Corporate video production in Malaysia: a guide for corporate teams

A corporate video is bought for a job, and the job decides the script, the length and who has to approve it. The common ones in Malaysia:

• Annual report and AGM. A chairman or CEO message and a year-in-review film shown to shareholders.
• ESG and sustainability reporting. Programme films that sit beside the sustainability statement and must match its figures.
• Employer brand and recruitment. Culture and role films for careers pages, graduate fairs and LinkedIn.
• Product or service launch. A launch film plus the short cuts that run in paid media.
• Stakeholder and investor communication. Explainers for regulators, partners, analysts and staff.

Name the job first. A video that tries to do all five usually does none of them well.

A good brief fits on one page and answers these, in this order:

1. Audience. Who watches it, and where: a shareholder meeting, a careers page or a social feed.
2. The one message. The single thing the viewer should remember.
3. Who approves. Corporate communications, legal and the business unit, with one named lead.
4. Mandatory content and disclosures. Logos, statements, figures and any wording legal requires.
5. Languages. Bahasa Malaysia, English and Chinese subtitles, and which version is the master.
6. Formats and cutdowns. The full film plus the short versions and aspect ratios each channel needs.
7. Deadline. Tied to the event it serves, with the approval rounds counted backwards from that date.

Production runs in these stages, in this order:

• Pre-production. Script, storyboard or shot list, location recce and permits, casting, and signed releases for every person and location that appears on screen.
• Shoot. Interviews, operations footage and b-roll, planned so one shoot day also supplies the short-form cuts.
• Post-production. Edit, colour, sound mix and music, titles and lower-thirds, then subtitles in each language.
• Cutdowns. Vertical and square versions for Meta, TikTok and YouTube, cut from the same footage rather than shot again.
• Delivery. Masters, platform files and an archive of the raw footage, named and stored where your team can find them next year.

Corporate video goes through more hands than most marketing. Plan for these before the shoot, not after the edit:

• Brand guidelines. Logo use, colour, typography and tone, checked against the group's own manual.
• Legal review. Every claim, figure and comparison read by legal before the final cut.
• Model and location releases. Signed for every identifiable person and private location.
• Licensed music. A licence that covers each platform and the period the video will run.
• Sector rules. Healthcare advertising follows KKM and Medical Act rules (see our KKM and MDC advertising rules guide); financial promotions follow SC and BNM requirements, which the client's compliance team signs off.

1. In-house crew or subcontracted. Ask who shoots and edits, and whether they are on the partner's staff.
2. Sector samples. Ask for work in your sector, or in one with the same approval load.
3. Footage ownership and usage rights. Get in writing who owns the raw footage and where the video may run.
4. Revision rounds. How many rounds are included, written into the agreement.
5. Delivery formats and subtitles. Confirm the cutdowns, ratios and languages are in scope.
6. One named approver on their side. A single producer who answers for the schedule and the files.

shakalakaa is a video production company in Malaysia that shoots and edits corporate video in-house, and we answer all six of these in writing before a brief is signed.

UEM Edgenta: shakalakaa, a registered vendor to UEM Edgenta Berhad, a Bursa Malaysia-listed infrastructure group, delivered its sustainability communications campaign: copywriting, corporate pages, video and photography.

TNB Electron: we designed the 3D charging stations and launch campaign for the EV charging arm of Tenaga Nasional Berhad. Aided brand recall among Peninsular EV owners rose from 18% to 56%.