More and more video is being used on websites to promote and endorse products and services, the technology is relatively cheap and easey to use, but why do so many people get it wrong.
Martin Shepherdly of video production company Web Epics has kindly agreed to share his 4 steps to creating an effective video for your website.
Getting the Message Right
The most important part of the process comes down to defining factors such as:
What exactly is the key message?
A video is like a building.. if you don’t give it firm foundations it won’t stand up!
What format will work best?
Depends on where and how the video will mostly be viewed.
What is the creative approach?
What ‘look and feel’ are you trying to achieve? What emotions are you trying to envoke? Understanding this helps to decide what shooting style should be adopted, whether to use any special visual effects, music and/or sound effects.
This normally is a joint process with the Producer/Director interrogating the client’s needs, thoughts and ideas. Once these parameters are defined an outline shooting script or in some cases a storyboard is developed that forms the basis of the production. It is unlikely to be ‘right first time’ and over the course of the production this will inevitably be fine-tuned and developed.
Capturing the Content
It is easy to sport the difference between amateur and professional video.
As well as mastering the technicalities of the camera itself, skills such as composition, lighting, camera moves, understanding depth of field and how to use focus to emphasise specific parts of the picture all make an enormous difference. Mastery of sound is – surprisingly perhaps – even more important than the image.
Video shoots can be lengthy and sometimes stressful, as interruptions may come in many forms; the weather, external noises (such as planes circling overhead – strange how they seem so attracted to video cameras) or even intrigued members of the public wittily waving at the camera!
Putting It All Together
Following the shoot, all the raw footage is loaded into the edit suite. It is then a case of literally building the programme shot by shot, until the story is complete.
Next, under the guidance of the Director, the Editor will work through this first cut, adding further images, mixes and other effects, layering music, possibly an audio commentary, adding captions, animations and titles and tweaking the audio to create something close to the finished product.
At this stage the client is able to see the work in progress – of course this can easily be achieved over the web. Any necessary amendments required for the final edit are then discussed with the Director and the agreed changes carried out.
The Editor then carries out a final ‘sound dub’ (smoothing out sound levels and getting rid of any intrusive noises) and ‘grading’ (adjusting the colours or brightness), ready for a final client sign off.
Publishing To The World
If you are planning to use your video online, the approved programme will now need to be encoded to Flash video (or alternative format if you prefer) before uploading to the streaming server.
Depending on where the video is being hosted and your own technical abilities, this will either generate a piece of HTML code for you to paste on to your web page, or a URL for you or your web person to integrate into a player.
