How To Make Great “Amateur” Videos

Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 9:03 pm in Blog, Suggested, how to, technology by brody

If you have the budget for it, there is no more compelling medium than film. Use it. Pay for it. The combination of carefully crafted messages, with moving images, and enticing music is the most persuasive art form.

But even if you can’t hire a production crew and an editing team, you can still make great videos to communicate your message online. Be sure to read our first article on the role of “amateur” video production. Here’s how to shoot your video and get it online:

Step 1: Buy a great cheap video camera
A Flip video camera or an iPhone 4 is all you need. In each case, you really only need to hit one button for both “record” and “stop.”

Step 2: Plan what you are going to say
But don’t plan too hard. Remember, you’re shooting this, not an expensive film crew. Yes, you want to know where you’re going with it, but you also have the opportunity to screw up over and over. The point of planning things out is that you don’t want to spend much if any time editing your footage. Do it enough until you can get your message across all in one take!

Step 3: Frame you shot
A couple quick tips to make your video look better instantly:

• Don’t put your subject in the middle of the shot. Follow the rule of thirds.
• “Break the plane.” This means, don’t shoot from your eye level. Get your camera’s lens to an angle that might not be common.
• Add “interestingness” to your shots by shooting in a location where the background is more than just a blank wall. If there is a landmark that will be in the shot, don’t have your speaker right beside it. Instead, have the speaker near the camera, with the landmark, sign, or other item several yards behind you. This technique will also a) preserve your audio quality, and b) let you get more of the background item in the frame.

Step 4: Test your audio
If you can’t hear your speaker, your video will be nearly worthless. Shoot a 3-second test video and play it back. Make sure the speaker’s voice is clearly heard above the noise of your surroundings.

Step 5: Shoot it
Don’t move. Don’t zoom. Stand still. Anchor your shoulders to your body or lean against a steady object. Or use a tripod of some sort. If you do have to pan or turn, do so slowly. It should feel like your movements are awkwardly slow.

Step 6: Get the video onto your computer
On a Mac, open a program that is already on your computer called Image Capture. This will be able to take videos off of any device you have plugged into your machine. If you’re using a Flip Camera to shoot, don’t use the built-in Flip video software. Don’t even install it. Use the Image Capture program to download your video to anywhere you want to on your computer. If you have a PC, use a similar process (or just borrow someone’s Mac – it’s a LOT easier).

Step 7: “Trim” your video
Get rid of the awkward silence at the beginning and end of your best take. Use a program like iMovie to do this very simply.

Step 8: Add a title slide to the beginning and/or end of your video
This gives a very professional touch and can communicate essential information like the spellings of names, links of websites, and calls to action.

(Note: steps 7 & 8 are a little more advanced for this particular post. If you need help, most 15 year olds are better at those things than most adults. Ask them.)

Step 9: Upload your video to YouTube
Why YouTube? Because it can play anywhere, it keeps track of your play stats (views counts, where the video is being viewed, and other cool things), and has commenting features. When you upload your video, be sure to title it and tag is very well. Your title should be a clear description of what the video is. Your tags should be the items in your video, including speaker, topics discussed, location, and purpose of the video. Your description should be a summary of the message in the video.

Include all these details so your video can be easily found when someone is searching for it. Also, once your video is embedded on your website, your site’s SEO will improve based on the content in the Title, Tag, and Description fields in your video.

Step 10: Embed your video on your site
YouTube will provide you with the code needed to get the player to show on your site. Simply copy and paste that code to the proper place in your content management system and you’ll be ready to go!

If your website doesn’t have a content management system, or you’re not able to embed YouTube videos on your site, you’ll need to fix this. Contact us and we can help you sort out what that might mean for you and your organization.

Again, this process is NO substitute for real film production. However, if you want to get some video content on your website, this is the cheap and easy way to do it.

Here’s an example:

The Role of “Amateur” Video in the Corporate World

Posted on August 2nd, 2010 at 9:01 pm in Blog, how to, technology by brody

People are watching more video online than ever, and it’s a trend that will only continue to increase.

This is due to two main causes:

Cultural Condition #1: An improvement in technological infrastructure. Simply put, it is cheaper and easier than ever to have decently fast internet speeds and computers that can play videos.

Cultural Condition #2: The tools needed to create video content are cheaper and easier to use than ever. The barrier of entry is a $200 Flip camera, and sometimes a cell phone that you have already.

So what do these conditions mean to your organization?

If you’re not using video online, you’re missing a huge opportunity to communicate in a compelling way with your audience. One reason why you should take a serious look at this is because it can be very inexpensive or free to make a “legit” video.

What I’m describing is absolutely not a substitute for a carefully crafted filming process including pre-production (story boarding, scripting, shot selection), production (great talent and film crews), and post-production (artful editing, scoring, and finishing touches).

But there is a huge role for amateur video as you seek to communicate with your audience. Here are some tips on how to do cheap video production well.

If you would like training on some basic technological and artistic techniques that will help you get video content on your website, contact us. We also offer “real” cinematic short film production when you’re ready to step it up.

Welcoming Facebook & Twitter Visitors

Posted on June 2nd, 2010 at 8:35 am in Blog, Blue Ocean Ideas, how to, technology by admin

At Blue Ocean Ideas one of our mantras is “everything matters”. What do we mean by this? We mean that your website, print, email, twitter, facebook, foursquare, tv, radio, etc. all should be consistently created with the customer experience in mind. It all matters!

So one of the things we do is worry about details and small things that matter including how someone is welcomed to our site if  they come from Facebook and Twitter. So we created popup welcome screens for people that come from either of these sites using  jquery and php. Here’s how it works:

Let’s say someone comes across our Facebook page…

And decides to click on a link to one of our articles. Usually this would lead them to that article’s page on our Blog. However, in the process of going to that page, he/she will be greeted with a welcoming message that was specially designed for visitors from Facebook. Which looks like this:

After being greeted (and delightfully surprised) they can continue by clicking “Let’s Go!”, and proceed to read the article which they came to see.

