Are you struggling to produce quality videos? Great advice from Ian Brodie.

I found Ian Brodie through the wonder that is the blogosphere.  Ian is a marketing consultant and consistently produces great content.  As a CMO who is struggling to produce business quality videos, I went looking for rescources, and I found a post from October 2010 by Ian helpful.

Entitled "Three Critical Mistakes to Avoid with Business Videos," Ian, through a video, discusses these mistakes:

1. It is important to look into the camera. (Memorize or get telepromter software - his explanatory comments go into more detail)
2. Make your gestures natural. (This can be one of the hardest things to do when recording a video. It feels so unnatural to speak to a camera instead of another person so Ian's advice is to practice, practice, practice. Your efforts will make a positive difference on how the video is received.)
3. Use an external mic.  (Ian notes that people tend to focus on picture quality and not sound quality when most cameras can produce good picture quality for the web.  However, if you use a camera with an internal mic, your sound quality can be horrendous, forcing you to reshoot the video, so use an external mic and make sure that your camera can support an external mic.)

Check out the comments to this post for further good information.

We have found that for us, if we can record in our offices rather than going off-site, we have a greater chance of getting the video completed, rather than just talked about, so I am interested in what kind of camera Ian uses and particularly, what kind of lighting he uses.

Another tip that I'll add is to keep the video short (Ian's is 3:11), to the point, and full of useful content.  Don't make it a commercial.  No one will watch.  If it's a long video, people will get bored and won't watch.  When developing content for the video, think about your ideal client and speak to a problem that they have and give them solutions.  That's the best content you can produce.  Then post to YouTube and Vimeo and have the video available on your website.

I'll keep you posted in our journey to produce videos.

 

Comments

[Ian Brodie]

Hi Barbara - thank you so much for your kind words.

Camera wise, it's getting increasingly tricky to get one with an external mic that doesn't cost the earth. The low end market is focused on people taking holiday videos who don't particularly need studio sound. So in marketing terms they're focusing on their core customer but unfortunately it's no good for us small businesses!

The particular cameria I use is a Samsung vp-hmx20c which I picked up on ebay as they no longer make it. It's got a nice big lens in addition to the external mic.

Another one with an external Mic is the Canon HG10.

The Kodak Zi8 also has an external Mic socket - it's like a little flip cam so could work well for short videos as long as you're not expecting too much from it. I used it for some of my original videos but it doesn't like it when you use powerful artificial lights - you get a stroboscope effect.

Light wise, I use a set of 3 continuous lighting softboxes along with a white backdrop.

To get the pure white effect you need to blast two of the softboxes onto the backdrop with one on your face. You then need to manually adjust the white balance on your videocamera (not possible with a zi8/flip) to overexpose the background so it comes out as pure white.

If you want to do it professionaly you need 1 or 2 more F stops on a light meter on the background than on the subject. But I just use trial and error.

For the background, I do have a proper white cotton muslin sheet with a giant frame - but I actually find it easier just to erect my overhead projector screen and use that - no wrinkes to iron out!

Hope this helps.

Ian