A very simple question, with some surprisingly simple answers. Video production can become very complicated, however, if you know what you want from a video, then many benefits can be gained in an easier way then you may think. This three-part blog gives you the transcript of a LinkedIn Live conversation between Glacé Media’s Managing Director, Marcus Johnson and Camera Operator/Video Technician, James Froment.
They broke down the process of making a good video into its most simple form. Their discussion covered three main areas; planning the video, shooting the video and then editing and distributing the content. For anyone wanting to gain more from video content, this conversation contained lots of great insights.
This is part three of three of this blog article. If you would like to read part one please follow this link. Or if you would like to read part two, please follow this link.
Marcus:
And I think that covers some nice tips there from things to bear in mind when you’re actually filming. And this applies for smaller productions and bigger productions, like you said, James, the content and the story and the message of it is more important than the technical. Technical comes into it, when you want to deliver it in a certain way. Or you’re trying to share a certain image of yourself or you need to capture certain things in a certain way, but for most businesses who wants to start using video or increase their use of video, you want to capture a message. So make sure that is in there in the planning phase and also when you executing it during filming and the production. So let’s move on to a bit in the editing and distribution stage of your videos when you put in them out there when you’re creating them. So the editing, I’ll ask you from a bit of a technical point again, very similar to what I said when it actually comes to filming, but from an editing perspective, what is very useful for you to have, or an editor that you’re working with from the client to make sure that edit comes out in the best way possible.
James:
One thing I always ask and if they have it, it’s amazing, is a branding document, you know, how they represent their company, what’s their voice, what are the colors? Obviously, if I need to add any animations and so on or a bit of aid in the colour grade. But yeah, to get to know the company and get to know how they interact with their potential clients, potential customers, so that that voice can be transmitted through the editing. You know, if you’re a calm and collected organization, that’s like very straightforward, by the book. You don’t need like a high paced, very quick snappy extreme sports style video. But if you were an extreme sports company, you don’t want a slow, calm, collected piece. So it’s knowing the industry, knowing how they communicate for the edit.
Marcus:
No, I think that’s a very good point. And again, tying in what we said before in planning, but it’s sharing as much information about yourself and what you want to achieve as possible. Again, it’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking this person is the expert and they’ve got the technical knowledge, they’ll know the best way of doing it, but this kind of mindset applies to all kinds of expert skills. If you want someone to redesign your house, you wouldn’t just go, they’re an expert, crack on, there’s 20 grand go and decorate, build wherever you need to. You share with them what you like, what you want your home to be like, what kind of person you were. And it’s exactly the same when it comes to this. So in the editing phase, a video can change so much.
I think a good example to bring up here is the short film that we made this year. It changed quite a lot in the editing. We had an initial plan for it, but we felt as it went, the edit changed the story. So it shows just the power of what an edit can do. So don’t think once a video is filmed, it just comes out, as you think it is. So I think what you said there, the branding, whether it be just a basic idea of sharing brand guidelines as if you were working with a web designer or anything like that, brand guidelines, brand information, anything like that straight away is very helpful, but also sharing who you are as a brand, whether this is examples of other content you’ve put out there or your message or what you’re trying to convey.
James:
What’s the mood? Obviously you should have that before even shooting, but like make sure it gets to the editing process. It doesn’t just stop it. Okay. We, the people who are shooting it know, so they’ve shot it. It’s fine. Now make sure that it gets to the editor and continues down the stream with it. Yeah. Consistency.
Marcus:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s about making sure that you see it through to the end. You’ve seen the work go in, obviously with the cameras. Everyone can see what’s going on there, but you can’t always see what’s going on in the editing phase, but that is as important, if not more in the message of your video. So yeah, for sure. And I’d also say, just picking up from what I mentioned there, in terms of sharing your brand feel, your company message, is that the video is two things. Yes. You’re trying to hit the technical aspects of if the brief is a one minute video showing an overview of what your company’s done in the last year. You need to technically hit that. But at the same time, you need to feel the emotion, convey the emotion. So sharing your brand guidelines are as important as sharing your brand message and feel with who you’re working with. And that’s what’s great about building up a longer term relationship with whether it be a videographer or a production company, is that you get the feel of the company and the brand and you can more effectively get that message shared through your videos.
