111 Tips to Create Impressive Videos

By Doris-Maria Heilmann

If you are looking for new ways to drive traffic to your business and your social media accounts, this is the book for you.

Your audience needs to be intrigued, inspired and informed by an outstanding viewing experience. Walt Disney once said: "I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained."

Find more than 111 tips on how to create professional videos that enchant and how and where to market them. 

Rather than focusing too much on equipment, the focus of this book is on the art of creating videos that viewers want to watch over and over. 

No matter if you produce just leisurely videos, educational videos, marketing and business communication videos or movie and book trailers: you will find lots of valuable ideas and suggestions.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: 111Publishing
• Release date: Apr 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781988664231

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Great videos are fantastic communication tools and are becoming immensely important on every platform and channel. If you are looking for new ways to drive traffic to your business, this is the book for you. Your audience needs to be intrigued, inspired and informed by an outstanding viewing experience. Walt Disney once said: I would rather entertain and hope that people learned something than educate people and hope they were entertained.

Rather than focusing too much on equipment, the focus of this book is on the art of creating videos that viewers want to watch over and over. Videos that enchant, and certainly also how and where to market them. This book will help you – with 111 Tips – no matter if beginner or advanced video producer – to make a huge difference in the quality of your films. In fact, readers will find a lot more than 111 Tips, not to mention hundreds of resource sites, and links to free music and images.

Instead of pondering what type of camera you should get, think first about the composition and the creation of an entertaining and attention-grabbing video

One might be able to shoot an Oscar-worthy video or film, using an iPhone. But on the other hand, purchasing the latest, impressive camera with overwhelming features does not make necessarily a good videographer. To bring original ideas, emotional connections and persuasion into a video are skills that are not automatically delivered with expensive equipment.

This is also the reason we start with the creative part of filming videos and add in one of the later chapters basics of the technical apparatus.

No matter if you produce just leisurely videos, educational videos, marketing and business communication videos or movie and book trailers: you will find lots of valuable ideas and suggestions.

VIDEO TRENDS

It would take an individual more than 5 million years to watch the amount of video that will cross global IP networks each month in 2021. Every second, a million minutes of video content will cross networks by 2021. More details on video trends can be found in Cisco’s forecast: http://bit.ly/2DWlMyp

Video adds to your arsenal of content you can share on social media. According to Simply Measured https://simplymeasured.com/ video is shared 1,200 percent more often than text and link content combined. The good news about video marketing: Only 25% of businesses and brands are using online video to market to consumers. Using video is a tremendous opportunity for you to get ahead of your competition. Learn in this book how to market and win in a world gone video!

Not only are videos fun to make and view, but most marketers agree that they have the best Return of Investment (ROI). And social media posts with video usually attract three times more inbound leads than text-only posts. The use of internet video increases sales conversions, some studies say by 30% or more. It has also been shown to decrease product returns, increase engagement and improve SEO. Product demo videos, client testimonials, and how-to tutorials are great ways to expand your brand and increase sales.

Every chapter in this book contains useful links to save you a lot of Google time. However, this book shows only a fraction of the resources we can offer our readers. Please send us an email requesting more addresses and links, and we will email you the latest listings and offers. You can find our contact website form and email after the last chapter.

VIDEO COMPOSITION & SHOOTING TIPS

There are some video films that are simply beautiful. It’s not the story or the picturesque setting. In fact, the scene might take place in the dingiest of sets, but somehow each shot just feels right.

A composition is undoubtedly the most powerful tool you possess as a videographer. As with photography, good videography requires a bit of know-how – such as adjusting the shutter speed, turning off your autofocus, or do whatever else is necessary to capture the best images. A good shot composition is at the heart of attractive video.The lens is the audience’s portal into the world you create. It is yours to control…

Video composition refers to the way the various elements in a scene are arranged within the frame. Many of these elements have been used in art for thousands of years and they really do help achieve more attractive video compositions.

