España!

Spain has been the filming location of choice for Hollywood blockbusters for decades. Epic and iconic films such as Lawrence of Arabia, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, The Bourne Ultimatum, and James Bond have all filmed scenes in various cities around Spain, but there’s no rule that says only film studios should take advantage of the many diverse locations across the country. If you have the means and need to spice up your corporate video with some awesome B-roll, here are some beautiful cities to consider and what visuals you can expect to find.

Barcelona
Several films and video production crews have found their ways to the streets of Barcelona. Here, you have a choice of filming iconic buildings like the Sagrada Familia and Park Güell and also capture the natural wonder of the mountains surrounding the city.

Granada
Head first to Sacromonte, an area initially inhabited by marginalized populations in the 16th century, but which now draw visitors to dance amidst the prominent white caves. The main city features beautiful architecture, including the Abbey of Sacromonte, surrounded by distant snow peaked mountains. A dreamy almost fairy-tale like city come to life.

Cordoba
This is the place to visit if you’re going to feature Moorish architecture. While many of the mosques have been converted into cathedrals, this city offers a rich historical perspective on the Islamic culture that was prominent years back. This is a city protected by UNESCO as a world heritage site, so don’t go flying around your drones without proper permits.

Valencia
The past meets the future in this birthplace of the famous rice dish paella. The City of Arts and Sciences is a spaceship-styled building, perfect to film some high-tech videos. Also, the old town looks like a Spanish café painting come to life with its quaint al fresco tables and boutique restaurants and shops.

Madrid
What can we say about the capital city except that it’s home to some of the world’s greatest pieces of art. Head into a museum, speak to some curators, or even visitors and grab interesting man-on-street video footage (once everything has calmed down, of course). After getting permission from the museum, post a virtual tour of one of the several art museums.

Tenerife
Filled with craters and lava flows, Tenerife is a geological jackpot located off the coast of West Africa is the largest of the Canary Islands. If you visit right before Lent, you’ll see the European answer to Brazil’s Carnaval. The island also features Spain’s highest peak, giving way to breathtaking aerial video footage.

Snippies is a full-service video production company in New York City that specializes in grabbing video footage from around the world, including Spain. We have the capacity of filming in multiple international cities, simultaneously and delivering a finished video with lightning speed. Se habla español.

Outside of New York City, London is probably one of the most featured and instantly recognizable urban metro landscapes that has captivated the big and small screen. Harry Potter, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Spider-Man, The Avengers, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Downton Abbey all have prominent sequences that take place entirely England’s capital, which features architectural marvels that are historically sophisticated and contemporarily intriguing. So, if you’re looking to showcase Old Blighty in an upcoming production, you’ll want to check out to the following locations around the city to capture the very best footage from some of the most iconic and appealing spots.

London Bridge is Video Gold
There are several bridges – 21, to be exact – that provide safe passage over the River Thames. Choose from the Tower Bridge, Millennium Bridge, London Bridge, or Richmond Bridge to grab excellent video of the riverside buildings and the atmosphere of the city.

Aerial Videos from the London Eye
Hop aboard the world’s classiest and tallest ferris wheel to get a 360-degree view of the city. The fragile seeming pods of the wheel are extremely steady and offer breathtaking views of the entire city for capturing amazing B-roll footage. The London Eye is conveniently located opposite Big Ben clock tower, so if you’re an efficient videographer, you can easily grab additional footage of the world famous bell tower.

Brick Lane
On this street in East London, you’ll find buildings not out of place in a Jack the Ripper documentary to go along with contemporary cafés, art galleries, and boutique shops. This is a hipster neighborhood, ideal for grabbing man on street interview videos or grabbing a modern view of contemporary London.
Bonus: You’ll find tons of great Indian restaurants or curry spots here to feed your video crew.

Buckingham Palace
The royal family lives here, so if you want to film, you’ll need to grab permission beforehand. While casual phone based videos are usually permitted, like during the changing of the guard ceremony, you’ll definitely need a local handler to manage the permits if you want to create a professional, public marketing video with your crew.