We have a similar lightbox for users coming from Twitter.

Implementation:

1) First we need to create pages facebook-popup.html and twitter-popup.html and insert the following code:

Show/hide the code:

In this code we have an image, with hotspots that I drew using Dreamweaver. One of them triggers function close() which closes the lightbox it is in, and second is a link to our Social Media services.

2. Next step would be open our header.php of our WordPress website and add the following code right before <body>

Show/hide the code:

The first part of this code is responsible for finding out where the visitor came from.
$ref=$_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];

The next part triggers lightbox with facebook or twitter popup with a welcome message.

To see how it works check out these demonstrations: For Twitter and For Facebook.

And by the way, you need to download one of the best lightbox scripts out there: http://colorpowered.com/colorbox/ to make it work

That’s it for now,
Enjoy!

Communication Tip: Use Your Website to Send Large Files

Posted on January 12th, 2010 at 1:28 pm in Blog, how to, technology by brody

Communication Tip: Sending Large Files

Posted on January 5th, 2010 at 8:54 am in Blog, how to, technology by brody

Communication Tip: SEO Strategy

Posted on December 15th, 2009 at 2:10 pm in Blog, how to, technology by brody

Communication Tip: Use Web-Based Email

Posted on December 1st, 2009 at 12:19 pm in Blog, how to, technology by brody

A Little Tool for Thinking of Creative Ideas

Posted on November 17th, 2009 at 9:29 am in Blog, creativity/imagination, how to by brody

About a year ago, I discovered an iPhone application in the iTunes App Store called “Idea Generator“. I haven’t bought the app, but it’s concept seems pretty cool.

I want to explore using this methodology in my own creative thinking – if only just for fun.

The way the application works is that it will randomly shuffle three columns of words. The words available in the left column are different than the words available in the middle column are different than the words available in the right column. Once the word in each column is randomly selected, they are put together to form a 3-word phrase. The example given on the app’s preview images is:

automatic | tubular | toy

Once you have that abstract phrase, you can let yourself run down a road of imagination because your brain is working with a new concept altogether.

Looking through the pattern of this app, there are two key things that make it work:

1. The words must come out in a left-to-right order. Meaning, the placement of all the words is not random, just the words in each column.
2. It looks like the words in the left and middle columns are all adjectives (including participles).
3. The words available in the third column are all nouns.

Experimenting

Humans think in and through words. We are language-crazy. To discover a new concept, we need to have new words, or new word orders. That’s why education is largely about developing a vocabulary, and expertise is largely based on knowing the jargon (only to then gain wisdom when you can describe concepts simply).

What I would like to do is put hundreds of words in hats. One hat would be nouns. Another would be adjectives. Another would be adverbs. Etc. Then, by picking out words from hats, we could construct any new concept following any phrase order. We could also play with the structure of these phrases. Something like “adjective-noun-verb-adverb” could be used with as much gusto as “adjective-adjective-noun”.

Of course, software makes this easier. If someone were to develop thematic sets of words that you could add or remove from the mix of options, that would add some scope to our possibilities.

Regardless, the take away is this: when stuck for ideas, let’s rearrange our language to spur us on.

A Little Tool for Thinking of Creative Ideas

Posted on November 17th, 2009 at 9:29 am in Blog, creativity/imagination, how to by brody

About a year ago, I discovered an iPhone application in the iTunes App Store called “Idea Generator“. I haven’t bought the app, but it’s concept seems pretty cool.

I want to explore using this methodology in my own creative thinking – if only just for fun.

The way the application works is that it will randomly shuffle three columns of words. The words available in the left column are different than the words available in the middle column are different than the words available in the right column. Once the word in each column is randomly selected, they are put together to form a 3-word phrase. The example given on the app’s preview images is:

automatic | tubular | toy

Once you have that abstract phrase, you can let yourself run down a road of imagination because your brain is working with a new concept altogether.

Looking through the pattern of this app, there are two key things that make it work:

1. The words must come out in a left-to-right order. Meaning, the placement of all the words is not random, just the words in each column.
2. It looks like the words in the left and middle columns are all adjectives (including participles).
3. The words available in the third column are all nouns.

Experimenting

Humans think in and through words. We are language-crazy. To discover a new concept, we need to have new words, or new word orders. That’s why education is largely about developing a vocabulary, and expertise is largely based on knowing the jargon (only to then gain wisdom when you can describe concepts simply).

What I would like to do is put hundreds of words in hats. One hat would be nouns. Another would be adjectives. Another would be adverbs. Etc. Then, by picking out words from hats, we could construct any new concept following any phrase order. We could also play with the structure of these phrases. Something like “adjective-noun-verb-adverb” could be used with as much gusto as “adjective-adjective-noun”.

Of course, software makes this easier. If someone were to develop thematic sets of words that you could add or remove from the mix of options, that would add some scope to our possibilities.

Regardless, the take away is this: when stuck for ideas, let’s rearrange our language to spur us on.

Google Apps for Small Business

Posted on June 25th, 2009 at 3:34 pm in Blog, how to, technology by brody

This is a video from Google about using Google Applications (Google Apps) as part of an organization’s workflow.

Boring video, but they’re right on.

Using the Gmail interface for email (while keeping you@yourdomain.com) is smart. So is using Google Calendar (gCal) as a shared calendar application. There are other great capabilites as well.

The best part: you don’t need to spend money on IT to keep your email working right.

If you need help using Google Apps to improve your organization’s workflow, Wordswell can help.