Take the voodoo out of video, part 1

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.