How To Shoot Your Own Video Content As A Small Business
It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, what product you sell, or how large your company is. Having video content in your online portfolio is absolutely necessary. When customers look you up online, they expect to see video content. Yes, photos and the written word are still important, but when the head of Instagram Adam Mosseri comes out and says Instagram is no longer a photo sharing app, the hammer couldn’t be hitting business owners over the head any harder. Tik Tok, Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, every major social media app has shifted its focus from photos and text to video and you should too.
Here’s the rub, video creation can be expensive. From cameras to lenses, drones, stabilizers, audio, lights. Let’s put it this way, I usually show up to a shoot with over $20,000 worth of equipment and that’s not even the computer, hard drives, storage system, edit software, music licensing, transfer hosts, and all the other things it takes to be a professional videographer. Not to mention the years of training and experience it takes to get good at video production. If you aren’t a professional cinematographer chances are you don’t have this kind of equipment or expertise. This is why people like me have a job. Not to worry though, with a little direction you can begin to produce quality video content on your own so that you and your business don’t get lost in the crowded internet landscape.
Where You Need Video
It is imperative you have video content on your website. I make a living producing content for social media. A lot of my customers find me through social media. I think social media is important. Social media is not a replacement for a website. Your website is still the most important platform in your online portfolio. It’s where clients in buying mode visit. It’s where people will purchase your products, book you, research you, it’s the top of the pyramid, the bottom of the sales funnel.
Text has always been important for SEO, so yes, having a lot of text on your website can be beneficial. But search engines are getting smarter and more sophisticated. They no longer just look for keywords in your website’s metadata. They track the user experience across your entire site. Think of us, human beings in the 21st century. Think of your own viewing habits. If you go to a website full of text and little to no imagery, are you sticking around? You have such a small amount of time to capture someone’s interest. Is a large block of text going to achieve that? All that text may have good keywords, but if someone looks at it, gets overwhelmed, and leaves your site quickly, that’s called bounce rate and that signals to the search engines people don’t like your site. The experience sucked and google is going to dock you for that. Now add some compelling video to your site. Video that keeps people on your site for a minute, two minutes, three. All of a sudden a user is spending five to ten minutes on your site. That’s a powerful signal to google.
But the user experience doesn’t just translate into better SEO. It translates into building your brand, building trust with your customers, and acquiring new customers. Having a website with good information, good visuals, and a good user experience is key to long term business success. With all that in mind and with video content being the new normal, can you see how important high quality video content is?
When You Need To Hire Someone
Whenever I get hired to shoot a video, I no longer look at making just one video. Back when I started, companies usually only needed one video. A video I like to call your “showcase” video. It’s the video that gives an overview of your business, your companies story. Typically this video is 3-5 minutes and combines interviews and stunning visuals to tell a potential customer what your company is all about and the value your company can bring them. This video is located somewhere near the top of your website and if you have a Youtube channel you can make it the featured video at the top of your page. Remember, people don’t buy what you sell they buy WHY you sell it.
Let’s say you sell salt scrubs. How many people sell salt scrubs? Now you’re saying to yourself, “Ya but my salt scrubs are the best! We use an herb only found on a remote volcanic island near Borneo and no one else has that.” Do you think those other salt scrubs are claiming to be basic salt scrubs? Of course not! We all think our product’s the best. How do you inform people about what makes you special and how do you compel them to buy what you sell? That’s this video. A beautiful 3 minute mini documentary that leaves people saying, “Wow that salt scrub sounds fantastic AND this company looks great! I have to try that salt scrub!
I highly encourage you to hire someone to create this video. I know you’re probably reading this to learn how to create video without spending any money, but the reality is that if you want your company to look professional, you need some professional content. Hiring someone to create this video and take some professional photos is a good investment. Have you ever gone to a business facebook page and seen a real crummy banner image? That’s the first impression someone has of your company and if your website or social pages look unprofessional at first glance, chances are you won’t be a customers first choice. But online advertising isn’t a one and done thing. You need to continuously put out content to keep engagement up and search engines happy along with keeping your sales funnel humming. And this constant content is the part we’re focusing on today.
Video Content You Can Do Yourself
Now that you have a solid foundation and a solid showcase piece that highlights you and your business it’s time to start building on that foundation. I’m going to let you in on a little secret, you do not need an expensive camera to create compelling video content. People think they need a bunch of fancy equipment to produce good content, but the reality is concept and story telling trump everything. Learning to tell an engaging and authentic story is the first step is successful video content.
