Archive for the ‘Making Video’ Category

An Introduction to Animation with Vidaao

Tuesday, June 18th, 2013
Jim Hohl and Justin Park are co-founders of Vidaao, a video production marketplace that connects marketing teams with creatives and provides them a collaborative project space. Justin ran a video production company and Jim a web design and development firm before joining forces. You can follow them on Twitter at @WeAreVidaao.

This guest post is a supplement to Vidaao's guest video, Intro to Animation, in our Learning Center.

If you haven't given any thought to using animation for your business videos yet, you're missing out.

Live acting is definitely engaging, but animation is charming. It can tap audience sympathies in ways only the best acting can match. An animated marketing video also gets rid of travel expenses and can cut the costs of video production. With just one dedicated animator, you have unlimited actors and sets at your fingertips. Here's how it works.

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Production Tips for Making Your Video Less of A Production

Monday, June 10th, 2013
Lauren Hill is Video Production Specialist at Volusion, an ecommerce platform that helps empower online business. Her background includes film, social media and marketing. She also really likes assorted jellybeans and balloon hats shaped like animals. You can check out more of her work on The Ecommerce Authority or send her a tweet at @lmhill.

This is guest post #2 in a series of 3 from Volusion. Be on the lookout for the next post in the near future.

In my last post, I discussed the importance of the pre-production and planning phase of creating a company culture video, all while showing you some of the key actions I took while putting together Volusion's.

Today I'll walk you through some of the most important components of the actual production process so you're armed with the right information when starting your own culture video.

To recap, by this stage, you should've already finished your shot planning, coordinated with your co-workers' schedules, and have a clear understanding of your organization’s goals. Now it's time to get started with the fun stuff - production!

Here's a look at four major considerations I made while working through Volusion’s culture video production:

Varying light environments

If you work in a big office like I do, you know that lighting has a tendency to change with every corner. You'll want to set up some time before you actually start shooting to test out the lighting in your office. Fluorescent, incandescent and outdoor lighting all look wildly different on camera. Occasionally, you'll have multiple light sources in one room that can make things a bit tricky, and if you happen to work with developers like I do, you might even find yourself in a dark cave-like area (love you guys!) that requires you to bring in several outside lighting sources:

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Learning Center: Weekly Videos with Moz

Thursday, June 6th, 2013

We just added "Weekly Videos with Moz" to the Wistia Learning Center:

Video isn't something you should do once and then be done with. As we covered on in our Make 5 Videos, Not 1 video, you need to be able to make videos over and over again. This can be intimidating, so we invited our friend Rand Fishkin to talk about how Moz creates excellent video every week for their Whiteboard Friday series.

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Learning Center: Wistia’s Scripting Tips

Thursday, May 30th, 2013

We just added "Wistia's Scripting Tips" to the Wistia Learning Center:

Some videos just need a script. We pretty much create a script for every video we create at Wistia, aside from testimonials and the How They Work series.

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Pre-Production Tips for a Killer Company Culture Video

Monday, May 20th, 2013
Lauren Hill is Video Production Specialist at Volusion, an ecommerce platform that helps empower online business. Her background includes film, social media and marketing. She also really likes assorted jellybeans and balloon hats shaped like animals. You can check out more of her work on The Ecommerce Authority or send her a tweet at @lmhill.

I'm of the opinion that, regardless of your size, every business can benefit from a culture video. It's the fastest and easiest way for people to gain a sense of who you are, what you do and how you work as an organization.

I recently went through the process of creating a new culture video for the Volusion team and, as a result, gathered a few nuggets of wisdom that I believe are helpful for any company looking to foray into this kind of video. While making a culture video is no easy feat, there are a couple of things you can do to help make the process as smooth (and fun!) as possible.

Pre-Production and Planning

From an organizational standpoint, there are a number of key ideas that you'll want to define. These can vary by company, but the following are absolutely essential throughout this process:

Define your audience

Is this a recruiting video or an advertisement for your company? It goes without saying (but I’m going to say it anyway) that a potential employee is very different from a potential customer. Defining your audience will help to better determine your needs throughout production. Hopefully, by this stage you’ve already identified why you want to make a video that’s representative of your company’s culture (in case you haven’t, here’s a little help), so defining your audience should be relatively easy.

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