Should I Hire a Videographer or Film It Myself?

When should you film business video yourself?

Quick updates and timely content

Let’s start with the situations where I’d save your money.

• Your company has just received a new product.
• Something interesting is happening in the office.
• You’re at an industry event.
• You want to answer a question somebody asked in the comments.

Get your phone out. Film it. Post it. You don’t need a production company. In fact, bringing in a professional crew can actively make this type of content worse. The attraction is immediacy. Something happened. You’re showing people. Turning that into a three-week production process rather defeats the point. Again, phones are brilliant for this.

Behind-the-scenes content

People often like seeing businesses without the polished marketing layer.

• Show the factory.
• Show the kitchen.
• Show the office.
• Show the camera crew setting something up.
• Show the product being made.
• Show something going wrong.

Within reason. Perhaps don’t livestream the fire alarm. This sort of informal content can make a company feel considerably more human. And slightly imperfect footage can actually help.

Quick answers to customer questions

Suppose customers repeatedly ask: “How long does delivery take?” Your sales director could answer that in thirty seconds on a phone. It doesn’t need three cinema cameras, a lighting van and Hans Zimmer. In fact, if you have dozens of questions to answer, the economics strongly favour doing some of them internally. A company that publishes useful video regularly will often get more value from 50 decent internal videos than from three immaculate corporate films. Professional production and internal content shouldn’t necessarily compete. They can do different jobs.

Personal brands and regular social video

This is another interesting one. If you’re building a personal profile on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok or YouTube Shorts, highly polished video isn’t always necessary. Sometimes it can actually create distance. A founder speaking directly into their phone can feel immediate and genuine. And because you can film whenever you have something worth saying, the content doesn’t become dependent on production schedules. That matters. The most beautifully produced video in the world is useless if you publish twice a year while your competitors communicate every day.

Should businesses build internal video skills?

Probably. Video has become fundamental to how people consume information online. YouTube alone says Shorts now average over 200 billion daily views, demonstrating just how enormous short-form video consumption has become. Meanwhile, LinkedIn has continued investing heavily in video as a format for professional audiences. For a business, relying on a production company for every single video can therefore become impractical. If your marketing strategy requires regular video, somebody internally should probably be comfortable producing basic content. That’s not a threat to professional videographers. It’s sensible marketing.

A simple rule for the DIY decision

I use a fairly simple rule: The greater the importance, lifespan and audience of the video, the stronger the case for professional production. Imagine two videos. Video A is a 20-second Instagram Story saying your office is closed on Monday. Video B sits on your homepage for three years and is watched by practically every potential customer deciding whether to contact you. Which deserves the production budget? Obviously Video B.

When should you hire a professional videographer?

Let’s look at the situations where professional production starts making considerably more sense.

Your homepage or flagship company film

If somebody visits your website and the first thing they see is a video explaining who you are, what you do and why they should trust you, I’d seriously consider producing it professionally. That video might be viewed thousands of times. It may influence customers worth hundreds, thousands or millions of pounds. The production cost should be considered against the commercial importance of the asset, not simply its duration. A two-minute film might take two days to create. But it could work for the company for years.

An important customer testimonial

Could you film a customer testimonial on a phone? Absolutely. And sometimes you should. But high-value case studies deserve more consideration. If you’ve persuaded an important customer to sit down and explain why your company solved a significant problem for them, that’s an extremely valuable marketing opportunity. You may only get one chance to interview them. Professional production gives you better control over:

• lighting
• sound
• composition
• multiple cameras
• the interview environment
• and the way the story is constructed afterwards.

More importantly, an experienced interviewer can help get useful answers. That’s often more valuable than the cameras.