Snippies is a full service video production company based in New York City. We film several videos in London on a regular basis and can help you obtain licenses, permits, and local video crews for all your video needs.

Shooting on a green screen background gives you the freedom to transport your video to the limits of your imagination – even if you, like the rest of us, are working remotely! Basically, a green screen allows you to superimpose or “key-in” any type of video, photo, or animated video in the background of your video (frequent Zoom users may already be aware of its “Virtual Background” feature, which utilizes the same principle). Your video can travel through time and space. Be whisked away to Times Square, Hawaii, a Texan ranch, or even Delaware!

But how do you choose what to put in the background? How do you ensure that the green screen video looks seamless and not fake? Excellent questions!

Lighting
A good green screen video starts with a laser focus on lighting. Light your set evenly so that there is balanced light across the frame. Space your subject and the green screen as far apart as possible to avoid shadows – around 6 ft would be ideal. Keep a matte box handy to keep out any unwanted light. Light your subject and the green screen separately to avoid any mixing.

Camera Settings
If you want to make the most realistic green screen effect, you’ll have to adjust your camera settings accordingly. The ISO setting should be low, and set it to the highest quality recording format. Set your aperture to f4 or similar to increase your depth of field. Also, ensure that there is minimal motion blur in the shot. All these steps will ensure an ideal chromakey.

Avoid Reflectors
The final tip for green screen shooting is a simple one: be aware of any shadows or shiny objects in your footage. Check the gate, once, twice, and three times before calling it a cut. Leave reflectors out of your shoot and make sure your actors don’t wear anything shiny. Tell the makeup department to leave the glitter at home that day.

Filming on green screen gives you the luxury of introducing fantasy into an otherwise ordinary shoot. The results, if done right following the above 3 steps, can be absolutely mind blowing.

Evergreen video content gives you consistent, dependable value, which is a wonderful thing whether you’re looking to either monetize your video content or acquire a new audience for your brand. Evergreen content, such as the suggestions below, can be made at anytime and is always relevant!

Animation
If you watch a cartoon that you grew up watching, chances are, you’ll still connect with it. Animated videos are made in their own universe – they don’t follow any limitations of the real world. Having an animated video for your brand will hit differently each time depending on your audience, but it will also deliver a specific message at any given time.

How-To Videos
Instructional videos or do it yourself videos are always relevant. Think of all the uses of your product or service and create a funny “how-to” video to impress your audience.

Pointer a.k.a. Trailer Videos
Sometimes a video is not a video, but a pointer. You can produce a short video, like a trailer, to encourage people to download a white paper from your website. A pointer video is a way to market another piece of marketing. If your brand is going to be present at a popular trade show, you could create a teaser reel to land more customers at your booth!

Behind the Scenes
Everyone wants to know how things get made, especially if they loved the final product. Next time you have the budget to hire a video production company near you, ask them to add an additional videographer to the crew to take “behind the scenes” footage. These videos act as great morale boosters for employees – especially if they happen to be bloopers!

Bigger Picture
If your company has a set of ethos that it builds its entire products & services on, you can address it through a philosophy video. Share your worldview and connect on a deeper level with your audience.

Testimonials
Grab video testimonials of customers talking about how great your product, service, or you are! This will always be relevant, as long as you’re in business! Testimonial videos have a proven track record of increasing sales.

Fresh like the morning mist, an evergreen video helps you stay relevant longer!

File Error!

File Failed to Send!

Please contact your IT administrator.

If you’ve ever seen one of the above or similar messages on your computer while transferring files, you need to know about firewalls. You may think that a firewall exists solely to make you miserable and unnecessarily elongate your work process, but the reality is far from the truth.

A firewall keeps out bad players, hackers, and competitors from accessing your company’s sensitive data and is a required blockade of information traffic within any organization. But, if you need to get personal access for specific tasks that are important to you, then what you need to do is speak with your IT administrator about surpassing the firewall.

Video File Transfer Access
If you’re working with a local video production company or one that’s remote, you’ll end up transferring – both uploading and downloading – a large number of heavy files. When you engage in a file transfer over an FTP server, it opens up a port of exchange between the outside and inside world. A firewall would immediately recognize this kind of activity as a threat and block the transfer.

