The Best Video Production Companies in Ohio

In the early 1930s, Cincinnati's Procter & Gamble started paying for daytime radio serials like Ma Perkins, and by 1944 it was the biggest buyer of airtime on American radio. The shows became known as soap operas, and P&G took the idea to TV, where its As the World Turns ran from 1956 to 2010. So Ohio has a decent claim to inventing branded entertainment.

The big brands are still here, with P&G and Kroger in Cincinnati and Nationwide, Huntington and Cardinal Health around Columbus. Hollywood visits too. Superman spent part of 2024 filming in Cleveland and Cincinnati, helped by Ohio's 30% film tax credit. There's no shortage of production companies, then. But a training-film specialist in Cleveland and a projection-mapping studio in Cincinnati both call themselves video production companies, and they're nothing alike.

Our nine cover Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, Dayton and Akron, with Trendy Grandad in the top spot.

1. Trendy Grandad (YouTube shows for brands)

Yes, we've put ourselves first on our own list. In our defence, Procter & Gamble's old trick is more or less what we do all day. We make shows people choose to watch, with the brand built in.

For QuickBooks, that meant studio entertainment formats for business owners, with six 20-minute YouTube videos filmed across two shoot days. When Hunter & Gather launched its chicken broth range, we made ten social-first videos and 30 stills in six weeks, from casting through to editing.

Our process starts with strategy, meaning what your audience already watches and the title and thumbnail that will make them click. Only then do we start scripting or book a crew.

Ohio is a short flight from New York, where we have an office, and we book local crews for the shoot itself.

2. Mills James

Mills James was founded in Columbus in 1984 by Ken Mills and Cameron James. It now has two studios in Columbus and offices serving Cleveland and Cincinnati, and its video production services cover commercials, virtual production, internal comms and live events. It's also the in-house production company for the Greater Columbus Convention Center. Abbott, Chase, Cintas and Ohio State University all appear on its client list, and it says it won five Telly Awards in 2026. Useful if you want the studio shoot and the event from one partner.

3. Lightborne

If you saw Kenny Chesney's 2025 shows at Sphere in Las Vegas, you've seen Lightborne's work. The Cincinnati studio made custom content for six songs in the residency. The rest of its work ranges across tour visuals, branded content, installations and projection mapping, including a show projected onto a Delta plane to reveal the airline's centennial livery. Its client logos include P&G and several of its brands, Gillette and Olay among them, which makes sense given the neighbours.

4. TRG Multimedia

The old American Greetings headquarters in Brooklyn, just outside Cleveland, is now home to TRG Multimedia, which has been going since 1983. That gives it 160,000 square feet of studio space, with more than 40 semi-permanent sets, a 30,000 square foot soundstage, a 10,000 square foot virtual production wall and a motion-control robot. Moen and Cuisinart are among the brands quoted on its site, for photos as well as video, and about 85% of the feature film Buddy was shot in Cleveland using its stages. Product-heavy brands will want to see the sets.

5. Epipheo

Epipheo started in Cincinnati in 2009, is 100% employee-owned, and says it has made more than 6,000 videos for over 3,000 brands. Explainers are its bread and butter, in 2D, 3D, whiteboard and live action, for clients such as Google, Microsoft, Cisco and Fifth Third Bank. It has a film arm as well, and was the animation studio on the feature Light of the World, released in 2025. In 2026 it says it won six Gold Telly Awards.

6. Spacejunk

Spacejunk has been making live action and animation in Columbus since 2002, and handles everything from the concept to the sound design in-house. Its tagline is "More Space. Less Junk." The work includes projects for Wendy's, Bath & Body Works, Huntington and Nationwide Children's Hospital, and it lists Gold ADDYs for a Bath & Body Works Stranger Things campaign and a Wendy's "Boo! Book". Retail, finance, healthcare and higher education are its main sectors.

7. Cinecraft Productions

Cinecraft has been in Cleveland since 1939, when Ray Culley set it up as what it calls one of the world's first corporate training film companies. It still specialises in learning, with training video and eLearning, and has worked out of a converted Cleveland Public Library building since 1947. It also says it filmed the country's first infomercial, for Vitamix, in 1949. Hyatt and Merck are among its client logos. If the brief comes from HR or learning and development, this is the specialist.

8. Clockwork 9

Clockwork 9 is a Cleveland studio making documentary-style brand films and commercials, with client logos including Progressive, Nike, Live Nation and Ernst & Young. Its work page also shows films for the Cleveland Orchestra and Charles Schwab. On top of client work, it makes its own series, AOTL, profiling Cleveland small businesses such as Black Cat Barbershop and Cleveland Print Co., which is a good way to judge its storytelling without a brand brief.

9. Red Point Digital

Timken's pop-up book and Morton Salt's "Science of Salt" both came out of Red Point Digital, an Akron studio that has made 3D product animation and CGI since 2011, alongside motion graphics and live action. It has also worked with Under Armour and Destination Cleveland, and founder Eric Vaughan is a commercial director. Manufacturers that need to show what's going on inside their products will find plenty to like.

10. AmeriFilms

AmeriFilms is the youngest company here. Souley Oumarou, who grew up in Niger and spent six years as a Wall Street tax analyst before turning to filmmaking, set it up in Dayton in 2022. Its work is mostly documentaries and brand films, and it runs a multi-camera podcast and livestream studio. It also publishes its prices, which makes it much easier to plan a budget.

How to choose a video production company in Ohio

Five questions to put to any company on this list, us included, or to a freelance videographer. The answers will tell you a lot about their approach.

Do they know what your audience already watches? Before anyone writes a script, a good company should be able to tell you which channels and creators your customers already watch, and show you examples of what you could make that they can't. If the first meeting is all about cinematography and technical details, that homework probably hasn't been done.

Can they keep it going? A YouTube channel needs a steady supply of video content, usually a new video every week or two, for months. Ask how many episodes they'd plan up front, and whether the same people will still be working on the project in six months.

Who's going to be on camera? It could be a presenter, or your own team speaking in interviews. Ask how they cast, and whether they have experience coaching a nervous first-timer, because the host is often the difference between a video people finish and one they click away from.

How will you both know it's working? Agree on your goals, and how you'll measure results, before you film. For a YouTube series, look at how many viewers come back for a second episode. For a product launch, look at sales from the page the video sends people to.

Will they work with your other agencies? Plenty of Ohio brands already have an advertising agency, a marketing team or both. Ask who owns the idea and who has the final say on the script and the message, before three teams start emailing each other the same feedback.

What Ohio's biggest advertisers worked out first

P&G paid for a story people wanted to follow every weekday, and the soap came along with it. The same thing works on YouTube now. People choose what they watch, so a brand has to earn their attention with something worth watching, then keep turning up with the next episode.

Columbus taught brands the other half of the lesson. It has a long-standing reputation as a test market, a place to try a new product before a national launch, partly because its population has looked a lot like the US as a whole. It's a habit worth borrowing for video. Try a few versions, see which one people stick with, and only then put the real money behind it.

Put the two together and you get a series you can test and improve as you go. A series is easier to budget, too, because you agree the scope once and sort the format and locations in pre-production. After that, each shoot day can cover several episodes, and post-production turns the leftover footage into Shorts and clips for Instagram and other social media.

If you're working out how to pay for that, our guide to retainers versus one-off videos covers the trade-offs.

Got a video to make in Ohio?

Tell us about it and we'll send you some format ideas, plus an honest view on whether YouTube is the right home for it.