Paid advertising

This one should be fairly straightforward. If you’re about to spend £10,000, £50,000 or considerably more paying to put a video in front of people, spending nothing on the thing they’re actually going to watch can be a strange economy. Advertising magnifies your content. If the content is good, excellent. If the content is bad, congratulations: you’ve now paid to show your bad video to significantly more people. That doesn’t mean every advert needs an enormous production budget. Some deliberately phone-shot adverts perform brilliantly. But the production approach should be a creative decision, not simply what happened because nobody budgeted for production.

Product launches

Product video can go either way. If you’re showing customers how to reset a device: phone footage might be perfectly adequate. If you’re launching the device internationally and trying to make somebody want it: professional lighting, camera movement, macro lenses, set design and careful editing can completely transform how the product is perceived. Again: purpose first, equipment second.

Recruitment films

Businesses sometimes underestimate these. A good employee might work for you for ten years. If video plays a meaningful role in convincing that person to apply, the commercial value is potentially substantial. Recruitment films are also particularly dependent on authenticity. The solution isn’t necessarily making everybody read corporate statements into a camera. Please don’t. Nobody has ever believed: “At Generic Industries Ltd, we’re not colleagues. We’re a family.” Especially the person reading it from an autocue. Good professional production should make real employees feel comfortable enough to sound like themselves.

An interview you cannot repeat

If your CEO has given you twenty minutes… Hire someone who knows what they’re doing. If a major customer has agreed to appear… Hire someone who knows what they’re doing. If you’ve somehow persuaded a globally recognised expert to give you one interview… This is probably not the ideal moment for Gary from accounts to discover that the camera stopped recording nineteen minutes ago. The more difficult something is to repeat, the more valuable professional production becomes.

Important events

Events are another classic example. Can your employees film an event on their phones? Yes. Should that be your only record of an important conference, product launch or corporate event? I’d be cautious. Events happen once. Professional event videography is largely about anticipating moments and making sure they’re safely captured.

• There may be several cameras.
• Independent audio.
• Presentations.
• Audience reactions.
• Interviews.
• Networking.
• B-roll.
• And potentially material needed for an edited event film afterwards.

Your marketing assistant can still film Instagram Stories. Actually, I’d encourage them to. But that’s a different job.

Established podcasts

This is another area where the DIY/professional decision depends heavily on purpose. As we’ve explained in our guide to how much it costs to film a podcast, somebody experimenting with their first podcast probably shouldn’t spend a fortune. Start. Learn. Find out whether anyone wants to listen. But if the podcast becomes an established part of your company’s marketing, professional production can dramatically increase what you get from each recording.

• Several cameras.
• Good audio.
• Professional lighting.
• A complete episode.
• Vertical clips.
• Short-form content.

Now one conversation can feed several platforms. That’s when production starts becoming a system rather than an occasional expense.

What does professional production add beyond the camera?

Is there anything wrong with phones?

Nothing. I want to make that very clear. Professional videographers use phones too. They’re useful cameras. The mistake is thinking that buying a professional camera automatically creates professional video. It doesn’t. The real differences usually come from everything surrounding the camera. Imagine I give you exactly the same cinema camera we use. Would your next company film suddenly look exactly like ours? Probably not. And if you gave me Lewis Hamilton’s car, I wouldn’t suddenly win a Grand Prix. I’d probably make Turn One unusually memorable. Tools matter.

The camera is only one part of the work

But professional video production involves a collection of skills:

• composition
• lighting
• camera movement
• exposure
• lens choice
• sound recording
• directing
• interviewing
• storytelling
• editing
• colour
• music
• graphics
• and knowing which of those things not to use.

The camera is just where the pictures end up.

Professional sound recording

This is the big one. Modern phones produce remarkably good pictures. Their built-in microphones cannot defeat physics. If the phone is four metres away from somebody speaking, the microphone is also four metres away. It hears the room. Traffic. Air conditioning. Other people. Echo. Everything. Professional productions often record sound separately or place microphones considerably closer to whoever is speaking. And audiences are surprisingly intolerant of bad sound. They might not consciously think: “The signal-to-noise ratio here is unacceptable.” They just stop watching.

