What I produce
A typical e-commerce session covers eight to fifteen short clips, cut for wherever they will live: an Amazon listing, an Instagram grid, a product page carousel. Nobody wants one 90-second film any more. They want small, specific pieces that each do one job.
Listing and A+ content video
Fifteen to thirty seconds, shot square or vertical, built to sit inside an Amazon listing or a Shopify product page. The brief is simple: show the product doing the thing it’s meant to do, in under half a minute, without a voiceover the algorithm cannot caption.
360 spins and unboxing
A 360 spin is a slow rotation on a turntable, stitched into a loop the customer can drag through themselves. Unboxing is the opposite: hands, packaging, the reveal. It works best for anything with a satisfying opening, cosmetics, jewellery, tech, and works badly for anything sold loose.
Demo, how-to and lifestyle motion
Demo footage answers “how does this work” in real time. Lifestyle motion sells the feeling rather than the mechanism, a candle burning on a windowsill in Hackney, a jacket moving in the wind. I cut everything down into vertical versions too, for monthly content packages, and you can see product work for London brands from past sessions in the portfolio.
E-commerce video prices
A half day at £400 covers eight to fifteen short videos, or six to eight with a 360 spin on each. That’s the base rate for straightforward product work: no assembly, no demonstration, no presenter walking through features.
| Booking | Output | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Half day | 8–15 short videos | £400 |
| Full day | 18–25 short videos | from £700 |
| Additional product video | Per product, on the day | £30 each |
| Stills and video combined | Half day, both formats | from £650 |
| 360 spin | Per product | £45 each |
| Presenter or hands model | Half or full day | from £150 |
| Rush delivery | 24 hours instead of 3–5 days | +£100 |
Full pricing for every other service sits on the full pricing across every service page, alongside deposit terms. None of this is a quote until I’ve seen the SKU count and, ideally, the products, though a spreadsheet with dimensions is usually enough to work from.
Marketplace specs that actually matter
Amazon’s own guidance asks for video under a minute, minimum 1080p, delivered as MP4 or MOV under 1GB. Most listing videos I shoot land between twenty and forty-five seconds, long enough to show the product working, short enough that nobody scrolls past it.
Aspect ratio matters more than most sellers think. Most photography advice still treats widescreen 16:9 as the default hero shot. I think that’s backwards: it looks great on a monitor and useless on the phone screen where most shopping now happens.
- Amazon listing video: square (1:1) or portrait (4:5)
- Instagram Reels and TikTok: vertical (9:16)
- Website product page or banner: widescreen (16:9)
- Google Shopping video ads: square (1:1) or landscape (16:9)
I shoot square or vertical as standard, and only build a widescreen cut when a brief specifically asks for one, usually for a banner rather than a listing.
Platform specs change without much warning. Amazon, TikTok Shop and Instagram have all shifted requirements in the last two years, so check the current spec sheet before a shoot. I keep across Amazon’s image and video requirements as they change, and if you are a smaller brand, I have written more on e-commerce photography for small brands.
Shooting stills and video in one session
Doing both in one visit is more efficient than booking two sessions, and usually cheaper. It is not free efficiency though. Setting up for video, moving lights for motion rather than a single frame, all of it eats time that would otherwise go into still frames. On a half day I’d normally shoot forty to sixty product stills; add video to the same session and that drops to roughly thirty, alongside the eight to fifteen clips.
If stills are the priority and video is a nice-to-have, say so up front and I will bias the day towards stills. If you need a full still catalogue and a full video set, two separate half days usually works out better than squeezing both into one rushed one. I shoot plenty of product photography from £300 on its own, and a lot of clients start there before adding video once a listing is live.
How many products a day
Eight to fifteen short videos in a half day is the honest range, dropping to six or eight if each product also gets a 360 spin. What actually slows a day down is rarely the filming itself. It’s everything around it: a product that needs assembling out of the box, a demo that needs practising before I can shoot it cleanly, packaging that has to be re-taped between takes.
Flat-pack items, anything with batteries or charging, and multi-part sets all take longer than a single moulded object you can pick up and place straight away. If your catalogue is mostly one type of product, tell me before the shoot and I will plan the day tighter. There is a longer breakdown of how many products fit into a day across different product types if you are planning a bigger session.
Sending products and what I need
Courier to the Shoreditch studio, or drop off yourself, either works, whether the stock is coming from a warehouse in Park Royal or a showroom in Mayfair. What makes the day run smoothly:
- A spreadsheet listing each SKU against the output you need, stills, video, 360, or a mix
- A spare of anything fragile or single-use, so a breakage or a bad take doesn’t stop the shoot
- A short written explanation of anything that needs demonstrating, sent before the day rather than read for the first time on it
- Packaging you are happy to have opened and re-taped, if unboxing is part of the brief
- Clear instructions on whether products get returned, and to which address
I hold stock for up to two weeks after delivery in case a return or a reshoot is needed, then it goes back or gets recycled, whichever you have asked for.
When product video isn’t worth it yet
If you are selling under twenty SKUs and the listings barely have traffic yet, video is not where your money should go. Stills come first, always. A plain, well-lit set of product photos that meets marketplace spec will do more for a new listing than a clever video nobody has found yet.
Video earns its place once a listing is already converting and you are trying to lift that rate further, or once you are running paid traffic and need something that stops the scroll. I would rather tell a small seller to spend £300 on solid stills and wait than take £400 for video on a page with no visitors. It isn’t the answer that gets me the booking, but it is the honest one.
Send me your SKU list and target platforms and I’ll come back within one working day with a shoot plan and a fixed price. Tell me whether stills or video matters more, and I will build the day around it.