Pottery is the easiest craft in the world to film and the hardest to film well. The wheel is hypnotic for eleven seconds and then it is a wet lump for four minutes. The skill is in knowing which eleven seconds and what to put around them.
The Kansas City angle
Kansas City's ceramics community runs through the Kansas City Clay Guild, the studios in the West Bottoms and the Crossroads, and the classes that fill up in Brookside and Overland Park every fall. The audience is three groups: people buying the work, people buying classes, and galleries and shops buying wholesale. The same shoot can serve all three if it is planned that way.
The Kansas City angle is the studio itself. A converted warehouse in the West Bottoms with the kiln glowing in the corner is a location a national brand would pay to fake. Film the space as much as the pot.
A firing day, start to finish
We would schedule the shoot for a glaze-firing day. Morning: the maker at the wheel, three pieces thrown, macro on the hands and the water. Midday: trimming and glazing, with a short interview at the bench about why the forms are what they are. Afternoon: loading the kiln, the door closing, and if the schedule allows, the door opening on last week's load. The unloading shot is the whole film; everything else builds to it.
That gives a sixty-second maker film for the shop page, a class-recruitment cut for the fall session, and a stack of verticals that post themselves for two months.
What to actually make
- A 60-second maker film — wheel to kiln to shelf, one voice, for the shop homepage and Etsy or Shopify.
- A class recruitment piece — the studio during a session, students at the wheel, the instructor's voice.
- Product verticals — each new collection as fifteen seconds of turning, glazing and the finished piece.
- A wholesale piece — the studio, the capacity and the process, for shops and galleries considering the line.
What it costs in Kansas City
For most of the businesses in this post the right starting point is The Short at $2,000: a half-day shoot cut into one 60-to-90-second film plus vertical cut-downs. Every package is published on our brand film page, and the video production cost page explains what moves the number up or down. There is no travel fee anywhere in the metro, Overland Park to Lee's Summit to Lawrence.
How the shoot works
It is the same two people on every project, Josh and Brandon. We scope it on a call, write the shot list, show up with lights and a lav mic, and stay out of the way of your customers. A first cut lands in about two weeks with unlimited revisions after that, and you own every frame, including the raw footage on request.
If this is your business, the brand film page has the packages, the examples and the calendar link. If you are not sure which package fits, this is how we work and why the prices are on the site.