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Video production during COVID-19

Your video production will likely look and feel differently than if you produced it during normal circumstances. 

The good news? Because of the circumstances, your audience won't care. 

Thanks to many businesses currently operating through video chat and streaming video services, many people are accustomed to watching less than perfect video. That means you have some leeway. The COVID-19 outbreak has altered daily operations for most businesses. The pandemic has been especially problematic for those that rely on in-person services and interaction, like video production and social media. The last thing you want to do is shutter your business, but how can you avoid this outcome as a video company?

Here are some of our video company's steps to ensure safe and high-quality video production services during COVID-19.

Our video crews will film primarily in controlled environments, such as a rental studio. There, we can do interviews, presentations, and demonstrations with one person on-camera, at a safe distance. 

Our team members will wear protective masks at all times. Any crew member who is feeling sick or has a fever is required to stay home. 

We create new videos from stock footage and other video content, existing footage, voiceover, and motion graphics. We use animation to turn complex ideas and processes into visually dynamic presentations that inform, entertain, and inspire. Our post-production team is handled by a single person to avoid any unnecessary contact with other team members. 

For most interviews, we prefer to conduct them primarily over FaceTime, Zoom, Skype, etc. Our production crew can set up the lighting, cameras, and lavalier microphones at the filming location, ahead of time, so that the talent can have minimal to no contact with our crew. 

Our video production team is taking practical steps to safeguard everyone's health and safety during the COVID-19 pandemic. We created video production guidelines, like social distancing and masks. Any crew member who is feeling sick or has a fever is required to stay home. 

Our Director of Photography and production crew also carries spare masks, gloves, sanitizing wipes, tissues, and hand sanitizer. 

If a company is looking for product videos, they can ship the product to our studio, and we can talk over the details via zoom during the shoot.

And of course, let's not forget live streaming video. It's probably the safest option clients choose during the pandemic. This business model is the best option in terms of public health in the current situation. Production work and workflow is relatively simple and straightforward. 

Your job didn't become impossible, but rather something you've have to get more creative with. A final step you can take to keep your production company running through the coronavirus outbreak is adjusting your services to your client's needs. Your production company doesn't have to shut its doors during this crisis.

How to shoot professional interview and testimonial videos?

How to shoot a professional interview or testimonial video?

You've seen them on the news, late-night talk shows, and documentary films. Interview videos usually focus on one person answering questions, generally on a specific theme. 

This video style is up close and personal, and the interviewee might be a subject matter expert or just someone with an opinion. Unscripted and authentic interview videos are a great way to lend a personal touch to a story or provide a perspective. 

Interview videos are versatile and can be used throughout your business and at various stages of the funnel. They tend to work best on the following channels to boost brand awareness, explain concepts, and attract leads with industry-specific insight. 

Interview videos and testimonials are authentic. 

Interviews are the best way to get information straight from the horse's mouth. They offer an unscripted personal take or knowledge from an expert. There's a reason why journalism and documentary films rely on interviews so heavily, and that's the truth. 

Interviews make for great storytelling. 

For years we have been refining and perfecting our technique for shooting great looking video interviews. Here we will be breaking down those different elements that a camera operator needs to consider when shooting an interview representing your subject and their story. 

The basics of shooting a video interview

There is no formula for lighting, framing, and shooting an interview. There are many things to consider, like location, purpose, and tone of the interview. All of these things have a significant impact on the final video. Before shooting, we always consult the director, producers, and editors before a shoot to discuss what they want to achieve. This might mean spending more time setting up lights to achieve a look in camera or shooting flat (shooting at lower contrast, less vibrant color profiles) to allow more flexibility in post-production. It's all about what suits the story you're trying to tell. Let your interviewee guide your decision making when it comes to selecting a look for your interview. Corporate video production might need to look professional and slick with low contrast, but an interview with a musician or artist might give you a license to add some bold colors or shadows to your lighting setup. 

Interviewing someone on camera can get tricky. It's a good idea to plan your shoot before beginning the interview. Knowing how to frame your interview subject will help improve your overall production value. Furthermore, perfecting your interview setup is an excellent way to prepare for narrative cinematography, as many of the same principles of lighting and composition are quite useful in the dramatic medium shot.

First, you need to decide on the type of shot you're going to use for your interview subject. Mid shots and close-ups tend to look best when someone is just talking. You want to see their expressions and possibly their hand movements. You might want to do mostly mid shots but zoom in for a close-up shot when the interview subject expresses a lot of emotion. 

