Okay you’ve got a new camera, but the audio doesn’t sound so great. Now what do you do? Follow these simple tips for getting clear audio in your next video production.
If you follow one bit of advice from this blog post, let it be this one. Do not use, I repeat, do not use the internal microphone on your camera. Though convenient, internal microphones are terrible. They pick up operator noise-you pushing buttons and turning knobs-and they pick up internal camera noises. If you are shooting on miniDV, the microphone will pick up the sound of the drum inside the camera. On camera mics also pick up the operator’s voice better than they pick up the subject’s voice. Do yourself a favor and spend a few extra bucks on a wired or wireless microphone.
There are three types of microphones you want to look at. Each one has its own application.
Lavelier microphones are the small mics that you see pinned to newscaster collars or lapels. They are generally used when you want hands-free operation and you want to focus on one subject. In a pinch, you can use them as an interview mic.
Shotgun microphones are the microphones that you see at the end of boom poles on a film shoot or in the hands of a newscaster. Of the microphones available they are the most directional. These microphones need to be pointed at the speaker and are good for doing interviews in noisy spaces.
Dynamic microphones are the workhorse of the microphone world. These are the microphones you see during a live stage event. They are generally more rugged than condenser microphones. Unlike condenser microphones they do not require power supply.
As the Boy Scouts say, you always need to be prepared. Before you go out on a shoot make sure that you know what kind of power supply your microphone needs and that you have it available in case something goes wrong – like a battery dying.
Also make sure that you know how to use your microphone. Often, in the heat of a shoot something doesn’t work. It could be as simple as the as the switch being set to the off position. Have your troubleshooting checklist laid out before you get in the field or in front of your client.
Audio peaks out at 0 dB. This is when you hear loud pops and clicks in your audio track. In your on camera monitor make sure that your levels are between -12 and -6. This will save you time and frustration when you are editing.
Don’t rely on your monitor to tell you how the sound is going. Make sure that you always use a set of headphones. Your ears will tell you when something is wrong before the camera will. If something doesn’t sound right, it usually isn’t. Don’t be afraid to stop and readjust in order get the best quality sound.
Image credit: hiddedevries
I scoured the web this week to find these pearls of video production and content strategy wisdom. Careful. If you read them, you’ll be playing with power.
1) Creating an Online Video Strategy
In this post, Kate Matsudaira at SEOMoz covers some of the trade offs between hosting and posting. Hosting means loading your video up to your own server and hosting it on your own. Posting is letting YouTube, Vimeo, or Blip.tv handle all the heavy lifting. Each strategy has its own pros and cons, so Kate gives you some tips for getting the most out both. Of course, she covers SEO for your clips, but she also adds a refreshing list of ways to optimize your video for people, not just bots.
2) 10 Free and Low Cost Footage Sources For Your Web Video Production
This was a post that @bigmanweston mixed, baked, and set to cool. I just added some icing.
If you’re looking for information on Creative Commons or places to find stock footage or music, then let this piece be your recipe to more interesting videos.
3) Content Strategy for the Post Purchase Phase
Valeria Maltoni at Conversation Agent is my new favorite blogger. In our efforts to wrangle new customers we often forget about creating content for the post-purchase phase of the buy cycle. Valeria bridges the gap between B2C and B2B customer retention by offering some thoughts on how to make the intangible more share-worthy.
4) 10 Steps to Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy
Lee Odden reports from SES and gives you 10 rock solid tips on getting the most out of your online assets. Producing content grows more and more complex as you add SEO to already tight production schedules. We have to start thinking like publishers and this post puts you on the right path.
5) 75 PR/Article Submission Sites to Generate Inbound Links
Who doesn’t love a list? And who doesn’t love a 75 point list of places to get inbound links. Mark Thompson at Search Engine Journal gives you a robust ranking of article submission sites.
We created this presentation for the folks over at SMB Austin in February. I present it to you for your perusal.
