May 2016

The truth about video duration

As a leading explainer video company, we know that the world around us moves at an ever-increasing pace, and the way customers consume media and information seems to be evolving at the same speed. We know that animated explainer videos are great tools for businesses to boost their online presence in an accessible way but how should you start to plan them and most importantly, how long should they be. Well statistics show that when it comes to animated explainer videos or corporate videos the optimum length of any material you produce is 2 minutes. After that you’ll start to lose viewers pretty quickly.

Retaining your message

But why are short online videos more effective in engaging your audience? Surely you can get more messages across in a longer video? In theory, yes, but research shows that if you try to bombard the viewer with multiple messages in a 5 minute video, they will retain less of your messaging than they would if you kept your video short and simple. If the online video is too long or contains multiple messages, it can even end up creating a negative impact on the viewer (as they’ll associate boredom with your brand!). The stats certainly back this up.

So let’s look at why shorter animated explainer videos are more effective when delivering your message and engaging your audience.

Attention spans

In the digital world, addressing attention spans (or lack of them) is critical for any explainer video company. Generally our digital attention span is much shorter than our real world attention span. We know that whatever digital media we are viewing can be replaced and substituted with something else in a heartbeat. We can click ‘Stop’, ‘Next’, ‘More’ or even ‘Close’ way before we’ve engaged with even half the content we’re presented with.

Be honest, how many times have you closed a page that you’ve not yet reached the bottom of?

So the online digital experience exaggerates modern life’s shortening attention spans and makes short bursts of communication much more powerful.

Cost

Shorter animated films cost less! Its that simple.

Now we need to stress that this is NOT always the case with live action video marketing but it’s certainly true when producing animated explainer videos.

Yes, you can spend just as much producing a 30 second viral as you could producing a 10 minute brand film, but generally speaking, shorter videos require less post production (ie animation etc), less pre-production (much less to storyboard etc) and even less delivery time – They can be uploaded and shared much quicker due to the final smaller file size. So producing short play animated explainer videos can be beneficial to your marketing budget.

Mobile

However, one of the main reasons that short online videos have greater traction and impact is down to mobile streaming. We’re now very used to seeing video online and we don’t accept blocky, grainy, overly compressed footage anymore, as we’re now accustomed to watching HD on our portable devices even if we’re in the middle of the woods!

Shorter video will stream and download much quicker due to it’s physical attributes. Their file sizes are smaller and so they are easy and quick for customers to view and more importantly share or send.

Message

As mentioned earlier on, keeping your online video message simple and clear will result in greater impact and engagement. Yes, your product may have 20 USPs but if you try to ram them down your customers throats they’ll end up dazed and overloaded with all the points you want to get across. Or worse still, they’ll become snow-blind by all your information and click off the video, having remembered none of it. If you have lots to say then the best way is to produce several short videos rather than one long epic!

There’s not really much else to say on this. However, one of the best ways to highlight why shorter video marketing works is to examine your own online video habits. Make a mental note every time you don’t finish a video that you’ve started playing – check to see when you stopped, and ask yourself why.

Most online behaviour is universal so when producing your video marketing material ask yourself whether you’d be willing to watch it to the end. If the answer is no then you can put good money on the chance that no-one else will either.

To find out more about us and our services, please click here.

Digital media production is increasingly one of the most important digital marketing tools in today’s world. Developing a great video will engage viewers and increase the time they spend browsing your website by a considerable margin, so getting your video strategy right is important. But a lot of online viewers admit to not watching a lot of videos all the way to the end. But why is that? These are some of the mistakes you can make that cause your audience to tune out.

It’s too long

We’ve talked before about optimum runtimes for video marketing (see blog) but the thrust of it is that beyond 2 minutes, you start to see a major drop off in viewing figures, and from there it’s a downward curve. We live in an age of constant on-demand content, where we no longer have to commit to one source for our entertainment. If you want more people to engage with your video, you have get to the point quickly. If you review your video and find that it’s dragging, chances are the audience will come to the same conclusion and stop watching.

