TL;DR: A company values film costs £10,000–£50,000 in the UK. The most common format is a vignette-style production of 6–8 value "beats", each 15–25 seconds, with real employees on screen. A well-executed values film at £22,000–£35,000 anchors your employer brand for 3–5 years without a single retake.
Company Values Film Cost: What UK Businesses Pay in 2024
A company values film is one of the most durable investments in your employer brand. Unlike a recruitment ad tied to a specific role or a campaign video with a seasonal shelf life, a high-quality values film earns its budget over 3 to 5 years of homepage, onboarding, and awards-entry use. This guide breaks down the costs, formats, and decisions that determine whether you spend £12,000 or £45,000 — and whether either figure is the right choice for your business.
What Is a Company Values Film?
A company values film is a structured short-form video that communicates your organisation's core values through the voices and stories of the people who live them. The dominant format in 2024 is the vignette-style production: each of your 6–8 declared values receives a 15–25-second "beat" built around a specific employee moment — a genuine anecdote, a real outcome, a candid reflection. No actors, no scripts handed to staff, no inspirational stock footage.
Key characteristics:
- Format: vignette sequence, each beat tied to one named value
- Cast: real employees, not actors or spokespeople (founders can appear, but rarely alone)
- Duration: 2–4 minutes for the full values suite; individual value clips can be extracted for social
- Tone: warm, specific, credible — the opposite of generic "we care about people" language
- Use cases: careers page, onboarding induction, Glassdoor profile, LinkedIn organic, awards entries
The critical difference between a values film that works and one that lands on a hard drive: specificity. "We value integrity" means nothing on screen. "Sara refused a £40,000 contract because the brief wasn't honest with end users" means everything.
Why Companies Commission Values Films Now
The UK talent market has changed. In 2024, 72% of job seekers research company culture before applying (LinkedIn Global Talent Trends). They watch videos, not just read about us pages. A values film is the fastest way to give candidates a credible, human signal of what working with you is actually like.
Three common triggers for commissioning:
- Post-growth culture dilution. You hired 40 people in 18 months and the founding culture is no longer self-evident. A values film reanchors it for existing and incoming staff simultaneously.
- Awards and accreditation seasons. Great Place to Work, Sunday Times Best Places to Work, and B-Corp certification all benefit from a values film as supporting evidence. Judges want to see culture demonstrated, not described.
- Rebrand or new leadership. When values are revisited during a leadership transition or brand refresh, a film makes the new values feel inhabited rather than aspirational.
Creative Approach: How MKTRL Makes Values Films
Our values film process begins with a 2-hour employee discovery session — a facilitated conversation with 6–10 staff from across seniority levels and departments. We are listening for real stories, not polished talking points. The stories we find in that session become the script framework. Nothing is invented; everything is drawn from what your people actually say.
Shoot structure for a typical 8-value film:
- 2 shoot days at your office or a hired venue
- 12–16 on-screen contributors selected from the discovery session
- Each contributor filmed in a single-camera interview setup (30–45 minutes per person)
- B-roll of real work environments, not stylised "business" clichés
- No teleprompters — we use question-led direction to draw natural delivery
In post-production, we edit each value beat independently so they can be used as standalone social clips (square format, captioned) as well as assembled into the full values suite. The music score is consistent across all beats to create a coherent emotional throughline.
Inclusion and ERG Representation
A values film that features only senior, homogenous employees is a reputational risk, not an asset. MKTRL applies an active representation brief to every values film: we review your contributor shortlist against gender, ethnicity, seniority level, and department before the shoot. If representation is skewed, we flag it before the camera rolls, not after.
If your organisation has Employee Resource Groups, we recommend allocating at least 2 of the 8 value beats to stories sourced directly from ERG members. This is not tokenism — it is accuracy. An ERG member's story about psychological safety or belonging is almost always the most credible evidence of that value in the film.
