You have finally realized the effectiveness of video marketing and are ready to produce your first video. Video production is a challenging task and you are likely to fail before you succeed. The important thing you need to understand is that the most important part of the video production is the pre-production phase.
Pre-production phase refers to the part where you decide everything regarding the kind of video you are going to make, how you are going to produce the video, how you are going to stick to the budget and various other such things. So, preproduction is the most important part of video production and here are a few video pre-production tips to help you get started.
Decide on Your Targeted Audience and Your Message
Before you do anything, figure out your audience. It involves building buyer personas and creating a video targeted at a specific audience instead of creating a generic video that is not going to be as effective as a targeted video. Do not try to target everyone.
Create a video for a specific buyer persona and the message should be to tell them how your service or product relates to them. As far as the messaging is concerned, do not try to do everything in a single video. Every video should have a specific message with a specific goal in mind if you want your video marketing efforts to bear good results. If you’re not getting any ideas, watch some highly successful video marketing campaigns to get your mind rolling.
Budget
Budgeting is extremely important. Without proper budgeting, you won’t be able to manage expectations and will end up under delivering. If you are working with a video production company, having a budget in place allows them to produce the highest quality video within your budget. It also sets boundaries and eliminates guesswork.
Write a Script and Keep Revising It
Writing a script for a video is a specialist job. Not everyone knows how to write script for a video. Many times, teams end up writing and executing the script without taking their time to critique it and revise it. Some of the most successful video marketing campaigns spent months writing and rewriting their script before doing anything.
In fact, their tagline came from the script itself. In many cases, your script would have undergone several revisions by the time production is done. So, take your time and spend as much time as you want writing the script in order to create a successful video.
Video Length
Research suggests that longer videos fail to hold the attention of viewers after the first few minutes. Therefore, it is important to decide on the video length right at the beginning. It is suggested to keep your videos to around two minutes in order to hold your viewer’s attention while delivering the message.
Storyboarding
Storyboarding is the process of visualizing the video before it is shot. There are several online resources that can help you understand the basics of storyboards and how you can use it to visualize the video before shooting it. It allows you to make necessary adjustments.
In simple terms, it may be defined as putting the script on paper. You will figure out where the light comes from, the location and the shots required for the video to work as outlined in the script. There are a number of online tools that allow you to storyboard the script even if you are not that good at drawing.
Shot List
A scene is made up of many video shots. Creating a shot list is like creating a step-by-step breakdown of each scene in the video. This list will include specifics such as placement of the camera, lighting direction and other such things. Having a storyboard along with a shot list will save you a lot of time during actual video production.
Production Schedule
It is also known as shooting schedule. Basically, it’s a way to organize things and manage the expectations of all the stakeholders. It allows you to keep track of everything including people needed for the shoot, equipment, location, contact information of required people, scenes and shots as well as the date and time among other things. A well-prepared production schedule should be a one-stop shop for all questions related to production and it should also be updated on a regular basis.
Visit All the Locations Ahead of Shoot
Whether you decide to shoot on location or in a studio, it is important that you visit it beforehand. It will allow you to have a realistic production schedule. For instance, you might have decided to shoot on location but when you visit the actual location, you might discover that the lighting is not right for the kind of shots you want to take. Similarly, inclement weather can play spoilsport with all your plans.
Equipment
As far as the equipment needed for video production is concerned, it is important that you have everything in place before the video production even begins. Typically, a video production manager manages all your equipment needs.
Conclusion
Overall, having a pre-production schedule and checklist in place is the key to creating an engaging and useful video. Without proper pre-production, you might end up shooting a video that does not deliver the intended message. So, keep the above-mentioned tips in mind and work on your script and your message before you do anything in order to come up with a high quality video.
If you want the best video production company in San Francisco to help you with your project, call us today. You can also visit our website at http://level2p.com to fill out our contact form.