Most organizations don't factor in the true cost of in-house video. It's not just about buying equipment, it's about what you're trading away and who you have on your team.

When it comes to shooting your brand’s video in-house, there are the obvious costs, like buying the necessary equipment (which can cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars), but this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are numerous costs that brands fail to consider when approaching filming, and they certainly add up.

1. The cost of team bandwidth

When a marketing team member, admissions officer, or communications lead becomes the default videographer, it comes at the expense of other things. Making video takes a lot of time. This is time not spent on other tasks. You lose:

• Hours of productivity
• Strategy time
• Creative bandwidth
• Momentum on other priorities

And the video always takes 3–5× longer than expected to make.

2. The cost of learning curves

Most teams underestimate the technical and creative expertise required to produce content that performs.

What seems simple—interviews, B-roll, editing—has a steep learning curve.

Hours of Googling, retakes, reshoots, color fixes, and software headaches add up fast.

Video production is complicated. Even to make fairly simple videos requires knowledge of tools from cameras to microphones to lights. There is no way around this. There are two ways to address this:

• Hire a new team member with existing video experience
• Have an existing team member develop this expertise

Both of these options are costly. Hiring an experienced production role can easily cost a company $75-100k a year. Training an existing team member means taking months of time and shifting most or all of their current responsibilities to other team members. In the meantime, they will need to experiment… and your brand image will be their guinea pig. If your content looks homemade, your audience assumes the brand experience is too.

3. The cost of opportunity

This is the biggest one.

While your team is figuring out gear, reshooting interviews, or troubleshooting audio, you're losing time that could go into:

• Strategy
• Marketing outreach
• Community engagement
• Product development
• Event planning
• Partner growth

In-house video often costs more in opportunity than in dollars.

So what's the right approach?

Most brands can, and should, shoot some video in-house, but it is important to keep two things in mind:

• The real cost of doing so
• Your team’s realistic capabilities

At the end of the day, if your video marketing is successful, a lot of people will see it, and it will inform their perceptions of your brand. This means that you should carefully consider your video marketing channels and the appropriate course of action.

Short-form content, for example, where visual quality is not paramount, might be perfectly fine to create in-house. Your brand films, commercial advertisements, product launch videos, and other more significant projects might be best to approach more thoughtfully. There may be significant cost, time, and quality benefits to outsourcing projects like these to a trusted third-party production company.

If you are exploring what makes the most sense for your company, I would encourage you to reach out to the team at Pollen Productions. The team will be happy to help you determine which content should be produced in-house given your resources and bandwidth.

What's your approach to balancing in-house content with professional production?