James:
Something I just wanted to add to that is maybe you’ve shot an interview and it’s come across great with the audio. The text is perfect, but it’s a heavy subject. It’s sort of a hard to comprehend subject maybe in the edit, you get to a point and you go, actually, I might just replace this with an animation. I’ll keep the audio, but I’m just going to cover it up with a simple graphic to show visually what the interviewee is talking about, just to make it easier to digest. That’s the sort of things that, if you’ve got all of the information in front of you, you don’t have to worry about that. You can just go ahead and do it.
Marcus:
No, that completely makes sense. And that again comes into, when you are thinking about speaking with whether it was the production company or the videographer is that those two stages of filming and editing are very different things. They’re very different scales, but it’s also the crafting of your video. So looking at those things as one can be a little bit dangerous because you want to make sure you’re applying different things in each element. So I think what you said there is bob on for sure. Can you believe it we’ve been chatting for nearly half an hour already? What I wanted to move onto is the distribution of the content. I’ve reigned myself in from going on a rant, but I’m going to just give one little gripe of mine straight away.
It’s that not using video content to its full potential is so frustrating when this is in many ways, the easiest part of the process. So of course, video, we all know video has been increasingly used across loads of different ways. Yes, you can get loads of use out of it, but it’s not as simple as just making a video, doing it and then just kind of putting it in whatever way you thought you put it out there and it’s going to do amazingly. It’s like with any bit of marketing or any form of content you do out there, you’ve got to think about who you want to get it to. And also you’ve got to think of the technical element of how it’s distributed. So this comes back to right at the beginning of the conversation where we were saying planning on how you’re going to deliver it
Iis been clever, but also sensible in yout thinking, how can I get the most out of this content? And content repurposing gets talked a lot by content marketers who do really well. And that can be in terms of their blogs and using those in different ways, but the same applies for video. The easy way of looking at this for me is at the beginning, if you have one idea in mind for a video, let’s use the example I’ve already mentioned of a 60 second company overview for 2020, for example, probably a bad year to give an example for, cause you might not have all that much to show, but let’s just live in the dreamland where loads went on this year and you’ve got plenty to show off in a video. So you’ve got your overview video right away. They’re 60 seconds.
The natural instinct might be, that’s the video I’ve created. Okay. We have a YouTube channel, we’ll put it on there, we’ll put it on our website, we’ll email our clients and let them know, and then we’ll post it on Facebook. Great. And people will see it and think fantastic, but then it can quickly disappear. And if it doesn’t kick off straight away, people can be disappointed. And rightly so because that’s not the best way to get traction out of your video. So on a technical perspective, straightaway for the repurposing format, you used to think, how can you break this video down and use it in a more long-term way? So yeah, post it out, do all that. But from a longer video, you can straight away break it down into multiple short ones. So whether that just be a shorter version of that video, you can use oin different ways, whether it be an ad campaign on Facebook, you’ve got a 10, 15 second version, whether it be just posting it as a teaser on different platforms and doing those over the course of a month.
And again, speaking with who you’re working with in the editing phase, actually creating three or four individual videos out of that footage. So there might be individual 15 second ones, but they’re all tailored slightly differently to give a little message off the back of that. So straight away off this one video, you’ve got maybe four different mini videos, but then they’re all tailored towards different platforms, whether that be optimized in different square or portrait, as we discussed. If you plan that before hand, you can do that. So you’ve got loads of content support straight away. Then if you do the voiceovers or whether it be an interview you’ve got audio, you can take from that. And you can use that in whatever way you want to put in different messages, put it over different graphics. And so you’ve got plenty to use there, but then also thinking what is the long-term use of this?
