HeadLight — Explainer Video

On a lot of job sites, the record of what happened lives on paper. Or in a report that shows up at the end of the week.

By the time anyone reads it, the problem it describes is days old.

HeadLight fixes that. Someone on site takes a picture, uploads it, and it's instantly searchable for everyone on the project. The office sees what the field sees, while it's still happening.

Simple to use. Not so simple to explain to someone who has done inspections on a clipboard for twenty years. That was the job: show a construction company how HeadLight makes inspections easier and keeps everyone working from the same information.

It's a fair question to ask anyone who works alone. Here's the honest answer, because it happened on this project.

HeadLight landed at the end of the year, alongside several other deadlines. Rather than let the schedule slip, I brought in Sarah, a designer I trust, to build the storyboard.

Stephanie didn't have to manage a second vendor. She talked to me, and I worked with Sarah. Every frame came through me before it went to HeadLight, so it matched what we had agreed on.

You get extra hands when the work needs them. You still get one person responsible for all of it.

Storyboard frames by Sarah Haftorson.

Before animating anything, I cut the storyboard frames to a scratch voiceover. That rough version is called an animatic.

It answers one question: does the timing work? Does each idea get enough room on screen, or does it rush past before anyone can read it?

Fixing pacing at this stage takes minutes. Fixing it after animation takes days. So HeadLight saw the whole video, start to finish, before a single frame was final.

Watch a few and you'll hear it. A gravelly male voice, the same delivery, over and over. Stephanie had noticed it across HeadLight's competitors.

A video that sounds like every other one gets treated like every other one.

So in a male-dominated industry, we cast a strong female voice. Knowledgeable. Reassuring. Noticeably different from what that audience expects.

I sourced a shortlist of voice talent. Stephanie picked her favorite. It's a small choice, and it's the first thing people remember.

SaaS products ship updates. Screens get redesigned. Features get renamed. An explainer that can't keep up goes stale in a year.

So I built the animation in After Effects as a flexible template. When HeadLight's product changes, the video can change with it, without starting over.

After the animation review, Stephanie asked for a better mix of structures and people in the footage. I swapped the shots, added sound design, and licensed every clip for online use.

Product screens built to be swapped as the platform evolves.

From first call to final file, through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's. Stephanie's part was the kickoff call, a few review meetings, and sharing what she already had: product screen recordings, photos, and the company deck.

The project cost about $8,000. That was low. Today a video like this runs $8,000–$12,000, covering custom storyboards, illustration, graphics, voiceover, production, and animation.

HeadLight got a video that explains the product in plain terms, sounds like no one else in their category, and can be updated as the software grows.

It ran on HeadLight's website, made the rounds on their LinkedIn, and lives on their YouTube channel. Stephanie also put it to work in paid ads.