In order to surpass this you need to give your admin a heads-up so that they can setup a username and password that your video production company can use to securely login to your network and engage in the transfer.

Third Party File Transfer Apps
If you would rather not bother your IT department about large file transfers, you may use one of the following sites that allow for transfer of giant files at relatively quick speeds:

WeTransfer (free, with paid version)
FileZilla (completely free)
SendAnywhere (free, with paid version)

Social Media Access
If your final project is a marketing video intended for public viewing, then chances are you’ll also need to get access to sites like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and the like. Most IT departments ban these sites to reduce distractions. But, once again, as a marketing manager you should get special permission to manage the company’s social media pages to upload your content on a regular basis.

Video making for marketing should be a fun process, get the right IT setup to make it run smooth!

You typed in a quick search for a video production company near you and moved ahead. But in addition to the videos they have produced in the past, there are 3 litmus tests available to know that you should get into business with them. 

Every production company needs the following things. 

1. Liability Insurance – Having insurance gives you a hint that the video production crew knows a lot more about production than making a short video. Liability insurance protects you and the company in case of any mishaps during the production. Every policy is different but primarily, the kinds of things you want to see should cover the audio and video equipment including lights, wires, drones, and so forth. Most liability insurance will protect the entire video crew while they are out filming. Say a light falls or a drone crashes into a window – all these things need to be covered so that you don’t start fighting a lawsuit while trying to create a brand video. A comprehensive insurance would also include worker’s compensation. A production company will have a set number of individuals who work on any given shoot. All these members need to be protected by insurance, in the case of an accident or emergency.  

2. Professional Equipment – Your video production company should have the best equipment. A camera is one of the most important aspects of your production, but not the only one. Ensure that they have reliable, tried & tested sound and light equipment, as well. A video production is all about the setup and finding the right visual that will deliver a compelling corporate or marketing video.

3. Experience – A lot of young filmmakers want to hit the ground running by trying out their freshly gained skills in film school on your business. While their chutzpah is admirable, nothing beats experience. As you’ve probably grasped by now, the professional video production company you choose should be able to do a lot more than just film a pretty visual. This means pre-production, scriptwriting, location scouting, obtaining licenses, registrations, managing the entire cast and crew, overseeing the post-production and ensuring final delivery within your deadline. In video production, very much like in life, things can and do go wrong. Having an experienced video production house makes the difference between a hit and a disaster. 

What will you film in Paris that hasn’t already been shown to viewers thousands of times? That’s the challenge of Paris. You can never leave the space without at least one mega shot of the stunning Eiffel Tower. A true testament to its longevity and beauty is that each view of the deceptively simple structure will make you long for your own Parisian romance. 

Pont des Arts Bridge

The love locks. Lovers would put a lock on this bridge to secure their happily ever after moments, though that isn’t allowed any longer. Still, this bridge offers a beautiful view of the surrounding architecture.

Louvre

While the pyramid made famous by the Da Vinci Code is here, the adjacent garden of the Louvre is also a beautiful space for filming. 

Pont Alexandre III

The bridge closest to the Eiffel Tower is ornate and iconic. A great place to capture the River Seine and Parisian charm at its finest.

Promenade Plantée

Walk into this secret garden – an elevated walkway in the 12^th arrondissement – in spring to capture cherry blossoms, gorgeous green plants and Parisians strolling by. In 1993, this was the world’s only elevated park, providing you plenty of opportunities to capture video of the delectable Parisian architecture. 

Montmartre

A great place to take in walks and get lost. You’ll notice tourists gathered around Café des Deux Moulins where the film Amélie was shot. But this neighborhood is home to some rare libraries, interesting characters and fashion boutiques. It’s also in walking distance of the Moulin Rouge. A residential neighborhood, you’ll find your fair share of creperies and street accordion players. And who knows, maybe a mime or two. 