I’m getting ahead of myself though, the first thing you need to do is identify where your video content is going to go and what role it will play in your sales funnel. After getting your showcase video on your website it’s time to start driving traffic to that site. This is the role of social media. Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, and Tik Tok. Think of these platforms as the top of the funnel. You’re creating videos that are trying to quickly capture a potential customers attention and eventually lead them to your website where you can make a sale. Unlike the showcase piece, these videos can be quick, unpolished, and require less skill to create. Major companies have whole teams dedicated to creating this type of content, but as a small business you don’t have the resources to hire a team. Creating your own content will save you a lot of money and you will learn valuable marketing skills along the way.
You can also create longer, less intensive videos to help strengthen your brand and build trust with your current clients. Customer testimonials or educational videos are good places to start. Perhaps you own a gym. Stories from members who have found health, lost weight, and improved their quality life would be perfect customer testimonials. Videos on how to do lifts properly or at home work out routines make good educational resources. Not only do these videos help validate your business to potential new customers they also keep the conversation going with current customers. We all know customer retention is key to successful business.
The Equipment You’ll Need
Chances are you already have your camera. Of course I’m talking about your cell phone. Not only are social media companies looking at video as the future, phone companies are too. It goes without saying the newer the phone the better the camera. I have an iPhone 13 and sometimes use it in my professional shoots.
The other two pieces of equipment you need are a tripod and a microphone. If you’re using your phone don’t forget an adapter like this one for an iphone. Audio is 51% of the story. People can look past sub par video, but they’ll turn off a video with poor audio instantly. A small shotgun microphone like this one (Rode Micro) is a good first mic. As you progress I recommend investing in a lavalier microphone. Get a lavalier microphone before upgrading your camera. Remember, audio is 51% of the story. I can’t stress this enough. Capturing high quality audio is the most important technical aspect of producing great video content. I recommend the Rode Wireless Go.
The amount of equipment available is endless and you can upgrade your setup for the rest of time. Here is a video if you’d like to go down the rabbit hole.
How to Record a Video
You have all the necessary equipment. You know where the video is going and have a plan for the final product. Now it’s time to shoot your video. For this exercise we are going to pretend we’re making a customer testimonial since this requires all the aspects of video creation including an interview. We are going to shoot this video in the traditional horizontal widescreen format. Personally I still shoot pretty much everything in this format since I shoot in 4k. 4k simply put, is a resolution 4 times the size of traditional 1080 HD video. Vertical video is still uploaded in 1080 just flipped vertically. So instead of 1080 x 1920 they are 1920 x 1080. With 4k being 2160 x 3840 I’m able to crop into that vertical format without having to actually shoot vertically. There is a benefit to shooting vertically if you know you’re only going to create vertical content and will never need that footage for something in widescreen format. But I usually create many different pieces from what I shoot and for the sake of this exercise, we’ll shoot widescreen.
Needless to say there are many different things you can do without an interview. Typically these are much easier to make. Just pick a good song and add b-roll. There is free music on YouTube. If you want to take your music up a notch I like Epidemic Sound for music licensing. We’ll get to b-roll in a second, but if you can put together a video with an interview component you can definitely make a video without one. So we’ll learn harder video production first, and with those skills you can figure out how to make easier videos from there. So let’s break this down in pain staking detail. Starting with recording an interview. This can be yourself, or a person you’re interviewing.
Lighting - You probably don’t have an actual light, and honestly using real video lights is a skill that is tricky to master. The easiest thing to do is find natural lighting. I still try to find natural lighting whenever I shoot and if I use lights it’s only to fill in problem areas. Find a window and face your subject towards that light source. You want soft natural light on the subject’s face. Turn on any lights in the room to add depth to the scene.
Framing - Adjust the height of the tripod so that the lens is at eye level with the subject. They can be sitting or standing. Use the rule of thirds to determine where to put the subject in the frame. You want the subject looking towards the 2/3 of empty space and not have empty space behind them as they seemingly bump their nose on the edge of your frame. Make sure the background is clean and attractive. The interviewer should sit or stand next to the camera and the subject should look at the interviewer and not the camera. The interviewer should not be in the frame. If you are shooting yourself you want to look directly into the camera. You can center yourself in the frame if you’re recording just you.
Take a look at the screen grabs on the right. These are two good examples using only natural light from a window in a gym. The top image has our subject off to the right and the bottom one centered. There’s what’s called fall off happening here which is the gym behind our subject is falling out of focus. Don’t put people up against a white wall, that will make your image look flat. Try to find space behind the person so you get this fall off effect. We won’t get into aperture here, but if you shoot something in a lower aperture the background will go out of focus much quicker and give you an even more cinematic look.
