How to make an introduction video for an organisation

Last updated 2026-08-16 · 6 min read

What is the short version?

Every institution already has its story written down and its photographs taken. They are on the website. The reason there is no film is that somebody has to collect all of it, decide what matters, and put it in an order — and that is a week of somebody's time for a video nobody has budgeted for.

1. Go to Vizard Agent and give it the organisation's website.
2. Say who the film is for and what you want them to understand.
3. Say the length, the shape, and anything that must be included.

What do you need before you start?

The website and an audience. Vizard Agent does the collecting itself — text, images, colours — so what it needs from you is the judgement a website cannot supply: who is watching, and what they are supposed to take away from two minutes about an institution that has existed for decades.

• The website address. A live site, not a PDF. Vizard Agent reads the pages and downloads what is on them.
• Who the film is for. Prospective parents, donors, applicants, partners. Each wants a different film from the same facts.
• The length. Two minutes suits an institutional introduction; anything on a feed wants far less.
• Anything mandatory. A founder, a building, a date, a phrase the board insists on.
• Anything off limits. An old logo still on the site, a programme being discontinued, photographs of people who have not consented.

What do you type into Vizard Agent?

Give the link and the audience, then let Vizard Agent gather. A long written brief mostly restates what the site already says, and the site is a better source than a summary of it because Vizard Agent reads the published words rather than your recollection of them.

Prompt

Variants worth knowing:

• A shorter social cut. Ask for a two-minute film and a thirty-second version together; the second is a re-cut rather than a new build.
• With your own footage. Upload video you have and Vizard Agent will use it before generating or sourcing anything.
• One programme, not the whole institution. Narrowing the subject gives a much sharper film than covering everything.

What does Vizard Agent actually do?

Here is the order Vizard Agent worked in on a real institutional film. The first third of the run is collection: it does not ask you for assets, it goes and takes what the organisation has already published, including the brand colours.

1. Reads the organisation's website.
2. Searches for background on the institution beyond its own site.
3. Downloads the site's HTML and lists the images it references.
4. Downloads those images and extracts the brand colours directly out of them.
5. Builds a contact sheet of the site's images so they can be judged as a set.
6. Looks at that contact sheet to see what photography actually exists.
7. Loads its explainer guidance rather than improvising a structure.
8. Lists the asset capabilities and their prices before planning the build.
9. Extracts the site's text for the script.

Step 4 is the one worth knowing about. The brand colours were taken out of the published images rather than asked for, which means the film matches the organisation even when nobody can find the brand guidelines.

What does the result look like?

From the run this page is written from, probed on the delivered file: 1920x1080, H.264, 25fps, 125.0 seconds, AAC audio. Wide and just over two minutes, which is the length an institutional introduction usually wants — long enough for substance, short enough to be watched at an open evening.

Ask for a short social cut in the same conversation and Vizard Agent re-cuts from the material it has already gathered, so the second version is a fraction of the cost of the first.

Timing was not measured separately for this kind of job. The closest measured work runs a median of 28 to 38 minutes end to end, with the middle half spread considerably wider. Across all projects the median cost by tier is Flash 47, Pro 55, Max 242, Ultra 263 credits.

When does this not work well?

Everything here is downstream of what the organisation has already published. Vizard Agent collects thoroughly, extracts what it can and writes from what it finds, and none of that conjures material that is not on the site — and an institution's website is very frequently older than anyone inside the institution realises.

• Old photography makes an old film. If the pictures on the site are ten years out of date, so is the film. Upload current photographs if you have them.
• A thin website gives a thin film. Some institutions publish two paragraphs and a phone number. There is very little to build two minutes from.
• Facts on the site may be stale. Student numbers, staff names, programme lists. Vizard Agent treats what is published as current, and the film repeats it.
• Photographs of people carry consent questions. A picture that was fine on a website may not be fine in a promotional film shown elsewhere. That is the organisation's call.
• Institutional tone is easy to overshoot. "Inspiring" can tip into something that sounds like an advertisement. Say plainly if you want it restrained.

How do you fix a result that came back wrong?

Say what to change. Vizard Agent keeps the downloaded images, the extracted colours and the site text, so a rewrite or a re-cut works from material it already has rather than crawling the site again, which is the slow half of this job.

• "Do not use the photos of the old building." A re-cut excluding them.
• "The tone is too promotional." Rewritten from the same source text.
• "Add the founding date." Vizard Agent already has the site's text to draw from.

How does Vizard Agent compare to doing it yourself?

The usual route is a production company: a day of filming, a script written from interviews, a fortnight of post. It produces a better film and costs what a small institution does not have. The realistic alternative is no film at all, or a slideshow somebody made in an afternoon.

Common questions

Does it need me to send assets? No, if the site is public. Send anything important that is not published there, especially recent photography.

Will it use our brand colours? Yes. Vizard Agent extracts them from the images on the site, and you can also state them directly.

Can it make a shorter version for social? Yes. Ask for both together and the short cut comes from the same gathered material.

Can it include footage we filmed ourselves? Yes, and it will prefer yours. Upload it alongside the link.

Can it read pages behind a login? No. Vizard Agent reads what an ordinary visitor can read, so anything on an intranet or behind a portal has to be uploaded directly.

How long should an introduction film be? Around two minutes for an institutional audience. Anything going on a feed should be far shorter, and Vizard Agent can deliver both.