Articles·Marketing

Eight videos, one four-hour session. How a small agency makes video without a production company.

Chris Cordon · 4 min read
A gray-haired woman in profile in a small home studio, eight clapperboards stacked beside her and a wall clock showing four hours gone.

Small agencies rarely make video because every video turns into a production: a script, a shoot, an editor, and a week of waiting. The fix is a pipeline where a person films once and a system handles the cutting, captions, motion graphics, and checking, inside a brand look that’s decided in advance. I shot eight demo videos, all under two minutes, in one four-hour session.

Why does video never get made at a small agency?

Video never gets made at a small agency because the editing is the bottleneck. Filming a two-minute video takes minutes. Cutting it, adding captions, adding graphics that match the brand, and checking it takes hours, and nobody at the agency has those hours.

Graphics have the same problem. Every video needs a title card, a lower third, a thumbnail. Without a designer, each one gets made from scratch, and no two look alike.

What do most agencies try first?

Most agencies try one polished brand video from a videographer, and it lives on the homepage for five years. Or they film on a phone and never edit it, so it never goes out.

My first try was the software. In 2014 I bought a MacBook Pro and Final Cut Pro to make training videos for my team. In 2023: “I had paid almost $500 a decade prior for what was, at the time, the top video editing software on the market. So, I dusted it off, ‘relearned’ how to use it, and recorded myself.” About eight videos in, a masking tool in Final Cut let me play more than one character in the same shot, and the black-and-white broker was born. Character driven business education. That became a 12-episode series plus about 10 shorts.

It worked because I did every edit myself. It also meant every video cost me a night.

Wanna fix it?

Video that never gets made gets fixed with one batched filming session, a brand look locked in advance, an editing pipeline driven by a word-by-word transcript, and a person who checks every frame before it goes out.

  1. Batch the filming. Write every script with the edit cues in it, then film them all in one sitting. Eight videos in four hours is doable. The eighth script was weak, and you’ll know it when you’re reading it off the teleprompter.
  2. Lock the look once. I have two design systems. The DoBetter brand: Sora font, navy, blue, and gold. The whiteboard: marker on white. Every graphic comes from one or the other, so nothing gets designed twice.
  3. Let the transcript drive the cut. A word-level transcript (WhisperX) marks every word with a time. The cuts and the motion graphics are placed from the words, frame by frame.
  4. Split the editing and the checking. Since early September, Astra edits and Claude checks the work. This is the most amazing V1 of anything I’ve ever built.
  5. Pay per clip for AI cutaways. I cancelled a monthly AI video plan because I used between zero and seven clips a month. Pay-per-use clips run under $1 each.

What does it look like once it’s running?

Once it’s running, my part is standing in front of the camera and approving what comes back. The rest happens in the pipeline: the transcript, the cuts, the motion graphics, captions, and a frame-by-frame review. The LinkedIn article walks through one explainer video from camera to post.

Graphics run the same way. The header images on these articles start as a written brief, one scene per page, and Astra makes them to match the series.

It’s a lot more fun than it sounds. One morning I sent this: “Good morning. It’s 4:25, and I’ve been working with the video editor all night.”

The next step for the demo videos is posting them on YouTube with their transcripts.

Can you do this yourself?

Yes, if you’ll do the editing. My studio has a 10x20 green screen, a Lumix camera, a Shure SM7B microphone, a teleprompter, and a Stream Deck. You don’t need any of it to start. A phone, a window for light, and a free editing app will get a talking-head video out the door.

Where DIY stops is volume and consistency. A video a week, with captions and graphics that match your brand every time, is a part-time job. One video a month, film it on your phone and edit it yourself. Every week, build the pipeline.

Quick answers

How long should an agency’s video be?
Under two minutes works. All eight of my demo videos are.
How many videos can you film in one session?
I filmed eight in four hours.
Do I need a studio?
No. A phone and good light are enough to start.
What does an AI video clip cost?
Under $1 a clip on a pay-per-use plan, as of this writing.
How do you keep graphics consistent?
Lock one design system (one font, one palette) and make every graphic from it.
Can AI make the whole video?
It can edit, caption, and make cutaways. The person on camera is still you.