Video
Videography
When creating videos for Fannie Mae, all elements of the brand guidelines apply — make sure to also familiarize yourself and follow the guidance in the photography, illustration, typography, logo use, and color palette sections. Here, you’ll find best practice guidance to ensure that a video aligns with our brand.
Note: Creative agencies must send all final deliverables, project files, and media assets to Fannie Mae for archiving at the project’s completion. Information on delivery details and required formats are available from your point of contact.
Individuals contributing their likeness, portrait, voice, and/or testimonial to a Fannie Mae video should have signed Fannie Mae’s Model Release and Consent form for Marketing & Communications’ files. If you feature an identifiable property or the interior of a consumer’s home, you should also secure from their occupant (owner or renter, as applicable) a Fannie Mae standard Property Release and Consent Form for Marketing & Communications’ files.
B-roll (people and places)
B-roll footage helps enhance the stories of our consumers. We feature authentic and realistic footage with soft, natural-looking lighting and balanced composition. To promote diversity and inclusivity, make sure when filming to feature a varied selection of subjects and highlight properties.
Do
Use slow motion as appropriate (60 fps – 120 fps range).- Make the house the hero. Showcase Fannie Mae properties as the character.
- Capture properties and neighborhoods that reflect Fannie Mae’s affordable housing mission.
- Consider diversity of all subjects and scenes.
Don't
Capture inauthentic emotion such as overexuberance.- Capture spaces with excessive clutter.
- Feature identifying street names and numbers.
- Feature logos or brands that are not relevant to story line.
- Feature alcohol usage and/or placement.
- Show people working late at night — Fannie Mae encourages a healthy work-life balance.
Example 1: property seems affordable
Example 2: Property does not seem affordable
Interviews
To create a more personal connection with viewers and add variety to video edits we incorporate footage of interviews on location. Our standard is to film subjects either standing or sitting in front of practical backgrounds. Remember to consider your audience when choosing a background — office spaces for B2B content and clean, relaxed, homey venues for consumer-facing pieces.
Live Backgrounds
Do
Use simple and clean setups.- Shoot with 2 – 3 cameras for different angles.
- Lead the shot, and keep lower-third graphic space in mind.
Don't
Shoot subject looking straight to camera. - Shoot with a cluttered background.
- Chose extravagant or uncommon spaces.
- Use wardrobe with small prints, glasses with glare, or excessive jewelry/accessories.
- Feature prominent photos in the background.
- Feature alcohol usage and/or placement.
Camera A
Camera B
In-studio
It may be more convenient for some subjects and production schedules to conduct iIn-studio interviews. We want to keep focus on the subject so be sure to keep the backgrounds simple and static. Backdrops or green screen are acceptable when appropriate.
Do
- Choose neutral backgrounds or branded step and repeat.
- Utilize green screen if needed. Prior to green screen shoot, identify background slate so set is lit appropriately.
- Use seating if appropriate.
- Utilize a teleprompter if there is a straight-to-camera address.
- Frame shots with graphics in mind.
Don't
- Feature logos or brands prominently that aren’t relevant to story line — for example, no event brands.
- Shoot primarily in negative space.
- Use chairs that swivel or rock.
Camera A
Camera B
Virtual recordings
Because of interviewees’ schedules or production logistics, there may be situations where we need to film virtually. These types of recordings should be used only if there are no other options available. Follow the guidance below to ensure the footage is brand-compliant.
Do
- Place subject in front of soft, indirect light source.
- Choose a visually appealing background.
- Place subject in center frame.
- Ensure camera or laptop is on a solid surface at eye level.
- Troubleshoot audio and visual before recording.
- Utilize a back-up screen-record if recording inside a platform like Teams, Zoom, or Webex.
- Capture a range of different expressions to use in editing process.
Don't
- Position subject with a bright light, such as a window, behind or above them.
- Use virtual backgrounds of any kind, including blur filters.
- Use messy backgrounds.
- Record more than one subject per frame.
- Position camera below eye level.
- Feature prominent photos in the background.
- Feature alcohol usage and/or placement.