Complex Jargon

This is normally only an issue in the corporate sector and depends on the audience you’re trying to reach, but if your audience includes the average person, you may have to adjust your mode of address to keep people interested. The corporate sector can include a lot of “boardroom language” which can be hard to separate yourself from when you need to boil a concept down to it’s simplest form in a way that understandable to a layman. This is where your digital media production company should make script suggestions.

Bad Sound

We’ve covered this before but we really can’t stress enough how important good quality sound is in digital media production. People can tolerate bad images to an extent, but won’t give an inch to poor quality sound and will turn your video off straight away.

No Charisma

If you ask someone if they’re likely to buy a product if they want a good quality video about it, they’ll probably say no. Nobody likes to think that they can be swayed by typical marketing tricks and many make the decision to rail against them. But a presenter or an interviewee comes along with just the right amount of charisma, those people might suspend their disbelief for the duration of the video. All it takes is for a representative of a brand to come across as laughably unenthusiastic, and the engagement with your video will be dead.

To find out more about us and our services, please click here.

The most successful corporate videos are the culmination of solid planning, productive shoot days and considered editing. It’s within grasp for companies and organisations alike to manage these elements in house. But it’s often the shoot days that turn out to be the most complicated and potentially stressful, and it’s here that novice producers could find themselves under the most pressure to get things done. Here are 5 simple things that you can do to ensure you have the most productive shoot day possible.

Do a Recce

On a previous blog, we talked about how important it is that you do a recce before the shoot. This is important because every location presents certain opportunities and certain limitations, and you should know what these are before you turn up with a camera in hand – you could come across something you didn’t anticipate which causes you to change your plans. Things to consider on recces include power facilities, position of the sun (if it’s outside) and noise considerations.

Know Your Shots

Doing a recce will also help you to plan the shots you need to get in a rough order. By laying out exactly what you need to capture, you can create a timetable to record your content, which will help to keep you on schedule during the shoot day.

Bring Spares of Everything

The last thing you want on a corporate video shoot is to be caught out by not having all the equipment you need. Plans can change and shoots can overrun, so plan for the worst by bringing spares of as much equipment as you can. Batteries and media cards are two things that are famous for running out just as you need them, so bring as many as possible. On bigger and longer shoots it’s worth taking battery charging units to charge spares as you shoot, and bringing a card reader to offload and reformat media cards if you’re not sure you’ve got enough to last you the day.

Employ a Runner

If you’ve taken charge of the shoot as a producer/director, then you’re at the centre of the action and the shoot can’t proceed without you. So what happens if you need to put some batteries on charge, load spare equipment into a van, or provide lunch for everyone at the shoot? It’s simple – bring a runner on to the shoot with you. Brief them before the shoot starts and they can get on with taking care of the simpler tasks leaving you free to do your job.

Of course shoots are often unpredictable anyway, but these problems are typical of corporate video shoots. If you take the time to plan and build in safeguards like these, you’ll have a more productive shoot day.

To find out more about us and our services, please click here.

Video editing essentials

If you’re thinking of producing your video marketing or (hopefully) viral marketing material in house, then obviously you need the right equipment. For the actual shoot there is a glittering array of options in terms of cameras, lighting and sound etc, but what about once the shooting stage is complete? This part of the process is called ‘post production’ and if you’re planning on doing this in house rather than finding an agency to supply video editing services, then there are some vital tools that you’ll need.

Editing Software

So the most obvious thing you’ll need is some software to edit the footage that you’ve shot. This kind of software comes in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and costs, but essentially it will do the same basic job. It allows you to quickly and easily sequence video clips, audio and graphics to form your final film. Depending on the complexity of the edit and the scale of your project you may want to go with a professional editing software package, but there are lots of software packages out there aimed at the enthusiast which are more than capable of doing this job for you.