Tip #1

First: Read the F…… Manual

Learn your camera and other equipment inside and out. Read the manual – several times. Know how to access the menus, which menus contain which settings, and so on. Keep a cheat sheet handy if necessary and attach it to the neck strap. A little bit of study and preparation can go a long way toward helping you to shoot better videos.

Tip #2

Start With a List of Shots You Need

Write the story beforehand in your head, and list the elements you want to get video of in order to do a certain story. Think about what’s going to look good visually, and how your shots are going to come together sequentially. A simple storyboard helps to plan the movie. In a three-column table, enter on the left for each scene what you want to convey, in the middle the planned pictures and on the right the text to be spoken or faded in.

Tip #3

Practical Shooting Tips

When you compose in video, many of the usual photography rules apply. Horizons should be straight and backgrounds in a room must be uncluttered—you will need to get it right in the camera, as you won’t have enough pixels to crop

Tip #4

Rule of Thirds

For video, the rules of composition are similar to what you may have learned in a photography or art class. Most important, consider the rule of thirds — the idea that you can create a sense of balance by imagining the canvas with two horizontal lines and two vertical lines. Key elements should occur at the intersection of these lines. When objects appear where they should in the frame, the quality of your video increases exponentially. When you place the important elements in your shot along these horizontal and vertical lines, you create visual images that please the eye of the viewer.

Tip #5

Open Compositions

In open compositions, shapes appear to be running off the edges and sides of the picture plane. This creates the sense that the work extends beyond the edges or boundaries of the picture which allows for more active eye movement via shared edges, overlapping, transparency, interpenetration, implied extensions... or lack thereof.

An open composition: objects appear to run off the edge of the image or don’t ‘fit’ within the image. A closed composition: objects are contained within the perimeter of the image.

Tip #6

Basic Composition Techniques

Don’t reveal the whole image right away. Slowly move into the location – shoot in slow motion to diminish any shakes. Keep elbows close to your body while holding the camera. Very slow motion is incredibly forgiving and perfect for handheld shooting, and it also makes your shots more dramatic.

Tip #7

Stable Shots

To get stable shots, you need to stay still. However, all of your shots will be static. The solution is: Manufactured movement which means creating movement in a shot where you the camera operator is completely still, but tethered to an object that is moving, e.g. out of a car or train, or filming people who are moving, or water that is running. Your video shots are stable – but at the same time full of movement.

Tip #8

Background-Foreground

Most of the time your background will simply be an out-of-focus static bystander. But if you want to add a subtle burst of extra flavor, compose a shot where something is happening in the background.

Tip #9

People in the Foreground

Viewers want to see people – not landscapes or any fancy background compositions – for example, when you introduce yourself via video. Did you know? The two most popular pages on your website are the Home page and the About page. Don’t miss the opportunity to place an introductory video on these two pages. Let your visitors know who you are and how your service or products will help them.

A very shallow depth-of-field shooting will bring all the focus to a person – you – in the foreground and blurs out everything else. Blurring the background of your video is a fast way to make it look more professional. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t clean-up your office!

The two main elements you use to take an exposure are aperture and shutter speed. The aperture of a lens ranges from wide to narrow, and is measured in f/stops, such as f/4 (wide aperture) to f/22 (narrow aperture). The wider the aperture, the more light is let in to reach your DSLR’s sensor – brightening your shots and blurring the background. You need an f-stop of less than f/4 to blur your background.

Tip #10

Headroom

This is the space between the top of your subject’s head and the top of the frame. Use the rule of third here too! If you apply too much headroom, your subject will appear to be sinking. Too little headroom appears to chop your subject’s head off just above the eyes.

To get headroom perfect, align your subject’s eyes with the top third line, rather than putting the eyes smack in the center of the frame. Keeping your subject’s eyes on that top horizontal line will ensure proper headroom in your shots.

Tip #11

Tall Objects

An unusual angle to film a very tall object (a tower, large trees or a skyscraper) is to point the camera straight up at the subject and