Behind-the-scenes (BTS)
To add variety of footage and give viewers an inside look at an event or production, we can shoot and feature behind-the-scenes footage. Filming will most likely take place at events with Fannie Mae employees and guests.
Do
- Capture a diversity of subjects.
- Shoot candids.
- Give a high-energy feel.
- Include branded swag.
Don't
- Feature prominent photos in the background.
- Feature alcohol usage and/or placement.
Graphics and animation
Graphics and animation add additional dynamic elements to videos. We use graphics to highlight our financial data and mission. We use simple, clean movements to avoid distracting from those key messages. In most cases, Fannie Mae will provide you with pre-designed graphic files for your project. Please consider all lockup static designs before determining motion graphics.
Do
- Include copyright on all external-facing content.
- Use footnotes and disclaimers when relevant/required.
- Utilize clean, direct, smooth movements.
- Use soft, subtle transitions for text on screen.
- Keep all text fully horizontal on a straight-line and equally spaced.
- Use lower thirds to display descriptive information such as name, job title, or location. They appear on the first appearance of all speakers for a standard 4 to 5 seconds. The lower thirds template has a motion pre—build, but static lower thirds can be removed by dissolve.
- Stagger your content animation so the viewer has an intuitive sense of where to look first.
- Use AE Text Animators to cascade text on screen in reading order or to emphasize a pause between text segments in the same block. (Example call to action: “See your options” [pause] “at fanniemae.com/url”). You can use character, word, or line grouping depending on what fits best with the content and timing.
- For standard text, animate text in/out using both position and opacity (or scale and opacity). Suggestion: have text slide in from the right or bottom (~50 px starting offset) and slide out to the left or up.
- For fast text or bold headline text, you can use a bounding box to mask the area around the text’s resting position, and use that hard edge to slide text into place without a fade. Typically these animate in quickly and are grouped by word or the entire line.
- Add nuanced movement where it makes sense but isn’t distracting. This can include subtle motion within iconography, slight movement on background elements, or a slow constant camera move with content at different Z-depths for a parallax effect.
- Use easing keyframes. Typically we use quart and cubic easing curves, but you can use milder options if those are too aggressive.
- Add diffusion or noise to gradients to prevent banding. Our brand palette leans on navy/teal gradients that are relatively close in color. While these look fine in the edit, mp4 compression causes native gradients to take on significant unwanted banding.
- If slowing footage down or using it at non-native framerates, use pixel motion frame blending to prevent choppiness.
- If the logo bug is not sufficiently contrasting with the content underneath, use drop shadows to help it pop without the drop shadow being visually identifiable. Typically two or three drop shadow effects with a large radius and low opacity work well, whereas a single drop shadow at higher opacity is too noticeable.
Don't
- Obscure a subject’s face with typography or graphics.
- Include graphics that interfere with lower-third caption and graphics space.
- Use abrupt transitions.
- Flip, twist, or rotate text on screen
- Design 3D graphics for logos or typography.
- Use Fannie Mae logo in any other nature than is presented in the Fannie Mae Style Guide. This includes altering the size, shape, or lockup of Fannie Mae’s full logo and symbol when designing a motion graphic.
- Use glows, flashes, shimmers or other graphic elements that fall out of brand guideline.
- Avoid hard cuts when not working with footage, unless the abrupt cut plays well to the content.
- Avoid fading entire text blocks on/off all at once.
Download graphic and animation assets
Download assets from our brand portal, including an on-screen graphics template, logo animations, and outros.
Download graphic and animation assets
Lower-third placement
Condo guidelines text build
Full logo build
Outro with copyright and disclaimer
Closed-caption SRT files
To ensure we make out content as accessible to as many people as possible, all videos should include a closed-caption SRT file.
Do
- Proofread captions.
- Adjust for readability and ADA compliance.
- Center captions in lower third of screen. Move caption placement to accommodate graphic placement when necessary.
- Open caption all social media bound deliverables
Don't
- Use solid color background fill behind caption text.
- Rely on auto-generated (AI) captions. All captions must be proofed and accurate.