Mastering Video Production for Increased B2B Sales

Getting Started with Video

“Action” Now Start Filming

00:00:00:15     Filming is about creating an illusion and it can be all make believe, but the objective is to make whatever you do, to be believable. Well here's a quick rundown of what we're going to cover today. We're going to go over whether you should film in your office or hire an

00:00:30:04     office or a studio. We going to cover lighting, green screen, backdrops using gray or black or white, props, product shots, people shots, a bit of B Roll, people working, people laughing, that kind of stuff, mist and fog. Seriously, honestly, mist and fog and a light diffusers or reflectors and then kind of finally looking at workflow backup and what you need to do to

00:00:59:10     just some ideas of keeping the data safe. If we start with location, whether you film in your own office or hire out a plush office in Mayfair or a specialist studio the bottom line is that you're able to create whatever impression you want to and it only takes a bit of imagination and a bit of creativity.

00:01:28:04     If you are going to hire an office it will pay dividends. If you make sure you have as many props, we'll call them props, as you can think of especially if you want the location to genuinely look like your office. So don't forget a... Picture the family pets all that kind of stuff but also in your own offices making sure they look engaging.

00:01:57:13     So when it comes to the lighting aspect of this it depends If you simply want to be able to see or if you want to get a bit of arty style into your video, but how you use them is also important because you want your viewers to like what you do. 

00:02:18:18     If you take some time out to watch a few YouTube videos about this kind of subject or LinkedIn, LinkedIn Learning. Part of the lighting setup is to know when to use reflectors display or diffusers, they call them scrims or black disks or sheets to stop reflections and then you can use black ones which are called negative fill. I know if someone is doing this for you don't have to think about it. But again, when it comes to your productions it is important to know what

00:02:50:04     can be done and why you should consider different styles or managing and manipulating light to deliver the best looking experience your customers are going to get. One of the other areas which makes me smile is is green screening and it can be quite lot of fun, you know, you have to decide the best time to use something like this for it to work well. If you take a look at this example, the office, and now the newsroom and of

00:03:26:08     course the garden, they were all filmed in the studio, but the point is if you use the right software, per se, you can really, really, well engage your viewers without leaving the studio. You can change background. This whole approach is to increase engagement and of course sales, without

00:03:54:22     breaking the bank and getting your business selling 24/7 because of video. The other aspects, because we do photos as well, is looking at backdrops. They are pretty simple to get a hold of whether they're plain or textured and you can get them from anywhere 

00:04:11:20     There's a company called Creativity International as well as of course there's Amazon and so on but they're great... if you're filming or if you're taking photographs you know especially headshots and stuff like that of people and of course then there's your products even when it comes to product shots depending on what your products are, there are some really special mobile platforms that can enable the camera to circle around your product whilst keeping a background at the same time

00:04:45:05     so you can get this kind of 3D view that moves around at the same pace. But again it's about being aware of what's possible without breaking the bank. So you can hire this this stuff. And you come on to the people shots. Now whether are you going to film staff or customers or clients or random people or use royalty free stock footage, using people shots always makes

00:05:14:01     the video or film far more, I suppose, personable and friendly I'm also aware of the fact that in some cases it's not going to be relevant, especially if you have a fairly serious offering. But if you can incorporate, kind of happy, smiling people then that can only be a good thing. And then there's the mist and fog! I know.. mist and fog! but seriously, depending on where you're filming and

00:05:48:11     what you're doing and so on you can use these this aerosol spray mist that can add a kind of a moody and interesting ambiance to your film even if it's for the B Roll side of things. 

00:06:00:20     But it just shows a bit of artistic flair within what you're doing instead of it just being a bog standard business video. The workflow backup process is the same as any data project. Back it up, back it up often, keep multiple copies in different locations and hopefully you'll be fine. So from recording on SD cards to uploading the cards to a, you can use a portable drive, DJI...

00:06:30:05     They do drones and stuff or GNARBOX... They've got built in batteries so you don't have to have a laptop with you so if you film something on set, you just plug the SD card straight into it. It copies it, saves it, backs it up and then you copy over your current work on the laptop once you once you get back to the office. But at the end of the day looking at your drives, looking at access drives and access servers is a really important aspect to this and depending on

00:07:01:15     your editors workflows and work load then a network access server (NAS) can be backed up. And then secondarily backed up to an Amazon server or something like that. And then finally at the end of the year when you've got all your work, it can be transferred from the network address server to cheaper hard disks and stored offsite somewhere. But it is just kind of small pointers just to be aware of. I mean if you've got an existing backup procedure then you might not need

00:07:32:03     to consider this at all. 

00:07:35:00     But it's kind of dotting the i's and crossing the T's you know where I'm coming from. If you're like me you'll probably find a style you like and build on it as you move forward. But it's not about you as a managing director doing it it's getting other people to do it. I think it really hit me when I realized that my videos were being watched by the exact market that I wanted to connect with and I mean I knew that there's no way I could go meet all these people you know within a day or a

00:08:07:15     week or the sheer fact of being able to post this information up. I know that it was working for me 24/7 was a seriously here is a real eye opener. So anyway that's all for now for this one. I found it useful and I'll see you in the next video. So bye for now.