Research video has two audiences and they want opposite things. The public wants the moment of discovery; the funder wants the method and the people. A film that gives the public the trowel and the funder the lab notebook, in the same two minutes, is the one that gets both.
The Kansas City angle
The Kansas City region has more fieldwork than people assume: the university programs at KU, UMKC and K-State, the state historical societies on both sides of the line, the Missouri River sites, the Steamboat Arabia collection in the River Market, and museum and tribal partnerships across eastern Kansas. Most of it is documented with phone photos and a final report nobody reads.
The local angle is access. A Kansas City crew can be at a site in Leavenworth County at six in the morning for the light and back for the lab at two. A grant-funded program cannot fly a crew in for that.
A field day and a lab day
We would film one full day on site during the season: the walk in, the grid, the screening, the moment something comes up, the recording. Then a shorter lab visit: the cleaning, the cataloguing, the researcher explaining what the object means. Interviews with the principal investigator and two students, kept to plain language.
A two-minute film for the program, the department and the funder's annual report; a sixty-second public cut for the museum partner and the university's channels.
What to actually make
- A two-minute program film — the site, the lab and the people, for funders and the department.
- A public discovery cut — sixty seconds for the museum, the news and the university.
- Student recruiting piece — the field school as an experience, for the next cohort.
- Grant-report clips — short pieces per objective, so the report has evidence in it.
What it costs in Kansas City
For most of the businesses in this post the right starting point is the Story Film at $4,500: a full shoot day with interviews, cut into a two-to-three-minute film. Every package is published on our nonprofit video 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 nonprofit video 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.