Professional lighting

A modern camera can make almost anything visible. That’s different from making somebody look good. Office lighting is designed so people can see spreadsheets. It was not necessarily designed to flatter human skin. Professional lighting allows us to control:

• faces
• backgrounds
• contrast
• colour
• reflections
• products
• and where the viewer looks.

This is why a professionally lit interview can look expensive even when it’s filmed in an ordinary office. And why an £8,000 camera can look terrible underneath the wrong ceiling light.

What about AI?

AI is changing video production extremely quickly.

• Editing tools can transcribe footage.
• Remove pauses.
• Generate captions.
• Clean audio.
• Reframe video.
• Create graphics.
• Generate voices.
• And increasingly, generate video itself.

That makes production faster. It doesn’t necessarily eliminate the need for production. If anything, it makes judgement more important. When everybody can produce technically acceptable content, the competitive advantage moves towards:

• ideas
• stories
• taste
• credibility
• access
• and genuine human material.

AI can generate a generic smiling employee. Your actual managing director explaining how your company solved a customer’s £2 million problem is considerably more specific. The tools change. The need to say something worth watching doesn’t.

Does production quality affect credibility?

Production quality can influence how people perceive information, but there’s an important caveat. A polished video containing meaningless corporate waffle is still meaningless corporate waffle. Professional production can make your business appear:

• established
• credible
• considered
• and competent.

But it can’t manufacture substance indefinitely. That’s why we increasingly think of production as two problems: What should we say? and then: How should we film it? The first question is often harder.

How can you make DIY video better?

Absolutely. And you don’t need much. If you’re filming internally, concentrate on these things before buying an expensive camera:

Face a window

Face a window rather than putting it behind you.

Use a tripod

Use a tripod. A cheap tripod is preferable to footage that looks like it was recorded during an earthquake.

Get the microphone closer

Get the microphone closer. Even an inexpensive external microphone can make an enormous difference.

Clean the lens

Seriously. We have reached a point in human technological development where people can carry extraordinary 4K cameras in their pockets and then film through six months of fingerprint grease.

Remove distractions

Remove distracting rubbish. You don’t need a beautiful studio. You just need the viewer not to spend the interview wondering why there’s a traffic cone behind your CEO.

Start with the useful bit

DIY video often improves enormously when you remove the first 40 seconds of: “Hi guys, so, yeah, basically, I just wanted to jump on here really quickly today…” Start with the useful bit.

Should you buy a professional camera?

Maybe. But I’d probably improve your sound and lighting first. If you’re regularly producing internal video, a sensible progression might be:

• phone
• tripod
• microphone
• lighting
• then camera.

Not:

• camera
• expensive lens
• another expensive lens
• camera cage
• monitor
• gimbal
• drone
• fog machine
• and eventually remembering that nobody can hear the person speaking.

Equipment buying is extremely seductive. Content strategy is less exciting. Unfortunately, content strategy is generally more important.

Freelance videographer or production company?

That depends on the production. A good freelance videographer can be perfect for straightforward jobs. One person. One camera. Simple interview. Event coverage. Regular social content. A production company becomes more useful as complexity increases.

Perhaps you need:

• multiple camera operators
• sound specialists
• lighting
• producers
• several filming days
• actors
• locations
• animation
• complex post-production
• or large numbers of deliverables.

Neither is inherently better. You’re choosing the production structure appropriate to the job.

Our guide to choosing a production company or freelance videographer explores that decision in more detail.

How much does professional video cost?

There isn’t a useful universal answer because the scope varies so dramatically. A straightforward half-day shoot by one videographer and a major commercial campaign are both technically “video production”. They obviously shouldn’t cost the same. Professional video is generally priced according to some combination of:

• pre-production
• crew
• equipment
• filming time
• travel
• locations
• post-production
• graphics
• music
• deliverables
• and usage requirements.