In this deck we cover these topics that you can read more about elsewhere:
1) Hero Videos
2) How-to Videos
3) Screencasts
4) Interviews
5) Book Reviews
Note: We originally wrote this post for VideoCamp Austin, but wanted to share it here. BIG Thanks to @bigmanweston, who wrote the majority of this post. We’re indebted to @daveiam, @aaronmsb, and the crew at Lights. Camera. Help. for their valuable input.
Ever wanted that little something to add to your clip but just couldn’t find it? Worried about copyrights?
Luckily, we have Creative Commons and people who like to share.
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that works to bridge the content gap between copyrighted and free material. They’re devoted to “expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.”
What that means is that there is content out there that other producers have created and allowed you to use through a variety of Creative Commons licenses.
There are 6 main licenses:
* Attribution (CC-BY)
* Attribution Share Alike (CC-BY-SA)
* Attribution No Derivatives (CC-BY-ND)
* Attribution Non-Commercial (CC-BY-NC)
* Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC-BY-NC-SA)
* Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)
If you’re going to use any content from another producer, please check with the terms of use of the original creator of the content and make sure you follow their guidelines.
Archive.org has a vast, non-profit video library of material. You can find anything from animation to WWII propaganda films.
This is an archive.org search page pre-configured to return only public domain media. The booleans are already entered in the search field. Just add “AND search term” at the end of the text in the search box. For example, if I am looking for shots of explosions that I can use without restriction, this is what would be in the search field after I added my term:
/metadata/licenseurl:http*publicdomain* AND explosion
Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone. It’s not as expansive as Archive.org, but you can certainly find content.
If you’re looking for explosions, Detonation Films offer a ton of pyrotechnical footage for free in standard definition (SD). Much of the footage is shot over black backgrounds and some even comes pre-keyed, making it relatively easy composite fun explosions into your other footage.
If your video is only going to be distributed on the web and you’re not putting a high premium on high resolution, this sight has tons of low-rez stuff for free. (And you can always upgrade for about $15 per clip.)
http://www.freestockfootage.com/
If you’re looking for stock with higher production value, Pond5 is the place to go. They’re one of the cheapest places for high-end stock and every week they give away a professionally shot HD clip from their library for free. You may not have an immediate use for this week’s clip, but if you get in the habit of downloading their freebie every week, you’ll build your HD stock library and find a use for it later.
By law, all media made by the federal government is in the public domain. As you can imagine with anything that involves the federal government and getting something for free, it is not always easy to find this kind of footage. Still, if you know what you’re looking for and willing to really dig, you can sometimes find some amazing stuff.
Take NASA for example:
http://video.google.com/nara.html
http://www.nasaimages.org/index.html
The WBGH Lab in Boston encourages video makers to submit and share footage in order to create innovative new content. Most of the clips are shared and hosted by The WGBH Educational Foundation and are licensed and shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
http://lab.wgbh.org/sandbox/
And yes, Mashable has compiled an amazing list of free resources as well. We’ve pulled the list below from them.
- Open Source Cinema: A community site for creating and remixing video online, users upload footage under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.
- Vimeo (): You can browse the videos tagged with Creative Commons or use a complex search query to search for videos tagged both “creativecommons” and the keyword you’re looking for.
- Flickr : You can use Flickr’s Advanced Search interface to look only within video content that’s Creative Commons-licensed.
Photo credit: acrib
Having trouble getting views? Maybe you’re guilty of these (not-quite) mortal sins of B2B video production and marketing.
Really, think about it. Did you think it was cool or did your customer?
Before you get started with your video, take a moment to think about who you’re making this gem for. Like any piece of content for the web, you need to think about at least three things when you’re working with video:
a) Who am I creating this for?
b) What do I want them to do?
c) What do they need in order to do it?
(from the minds at www.grokdotcom.com)
Beyond that, remember that you’re telling a story with an end, beginning, and a middle – preferably with some conflict (and maybe some guns). It’s either a story that’s compelling to your audience or one that somehow fulfills a narrative in their own lives (see Is Your Customer The Hero of Your Videos?)