Next, you need to decide whether you want the interview subject to look at the camera or look off-camera. If the interview subject is speaking directly to the audience, like Nick is in the video, have them talk to the camera. If they are answering interview questions, have them look to the camera's right or the left of the camera and place them in the opposite third of the frame using the rule of thirds. You can even position the interviewer there so that the interview seems more natural. 

For a basic video interview, use 2 point lighting setup. Today, the key light source is almost always a soft light, emanates from this same broadside to the left (in this example) of the speaker's line of sight. 

If you have extra lights you can use, consider using the three-point lighting technique. The additional light source being the rim light, or the hair light. 

How to mic for an interview?

Audio is half of the viewing experience. No matter how professional your video looks, your whole production feels amateur if your audio is terrible. We use two external microphones for every interview. Our primary microphone is a boom, sometimes called shotgun mic. Boom microphones are best placed anywhere from 8-14 inches from the subject's face and pointed slightly under the subject's mouth.

We use a lav mic under our subject's shirt for back up just in case anything were to go wrong with our Boom Mic. The lav mic's optimal placement for the best quality sound is in the middle of the subject's chest. 

Composition, camera angle, lighting, and audio are the primary tools to achieve a great looking interview video that will improve any professional video's overall production value. Of course, other things are essential, such as camera (there are so many DSLR cameras that shoot video that it requires a whole new segment to discuss), camera settings, camera lens, camera movements, camera support vs handheld, and image stabilization, dramatic lighting, or atmosphere. We will cover those in a separate blog post. But mastering the first 3 is critical.

Will Video Content Be The Future Of Digital Marketing?

What is video content?

As marketers find newer, more creative ways to attract audiences, video usage is becoming a key scope of interest for revenue growth. 

Video is no longer considered a niche skill or category when trying to expand the types of content that your company can produce. The costs and skills required for video production have gone down tremendously in the past years, making it a highly efficient way of communicating your brand's story. 

According to a study by Wyzowl, people love watching explainer videos of products or services. On average, people spend about 16 hours watching online videos every week. That makes it a 52% increase in the last two years. This clearly shows that people absolutely love watching videos. 

People prefer videos over other content. Videos are engaging and entertaining at the same time. This is the reason why people prefer to watch them in the first place. 

It's quite fair to say that video is the future of digital marketing. Video is everywhere, and it's only going to keep growing, with fifty percent of all mobile web traffic now being video. 

Most of the major social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, have made major shifts towards the hosting and sharing of video on their websites. Users have also started shifting more and more time towards watching video over reading articles, with over 50% of people in the US watching videos on YouTube every day. 

But this shift isn't just due to social networks and their users over time, video content has proven to be a very effective tool for brands, no matter what their objective. 

How Video Can Help Your Brand?

If you're looking to increase revenue or boost sales, according to ComScore , consumers are more likely to convert from video content than other media. In the best cases, the increase in conversions was as high as 64%. 

Video is also a huge help when it comes to SEO, with Google heavily favoring videos and sites with video embedded video content. This means that 70% of the top 100 search results on Google are videos , and that's made all the more compelling when you consider this : your site is 53% more likely to appear on Google first if there's a video embedded on the page. 

Thanks to its use of both sight and sound, video is also highly effective at creating a connection with audiences. Video's use of image and sound can be particularly helpful in evoking an emotional reaction and, in doing so, brands have the ability to further increase recognition and loyalty. 

And all those social networks shifting to video? Well, they each provide a deep set of video analytics that you'll be able to use to get to know your audience better. It also means your customers can become your biggest advocates, with 76% of users saying they'd share a branded video if they enjoyed the content. 

The future of video marketing

The rapid advancement of video technologies and their applications in the business world is just the beginning. Its an exciting space to be a part of because everything is constantly changing, evolving and improving, which means digital marketers need to always be adapting if they want to stay in the loop with the latest trends. 

Smart Insights Studies show that about 54% of consumers want to see more video content from brands that they support, not only for entertainment purposes, but for promotional and educational purposes as well. Of course, there's YouTube, but other social media platforms have made it easy to create videos as well.

With numbers like this, video content should be added to a brands digital marketing strategy, and there are a variety of methods for them to do so. 

In fact, social media channels have proven to be immensely favorable of video content, encouraging marketers to integrate video into their social media strategy.

The preference for video content is not just limited to streaming online movies and shows or watching YouTube video clips, video is now extending into brands with studies showing that consumers (over 50%) are interested in video content from brands or businesses that they support.