This is why I’d be cautious about choosing solely on day rate. A £500 videographer who needs five days to achieve what another production can achieve in two isn’t necessarily cheaper. Ask what the complete project costs.

The complete UK video-production cost guide explains how those parts combine in a quotation.

Is professional video worth the money?

This is the question businesses should ask more often. Suppose a video costs £3,000. That sounds expensive. Now imagine your average new customer is worth £50. The video needs to work rather hard. But suppose one new client is worth £100,000. Now the economics look rather different. The production budget should bear some relationship to:

• the value of the audience
• the lifespan of the video
• the importance of the message
• the commercial outcome you’re trying to achieve.

This is why an expensive production can sometimes be cheap. And a cheap production can be incredibly expensive.

The separate guide to whether professional video production is worth the investment develops the commercial case.

What can poor DIY video cost?

This is perhaps the better question. Imagine your homepage video is watched by 20,000 potential customers. It cost you nothing because somebody filmed it internally. Brilliant. Except the sound is terrible, the lighting is unflattering and it takes two minutes before anyone understands what the company actually does. How many customers left? You probably can’t know. That’s the uncomfortable thing about poor marketing. The invoice rarely arrives. People simply don’t contact you.

Three questions to guide the decision

If you’re trying to decide whether to hire a videographer or film something yourself, ask three things.

How important is the video?

A disposable social update? DIY. Your company’s flagship brand film? Professional.

How long will it be used?

Gone tomorrow? DIY probably makes sense. Sitting on your homepage for three years? Spend more time on it.

What happens if it goes wrong?

Almost nothing? Film it yourself. You lose an irreplaceable interview, important event or significant commercial opportunity? Professional production becomes much easier to justify.

It’s not a perfect formula. But it’s considerably more useful than: “Professional cameras always look better.”

Does a business need DIY video or professional video?

This is where I think the discussion ultimately lands. It shouldn’t really be: DIY video versus professional video. A good modern business probably needs both.

• Create regular internal content.
• Answer questions.
• Show behind the scenes.
• Make quick updates.
• Let employees talk.
• Use phones.
• Experiment.
• Publish.

And then identify the pieces of content important enough to deserve substantially more attention.

• Your flagship company film.
• Your major campaign.
• Important testimonials.
• Case studies.
• Product launches.
• Events.
• High-value interviews.

Those are where you bring in professional production. This gives you something much more useful than choosing one side: quantity where quantity matters, and quality where quality matters.

How The Camera Guys approaches the decision

At The Camera Guys, we don’t think the answer to every video problem is hiring The Camera Guys. Sometimes we’d genuinely tell a business to film something on its phone. Professional production should have a reason to exist. Our role becomes more valuable when the video is important enough that you need greater control over the result — professional cameras, lighting, sound, interviews, multiple-camera coverage and post-production — or when you simply don’t want your employees spending three days trying to become a production company. After more than a decade working professionally in video, one of the biggest differences experience gives you isn’t knowing which camera button to press. It’s recognising problems before they happen. The room that will sound terrible. The window that will destroy the exposure. The answer in the interview that should be followed up. The shot we’ll need in the edit six hours later. The moment at an event that only happens once. And occasionally: the job that doesn’t need us at all.

Should I hire a videographer or film it myself?

Film it yourself when speed, frequency and authenticity matter more than production quality. Use your phone for regular social content, quick updates, simple FAQs, informal behind-the-scenes material and ideas you’re still testing. Hire a professional when the video is valuable, difficult to repeat, technically complicated or likely to represent your business for a long time. And don’t confuse “professional” with “expensive-looking”. The purpose of professional video production isn’t to fill every shot with drones, sliders, dramatic lighting and slow-motion footage of somebody walking purposefully through an office. It’s to communicate something effectively. Sometimes that requires an experienced crew, cinema cameras, professional lighting and weeks of editing. Sometimes it requires somebody to pull a phone out of their pocket and press record. Knowing which one you need is part of the job.