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All you need to know about explainer video production

By February 2, 2017March 23rd, 2020Explainer Video

You’ll never look back…

Animated explainer videos are useful for clearly explaining complicated topics. They’re a great way to communicate with employees, existing customers, and prospective clients. So what are they, why do they work, and what are the first steps to making one? Here’s everything you need to know.

What are they?

Animated explainer videos… sounds complicated, right? Well they’re not as tricky as they sound. Put simply, an animated explainer video is a kind of computer animated graphic. Usually two to three minutes long and backed by a voiceover, the video uses diagrams, illustrations, and sometimes text, to clearly explain complicated topics.

Why do they work?

“A picture paints and thousand words” has never been more true than with a animated explainer video. It’s not surprising when you think about how visual the human brain is. But more than that, it comes down to the way people live their lives. Gone are the days where we have half an hour plus to sit down and read a heavy piece of text, when the same information can be clearly communicated in a three minute video.

Are they effective online?

In short, yes. More than that- Diode Digital have reported that over 60% of internet users watch videos before reading text on a website. And it’s not only the people you have to think about here: Google absolutely loves videos. So much so that Forrester calculate that a web page with a video is 53x more likely to be the first result on a Google search that a page without one.

What first steps can you take?

Producing an animated explainer video is a multistep process, and changes depending on what style of video works for you, but don’t be put off. The first thing you can do is watch some videos, a simple search on YouTube for ‘animated explainer video’ will show you plenty of options, or check out this playlist. Find a video you like and search for a video production company near you. Discuss the video you’ve found and they’ll be happy to talk you through the next steps.

fortyfoursixteen films

fortyfoursixteen films has over 15 years experience producing high quality video content for leading brands and organisations throughout the UK. Headed up by lead producer Neil Waddington we aim to create innovative, inspiring and engaging video for a wide variety of digital delivery platforms.