And this is where we look at paid advertising as well. And video is so effective when it comes to Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, YouTube ads, and things like that. You can cut your campaign, which would be an organic campaign into these shorter snippets. Think of the key message for there and use them over the space of a month or a few months. So straight away from what seemed like a project that was spending a week making a video, which was just going to be sent out to some of our clients to say say, look what we did. You’ve actually got a piece of marketing content out there. It’s saving you money for all your other marketing content. And you can start getting a return on that investment. That’s not just a pretty video, which looks nice, but it’s not getting anything in. So that’s my rant over there. My big tips that we’ll round up from it is that definitely think about the long-term, what you can do with your video, but there’s so many more options out there that you may not have discovered straight away in terms of repurposing your content, which means video connects so many different things in terms of your marketing. James, if you had kind of any experience where you found that useful to do in terms of chopping videos into different versions or using them in multiple ways.
James:
Yeah. And something, I had, recent one where I I was asked to deliver a Facebook ad. I delivered a Facebook ad, but I also delivered a vertical version of the Facebook ad. And they were sort of surprised. And it was a case of, well, we asked you for just a Facebook ad. I’m like, well, Facebook stories is the thing.
Instagram stories. And it goes on Instagram as well. At the end of the day, it’s the same company, isn’t it? So it just made sense to deliver this as well. Like the cost, if you’re putting it out there, I would say depending on the client and all that and their case, I believe that Facebook stories was more of the way they should go with their paid marketing. Having two videos running at the same time. It’s just increasing your span and the amount of times you can hit people with it to make them aware of it.
Marcus:
Yeah, exactly. And from a very business and financial viewpoint on that, it’s getting the most out of your investment.
James:
It was exactly the same video. It was just me adapting it for a different space.
Marcus:
Absolutely. And I think that’s the key. It’s about adapting and repurposing it. And as you mentioned, on Facebook ads now you can put different versions of the same piece of content in different dimensions to be used across the platform. Like you said, stories, square is a very useful dimension as well because it more of the newsfeed, than a landscape would as obviously they’re taller dimensions and it fits how a newsfeed would do. So having all these different uses, not only gives you multiple videos to target in different ways, but as you said, it hits more people and especially in a paid campaign, I think that’s exactly what you should be doing. And I’d also add as well.
Marcus:
Linkedin, have got LinkedIn stories now. So if you’re watching this and thinking, okay, Facebook, Instagram, it might be for clothing brands for products. It’s not for B2B. Well, I think there’s a lot scope on Facebook that for anyway, but LinkedIn has got increasing opportunities to use video in effective ways. Now whether that be in the LinkedIn stories or within their ad campaigns, or just organic. LinkedIn keep giving more organic reach to video content. Now, as they’re trying to catch up with the likes of Facebook and Instagram and their use of video, so get it out there, post it organically because there’s plenty to be done in that sense. You know what James? We’ve been speaking for over half an hour now. And I think we’ve touched on some very good points. Just to round up the main things that we said. Planning is so important when it comes to what makes a good video, make sure that above all else, you know, the message that you want to portray in your video or series of videos, you make sure you put thought into what’s being said, whether that be the dialogue, the interviews, or whether that’d be on screen text, or just the visuals that are in there, what message you want to get out there?
But planning is so important and also make sure you plan what the video is going to be used for, because it’s very easy to plan a visually appealing video. So it looks great. If you don’t know what you’re going to get out of it, if you’re running a business or a brand, you need to actually get some return on that. We’re always up for making a video that just looks great for the sake of looking great. Don’t worry about that. We’ll never shy away from an artistic endeavor.
But for business owners, marketing managers, people running brands, you want to get something out of that video. So making sure you know how you’re going to distribute it, who you want to see it and what message you want to convey to them right from the very beginning is so important because every stage of producing a video goes back to that plan. And the more you can put in that plan, the more detail you can put in it, the better the video will come out. So I’d say they’re the main things. Technically, also we said sound is so important. Even if you’re doing low budget, on your own speaking, in a sense like this, get a good microphone. It doesn’t have to be anything massive. Doesn’t have to be anything ridiculous, but increase the audio quality and things will go up so much. And one thing I didn’t add is that subtitles on videos now, have you used them on social? Very important. I think the stat that gets thrown around so much is 80% of Facebook videos are watched without sound. So make sure you get those subtitles. Just a little trick there to get on because that will help you massively.