45% of video is found through deliberate search. The rest is “discovered.” In either case, you need to optimize your video so that it comes up in keyword searches regardless of platform or channel that it happens to reside on. Video SEO has its own quirks. The folks at ReelSEO know more about it than anyone.
If 55% of people just randomly find stuff, doesn’t it make sense to cast your net really wide? I’ll say what everyone else says and recommend Tubemogul. But, hey, why not hit up a few of your friends and get that video in their blogs and forums.
Video is awesome. I personally think it will save the B2B Marketing world, but it can’t stand alone.
Your video content has to be integrated with all the other assets that you’re creating. Think about your editorial calendar and, more importantly, your customers’ buying cycle. Awareness videos don’t look like Risk Avoidance or Christmas videos. Is the screencast really going to be effective just as they’re going to sign the paperwork? How about wrapping up your weekly blogs with a Friday .tv show?
Strategizing also means thinking about metrics. How are you going to know you should keep making these kind of videos? What’s your baseline time-on-site? Will it improve because of your video? My Magic 8-Ball says yes.
Your customers will watch a video with a poor image before they’ll watch a video with bad audio. If people can’t hear something, they tune out. Think about all those webinars out there. Do you watch the WHOLE thing? Or do you multitask and listen in? You couldn’t do that with poor sound quality.
My partner in crime says this, “You’re not going to do it, but you should spend more money on audio than you do on video.” And he’s right, people consistently buy a camera and forget to get a microphone. On camera mics are terrible. At least take a look at some wired options. You don’t have to get fancy.
In conclusion, don’t let all this slow you down. You’ve got to get out there and try it before you get it right. Have fun with it. Be bold. Create new stuff and get out there and share it.
Want to get more out of your videos? Follow these simple tips for increasing your reach and quantity of optimized content on the web.
Video is comprised of more than moving images. Don’t forget that you can optimize audio, copy, and screenshots.
You are transcribing your videos, right?
I’ve said it once. I’ll say it again. People consume content in different ways. Do your readers a favour and let them skim the transcription in your blog. Follow your copywriting rules and put in your H1 and H2 headers to make things easier to read. The added benefit to you is that search engine bots will have more to index if you put the transcription in the body of your blog post.
Once you’ve created your transcription, drop it into a .pdf, add some links back to your blog, your RSS feed and put your contact information in it. This may not give you any SEO juice, but if someone finds your content on Scribd, you’re giving them the opportunity to find you and come back for some more helpful tips.
When you’re in your editing software of choice, export out the audio track and then upload it to www.archive.org. Add a description of your audio file and add some appropriate keywords so that people can find what you’re talking about. You can also use it to add the audio file to Slideshare (see below).
Most editing software allows you pull out a screenshot from your clip. Export out some interesting frames and upload them to Flickr with the right keywords to give yourself some extra reach.
If your video is straightforward, or if it’s from a presentation you did, take that audio track that you created and make a slidecast on Slideshare. You also might try using some of your screenshots to drop them in the slideshow to save time and still give people some glamour shots of yourself. I’ve also noticed that URLs show up as hot in the Slideshare descriptions, so when you post to Facebook, you can get some traffic back to your site.
Last week, YouTube announced that it was automatically creating machine based transcriptions of videos.
Don’t rely on them.
If you’ve read through the captions you’ve seen that the service isn’t quite there yet. Some of the text is completely nonsensical. Not only is this annoying for the hard of hearing, but when Google indexes the captions, you may wind up in some strange search results.
Use your transcription to add your own caption file. That way YouTube isn’t putting words in your mouth and you’re getting indexed for something you’ve actually created.
Call it what you will – a documentary, a testimonial, a hero’s story – we love to hear tales about triumph and tragedy. When one person takes on a challenge and succeeds (or fails) we love to watch and share in her experience.