Videos can be shared in several different digital channels, including: Emails Social media Websites Video content also doesn't have to be for entertainment purposes, which is where many marketing teams get hung up. 

Each channel (social media, email, website, etc.) has its own analytics and insight programs to help guide marketing teams on how their content is performing. 

The future of Digital Marketing in video production

The philosophy behind them is driven by the fact that modern digital marketing isn't often just a single interaction that leads immediately to a purchase; it's a curated journey that entails a variety of different stages and techniques.

Therefore, marketers should be able to look into the crystal ball and predict the future of video marketing to ace their digital marketing game. 

If you're interested in getting closer to your audience and achieving brand awareness that is increasingly effective, Instagram and LinkedIn should both be considered. More and more people are producing videos for specifically for Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

How exactly will content creation change over the next 10 years? It's hard to say, but SEO keywords may start to pivot more toward mobile searching. 

In time, Google might be able to detect when content isn't well-suited for mobile reading. In fact, Google can already do this, sort of. 

Who doesn't turn their head in astonishment when they see someone use a flip phone nowadays? 

In a tiny period of time, smartphones not only changed the way we communicate. They also changed the way we obtain information. Even Google searches are occurring more frequently on mobile devices than on desktops. 

Users can find videos on Instagram and Facebook by searching relevant hashtags. 

For instance, research shows that people have a tendency to look at videos much longer than they do static pieces of content on social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook. 

Snapchat continues to be one of the fastest-growing social media entities largely on the basis of its video stories, and Instagram has had success by introducing a similar feature on its platform. 

The idea being these segments are entertaining enough to watch and share while providing the brand a halo by being associated with the video." Let's find out why online video is the future of video marketing. 

Video Marketing Isn't Going Away Anytime Soon Long-form content has been at the forefront of digital marketing for the last 10 years or so. 

If your target audience comprises the age range of 18 to 24 year-olds, consider Snapchat. 

Instagram alone has over 400 daily active users who post and interact with their Stories, while Snapchat has over 188 million active users. 

You just have to say something interesting enough that it will get the lead viewers to delve more deeply into your ecosystem through your content marketing, email capture, or another tool. 

Video marketing, initially popularized by YouTube, has gone on to dominate most social media platforms, such as Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram. 

What is a Marketing Video?

First things first, let's share a definition of video marketing. 

It's really quite simple. Video marketing is just what it sounds like: using video to market something. You may be marketing your business, yourself, your product, your service, and everything goes! When you use video to do it, thats video marketing! 

Video marketing is using videos to promote and market your product or service, increase engagement on your digital and social channels, educate your consumers and customers, and reach your audience with a new medium. Video marketing isn't just B2C-focused, although video is a powerful B2C tool, especially when teamed with social media, it is also being used more by B2B companies looking to increase leads and conversions. Additionally, video content marketers need to have a solid understanding of metrics, and how they indicate a video's success and areas for improvement.

Why should you focus on Video Marketing? 

In 2020, video content will account for an estimated 74% of all online traffic. Video marketing follows the same broad rules as any other kind of marketing, but there may be specific channels, rules and best practices that you're not aware of. 

This trend is fueled by 83% of businesses believing that video marketing gives them a good ROI. 

Out of those, 82% of businesses feel video marketing is an important part of their strategy. 

Video content marketing rests on the principle of creating and distributing valuable & consistent video content to your target audience with the aim of attracting, engaging, and converting qualified leads like regular content marketing, video content marketing is a strategic marketing approach that puts the wants and needs of buyers first to ultimately drive more profitable customer action. 

Video content marketing is about considering how video can be integrated into every stage and channel of your marketing strategy, alongside other forms of content like blog posts and podcasts. 

Its focus is creating video content that is useful, entertaining and interesting for your audience, and which encourages them to engage with you further. 

According to Gary Stevens, head of research at HostingCanada.org , "retargeting our website visitors on social media has led to a 47% increase in visitor value site-wide." The granularity of video analytics on platforms like Facebook is one reason why, in 2018, 93% of businesses reported getting a new customer on social media thanks to video.

The goal of brand videos is to build awareness around your company and to intrigue and attract your target audience. 

But video content , the most powerful, engaging and human communication medium of all, is regularly considered with hindsight. 

Why wouldn't you create video content as any other part of your content marketing strategy, with the benefit of research, planning and strategic distribution? 

Today, video is a holistic business approach, meaning video content should be produced by all teams in a conversational, actionable, and measurable way. 

You need channel-specific video content for Facebook and Instagram, not to mention for your website. 

