​More tips and tricks to help you make video marketing a reality.Move on to your other sound strategy (the audio kind).
Whoever you’re trying to reach will forgive you for less-than-stellar video quality. Not so much with sound. Screw that up and say goodbye to your audience.

• Try to follow the three-foot rule: get your sound recording device within three feet of what you’re recording.
• That may mean using an audio recording device that’s different than your video recording device.
• It does make it a bit more difficult to create the final video. But with a little post-shoot editing, it will be worth the improved sound quality.

A value investment that will make your mobile phone shoot look like a pro’s.
No matter what you’re shooting with, a tripod is a must. Even if you’re shooting with a phone, there are plenty of tripods and adaptors you can pick up. And even if you like that raw, shaky camera look you see in so many suspense dramas, you’ll most likely need a tripod for some of your shots to give your motion-sick viewers a break from the shaky shots. Also, there will be times when you’re working on your own and want to set your camera in one location while you move to another to interview a person or shoot with a second camera.

• Tripods are available for just about any budget. A basic one can start for as low as $30.
• More advanced ones bring you a world of smooth tilting, panning and stability features.
• If you are shooting on the run and want a bit of motion in your shots, just fold up the legs and use your tripod as a monopod.

​
More tips are on the way. Stay tuned.
Mark Bellusci is an award-winning filmmaker, published playwright and freelance copywriter. The filmmaking and playwriting started as hobbies, became crafts, and are now how he makes his living, along with copywriting. And somewhere along the way, he picked up an MBA from Baruch College, CCNY. See his stuff at markbellusci.com
#video #videotips #videoproduction #videography #videohowto #videoadvice #makeyourownvideo #makeyourvideo

Got 10 minutes? Check out our latest Street Writers podcast. It’s got a great tip on a great tool that Dan Chichester swears by, a review of the great Sandman Slim series, and an intro to Mark’s series of articles on creating videos.
#podcast #podcastlife #podcastshow #writingtips #howtowrite #businesswriting #creativewriting
https://anchor.fm/streetwriters/episodes/Street-Writers---Storymatic-e3c39q

It’s the video content revolution, right?
With a bazillion videos on YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook and elsewhere. About kittens in boxes, people taking selfies, cinnamon challenges and other Earth-shattering stuff.

But where are the business videos?
Sure, there are big budget productions by corporate giants. But compelling videos by businesses of all sizes that don’t break the bank? Um ... crickets.

I have no clue what’s holding everything up.
It can’t be cost, because video prices have fallen through the floor. And you have enough to start shooting right now with your phone camera.
So to help clear the bottleneck, I’ve put together some tips that have helped me over the years, and can help you, too.

Start with a sound strategy.
Your budget may be limited, but your brainpower isn’t. Plan what you’d like your video to accomplish. Among the options are:

• Generating leads
• Going viral and/or landing in a festival
• Providing clear instructions on your product

​Once you’ve established your goals, write a video strategy to achieve them. Then, crank out a video script (if you’re interviewing someone, these would be your interview questions). Going into a shoot with a well-conceived strategy and script will make it much easier to bring your video to life.
See it before you shoot it.After you’ve created your strategy and script, visualize your shoot with a storyboard. This is a series of still images (photos, line art or stick figures) and corresponding captions that describe the action. Visualizing what, how and why you want to shoot will give you direction and focus for your video production, and enable you to test out different shots and scenarios before the real thing.

• There are plenty of nifty storyboarding apps available
• Or use tried-and-true stick figures doodled on paper, or digitally on the Apple notes app or Android equivalent.
• Here’s an example of the storyboard I created for a recent film we produced, We Should Give a S**t:

Whatever you can shoot with is probably good enough.Don’t have the money to invest in a professional video kit? Don’t need it.

• That phone in your pocket or purse most likely has a camera that’s better than professional cameras were as little as 5 years ago (4K, 120 frames a second: mind-boggling).
• Filmmakers like Stephen Soderberg (Oceans Eleven, Logan Lucky) are now making Hollywood releases exclusively on mobile phones and tablets.
• So pull your phone out, get to know its video features, and start playing with it (more about how to get the most of your phone camera later.)

More tips are on the way. Stay tuned.