Client Testimonial Video Production from Skillman Video Group on Vimeo.

When a business hires Skillman Video Group, there’s an implicit trust that comes along with the arrangement. The business trusts that we are, first and foremost, capable professionals who are able to bring out the best stories from other people. This trust is especially important when our client is based in St. Louis, and our job is to remotely produce a video for them in Boston.

A few weeks ago, we had the privilege to film a client testimonial for Stackify at the gorgeous, downtown-Boston offices of Carbonite. Since we were hired by Stackify, not Carbonite, we were there as ambassadors of the Stackify brand, and this is a responsibility that we took very seriously.

So, after we had our equipment rigged, our frame composed, and our white balance… balanced, our CEO, Creative Director, and Producer Christina Skillman sat down with our contact, Carbonite’s Chief Engineer, to get a sense of Stackify’s influence in the work place.

Now, we at Skillman Video Group were not give the chance to check out the Carbonite offices prior to shooting, so, once we got there, we needed to employ a series of smart judgments to get the most out of the space. It takes a certain level of experienced judgment and familiarity with process to come into an unfamiliar area, and still produce something that looks fantastic. We have enough experience to know what to expect, and we always bring the right gear to get the job done.

Our content speaks for itself, and wow did we get a lot of material to work with. See how the embedded video is roughly two minutes long? It’s been cut from roughly thirty minutes of back and forth interview, and we couldn’t help but get tons of B-Roll of Carbonite’s beautiful office. The way we construct narrative, tell stories, and show these stories visually requires the skilled, intuitive understanding of how audiences connect with the people and media they engage with.

In video, the construction of narrative first happens on set. A big challenge with this shoot was producing content that appealed to both highly skilled, technically oriented engineers, and also managers who lack the technical expertise. Simultaneously appealing to both audiences is obviously very difficult, but we were able to get enough personality and raw, technical content out of the interview to construct a powerful narrative.