This type of video can take longer than an hour to shoot because you may need to follow a character around a bit. It can also take just a few minutes.
Thanks to YouTube, the world has unprecedented access to the cat video canon, and through our research we found one that elegantly exemplifies the hero tale in its simplest form.
Now, think for a moment about the last time someone started telling you about their cat. Even if you’re a cat lover, you know it’s at best a 50/50 chance you’ll be bored to tears a minute into someone else’s cat story. More people will spontaneously and passionately tell more boring stories about cats than almost anything on earth. (Dreams and children come first to mind.) Why are Maru’s struggles compelling? Even a dog owner can’t help rooting for him, at least a little.
In 1949, Joseph Campbell released “The Hero With A Thousand Faces” in which he outlined his theory of the hero myth. Essentially, Campbell identified the structure of almost every tale from Ulysses to Star Wars.
Almost universally (and I’m really reducing this), a hero begins in an ordinary world, receives a call to enter a strange world, faces trials, and then returns home to improve the world. Amazingly, this can be even further reduced to a simple formula anyone can follow to tell a good story.
In the case of Maru and the Box:
1) Introduce the Hero: This is Maru. He is inquisitive and cute.
2) Introduce a Challenge: This is a box. Maru absolutely has to get into that box!
3) Show the Struggle: He tries climbing on the table to jump higher. He fails.
4) Vanquish the Challenge: He pulls out a gun and shoots the box. (You watched the video right?)
You can describe almost anything that’s ever happened to any person using this formula. Just stick to the formula. There are two problems people often encounter when trying to follow this formula.
1) Adding unnecessary details to “fill out the story.”
People often want to add things that aren’t in the formula because they are afraid their story won’t make sense without it. For example, you could get hung up explaining to the viewer why the hero’s challenge matters. Don’t do it. If your hero is passionate about their determination to overcome the challenge, the viewer will except any explanation you give them–if you even bother to give them one. For example: What was the gold stuff in the case in Pulp Fiction? What was E.T.’s ship doing on earth in the first place? Why did Maru have to get in the box? The more you explain your story, the more time you give your viewers to wonder “Do I believe this?” Give them nothing.
2) Thinking their industry is too technical/specialized/boring to make a good story–even with Joseph Campbell’s formula .
This is not true. Ever. The more technical/specialized/boring your industry is, the lower the bar your story has to get over–for the right viewer. That’s because the smaller your niche is, the fewer stories your video has to compete with. When the right viewer watches your hero video they are going to be so excited to see a story about something they care about they won’t care if it’s perfect. They’re going to feel like you wrote a song about them. That’s the best!
For example, check out the tale of the Kenmore 90 series Washing Machine and the Broken Coupler:
Was that amazing or what? Did you watch the whole thing? The first time I saw it I watched it at least five times. Let me break down the story:
1) Introduce the Hero: This is Weston. He thinks he is “handy.”
2) Introduce the Challenge: This is Weston’s Kenmore series 90 washing machine. It stopped producing clean clothes and now makes only a bad sound.
3) Show the Struggle: Repairmen are expensive. (Weston is also “frugal.”) It is impossible to compare the sound he hears the machine making to the sound the repair blogs write about.
4) Vanquish the Challenge: Weston fixes the machine with a couple of wrenches and his bare hands. (and a laptop looping the above video)
The only thing more powerful than a video that tells a great story by itself is a video that helps viewers tell the story that matters to them.
Have you ever heard someone sing a song or read a poem about something small that you knew a lot about like your school or your work or your family or you? It didn’t matter that it was terrible because it was about something you cared about. In fact, it was even better that it was terrible because it meant someone cared enough about what you cared about to risk looking stupid singing a song they wrote about it.
We’ve all (hopefully) heard someone tell a story that had us catching ourselves holding our breaths at parts and laughing out loud at others. You’ve likely also had the experience of trying to re-tell a great story you heard to a friend only to have them stare blankly at you and say something like, “So they couldn’t find the right printer paper, but then they found it.”
