At Bee Video we often joke- “Everyone likes to shoot- but nobody likes to edit.”

We can all picture the scene, whether it’s a concert, a children’s sporting event, or a celebrity sighting- a crowd full of people all with their phones up in the air recording the event for posterity. As a video producer myself, I’m rarely one of those people. Maybe because I spend so much time looking at the video, in my personal life I try to remind myself to stay present and enjoy the moment rather than recording it. I recently attended a beautiful wedding and I strongly resisted the urge to join the people in the pews that were recording the bride walking down the aisle.

I am as guilty as anyone though, of having hours and hours of video footage on my phone that I rarely if ever watch.

The problem is, it’s relatively easy to record a moment and it’s relatively hard to edit and to store that moment in a cohesive way. The same is true for a corporate video.

I have met many clients who tell me they have vast corporate archives of still and video footage that they don’t know what to do with.

Take for example our wonderful client Camino Chocolate. They produce organic, ethically sourced cocoa and chocolate products. They came to us with this exact dilemma. They knew the story they wanted to tell and they had the footage (or at least they thought they had the footage) but they weren’t sure how to pull it all together. In fact, they had tried their hand at editing a short piece for a YouTube pre-roll ad but were rejected by Google on the basis of low production value.

So we started this project first by writing out a simple storyboard of the message they wanted to convey about their chocolate. The message was simple: when you buy Camino not only are you buying delicious chocolate, you are also supporting thousands of small-scale, local farmers and an organic farming process.

So once we got the messaging down we went on a search through their archives for video and still footage that matched each of those points. We also supplemented the archival footage with strategically-placed stock footage. We added an upbeat music track and some fun animated quotes.

We did a 30-second version, a 60-second version, a French version and an Instagram version. We charged an hourly rate for editing services which included the storyboarding, the music rights and the stock footage cost.

Camino was very happy with the result. The entire process was done remotely because Camino is based in Ottawa and we’re here in Toronto. We communicated through regular Google Hangouts so it felt pretty personal but technically we didn’t meet anybody from Camino in person.

Video editing services have become a bigger part of our business as more and more clients look for simple ways to stretch their marketing dollars by repurposing their footage. It’s also great for Bee video because we can easily work with clients from anywhere in the world since we’ve eliminated the need for a shoot day.

We’ve done similar videos for Gravitate Travel, Sotheby’s International, Sterno Home Candle Company, Accenture and for the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. The key to success with each of these projects is that the client had access to an archive of video footage that we can supplement with stock video.

What differentiates Bee video editing services from the rest is that we will consult with you on a creative level to create something that works for your brand. If you hire an editor, you are not going to get that level of feedback. We will curate your content rather than just edit it.

It’s also a very inexpensive way to try us out. A short curated video produced in this manner can cost as little as $750. Because we work on an hourly rate, we can keep going if you get more ambitious.

So if you have your own video archives reach out today let’s talk about making something great!