So you've just discovered (or been told) that your company needs a video... and you're in charge of it. Congratulations! You are about to embark on a fun and exciting journey- one that is not always easy, but one that will leave you with a true sense of accomplishment, positive reactions from your customers, and hopefully... a pretty feather in your cap for the boss.
You have the privilege to create basically something out of nothing, where the sky is the limit. Starting with a gaseous idea (creativity), together we'll begin to mold and shape a moving and engaging presentation of only pictures, music and sound. Intangible items that can, when properly combined, strongly persuade your audience to believe in and stand behind your message.
Oh, but wait... just what is your message? That is the greatest question you could possibly ask yourself now. Before anything else... before the storyboards are inked, before the lights come up, and before the camera rolls... you must determine a central and resounding message.
This may seem like the absolute obvious, like there should be a quick and easy answer. But believe me, this can often be the most difficult decision of the entire process. And for good reason too. Most companies and their advocates are excited about what they do. They are excited about the opportunity to use video to tell their story. As a result, they are often reluctant to let any of the detailed selling points hit the cutting room floor. When producing a video, though, this is the amateur's demise. You cannot approach video production as you would any other form of print material. It just doesn't translate. It leads to a mundane, unsuccessful product.
I often ask my clients a series of questions, some basic and some bizarre; to help them narrow down what really is important. My favorite basic question is always this: "If your audience could take away just one thing from your video, what would it be?" Video is a powerful medium, but one that must be focused and concentrated to be effective. We've all seen a video where the copywriter threw in everything and the kitchen sink. What's the one thing we all took away from that video? Nothing... in fact, it took from us several minutes of our lives we'd love to have back. Luckily, we can take advantage of the fact that today's generation is extremely media savvy.
We've been brought up on moving pictures that tell us stories without using words. Go back and watch a movie from the 1930s when audiences weren't keen to deciphering information from a moving picture medium. Everything is blatant and often ridiculously spelled out in great length. Today's audience is deftly capable of garnering plots, sub-plots, character nuances and clues from a mere five seconds of cleverly crafted flashing pictures and sound. So if you could take away one thing from this article it would simply be this: Effective videos rely on the old adage, "A picture is worth a thousand words." Once you've found your one (I repeat... one) message, let the pictures begin to circulate around that message and tell a thousand more stories. You don't need the voiceover narrator to explain every little detail of your story. That is not interesting to your viewer. Instead, rely on a good director and crew to splash your story across the screen with rich, well thought out images. These images will support your message, yet quickly expound upon it in ways you didn't even know were possible. If a factory wants to tout that their production floor is very "clean and orderly," we wouldn't bother even saying it. We'd emphasis it best by just properly showing it. Seeing a well crafted shot, in High Definition preferably, down the factory line with each workstation in impeccable order while hearing the workers' shoes squeak as they walk by screams this sub selling point with a credibility found nowhere else.
It may feel like too subtle an approach at times, but once you sit down to view the final cut in the editing suite with a latte, you can't help but realize you've built a product that delivers a resounding impact. Your video production experience will be that much more rewarding, and your product will be that much more effective if you just let go of the kitchen sink and surround your one true message with beautiful pictures that speak for themselves.
Television And Video Production
Youtube is the most popular internet television or video distribution site on the Internet and currently ranks number 16 on Alexa for most visited websites. YouTube offers anyone with an internet connection the ability to upload video clips and share them with friends, family, and the world, all for free. Users are invited to leave comments, pick favorites, send message to each other and watch videos sorted into subjects or channels. Videos are served with Adobe Flash are viewable on almost any modern computer.
For Content Producers
Pros
Fast video approval time, they basically approve anything, even copyrighted material (copyrighted material may eventually get pulled or deleted if they catch you). YouTube receives lots of visitors so your videos have the potential to get viewed a TON of times, especially if your video makes it on one of the top viewed, or most discussed video lists for the week, month, or for all time. Each content producer gets their own profile page and unique channel where users can subscribe to your content and be alerted whenever you upload a new video.
