MD Internet Marketing Solutions

Tips For Making Company Videos Emotionally Engaging

Almost everyone knows that emotionally charged marketing videos have a far greater impact on viewers than boring videos with someone just standing there talking.

An emotionally charged video can mean the difference between the viewer taking action, i.e. calling for your services or filling their online shopping cart, or just clicking the back button to go to someone else’s site or video.

In this short article we will cover 2 very simple things that you can do to help make your company marketing videos more engaging.

Video Marketing Tips

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Make Use Of B Roll Footage

The first thing that you can do in creating more emotion is by using what’s called in the business as “B-Roll”. What is B roll? The real short answer is additional footage inserted as a cutaway to help tell a story.

For instance, let’s say you own a roofing company. While you may have yourself or a spokesperson in front of the camera talking about how your company replaces a roof you carefully inspect all of the underlying decking. While you are talking this would be a good time to cut away to footage of your crew that actually has the shingles stripped from the roof and are inspecting the decking.

Basically you can use B roll to just get your message across by VISUALLY explaining and keep changing what’s on the screen to help keep the viewer engaged.

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If you are new to creating videos it can be hard to figure out what would make good B roll for you to use. Michael Maher wrote an article on shutterstock that can help you with making b roll of the person you are interviewing for your video:

Make Small Talk

During pre-production, you develop an overall feel for the final video. Is this an upbeat happy project? Does it deal with very serious subject matter? By knowing the type of corporate video you’re filming, you can plan for some additional shots — and the type of direction you’ll have to give your subject to capture those shots — well in advance of the shoot.

On the day of the shoot, spend some time with the interviewee to warm them up to the camera. One of the best tricks is to film while you and the subject have a conversation. Ask them about their day, their position with the company, or little details about their life, like if they have any children.

Capture Movement

While the interviewee warms up to you, take the time to capture their subtle movements. Are they grasping their hands? Do they fidget with a ring or watch? Are they checking their phone? These b-roll shots will add a genuine personality to the video, and you can cut to them at anytime. After you get a few of these moments, guide the subject to their mark and have them get in place. Continue Reading The Full Article Here…

In that article Michael has some pretty good tips for getting b roll of the interviewee. But we think and know there are a lot more ways to get good b roll for your video.

At Indiewire.com they recently posted this about other great ideas for getting b roll:

1.People. It might be laborious, but take the time to arrange to shoot
models for b-roll. Models acting out business scenarios, or healthcare
scenarios, or playing sports These are the most commercially viable
clips.
2. Nature. Take advantage of the scenery around you,
and consider doing it outdoors. Filmmakers are always looking for great
panoramic clips. Timelapses are particularly popular.
3. Science. Get geeky. It’s a hard thing to shoot yourself because
it requires both knowledge and innovation to get it right. Digital
producers depend on b-roll to fill in content gaps in their productions,
as necessary.
4. “Industrial” is a growing category and has
emerged as a top performer. These scenes are in demand — “warehouse at
night” is an example of a well-searched keyword on Shutterstock. It can be used to set up scenes for criminal activity, and more.
5. Big cities. Create timelapses that demonstrate
the regular hustle and bustle of city living. Show the dark turn to day,
how a blank landscape evolves quickly into a busy one. Read The Entire Article Here…

So those examples will give you some good ideas and starting points as to where and what to make your b roll shots of for your company video.

Add Some Great Music

The second thing to help make your marketing videos more engaging – MUSIC! We know we have mentioned this before in other posts, but it bares repeating.

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Take a horror flick for instance. There is always some dumb ass kid that is wondering around a haunted house and is getting ready to peak around the corner. How ominous would the scene be without the scary music? The same goes with your company videos, although you may not want to use scary music from a horror flick!

So how do you go about selecting the perfect sound clip for your video? Here is a good snippet from an article done by Danny Greer at PremiumBeat.com:

Define The Music Early

If you’re reading this, it’s my hope that you’re seeking out music for your project before you finalize an edit! You’ll be one step ahead if you determine your music choices early on in the production process. Planning ahead will allow you to:

Get your client’s approval on music early on. The last thing you want is to finalize an edit and have a client come back and ask for a music change.

Utilize the music in your editing pace. Cutting to the music to drive energy and pace while cutting against can create tension. Make thoughtful choices about how you use music to work with your video edit.

Stay within budget. Nobody likes production surprises… especially when it comes to money. Licensing music early could curtail the chances of a budget issue later.

Some editors prefer to create a VERY rough cut of an edit and try different music tracks underneath to see which might work best. Once a track is decided upon, they can clean up the edit to match the music. It’s a useful approach, but must be done early on in the post-production process.

 Continue Reading “How to Pick the Perfect Music for Your Video Projects

Danny has some great tips about picking the right music for your video. We especially like his advice of making a rough edit and then finishing the video and making the video “match up” to the music.

One word of caution – don’t pick just any music to add to your video. Make sure you have the correct license and permission to use the music. Failure to do this can result in a couple of things happening, which are rather unwanted.

One, YouTube will recognize that the music is copyrighted and allow advertisements on your video. The advertisements can and probably will be your competition! Secondly, repeated copyright infringements can get your videos deleted and your channel deleted by YouTube.

There are several places that you can get totally royalty free music on the web. The YouTube audio library is one, just check if there is attribution required. You can also do a Google search to find a lot of places where you can get music.

So there you have it. The top 2 ways to make your company’s marketing videos more engaging. Just add some B roll and music and your videos should produce more sales and calls versus your competition that fails to use them 🙂