Video Encourages Social Shares In the 8th annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report Michael Stelzner stated that 60% of the social marketers used video content in 2015 and 73% of the total respondents planned to use it in 2016. 

Any modern marketing strategy is based on valuable conversations with your audience, primarily delivered through quality written content distributed via websites, blogs, social media and email. 

The last handful of years saw a surge in the popularity of video as a content marketing format. 

According to Wyzowl statistics, 63% of businesses have started using video content marketing. 

The whole concept of content marketing is based on trust and creating long-term relationships. 

This is a wonderful representation of how you can use different types of video content to: Generate awareness of your brand, product or service in your target audience. 

Instagram Video Marketing is quickly becoming another social platform businesses cant afford to ignore. Instagram put in place 60-Second Videos & Instagram Stories, Twitter has Periscope. 

The acceptance of good enough production quality will lead to a massive amount of video content created ad-hoc on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. 

When you spend money to get a marketing video in front of a larger audience, it becomes video advertising or a video ad. 

But effective marketing videos present your products in a conversational form. 

Making marketing videos for your business requires creativity and knowledge of human psychology. 

Consider how much you might need to spend on video ads on YouTube or Facebook to help speed up traction. 

This includes anything from a social media ad to a YouTube pre-roll ad, television commercial, or any other type of paid ad unit that incorporates video. 

YouTube is the second largest search engine.

What is a high production value video?

As you begin to research how to take advantage of your business's video production, it's essential to understand the ins and outs of production value for video before deciding how much money to invest in a video marketing budget.

Production values are the perceived value of the production investment seen on the screen in the final master. The irony is that high-quality production value is most noticeable when it is missing, rather than being appreciated by anyone outside of the production industry when present. 

These aren't values like moral values or family values. Production values are elements such as lighting, set design and set dressing, costuming, and special effects (the list goes on) that contribute to the overall "look and feel" of a project. Production value is a massive part of the "experience" High production value typically implies something was glossy, well-executed, professional, and quite frankly, expensive. 

From a commercial perspective, high production values are equated with quality, professionalism, and skill, all attributes desired by most brands and organizations in their advertising. But in the YouTube generation, the general public also appreciates the idea or concept in the most amateur or primary production. 

Production value can also be determined by the equipment used (camera, lights, accessories, etc.), the location you shoot at, the number of skilled video crew members, the experience of talent on camera, and even motion graphics or special effects. When you're watching a Hollywood movie or your favorite episodic show, you may not realize it, but the video crews make conscious decisions on how to move the camera. 

The camera is often handheld. The audio is often captured by an in-camera microphone The audio is usually voice on tape (versus voiceover narration recorded in a studio) The videos have minimal editing done in amateur apps such as iMovie Available light is the primary light source Color balance, tone and saturation are often what the camera captured initially (i.e., there is little to no post-processing adjustment of the picture ) There are little to no motion graphics (animated text, etc.) The video is shot at a convenient location, even if better sites exist elsewhere. Having experience shooting with a video camera will always be the difference in the quality of video you get with any camera. But, quality footage requires quality cameras. And quality videographer plays a significant role as well.

Storyboarding also helps figure out which types of lighting, camera angles, media, and scenery are needed for the video and directions for how to cut and edit the footage in post-production. 

How Quality Production Value helps Your Business?

Of course, for an independent specialist to be of any value, the specialist should be engaged early in the production process. Storyboarding also helps figure out which types of lighting, camera angles, media, and scenery are needed for the video and directions for how to cut and edit the footage in post-production. 

Of course, for an independent specialist to be of any value, the specialist should be engaged early in the production process. 

Over the years, we have refined our production process continues to bring you the best value for your production dollar. 

Business videos go viral these days, and people are all too willing to do your marketing for you by spreading the word about your video on their social media accounts. The image and brand you are trying to present are essential aspects of the video being produced.

High-quality video and Visual Story are terms that most people have heard, mainly through movie reviews in magazines, blogs, amateur reviewers on the web, and maybe even in filmmaking. Whether it is about you, your company, or your product or service, professionalism is conveyed through high-quality production value. 

The power of engaging, high-quality video is still unmatched when it comes to grabbing that first, essential bit of attention. On the flip side, if you already have a videographer in-house with AV equipment or you're working with a video marketing agency, that same new product video can have visuals, audio, and even animations.

In Conclusion, The difference in a mediocre video and a high-quality video is production value. 

If you're looking to produce a high-quality video for your business, please contact us for more information on how to get started.