The Safety Equipment that Billboard Workers Need

About the Client: Formetco

Formetco manufactures and distributes structural and safety equipment for the outdoor advertising industry. Their product catalog covers structural components, LED display hardware, and personal protective equipment for climbers who work at height on billboard structures. Formetco Select Safety Equipment is their purpose-built PPE line: harnesses, lanyards, carabiners, and anchors designed specifically for billboard installation and maintenance.

The buyers for this commercial are procurement managers at outdoor advertising companies, safety officers managing OSHA compliance, and independent contractors who climb for a living. All three evaluate safety equipment with an expert eye. The commercial had to hold up to that scrutiny from the first frame.

The Challenge

Three constraints arrived at once: 

1. Runtime first: the finished piece needed to work as a paid social asset, a trade show loop, and a product-page hero video, all at once. That means 45 to 60 seconds with no filler and no setup time.
2. Credibility second: Safety equipment buyers are not going to trust a commercial that shows gear in glamour lighting or lifestyle framing. Harnesses, lanyards, carabiners, and anchors have to look tested and functional. The visual language of a lifestyle commercial does the opposite of what this product needs.
3. Coverage third: The commercial had to show every major component of the Formetco Basic Billboard Climber Safety Gear Kit clearly enough for a professional buyer to identify what they're looking at, with no single component getting more than four or five seconds of screen time.

Our Approach to the Production

Eagle Wing structured the video as a fast, product-first cut that treats each component as its own beat. The approach is closer to a professional product walkthrough than a brand story: identify, show, move on. That density gave the piece the room it needed to cover the full kit inside 46 seconds without rushing any individual shot.

Creative Direction

Hard, directional lighting throughout. That's the choice that lets a buyer evaluate the stitching on the webbing, the machining on the carabiner gates, and the working action of the buckle mechanisms. Nothing is softened. Safety equipment should look like it's been tested. Ours does.

Clean cuts on beat, no transitions, no motion graphics. A safety product commercial that relies on visual effects is signaling that the product can't carry the frame on its own.

Filming and Equipment

We combined controlled tabletop cinematography for the component-by-component coverage with location work at a real billboard site for the contextual shots. Macro coverage handled carabiner gate detail, buckle hardware, stitching on load-bearing webbing, and anchor attachment points. The location work put the gear on a real structure, which is the only setting that makes the product fully legible to its actual buyers.

Post-Production and Editing

The 46-second cut moves through each component in the order a climber would actually put the kit on: harness first, then lanyard, then carabiner and anchor. That sequence reads as familiar to anyone who's done this work, and as a logical walkthrough for anyone who hasn't.

Color grading holds a neutral industrial palette that lets Formetco's brand color sit cleanly against the black webbing and metallic hardware without any saturation push that would compromise the professional look.

The Result

Formetco received a 46-second commercial for paid social, trade show loops, and their product page: three distinct placements, one master cut, no additional editing required.

The piece opens at a working billboard site, moves through component-by-component coverage that any professional buyer can evaluate on sight, and closes on the full gear kit and Formetco branding. A short-form industrial commercial built to convert a technical audience, not entertain a general one.

Services Delivered on This Project

This project used a compact industrial product commercial video production workflow, engineered for a short deliverable.

• Product Commercial Video Production (short-form, silent-first)

• B2B Product Video Production for industrial and safety verticals

• Product Cinematography with Macro Coverage

• On-Location Contextual Filming

• Post-Production, Color Grading, and Music Supervision

Frequently Asked Questions

• How long does it take to produce a short-form product commercial like this one? - A tight product commercial in the 30 to 60 second range typically runs three to six weeks from creative kickoff to final delivery. That timeline covers creative direction, product photography and cinematography planning, a controlled shoot (studio for macro work, on-location for context), and an edit and revision cycle. Safety and industrial products sometimes add time on the front end for product staging and compliance-adjacent art direction.
• What's different about producing a video for an industrial or safety equipment brand? - Industrial and safety product commercials have to survive scrutiny from buyers who evaluate equipment for a living. That means lighting choices, framing, and editing decisions that would work for a consumer product can quietly kill credibility with a professional audience. The winning approach is to show the product the way a buyer would inspect it in person: hard directional lighting, functional context, and coverage of the working parts rather than glamour beauty shots.
• Do you produce product videos for silent-first playback on paid social? - Yes. Most of the industrial and B2B product commercials we produce are designed to work with sound off, because paid social auto-plays muted and trade show loops usually run without audio. That means all critical information has to land visually, and any voiceover or dialogue used in longer versions has to be redundant with what the picture already communicates.
• Can you shoot at the client's real work site instead of a studio? - Yes, and for many industrial products the on-site context is worth the added logistics. For this Formetco project, we combined controlled studio work for the macro product coverage with on-location filming at a working billboard site for the environmental context. That split gives buyers both the inspection-grade detail they want and the real-world validation they need.
• Can this production style adapt to my industrial or B2B product? - Yes. The Formetco case study is a template for any short-form industrial product commercial: tight runtime, component-by-component product coverage, silent-first edit, and lighting that reads as inspection-grade rather than lifestyle. That framework adapts to safety equipment, tools, machinery, industrial hardware, and any B2B product where the buyer's evaluation criteria are functional rather than aspirational.

Ready to Produce a Commercial for Your Industrial or B2B Product?

Eagle Wing Productions works with manufacturers, safety equipment brands, industrial hardware companies, and B2B product businesses that need short-form video engineered for how professional buyers actually evaluate a product. Book a free strategy call, and we will talk through what a piece like the Formetco commercial could do for your business.

Call (801) 471-0759 or book a free strategy call online.