From the smallest feline to intergalactic cowboys, heroes come in all shapes and sizes. We’ve been telling stories about them for a very long time. By integrating this classic structure into your videos, you not only help your viewers solve their problems, but you help them become a hero as well.
You want to use video in your marketing campaigns, but hiring a production team for every YouTube video can be a costly endeavor. The Video Marketing Boot Camp will teach you how to plan, produce and edit compelling visual stories.
The Video Marketing Boot Camp is an intensive two day class designed to help marketing, public relations, and social media professionals create educational, entertaining, well produced videos so that they can create larger audiences, improve website traffic, maximize time on site, and increase conversion.
Marketing managers, content marketers, inbound marketers, public relations professionals and social media marketers who have content production responsibilities.
At the end of the video marketing boot camp you’ll know how to:
· Choose and operate a camcorder
· Set up a simple 3-point lighting system in any environment
· Capture crisp, clear audio
· Edit video for compelling story-telling
· Choose the right compression (codec) for online distribution
· Optimize your video for the web (SEO)
You’ll need to bring –
· Your video camera
· Laptop
· Editing Software (preferably Final Cut Express or Adobe Premiere)
· Tape
· Headphones
If you have any questions about equipment – contact us.
$650 for the 2-day seminar
If you are unable to attend and don’t plan to send a substitute, you must notify us five (5) business days prior to the seminar date to be entitled to a full refund.If you cancel or transfer within five (5) business days of the event,there is a 15% cancellation fee.
The “how-to” video is the quintessential video for content marketing. By creating a video that solves a problem around a particular keyword set you not only show yourself off as a thinker but you create extra inbound marketing bait.
This is probably the most important part of the process. Have you identified a solution to a problem that you’ve haven’t found online yet? Are you looking to get some traffic around a particular set of keywords? Take some time and research YouTube for videos about topics that are important to your audience. Look at the competition and see if there are some gaps they haven’t covered yet. You may discover that you have the opportunity to build an entire channel that didn’t exist before. If you’re SEO savvy, do some keyword research using your favorite tool and see which terms are the most searched in your area. If there are 200 searches a day for “make organic dog food” and you do just that, you may have found your topic.
Good Ol’ Fashioned copywriting rules apply here when you’re choosing a title. You want it to be mind-tingling and SEO friendly so that both your audience and Google love it. Consider using the Cracked.com formula of headline writing – “Number Adjective Noun That Noun Verb”. Really. It’s a successful formula. You can also use “How To” in your title. If someone sees that they’re going to believe they’re going to learn something.
Keep this simple and straightforward. Introduce yourself, who you’re with and then tell us what you’re going to do. Shoot this as a separate segment so that you can get it right. Afterward, you’ll be able to edit it in to your clip.
If you’re doing something complex, you’ll often have a list of supplies that your viewer will need to gather. Remember that people consume content differently, so rather than only taking shots of each item for your video, consider itemizing the list in your blog post.
When you’re designing the video, it helps to break out your story into its component parts.
Video: Obviously, video is best for conveying action and dialogue. Which shots do you want to use for this video?
Images/Graphics: Which images convey your message. Will you be using photos or are you better served with drawings that you can cut in.
Text: Which pieces of text can you use? This will probably come in the form of titling or may be even itemized lists in your video.
Audio: You want to be heard. You’ll need a voice. You’ll may also need music and sound effects. Consider where they may go in your clip.
You have a couple of options here for shooting your how-to video.
Shoot all at once: Shoot your entire video at once so that you get a nice continuous piece of audio and video to use in your timeline. Audio is a critical piece of the video since you’ll use it to structure the story. Various shots can be added as needed if you have a solid structure.
Shoot in segments:Record each step of your “how-to” video individually. Doing it this way insures that each piece is polished as possible. Plus it keeps you in the flow of each segment giving you confidence each time you repeat yourself.
