ABSTRACT
Corporations, nonprofit organizations, government departments, and businesses large and small often use a visual medium like video to communicate important information and ideas to both internal and external audiences. Before video, they used film. Corporate use of visual media started early, although infrequently, in the days of silent film. Armour & Company, the Chicago meatpackers, used the Polyscope Company to make a promotional film about their stockyards to counter the negative publicity brought about by Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle (1906), which exposed the less-thandesirable practices of the meatpacking industry. 1
Today, making video and television for corporate clients, often called the non-broadcast industry, is a huge business, larger even than the more visible broadcast television industry. The general public
sees very little of the output of the non-broadcast producers for the simple reason that the target audience for these videos is rarely the general public, and the videos are seldom seen on cable or broadcast networks. You may get to see an industrial or commercial video as a customer of a service or a purchaser of a product. Many of these productions serve business to business communications. Most people do not know about the vast number of writers, producers, and directors who make their livings creating these videos for corporate clients. Many of these creative talents migrated from the broadcasting and entertainment worlds. Some of them work in both.
