In 2019, companies of all sizes can now afford to produce high-quality video content to tell their stories. The rapid increase in accessibility to professional gear has made beautiful and meaningful stories not just the exports of expensive Hollywood productions. Nowadays companies are using video to tell impactful stories and help customers understand their business across a variety of channels, including videos on their website, social media, and even in digital ads.
While access has increased, it is still no small task to create engaging, informative, and well-produced video content. Here at The Squad, we’ve spent years honing a trusted process and we love helping companies tell their story through video.
Not sure how to get started? Here are some basics to get you off to the races.
First off, know who you’re trying to communicate with! Include demographics, professions, and felt needs. Any information that you can compile to identify your target audience will be the foundation of how you craft your plan.
Once you have narrowed your sights on a target audience, determine a desired result of the finished piece. A popular marketing rule is that most content can be broken into four basic intentions: to inform, inspire, educate, or entertain. When planning and writing your script, consider the most effective ways to achieve the desired result for your video.
Planning is vital to a successful shoot-day. The more time you spend ironing out each detail of the shoot, the less time you’ll spend in the editing room, afterward. The mindset of ‘we’ll record a lot of footage and figure it out’ usually results in a headache of an edit and a disappointing final product.
Knowing the lay of the land is another important piece of the puzzle. If you have the ability to scout your location, take notes, and make adjustments before the shoot; this will make the shoot-day much less stressful. If you don’t have the ability to scout ahead of time, make sure you plan to arrive early on location to walk through the shots and address any last-minute adjustments.
Creating a detailed shot-list is vital before every shoot. Once you are on location, being able to check off specific scenes will add a level of confidence and organization to the process.
On more elaborate narratives, storyboarding specific scenes can be very helpful.
If you are filming ‘talking head’ interviews, it’s always best to at least have an outline and talking points outlined beforehand. Most inexperienced interviewees are nervous and the more structure you can provide, the better. Whoever is directing the interview should focus on making the subject feel as comfortable and relaxed as possible.
Writing a voiceover script can be more straightforward, but keep in mind that having the right talent to record the voiceover can make or break the tone of your project. An audience is much more forgiving of a casual or ‘imperfect’ execution of interviews but usually expects a very polished and professional voiceover experience.
One of the main hurdles to overcome when creating a video project is acquiring and operating the necessary gear. While the price of quality cameras and various accessories has rapidly decreased over recent years, it still depends on the overall budget and goals of your project whether you should consider renting or buying.
Some rental resources we use:
https://murphyscamera.com/rentals.html
Selecting the right music for your project is important for setting the emotional tone. Also, depending on where you purchase rights to your music, this is a consideration to be built into your total budget.
A resource we use:
2019 is going to be another big year for video content! We hope this list is helpful for planning a video project of your own. Of course, if this list left you with more questions than answers on how to produce your own marketing video, then let’s talk.
Our team of videographers, designers, editors, and creative strategists are dedicated to helping businesses in and around Louisville, KY and Charlotte, NC tell their story through video. You bring the story and we’ll bring the skills, gear, and process.
Do you use a monitor, smartphone, or television? Obviously, you do - you’re reading this.
If you’re like me, then you probably use one of these devices close to 12 hours a day. People always say to limit screen time, but how can we in this day and age, especially if your job calls for it? The average American spends right around 11 hours a day looking at a screen. A good amount of that is due to work and the rest is typically entertainment or communication with friends and family. All of this is just to say we, as a culture, spend a lot of time with eyes glued to screens.
I have gotten headaches for a while and I always attributed them to allergies, but I am a graphic designer. I spend lots of time on my computer working in Photoshop and similar design software starting at my screen, sometimes focusing down to specific pixels. And research says that too much screen time can have a negative effect. But in a world that revolves around screens, it's hard to cut back. So what can you do?
Have you ever heard of blue light glasses? I hadn’t either until a friend of mine recently got them. She is a college student on track to start med school, so she spends a ton of hours at the library on her Macbook reading, writing papers, and probably looking up the occasional cat video (we’re all guilty of it).
She had noticed that she got headaches fairly regularly and had trouble sleeping at night, but she attributed this to stress about school. After she saw an ad on Pinterest for blue light glasses that promised relief, she decided to give them a try.
When I asked about them, she explained to me that prolonged blue light emitted from electronic devices affects people because of light triggered hormones in your body that tell you to wake up when the sun is up and reduce melatonin production, which is made to lull us to sleep at night.
Blue light, specifically, affects people in this way because it has the highest wavelength of the visible light spectrum. Because the wavelength is so high, it tends to strain your eyes the longer you spend looking at a screen, which often results in headaches and occasionally a migraine. There is also research that is suggesting that long exposure to blue light can permanently damage your eyes.
At first, I was skeptical of the magic blue light blocking, headache-preventing, send you off to sleep glasses, but I was willing to try anything to cure my daily headaches. So I thought I would give the magic glasses a try.
I didn’t want to spend a ton of money on these glasses because I wasn’t even sure they would work, so I went to the one place I knew I could get stuff for cheap with lots of reviews on the product: Amazon. I ordered blue light glasses that received high reviews from customers and they were only about $20. After wearing them for a few weeks, I am very impressed with how well they work.
I no longer get headaches like I used to and I can still spend hours at a time on my Macbook fretting about small little pixels. I never wore glasses before so it took some time getting used to wearing them for the majority of my day, but the glasses I got are light and comfortable and I am now drinking the blue light glasses Kool-Aid and loving it.
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