How long a video project really takes

For a standard corporate video, count a few weeks between the first conversation and the final file. Not a few days, not six months. But that range hides something more useful: the time a video project takes is not one uniform mass. Some phases cannot be compressed, others depend almost entirely on you. Knowing which is which changes everything about your planning.

So let us go through each stage: framing, preparation, shooting, editing and approvals. For each one, how long it takes in practice, and above all what makes it slip or speed up.

One benchmark to place the stakes: according to Wistia's State of Video 2026 (more than 900 professionals surveyed, 13 million videos analysed), 76 % of companies publish at least one video a month. A pace like that does not hold if every project is negotiated in quarters. That is why the timeline deserves to be looked at phase by phase rather than as one block.

It all starts with a conversation: what objective, what audience, what message, what success looks like. With us, that first exchange lasts thirty minutes and costs you nothing. It leads to a written proposal, which you approve or adjust. This phase rarely takes more than a week, on one condition: that the person who decides is in the loop from the start. A brief approved by someone who does not have the final say is a brief you will do twice.

If you want to arrive prepared, the article on framing a video by its objective sets out the questions that come up.

Between the signed quote and the camera rolling, invisible but decisive things happen: scouting locations, writing the interview outline or the script, choosing who appears, coordinating diaries. It is almost always this phase that sets the delivery date, for a simple reason: finding a slot where the director, the meeting room and the daylight are all available at once sometimes takes international diplomacy.

Count one to two weeks in most cases. You can compress it by appointing a single contact on your side and blocking diaries as soon as you sign, not after.

The paradox of the job: the most visible phase is often the shortest. An interview with a few cutaway shots fits into half a day; a brand film with several people and several locations can take a full day, sometimes two. Properly prepared, a shoot does not overrun: every planned shot, every briefed speaker, every booked room.

What makes a shoot slip is almost never the technical side: it is improvisation. The speaker told the night before, the office that has to be tidied while everyone waits. Preparing your offices before a shoot will spare you most of that lost time.

This is where deadlines evaporate with many suppliers: the shoot is done, the pressure drops, and the first cut arrives “soon”. Our commitment is dated: you receive a first cut within three working days of the shoot, or of receiving the footage if you supply it. Not the final version, but a complete, watchable video, so your feedback lands on something concrete.

Then come the approvals, and there the pace depends on you: each round takes as long as your team takes to agree. Feedback consolidated into a single list saves days; five contradictory opinions sent separately lose as many.

What stretches it, in order of damage: an objective that changes along the way, a vague approval chain, unavailable diaries, feedback that trickles in. Notice what they have in common: none of it is technical. The edit does not take three extra weeks because the software is slow.

What compresses it: a decision-maker present at the framing stage, a single contact, shooting dates blocked early, feedback grouped and dated. An urgent but well-organised project moves faster than a relaxed but vague one. If your deadline is tight, say so in the first conversation: we build the schedule backwards from your date and look together at whether it holds. If it does not, we say so before signing, not after.

Here is the typical run of a well-managed corporate video: a week of framing, one to two weeks of preparation, a day of filming, a first cut within three working days, then approvals at your pace. In other words, most of the calendar is decided in the phases where you hold the controls: the availability of your teams and the speed of your feedback weigh more than the time spent behind the camera or in front of the editing software.

That is good news: you are not a spectator of the schedule, you are its first lever. A project framed early, with an identified decision-maker and grouped feedback, holds its dates. Ours are written into the quote; yours are decided in the first conversation.