How To Tell A Story With Video
Real-life video production and marketing advise to help you in your video business!
More and more videos are being produced every day; including: corporate image videos, motivational videos, educational videos, and instructional video.
If you are a video producer, editor or cameraman, there’s a golden rule of production that I’d like to pass on to you.
Every time you begin a new project, no matter what your topic is, no matter who your audience is, and no matter how much money you have at your disposal, there’s one thing you should remember.
You still have to tell a story. Remember that!
You can spend $10,000 on your instructional video, put in a lot of cool graphics and visual elements to “wow” your viewer, but if you don’t convey your message to the customer, you’ve wasted $10,000.
The art of scripting, shooting, producing, editing and packaging a video is very complicated.
As a professional videographer and editor for nearly 20 years and in that time, I’ve worked with a lot of producers.
Most producers know how to do the legwork up front so that the process of shooting and editing a program can be carried out smoothly.
A small percentage of producers out there jump into a project unprepared and the entire experience is like pulling teeth.
Due to the recent explosion of the cable/satellite television industry, more broadcast channels means more programming is needed.
Because of this recent trend, just about anything can be made into a television series which means a lot of poorly produced programs are allowed to hit the airwaves.
This phenomenon has lowered the standards for professional producers. In turn, this trend has also affected the so called “special interest” and “how-to” videos market.
The “experts” will tell you that to be successful in any business, you need to: determine a need, act upon that need, provide a solution to the need, & finally market the solution to the appropriate audience.
Well, the experts usually skirt over the most important part… your ability to clearly and accurately convey your message to the customer.
If you sell a video showing the consumer a better way to “tie a necktie”, for example the consumer better be able to “tie a necktie” after viewing the video you sold them.
In this age of MTV, everyone thinks they can be a video pro. Just grab a digital video camera, buy a cheap video editing software package and become a “professional producer.”
Well I hate to burst your bubble, but it ain’ t that simple.
First of all, there are a lot of very talented producers out there marketing excellent instructional videos. They do it by defining a problem, developing a solution to the problem and producing an easy-to-follow instructional video.
However, the availability of low cost video systems has made it affordable for anyone to become a producer, which has led to an increase in the number of instructional web sites marketing poorly produced videos.
When a consumer buys a poorly produced video from a web site it hurts all of us, because that consumer is likely to never buy another video product off the web for fear of getting duped again.
Bad video quality or intermittent audio problems are a couple of areas amateur producers struggle with, but these can be acceptable, if the viewer is able to understand the message and follow the instructions given.
A bigger problem occurs when “producers” aren’t able to provide instructions that the viewer can understand or follow.
People that don’t take the time and effort to get the proper footage before heading into the edit suite will often substitute quality with smoke and mirrors.
They will use video tricks like “strobing” the footage to cover up poorly shot segments, inserting “shaky cam” footage to confuse the viewer and throwing in meaningless shots to cover up the fact that they don’t have the proper shots on tape to show the viewer “how the widget should be properly cleaned.”
If a producer is unable to clearly show the customer how to solve a problem, maybe he should shelve the project before spending a lot of time and effort producing a video that does not help the viewer.
Although every project comes with it’s own set of unique circumstances, there are some basic guidelines that should be followed when producing a quality video.
Over the next several weeks, I will cover most of the following list in greater detail. But for now, here are some basic steps that should help you locate problem areas and allow you to produce a quality “how-to” video.
Determine your video topic.
- Put together an outline listing the topics to be covered, people to be interviewed and the purpose of your program.
- Attempt to research the topic and determine if there is a market for your video.
- If permission is required from any organizations or individuals, contact those people to get permission before proceeding.
- Line up interviews, work up a rough script and determine your budget.
- Pre produce, pre produce, pre produce! Have all your ducks in a row before ever picking up a camera. If you do not have all the elements together before videotaping, you’ll waste valuable time and money.
- Shoot your program, ensuring that all segments and cover footage are videotaped.
- Record any necessary voice over segments or audio elements.
- Log your footage before heading to the editing suite.
- Edit your program. It’s much more complicated than just “editing your video,” which we will cover at a later date.
- Get approval copies of the video to anyone required to sign-off on the end product.
- Put your packaging together. Make it visually appealing while telling what the video is and how the buyer will benefit from purchasing this instructional video.
- Get the product in front of as many potential customers as possible. So remember, you don’t just wake up and produce an instructional video. You still have to tell a story.