Monmartre is also home to Sacré-Cœur, the Roman Catholic church which after the Eiffel Tower is easily one of the most recognizable domes in Paris. Situated on top of a hill, you’ll get a sweeping view of all of Paris from here. 

Père Lachaise Cemetery

A haunting and beautiful space – this is where Parisians go to rest after a well-lived life. Here you can visit the graves of Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Édith Piaf, Frédéric Chopin, and more.  The cemetery is located in the 20^th arrondissement and can capture a different mood of Paris. 

Welcome to Mexico City! Capital of Mexico, of course, but also home to several beautiful video and filming locations for your next video production project. 

Mexico City has a huge population within its dense cityscape. You’ll find baroque architecture alongside the 13^th century Aztec temples, amazing art, and a growing hip urban scene.

The Day of the Dead

If you want to see the city’s colorful side, you can come anytime. But if you want to see a parade filled with cultural heritage on full display, you need to visit on November 2^nd, better known as Dia de los Muertos (or Day of the Dead). Combining Aztec and Catholic traditions, locals will paint their faces like skeletons while paying respect to their ancestors with offerings or ofrendas. 

Mercado Roma

A hipster market for those with ample pesos to spend. You’ll find a lot of tourists nibbling on cheeses and sipping on wines at this uber cool hangout spot. 

Floating Gardens of Xochimilco

Colorful gondolas? Check.

Beautiful canals? Check.

UNESCO World Heritage Site? Check!

An exceedingly gorgeous excursion with plenty of interesting footage to grab along the boat ride. 

Museo Jumex

From the outside, one of the most modern buildings in Mexico City and on the inside, home to one of the largest collections of contemporary art in Latin America. 

Teotihuacán

Ancient pyramids in an ancient part of the city, thought to be the home to several tribes. Seep in the history and grab unbeatable shots that are guaranteed to be part of your sizzle reel. 

Mercado Coyoacan

If you’ve always wanted to fly away to an Arabian night without crossing the Atlantic, you’ll find that this marketplace is pretty similar to the ficitional streets of Agrabah. Founded in the 20s, it is one of Mexico City’s most iconic shopping locations. You’ll find burlap bags filled with spices, interesting clothes, a lot of local produce and much more. A great filming location for grabbing the hustle and bustle of Mexico City, especially due to its narrow streets. 

Torre Latinoamericana

It looks almost like the Empire State Building in New York and the Torre doesn’t disappoint. Once you’re at the top, you’ll get breathtaking views of Mexico City. Filming is ideal here since it’s usually not that crowded. Go on a late evening or during the day after a rainfall to grab beautiful videos without the smog.

Testimonial videos give prospective customers a reason to trust in your brand. They also give your existing customers an additional reason for repeat buy-ins. 

A great brand, if nothing else, is good at repeating its value in your life.  It gives you FOMO if you don’t have it and makes you feel at ease when you do. 

More than even your own brand videos and ads, a customer testimonial hits home harder. People relate to people who are in similar situations to them.

When it comes to making testimonial videos, there are 3 topics that you need to ensure getting covered so that you have a convincing and brand-boosting testimonial. 

1. Ask Why – Ask the customer why they use your product. What is the one strong reason behind their purchase? This will give you an emotional response from them – even if it is fact based. Board members of FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) companies know that these few honest answers often turn out to be the most valuable.

2. What Problem Did it Solve? – Chances are your brand or product serves more than one purpose. But when you are on the production or service side of the business, you don’t necessarily see it clearly. Your testimonial videos should elicit the solutions that you provide to your customers. By focusing on the pain that your brand solves, the video connects once more with prospective customers who are facing the same issues.

3. Put it in Context – Your brand lives far away from the boardroom where it’s conceived. It’s used far away from the assembly line where it’s manufactured. Give real world context to your testimonial video by filming it in its natural habitat – your customer’s world. Tap your video crew’s vast knowledge of location scouting to help you pick the right spot for filming your video.

A testimonial can be pre-planned with an in-home or in-office interview or it can be a man on the street video done at the spur of the moment. 

Make sure you carry a video release form with you so that you are able to use the video testimonial in all your future marketing purposes.