The Art of the Closing Video

Producing a closing video resembles filming and editing a documentary in that a story is crafted from hours of footage with the goal of evoking an emotional response from attendees and external viewers. In the context of pharma and bio-tech conferences this emotional response is typically set to inspire, motivate, even reinforce the week’s theme and messages to its attendees which include employees, shareholders, and executives.

Your closing video essentially represents a condensed narrative of the week’s speakers and events through edited soundbites and stylized b-roll, edited to an emotive score that builds until the final denouement, which is usually the animated theme or supportive graphics. What determines the selected soundbites depends on the speaker and order in which they present because, like a research paper, the most important pieces are presented first and are continually supported afterward.

These moments are discovered within the editing process by listening to each speaker’s presentation and pulling the important pieces that speak broadly to the week’s messages and theme. The first night of editing begins by combing through IMAG footage and pulling the “Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How” of each speaker and laying them within a timeline to get a sense of what is being said and by whom. These selected moments then guide the b-roll selection and shot list for the remainder of the week.

Knowing the overall theme and message early on helps drive the narrative of the closing video because the two biggest challenges to producing an effective closing video are time and substance. At the beginning of the show, there is a lot of time and very little substance. Alternatively, towards the end it’s all substance with no time so it’s imperative to stay on top of both throughout the week.

Despite time and substance constantly working against each other there are still workable elements of filming and editing throughout the week that reinforce the overall narrative. These elements include most everything that happens off-stage. For this reason, we focus on capturing attendee reactions in the audience and with one another, breakouts, Q&As, emotional reactions to a speaker, excited greetings and team-building moments. All of these elements enhance and reinforce the theme and overarching message; which is meant to unify the team under one vision.