Recording - 4k if possible. Minimum 1080p. I like to record in 24fps instead of 30fps. None of the movies you watch are in 30fps. It’s an old TV format and outdated in my opinion. Your eye sees in 24fps and this is what movies are played in. You want your shutter speed to be double your frames per second. So your settings should look something like, 1080p at 24 frames per second with a shutter speed of 1/48 or 1/50. Shooting in 4k has no bearing on your frames per second or your shutter speed.
Mic - Have the subject run the lavalier wire up their shirt and have them clip the mic under their chin. If you’re using a mic on your camera, get that thing close to your subject. Use a wide lens or wide setting on your phone to move your mic as close to your subject as possible, about 5 feet away.
Noise - Keep background noise to a minimum, especially talking.
Lens - Wipe the lens with your shirt or a lens cloth to get rid of fingerprints and smudges.
Briefing the subject - Inform the subject that this is a casual conversation. They should think of this as a normal conversation with a friend. The video will be edited so it does not matter if they word something poorly or need to start over on an answer. Let them know that you’ll be asking them questions but the questions will be edited out so they’ll need to restate the question. For example, if I ask you what your name is, don’t just state your name. Say “My name is _________”.
Probing questions - If the subject gives generic, short, or incomplete answers try stating, “Tell me more.” If there is an angle that they are leaving out, ask them a question to remind them to include it. For example, sticking with the gym theme, if you know the subject had back pain when they started and don’t now, ask them about it. “Didn’t you have back pain before you started at our gym?”
Uncovering emotions - A subject can sometimes get wrapped up in the task of communicating and fail to connect what they are saying with how meaningful and emotional that thing is. If someone said something powerful and important like, “I don’t wake up every morning with back pain anymore”, say something like, “Not waking up with back pain anymore sounds fairly life-changing. How does that make you feel to say that? How has the affected your day-to-day life?”
Your role - Be quiet. Let the person talk, don’t interject. Count to 3 after the subject has finished talking before you ask another question. Sometimes pauses mean the subject is thinking and is about to say the best part of the interview.
Ask your own questions - The best interviews are the ones where the interviewer is genuinely interested in the subject. What do you want to know about the person? Ask. Too many questions and too long is better than too few questions and too short. The video can be edited.
The most important question - Your last question should always be along the lines of, “Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you would like to share or you think is important to the story?” Chances are your subject has something you didn’t even know to ask and many times the most emotional responses come from this question.
Review - Watch the video file to make sure it was recorded correctly.
There Is No Such Thing As Too Much B-roll
Now that you have your interview recorded, it’s time to gather some b-roll. No one likes a video with a static shot of a person just talking the whole time. Even podcasts nowadays have multiple angles and video clips. The interview is the base of your story, now you want to add 3-7 second clips over that interview to create your final piece. Earlier I mentioned making videos without an interview. Essentially those videos are just a bunch of b-roll combined with music or natural sound.
There is no such thing as too much b-roll. However, a good number to try to hit is at least 60 clips of b-roll. Video the subject performing the activity you’re talking about. If we’re making a gym video, it’s them working out. If we’re making a salt scrub video, it’s them using the salt scrub. If they make the salt scrub, it’s them making it. You get it. Take video of the environment. Sticking with the gym that would be weights, signage, people putting shoes on. People laughing. Chalk. If that’s salt scrub it’s flowers, salt, the place it’s made, hands. Capture faces in your footage. Think wide, medium, tight. We want wide shots seeing the entire space or activity being performed. We want medium shots like facial expressions. We want tight shots of things like fingers gripping bars or hands digging in salt. Keep repeating wide, medium, tight. 60 clips sounds like a lot, but at around 7 seconds each you can capture all this in no time.
B-roll is also the time to experiment with your camera settings. If you’d like to shoot in 60fps for slow motion, now is the time to do so. Just remember if you shoot in 60fps you want to double your shutter speed to 1/125 a second.
If you’d like to learn more about capturing better b-roll with any camera, here is a video I made.
Your Video Is Shot! Now What?
Now it’s time to edit your video! Which is a whole other can of worms and requires a separate blog post. For now I’ll leave you with the best free edit software for you to download and start trying. It’s called Da Vinci Resolve. It is a professional edit software and a majority of Hollywood use it for color grading. They have a free version you can learn on if you want to try professional editing yourself and if you like it you can upgrade to the full version for $300 which is the cheapest professional editing program out there. Of course iMovie and third party apps work as well.
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