ABSTRACT
Corporations , nonprofi t 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 fi lm. Corporate use of visual media started early, although infrequently, in the days of silent fi lm. Armour & Company, the Chicago meatpackers, used the Polyscope Company to make a promotional fi lm 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 nonbroadcast industry, is a huge business, larger even than the more visible broadcast television industry. It is hard to see that because of the way television and cable dominate most people’s lives. The general public sees very little of the output of the nonbroadcast 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. 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.
