your video team will do on production day? Let me walk you through a typical film shoot day.

Shooting Schedule

Load In

Starting bright and early, your video crew is likely ready to arrive on set and load in all their gear including camera, lights, grip, sound, art, and other equipment needed to create the best shots for your video.

You can expect your video crew to drive up in a large vehicle, such as a van, and to roll out their gear on carts and wagons. They’ll locate the freight elevators if there are any and if it is needed to travel to different floors with their gear.

Location Scout

Once they’ve loaded all their gear in, the video team should designate a spot as home base to store gear and identify areas for each department of the crew. For example, for the hair and makeup artist, there might be a separate room for them to intake talent and complete hair and makeup services. For the camera team, they’ll need an area to lay out their gear and to offload media as needed.

The team will also take a look around your office to identify the spots with the best background, lighting, sound, and places to set the camera for movement and depth of field (if they haven’t already done this before the shoot day). This ensures that the team can grab the best shots by planning ahead of time for the variety of camera angles and set-ups so that transitions between set-ups are efficient and smooth.

Set-up/Hair and Make-up

Once the team determines the filming locations, your video crew will jump straight into setting up all their equipment, including cameras, lights, grip gear, sound, art props, and anything else needed.

Meanwhile, your hair and makeup artist (if you have one!) will be ready to prep the first on-screen talent. Throughout the day, the hair and makeup artist will continue to work on all the talent as they flow into the set and according to their filming schedule. During filming, the hair and makeup stylist will also be monitoring talent on screen to ensure they are always looking their best, including patting down hair flyaways and powdering any shininess on their faces.

Crew Lunch

The crew will take a lunch break anywhere between 30 minutes to 1 hour. If the crew seems particular about lunch timing, it’s because lunch breaks are carefully scheduled to keep the shoot on track — especially since film days are long and often tightly packed with activity. Since there are labor rules tied to when the crew should be taking their meals, it’s important for all to adhere to this so as to avoid a meal penalty in California. For lunch, the crew may get food delivered or pick up food nearby. They may also walk away from set to take their lunch break.

Filming
This is the big moment that you, your talent, and your video team have been prepping for! As the client, you will likely be seated in an area called a Video Village, where you will monitor the performance of the talent and whatever shots are being filmed. Your film team is recording your talent and may be asking them questions for their interview or directing their lines and performance. Depending on the role you choose to take on as client, you may also provide feedback to your talent and direct their soundbites and performance as you’d like.

In case you want to be extra prepped, we cover some film jargon we may use on set in our other blog here.

Breakdown

Finally, the day is nearing its end and your video team has captured all the shots needed, including filming interviews, scripted scenes, and/or any b-roll. Once the video crew calls the filming a wrap, the team will begin breaking down all their gear. They will offload any media if needed and organize their gear to pack back into their cases, carts, and wagons.

Post-Filming/Post-Production

If you have hired your video agency partner to be in charge of editing your content, they should keep open communication with you on the next steps of their post-production process.

This may include sharing the project timeline (if they haven’t already) so you know when to expect video cuts and when you should provide any feedback for client review cycles. Once a first draft of the video is ready, your video vendor should share the first cut with you and give you a couple of days to collate feedback from your team and any other stakeholders involved. Once you have all the feedback finalized for the first round of review, your video vendor should be working to execute all your notes to pass you the next revised cut of your video. At Slow Clap, we usually include three review cycles for a project timeline, but we are very flexible depending on each client’s and each project’s needs.

Questions

Hopefully, all these details put you at ease and give you a better idea of what to expect ahead of your corporate video shoot day. If you have any other questions, we’re happy to answer them here. Wishing you all the best with your filming!

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