What to Expect from Corporate Video Production in Nairobi

If you have not commissioned a video before, the process can feel opaque — you approve a quote, a crew appears, and some weeks later a file arrives. Here is what actually happens in between, and where your involvement genuinely matters.

Stage 1 — Discovery

Before anything is filmed, the production team needs to understand the business goal, not just the deliverable. Expect questions like: who is the audience, what should change after they watch, where will this be published, and what has been tried before.

What is needed from you: one person empowered to make decisions. The single most common cause of delay is a project where feedback arrives from four people with different opinions and no one to resolve them.

Stage 2 — Pre-production

This is the planning: the treatment or script, the shot list, locations, permissions, scheduling, and who appears on camera.

For scripted corporate pieces the script is written and approved now — changing it after the shoot means reshooting. For documentary formats there is no script, but there is a plan for who is interviewed and what the film is arguing.

What is needed from you: approve the script or treatment, confirm who will be interviewed, and arrange site access. Location permissions in Nairobi are usually straightforward but they are not instant.

Stage 3 — The shoot

A typical corporate shoot day runs 8 to 10 hours including setup and breakdown. Setting up lighting for an interview takes longer than people expect — often 45 minutes for a conversation that lasts fifteen.

What is needed from you: a named contact on site who can open doors and find people, and interviewees who know in advance roughly what they will be asked. Nothing slows a shoot day like waiting for someone who did not know they were being filmed.

A note on the people on camera: nobody enjoys the first ten minutes. Good interviewers spend those ten minutes on questions that will not be used, so the useful answers come once the person has forgotten the camera.

Stage 4 — Post-production

Editing usually takes longer than filming. A first cut typically arrives one to two weeks after the shoot.

What is needed from you: consolidated feedback, in one document, from everyone who needs to see it. Two rounds of revisions is standard. The pattern that damages projects is feedback arriving in sequence — one round, then a senior person sees it for the first time and asks for something structural.

Show the first cut to everyone who has an opinion, at the same time.

Stage 5 — Delivery

You should receive the final file in the formats you agreed, plus any per-platform versions. Ask explicitly about:

• The project archive — so a future edit does not require a reshoot
• Usage rights, particularly if music or talent is involved
• Source footage, if you want it

How long the whole thing takes

For a straightforward corporate video, three to five weeks from brief to delivery is realistic: about a week of planning, one or two shoot days, then two to three weeks of editing and revisions.

Documentary formats take longer because the structure emerges from what people actually say. Multi-location shoots depend on travel.

If you have a fixed date, say so at the first conversation. A schedule built backwards from a real deadline is a different plan from one built forwards from a start date.

Where projects actually slow down

Almost never the filming. In order:

1. Waiting for script or treatment approval
2. Waiting for consolidated feedback on the first cut
3. Late structural changes from someone who had not seen it before
4. Site access and permissions arranged too late

All four are on the client side, and all four are avoidable with one decision-maker and one feedback round.

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Planning something? Tell us about it and a producer will come back with an approach and a realistic schedule.