Videos for social media are a DIY job. For something which will last a bit longer than today there is a process.
Regardless of its size, complexity or final destination there are four key stages to producing a video.
Pre-production
This is where you brief the project – taking into account every aspect of the production including each of the additional ways in which the entire presentation (or clips from it) might be used online, mobile phone, e-mail shots etc. The script or plan is written at this stage. It might be wise to draw up a storyboard as well, to determine the look and feel of the finished production. From this it will become obvious how much filming is required. It’s a good idea to prepare a shot list and group the shots in order of location, day etc.
Production
The production stage is where all elements of the finished presentation are brought together. This involves shooting the video footage, recording the voice-over and/or in-vision presenter, gathering any other assets such as stills graphics and preparing any music or sound effects which are to be used.
Post-production
Basically – the edit. The proceeds from the production stage are logged, viewed, sorted and edited to a first approval stage. You get the opportunity to amend, add, change your mind, etc. on everything you see. These comments are then incorporated into a second approval version where only small ‘tweaks’ are required. Final polishing of sound and grading of images now takes place and the final video is ready for encoding to the various formats required.
YouTube/Vimeo/Self-host?
YouTube is for search engine optimisation. Put a copy of your video on YouTube, add SEO metadata and insert links to your website. Don’t use YouTube to host your video on your own website. Why? Because you have little or no control over how your video will appear. You have little or no control over which adverts appear before, during and after your video plays. Also when your YouTube hosted video finishes the viewer will be presented with 9 alternative ‘related’ videos to choose from. You can be sure your competitors will be amongst them, along with some completely off-the-wall videos that may even be offensive. And all this embedded on your website?? Also, YouTube and Google work together to create revenue for themselves and as such can and do completely change the rules when they like and without telling you.
Vimeo is for high quality video which you control. No adverts, no ‘related’ choices at the end and complete control over the thumbnail image, control over what happens at the end of your video, and comprehensive analytics which tell you who watched your video, how they found it and where they came from.
Self-hosting is when you upload a video to the same server as your website and hope that it will play. Don’t do it. It will slow your website down to a crawl and may even bring it down altogether. There are alternatives but unless you are streaming to hundreds of thousands (i.e. broadcasting) they can be very expensive.
Our team Of Video Production Experts are available to talk through any questions you may have about Video Production and are on hand at our Stroud Studios to discuss your video requirements.