Company Values Film Packages & Pricing
| Package | Price Range | What's Included | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essentials | £10,000–£18,000 | 1 shoot day, up to 8 contributors, 4–6 value beats, library music, 2 edit rounds, HD delivery | SMEs, charities, B-Corp applicants on a fixed budget |
| Standard | £22,000–£35,000 | 2 shoot days, up to 14 contributors, 6–8 value beats, colour grade, social cutdowns (square format per beat), 3 edit rounds | Series A–C, 50–500 employee companies, active employer brand investment |
| Premium | £38,000–£50,000 | 2–3 shoot days, multi-site filming (up to 2 UK locations), 16+ contributors, bespoke music brief, animated value titles, subtitle package, 4 edit rounds, ProRes delivery | Enterprise, PE-backed scaleups, national employer brand campaigns |
Common add-ons:
- Discovery session facilitation (if not included in package): £800–£1,500
- Animated value title cards and motion graphics: £1,800–£4,500
- Individual value clips reformatted for LinkedIn and Instagram: £900–£2,200
- Translated subtitles (per language): £400–£900
- Second-site filming day (UK travel): £2,500–£5,000
What Drives Cost Variation in Values Film Production?
The 5 biggest variables between a £10,000 and a £50,000 values film:
- Number of contributors. Each additional contributor requires scheduling, briefing, and interview time on set. More contributors = more shooting time, more footage to review, longer edit. 8 contributors is the efficient sweet spot; beyond 14 the law of diminishing returns applies.
- Number of shoot days. Single-location 1-day shoots are the most efficient. Multi-site productions require additional kit, crew travel, and coordination time. Budget £2,500–£5,000 per additional location day.
- Post-production deliverables. A single long-form master is cheaper than a long-form master plus 8 individual value clips plus social reformats. Agree the full deliverable list before production starts — adding outputs afterwards is the most expensive way to expand scope.
- Music approach. Library music costs £300–£1,500 for a values film licence. A bespoke original score (recommended for Premium tier) costs £3,000–£8,000. The quality gap between top-tier library and entry-level bespoke is smaller than most clients expect.
- Revision rounds. 3 rounds is standard. Committee approval processes (more than 3 internal approvers) almost always generate scope creep. We recommend nominating a single creative director internally who consolidates feedback before it reaches us.
Company Values Film FAQs
- How long should a company values film be?
- The full values suite typically runs 2–4 minutes. Individual value beats extracted for social use run 20–40 seconds. For careers page placement, 3 minutes is the upper limit before drop-off becomes significant; if your full suite is longer, use it on the induction screen, not the homepage.
- Should senior leaders appear in a values film?
- Selectively, yes. A founder or CEO speaking to a single value beat (particularly purpose or integrity) adds credibility and signal. But a film featuring only leadership reads as top-down mandate, not lived culture. Aim for senior leaders to represent no more than 25% of on-screen contributors.
- How do we choose which employees appear on screen?
- We recommend a nomination process rather than a self-selection one: ask team leads to nominate one person from their department who best embodies each value, then brief those nominees before the shoot. Avoid volunteering — the people who put their hand up fastest are not always the most authentic on camera.
- What if an employee leaves after the film is released?
- This is the most common values film concern and the most over-weighted one. Film does not become invalid because an individual moves on. Where possible, avoid identifying employees by name in on-screen text; their story is the asset, not their continued tenure. If a key contributor leaves within 12 months, a small re-edit can be done for £800–£2,000.
- Can values films be used for Great Place to Work or B-Corp submissions?
- Yes. Both programmes accept video evidence. A well-structured values film with real employee testimony is significantly more persuasive than a written statement. Ensure the film is hosted on a publicly accessible URL (not password-protected) for submission links to work.
- How do we stop it looking scripted?
- We never hand employees a script. Instead, we run a 15-minute pre-interview conversation to surface the genuine story, then ask the contributor to tell it again on camera in their own words. Our director's job is to create the conditions for authentic delivery, not to direct performance. You can feel the difference in every frame.
- What's the shelf life of a values film?
- 3–5 years if your values are stable. The main reasons for a values film becoming outdated: your values change (rebrand/leadership change), your visual identity changes significantly, or the office/environment shown no longer exists. We recommend a "refresh" approach at year 3 — new contributor interviews edited over the existing structural framework — rather than a full commission.
- Do we need professional lighting or can we film in our normal office?
- Professional lighting is non-negotiable. Your normal office, even a beautiful one, has mixed colour temperatures, hard windows, and acoustic challenges that produce footage that undermines the credibility of everything being said in it. We bring a full lighting kit for every shoot. It is already in your production budget.