In order to keep things lively, you’ll need b-roll. That is you’ll, need individual shots of either your materials or separate closer, detailed shots of you working on something. You’ll add these shots into your timeline to give your audience something to look at besides just a long speech on fixing washing machines.
In this post, we outline some of the things you should consider when creating screencasts.
Want to download this as a pdf? We’ve put it over on Scribd for you.
If you’ve found these posts to be beneficial, please subscribe to our feed. We’d appreciate it.
Screencasts are a very easy way to do training or to show off new features of an online product. They’re particularly useful if you’ve noticed a gap in the “how-to” market for your particular set of keywords. Putting up a screencast demonstrates your knowledge as well as gives you some extra SEO content out there on the web.
Pre: 20 minutes of scripting out your bullet points
Production: 20 minutes to allow for re-dos
Post: 20 minutes in post production
There are a variety of screencast tools on the market.
PC users have access to:
- Camtasia
- Jing
- Adobe Captivate
For the Mac you can try:
- Screenflow
- Camtasia for Mac
- iShowU
Screenflow and Camtasia run about $99.00 and both allow you to edit your screencasts in a timeline which gives you plenty of flexibility.
Distribution: Think about where this video is going to be seen. Are you doing it just as a quick one-off for your own blog or are you building it for your company’s site. The answer to this question will determine how much you put into your screencast.
Scripting: Brainstorm and outline your screencast so that you cover the 3 – 4 main points that you want people to get out of your project.
Consider this approach to the script:
I. Introduce yourself, role title, company
II. Tell your audience what you’re going to show them
III. Show your audience 2 – 3 points
IV. Provide a summary
V. Restate your name and your contact information so that they can get in touch with you.
Storyboarding: Remember that screencasts take a nice big screen down to a little bitty player on someone’s desktop. Sketch out the most important shots or images that you want your viewer to see and synch them up with your script.
Editing: You can get as fancy here as you want. Keep in mind that you’re trying to make an impact, solve a problem or educate someone. Make sure that the tricks you use support your goals.
You’re going to notice that you mumble, stutter and say ‘um’ an awful lot the first few times you create your screencasts.
Practice what you’re going to say, or even better, record your audio separately so that you can edit out any unseemly pauses.
Our friends at Phurnace Software asked us to help them create a show that highlights their ability to automate java application deployments. Phurnace builds software to help companies automate the deployment of J2EE applications and configuration of WebSphere, WebLogic, JBoss or WebSphere Portal.
Shot on a Canon HV30 and performed by Larry Warnock and Jessica Gass [...]
Our friends at Phurnace Software, who make Java application deployment software, are gearing up to announce a new “rollback” feature in their Portal Deliver product at the next Websphere Portal Excellence Conference.
They asked us to put together a quick promo piece to invite people to their booth.
We are gearing up for a great [...]
We put together a book trailer for the book “Smoke Screen” by Sandra Brown.
Ms. Brown isn’t a customer of ours, but we felt like playing around a little with graphic animation, and intrigue. You can find out more about the book and the author over at Barnes and Noble.
The Pink Slip Festival in Austin, Texas provided free live music, family fun, cheap beer and hotdogs for Austin’s unemployed families. Dan Dillard of Amplify Financial created the Pink Slip Festival as an Austin styled response at to the down economy. The Pink Slip Festival was held at the Spider House coffee shop and featured [...]
It’s no big secret that @bigmanweston and I like to eat.
My wife is a killer cook and Weston’s culinary paramour, @girlblake, can make a mean Sunny Side Up-Cake.
So when she decided to take her cupcakes on the road to the Cupcake Smackdown 1.0, we thought we’d tag along with a camera.
There were many entries. [...]
This is a promo piece that we shot for our friends at Amplify Federal Credit Union.
The 30 second commercial aired in Austin captures Rob Harbison’s testimonial about Amplify’s new “Free All ATMs” campaign. That’s right. All your ATM transactions are free with Amplify.
Go Amplify!