How long a corporate video takes, start to finish

A single video typically takes somewhere between four and eight weeks from the first workshop to final delivery, depending on how many locations are involved and how complex the edit needs to be. That's the whole process, not just the day the crew is on site, and most of that time isn't filming at all.

Clients booking their first shoot often think of the timeline as one event, the day the camera rolls, and are surprised by how much sits either side of it. Understanding where the weeks actually go makes it much easier to plan a video against a real deadline, a launch, a campaign, a board meeting, rather than guessing.

Week one to two: the workshop and the brief

Every project starts with a workshop, not a camera. That session settles who the video is for, the one thing it has to say and where it'll be published, and it usually takes one focused session plus a short turnaround to confirm the brief in writing. Rushing this stage to save a week almost always costs more time later, because a shoot without a settled brief tends to need reshoots or a longer edit to fix in the cutting room what wasn't decided on paper.

Week two to four: pre-production and scheduling

Once the brief is locked, we build the run sheet and shot list, book the crew that suits the job, and sort logistics: site access, availability of the people being filmed, permissions where they're needed. This stage moves at the pace of your calendar as much as ours, because coordinating a senior executive's diary or a site access approval often takes longer than any part of the production itself. Booking further ahead gives more room here, particularly for multi-location projects. We've written about how this stage actually works in run sheets and shot lists, explained for clients.

The shoot day itself

The filming is usually the shortest part of the whole timeline. A single-location interview day wraps in a day. Multi-location or multi-state projects take longer to shoot, though we run those in parallel with local crews rather than moving one team city to city, which keeps the schedule from stretching into weeks purely because of travel. For the detail on getting your side ready before the crew arrives, see preparing your team for a shoot day.

Week four to seven: the edit and review

This is usually the longest single stage, and it's where the timeline flexes most depending on complexity. A simple talking-head edit can turn around in about a week. A longer, more structured piece with multiple threads takes considerably longer to build properly, because the work is finding the story inside the footage, not just trimming clips. Once a cut is ready, you get a review link to leave notes tied to specific moments, and we work through those rounds before final sign-off. Build in real time for this stage rather than assuming the first cut will be the last one.

Week seven to eight: delivery, formatted for where it lives

Once a cut is approved, delivery isn't a single file. You get versions built for each channel it's going to live on, sized and captioned for the platform rather than one file squeezed to fit everywhere, which is its own step after picture lock.

What actually stretches a timeline

The things that add real time are slow feedback turnaround between review rounds, late changes to the brief after the shoot's already happened, and scheduling delays getting the right people in front of the camera. None of those are about production speed. They're about how quickly decisions get made on your side of the project, which is worth knowing if you're working against a fixed date.

Retainers and multi-video projects run on a different clock

Everything above describes a single video, start to finish. A retainer or a project with several deliverables planned together doesn't multiply that timeline out linearly, because the workshop and pre-production happen once and cover the whole run of production, with individual pieces then moving through the edit on their own schedule. That's one of the reasons an ongoing arrangement often gets content out faster per piece than commissioning each video as a separate, fresh engagement.

If you've got a deadline in mind, tell us early. We'll build the schedule backwards from it and flag straight away if it's tight. For the full picture of what's included at each stage, see our video production page, or get in touch with your date and we'll map the timeline against it.