Cons
Limited file size of 100 Megs and a limited video length of 10 minutes. For longer lengths you have to apply for a director's account and wait for approval. You video is served in Adobe Flash, so the resolution is downgraded. Tons of garbage content so your video may get "lost" in a sea of people lip singing and boot shake videos. Content creators receive no compensation and users can't download your video to their computer.
For Content Consumers
Pros
There are lots of videos to watch. Being the 16th most popular site on the internet, you get the largest total amount of videos and video creators. This site is even more popular then Google video. Users can embed videos in their regular blogs, Myspace, or on their personal websites. You can subscribe to your favorite content producers and receive notifications whenever they post anything new. They have the most substantial set of video lists I've seen on any video distribution site. You can view videos sorted by most recent, most viewed, top rated, most discussed, top favorites, most linked, recently featured, worst rated, by category, by groups and by channel (every user has their own channel). Each one of those lists can further be divided by date range, giving you lots of different ways to sort through the vast amount of clips there.
Cons
You can't download the movie clips to your personal computer. You can "save" them to your favorite and create play lists etc, but there is no easy way to say burn them on a DVD and watch the videos on your regular TV. Almost all of the videos are short amateur clips, meaning that most of the content is relatively low quality. So you'll have to sort through tons and tons of junk to find anything good, not to mention lots of it is just copies of things broadcasted on regular television, so you'll spend a bunch of time watching tiny net videos which are "old" traditional broadcasting content.
Community
Lots of comments and discussion, but the site doesn't feature any long articles or any substantial reviews, so most comments consist of one sentence or two sentences. Their site offers, favorites, Groups, message, inbox, playlists, and user profiles, the standard set of customized community features that are on almost all social networking sites, via it be myspace or any one of it's many clones.
Comparison with other online video distribution sites:
Youtube has the most content, but if you want to save a copy to your personal computer try Google Video or Veoh. Veoh actually lets you download the video in its original resolution (very nice) and doesn't contain any length or size limits. As of now, it still consists mostly of the same type of videos as all of the other similar sites though.
Overall Value
Youtube is a fun site and everyone should visit it at least once. Don't expect it to replace your normal viewing patterns anytime soon and be prepared for juvenile comments, and lots of bad karaoke videos, but there are some interesting clips there and viewing amateur content is surprising addicting. Don't think YouTube is the end all of Internet tevision though, I would highly recommend you also check out their major competitors (Google Video, Veoh, Yahoo Video, and Addicting Clips just to name a few)
All the community features could potentially be very cool and useful, but currently I don't think most users will want to take advantage of them, considering the quality of most of the video content. How many people's vblogs of them singing and dancing do you actually want to subscribe to? This will almost certainly change as the internet television revolution continues.
If you are promoting your own videos make sure to setup an account, but don't put all your eggs in this basket either, make sure you post your video other places too. YouTube is the most popular, but there are lot of major players in the Internet Television and Video Distribution Market.
Future of YouTube
The future of YouTube seems to be uncertain, they are currently being sued and have yet to come up with a successful business model, they are for now going to try and sell advertising. Most of the content they carry consists of stuff ripped off from conventional television or amateur user created videos like people's v blogs, or webcam singing and dancing. The copyright violations have led to a few lawsuits, including one that is currently pending right now. The website repeatedly gets asked to remove content and without viable a revenue model is hard to manage. With bandwidth needs rising rapidly, YouTube's future is uncertain in its current state. With so much demand and traffic YouTube is definitely not going to go away, but may work substantially different in the very near future.
Both Pat Bedall & Solomon Rothman are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Pat Bedall has sinced written about articles on various topics from Information Technology. Metro Productions is a full-service video and multimedia production company headquartered in Virginia. Metro Productions provides clients with the ability to realize the benefits of high-end visual media products for the purpose of sales, marketing, recru. Pat Bedall's top article generates over 14800 views. to your Favourites.
