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:

Wow! What Great Feedback!

Posted on December 15th, 2009 at 2:26 pm in Blog, client work by brody

We were very pleased to get this note from an individual who attended our first training workshop:

Wordswell’s Social Media & In-Bound Marketing seminar was just outstanding in content, selected topics and delivery. The speakers were all enormously well versed in the material covered and were really able to very specifically address the application of the technologies as they would apply to the attendees. It was clearly time well spent. Being able to attend this kind of seminar without having to travel to NYC, or fly to the west coast was also a definite plus.

I highly recommend any firm serious about their marketing and perception within their market, send at a minimum one C-level executive to attend regardless of their current level of knowledge in social media and in-bound marketing. I am already looking forward to Wordswell’s next seminar.

Recap Montage from “Social Media & In-Bound Marketing 101 & 102″

Posted on December 8th, 2009 at 10:03 am in Blog, client work, social media by brody