Company presentation video: what it needs and how it's made

What a company presentation video should include

A presentation video has one job: to make someone who doesn't know you understand what you do in a minute, and want to talk to you. To get there it needs four things, almost always in this order.

First, what you do and who for, said in one sentence anyone would understand. If the video opens with the year you were founded or a drone shot of the industrial park, you've already lost half the audience.

Second, why you. Not a list of values like commitment, quality and innovation, which any company could sign, but something people can see: how you work, a detail of your process, a decision others wouldn't make.

Third, people. Viewers trust faces, not logos. A founder who speaks plainly or a technician explaining what they do every day is more convincing than a voice-over artist reading over stock footage.

Fourth, a proof point and a next step: a client, a result or a milestone you can stand behind, and at the end, what the viewer should do, whether that's getting in touch, booking a demo or sending a CV.

One tip that saves trouble later: leave out figures that go stale fast, like headcount or number of offices. If you include them, the video ages in a few months and you'll have to reshoot it.

Corporate, institutional or presentation video: which one you need

Google mixes up the three terms, so it's normal to be unsure. Corporate video is the whole family: any video a company makes to say something about itself, to the outside world or internally. Within that family, the presentation video explains who you are to someone new, whether that's a client landing on your website, an investor or someone who wants to work with you. The institutional video is more formal and usually covers history, mission or anniversaries; public bodies, schools and large corporations use it a lot.

For a company that wants to sell or grow, the presentation video is almost always the right call: shorter, more direct and built around people. On a website and on LinkedIn, one to two minutes works best. To fine-tune it by channel, here's our guide on how long a corporate video should be for each goal.

What doesn't work is asking a single video to do everything. One that tries to serve clients, investors, recruits and a trade show at once ends up long and lukewarm for everyone. A main piece plus several short versions for each use, all cut from the same shoot, works much better, and you don't have to bring the crew back.

How it's made, step by step

The process has five steps, and the most important one is the first, which doesn't need a camera.

One, goal and placement. Decide who will watch it and where: your homepage, a sales deck, LinkedIn or the screen at a trade show stand. That sets the length, the format and whether it needs subtitles to work with the sound off.

Two, message and script. Write down in one sentence what you want the viewer to remember. The script grows from that: what gets said, who says it and what's on screen meanwhile. If you've never commissioned a video, writing a good video brief gets you halfway there.

Three, pre-production. Choose the people who'll appear, prepare their interviews, pick the locations (the office, the workshop, the lab) and lock the shot list.

Four, the shoot. For a presentation video, one well-organised day is usually enough: interviews in the morning and everyday footage in the afternoon.

Five, editing and versions. Cut, colour, sound, titles and music. From there come the cutdowns: the main horizontal video, a vertical version for social media and a short clip with the strongest line.

The biggest time-waster is skipping step two and trying to fix the script in the edit suite.

A real case: presenting a quantum computing company

Our clearest example is Qilimanjaro, a Barcelona company pioneering quantum computing, for which we at Bostak have produced more than 15 corporate videos. The challenge was to explain something very hard without losing scientific rigour, so that an investor and a prospective hire would both get it.

The answer wasn't one video but a family of pieces that share the work. Qilimanjaro in a minute is the pure presentation: what they do and why, with a voice-over, in just over a minute. SpeQtrum is a product piece of under two minutes with motion graphics, starting from a problem anyone can grasp: the energy ceiling of data centres. In the interview with Dídac, the lab manager talks about his work and the company gets a face. And in Accelerator, a three-minute mini documentary, the CEO, Marta Estarellas, and the team explain why they do what they do.

With Audiovisuales Data, which sells technical audiovisual equipment to other businesses, the approach was similar: product videos and a digital catalogue that turn spec sheets into something people understand the first time.

In both cases the idea is the same: complex things are told through people and concrete images, not big statements.

With a phone, Canva or AI? When it works and when it doesn't

Yes, you can, and sometimes it's the right move. If you need something quick for social media, or an internal video only your team will see, a recent phone, good window light and a lavalier mic will give you a decent result. Canva templates and AI editors are fine for putting photos, text and music together in an afternoon.

The problem starts when the video has to win over someone who doesn't know you. Templates look alike, a synthetic voice is easy to spot and stock footage shows offices that aren't yours. That's the opposite of what you want, which is for people to see who you really are.

A professional crew makes the difference in three things you don't notice at first glance: a script that says one thing, interviews where people speak naturally even if they've never stood in front of a camera, and clean sound. A simple rule for deciding: if the video will sit on your homepage, or a client will watch it before meeting you, it deserves a proper production.

At Bostak Films we make presentation videos from start to finish, from the script to the social media cutdowns, at your premises or in our studio in Viladecans, near Barcelona. See how we work on video and photography for companies, or tell us about your project and we'll suggest the right format.

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