At the highest end of software comes AVID. This is the software that most of the Hollywood movies you see in the cinema are edited on, and it’s the only editing package the BBC will touch. It’s well suited to large-scale projects and is powerful and robust enough to handle anything you throw at it. But what if you’re working on something much more typical to companies who supply video editing services to businesses such as just cutting together a simple interview?

Well, both Adobe and Apple offer great and instinctive editing software in the form of Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro. You can sequence, edit and colour grade your footage easily in these applications, and they come with a great array of tools to enhance your edit. They are priced reasonably and would generally be our suggested approach. However if your budget is sensitive, there are stripped down editing packages available such as iMovie that are often free and perfectly adequate for simple editing tasks.

So other than the basic editing, what else will you need?

Sound

You may want to enhance your film by cleaning up the sound a little. Noise pollution can be a factor on any shoot and a good sound editing tool will allow you to reduce any unwanted sound and enhance the sound you do want. With most projects we produce, there are 2 main tasks we perform in sound editing applications: we can eliminate any unwanted background noise (such as air conditioning) and also apply filters to the sound so that people’s voices remain at a constant volume level (these filters are called “Limiters”), which you may need if someone’s voice varies in loudness, and if you want to keep the voice soaring above musical tracks you might lay in the background.

Software such as Apple’s Soundtrack Pro or Adobe Audition are our ‘go to’ applications but there are many more on the market that will do just as good a job.

Animated Graphics

So next up, you may want to add some animation to your film. Having a dynamic animated logo at the start or end of your film can really elevate the brand and give it a higher production value. For this we turn to motion graphics software.

Within most editing packages are ‘drag and drop’ effects that you can apply to any clips that you have. However most video editing services providers steer well clear of these as they often result in slightly gimmicky effects that look as if they belong on a 1980s TV game show. The other drawback is that as they are an easy ‘drag and drop’ option, they are very often overused (and therefore could be in your competitor’s video marketing) so its always wise to try and create logo animation that is bespoke and original. To achieve this you’ll probably need 2 pieces of software which are mainstays of most video editing services.

Firstly a pixel-based artwork package like Adobe Photoshop to prep and create the basic artwork (although vector tools such as Adobe Illustrator would be just as good).

Secondly you’ll need some motion graphics software. In this case there is only one package that we use which is Adobe After Effects. After Effects is a robust and comprehensive motion graphics and animation package that will produce just about anything you require, and as with AVID, it’s very often used by Hollywood visual effects artists. It requires a fairly in-depth skill set so its not a ‘jump on and go’ option but you can find ample online training at sites such as the excellent Video Co-pilot. You can use it to add a touch of high end animation to your film that will lift it above your competitors.

Video editing services – Storage

Next up is storage. Digital film files are BIG! There’s no way around this, so you will need large and speedy storage systems in place for your files to sit on and be accessed from. A lot of corporate film makers like ourselves use G-Tech Thunderbolt hard drives which allow us to copy our raw files to them quickly and work without any read/write lag. However, there are other options out there, and storage space and price go hand in hand so identify a robust and quick storage facility if you’re processing video in house.

Delivery

Finally, you need a good delivery platform to help you distribute the fruit of your video editing services. Throughout most video projects, draft edits and approval edits may need to be shared quickly with multiple stakeholders in the project. So having a quick and easy way for them to view the edits means that feedback times are reduced and project runs more smoothly.

For this we’d suggest a Vimeo Pro account. It allows you to quickly and easily upload multiple HD files that colleagues can view on their desktop, laptop, tablet and smart phone. The other obvious platform to upload videos to is YouTube, but Vimeo has features that are more suited to corporate video projects, such as the ability to password protect the video, and replace the video with an updated version without changing the web address.

Having this quick and easy sharing platform greatly reduces delay on feedback and allows you to complete projects in good time.

So that’s it really. Yes, processing the post production of your video in house rather than contracting out to a video editing services company requires some time and financial investment, but it can be worthwhile and it gives you ultimate control over your final video marketing output.

To find out more about us and our services, please click here.