Glossary
Explainer video: animation or live action?
An explainer video makes a product, process or proposition understandable in under two minutes. Whether it should be animated or filmed depends on a single question: can the subject actually be photographed?
That question resolves most briefs faster than any discussion of budget or style. If the thing exists, is visible and can be filmed, live action is usually more credible and often cheaper. If it is abstract, invisible, sealed inside a housing or only meaningful once it moves, animation is not a stylistic preference but the only option that works.
The failure mode in both directions is the same: choosing the format first and then discovering it cannot carry the subject. Animated films about visible physical products often feel evasive. Live action films about data or software often become someone pointing at a screen.
Which format fits
| Subject | Better format | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Physical product in use | Live action | Credibility comes from seeing it real |
| Process inside a sealed unit | Animation | There is nothing to film |
| Software or interface | Either — often screen capture with motion graphics | Depends on whether people are part of the story |
| Data or a flow of information | Animation | Meaning only appears in movement |
| A service delivered by people | Live action | The people are the proposition |
| An abstract benefit | Animation | Nothing concrete exists to point a camera at |
Practical considerations
- Animation front-loads approval. Script and style frames are signed off before anything moves, because changing the look later means rebuilding rather than re-editing.
- Live action front-loads logistics. Locations, availability, weather, permits.
- Animation ages more slowly. It does not date the way footage of people and offices does.
- Language variants are cheaper in animation, though not free.
- Technical accuracy is what animation most often gets wrong. Fix it by putting the animator in front of your specialist before storyboard, not at review.
In practice
For Albert Heijn, DOT produced 42 films — 41 stop-motion, one animation — explaining a collectible mechanic to millions of shoppers. Stop-motion was chosen because the object is physically assembled in front of the viewer frame by frame, which removes the need for explanatory voiceover entirely.
See scope and examples on the animation page.
Last updated: