Most corporate video scripts open the same way: “Northbay Packaging is a leading provider of innovative packaging solutions, committed to quality and sustainability.” Someone copied it from the About page, and on paper it reads fine.
Spoken over a drone shot, it fills the first seconds of the video without telling the viewer anything, and on a home page or in a LinkedIn feed that’s often where they leave.
A corporate script is heard once, at the speaker’s pace, by people who didn’t ask to watch. This post is about the story and the words. The layout, picture on the left and sound on the right, is in the two-column script template.
In short
- Open on what changed, in the first few seconds, and leave the company description for the About page.
- Four beats carry the script: the hook, the change, one proof and one ask.
- Keep one idea per sentence and read the whole script aloud with a stopwatch.
- Mark who says each line: the voiceover, a person on camera or on-screen text.
- Write names, titles, numbers and dates in their final form and send them to the client as a short list to confirm.
Start with what changed
Almost every company video exists because something changed. A plant opened, a service launched, a process got faster, or the company needs forty welders by March. That change is the story, and the company description can stay on the About page.
Four beats hold up for a brand film, a launch video or a recruiting piece:
- The hook, in the first few seconds: a picture or a person in the middle of something, sometimes a number. The logo animation and the mission statement can wait.
- The change, or the problem it solved, in one sentence that says what’s different now and for whom.
- The proof. One number, one customer or one scene the camera can show. Pick the strongest, because three statistics in a row blur together.
- The ask. One action, said plainly, like “apply by Friday” or “book a visit”.
Before writing a line, agree with the client on the one sentence the viewer should remember, ideally already written in the video brief. Each line in the script supports that sentence or comes out.
Testimonial-led videos use the same beats, with the customer carrying them. Their words come from the interview, so what you write are the questions that get each beat on camera and a few voiceover lines to bridge the gaps. Our testimonial interview questions are built the same way.
Write for the ear
The audience hears each sentence once and can’t scroll back, so it has to make sense the moment it ends.
- Keep one idea per sentence. A sentence with a “which” or a second comma is usually two sentences.
- Put the subject and verb first. “The new line turns our offcuts into boxes” lands right away, while “With the inauguration of the new recycling line, offcuts are now…” makes the listener wait for the point.
- Use words people say out loud. “Solutions” and “committed to” come from slide decks, and there’s nothing in them to film. If the CEO will read a line, read it in the CEO’s voice and change whatever they wouldn’t say.
- Don’t describe what’s on screen. “As you can see, our team works around the clock” spends words on what the viewer is already looking at. The voiceover should add what the camera can’t show, like how long it took or what it cost before.
Then read the whole script aloud with a stopwatch. If you run out of breath, the sentence is too long. If you trip, change the word.
How many words fit your target is in words per minute for a video script, and the target itself in how long a corporate video should be.
A before and after
A packaging manufacturer built a line that recycles its own cardboard and wants a 30-second cut for LinkedIn. The first draft came from the brochure:
Northbay Packaging is a leading provider of innovative and sustainable packaging solutions, committed to excellence and to long-term partnerships with our customers. With the inauguration of our new state-of-the-art recycling facility, we are proud to reinforce our commitment to the environment.
The rewrite:
VO: Every week, forty tons of cardboard left this plant as waste.
VO: Since March, it comes back in.
ANA, on camera: We built a line that turns our own offcuts into new boxes. The first ones shipped in June.
ON SCREEN: “Ana Ruiz / Plant Manager, Northbay Packaging”
VO: Same boxes, same price, a third less new fiber.
VO: Ask your account manager about the recycled line.
The draft spends 41 words, about 18 seconds of voiceover, and the viewer still doesn’t know what happened. The rewrite tells the whole story in 52, about 22 seconds, and leaves room for the pictures.
It opens on a picture and a number, and the person who built the line says the part that’s hers, with her title written the way it will appear.
“A third less new fiber” is the line to send back to the client before anyone books a crew. If the measured figure is 31%, either the voiceover says “almost a third” with 31% on screen, or both lines change.
Decide who says each line
Every line is spoken by someone or read by the viewer. Give people on camera the lines that belong to them, like what they decided and what it was like before. “We were turning customers away” is believable from the founder and sounds like an ad in a voiceover.
The voiceover carries context, transitions and the facts nobody on camera would say naturally, such as a date or a figure from the annual report.
On-screen text holds what the viewer has to read and keep: names and titles, the number you want remembered, the web address, a legal line. Avoid running a full sentence on screen while the voiceover says something else, because people can’t follow both.
A single number that echoes the voiceover is fine. A cut that plays muted in a feed needs captions for the spoken lines (see the subtitle guidelines).
Mark the speaker on every line before the shoot: VO, a first name or ON SCREEN. A presenter reading from a teleprompter should see only their own lines.
Names, titles, numbers and dates as they’ll appear
Write every name, job title, figure and date in the script in its final form, the way it will look on screen. Then send the client those lines as a short list and ask them to confirm each one.
“Please check these six lines” gets a careful answer, while “Let us know if the script works” gets a thumbs up from someone who skimmed it.
Titles change, and the one online may be a year old. People spell their own names in ways their colleagues don’t.
Pick one format for numbers, currency and dates, and make the voiceover match the screen. “Almost four hundred” spoken over “386” on screen is the kind of mismatch someone at the client catches in the last round.
Product names follow the brand guide, capitals included. The lower thirds checklist covers the rest for the edit.
How this works in RecReview
In RecReview the script lives on the video’s task, as an uploaded file (PDF, Word, PowerPoint, TXT or RTF, up to 50 MB) or a document linked from Google Drive or OneDrive. A rewrite goes in as a new version, and the history keeps every version, with the ones already sent marked as Sent.
Sending a version to the client emails them a link to the script with your message, a good place for the list of lines to confirm. If the document lives on Drive or OneDrive and was edited after the last version, RecReview saves a new version before sending, so the client gets what you just wrote.
Scripts have no approve button, so ask for the OK in writing and keep it with the job.
When the first cut is ready, AI Review can compare it with the task’s latest script, on request or on every upload if you turn that on. It marks lines that were dropped, added or changed and sections that were skipped or moved, each with the timecode and what was actually said there.
On later cuts it only checks what changed in the speech or in the script, and once the client has commented on a version, their notes become the reference instead. Some differences are mistakes and some are better lines that came out of the shoot, and the editor decides which is which.
