Lights, Camera, Action! - Putting Your Business on Video (Part II)

Picking up where we left off, here are the other things you need to think about when planning, creating, shooting and editing a video to help promote your business and all the value you bring to your customers.

You can never have enough b-roll
B-roll, or background footage, is the wallpaper you use to help tell the story. It's run with a voiceover or narrative and makes the story you're telling come alive, giving it a sense of place. If you don't have enough, it's just talking heads. I just finished a shoot at a service bureau where I captured over an hour of widely varied b-roll, only a few fragments of which will wind up in the 5-7 minute video I'll ultimately produce. But all that footage gives me lots to choose from without using the same clips over and over again.

Light 'em up!
The lights in your offices and plant floors are fine for working, but fall short when it comes to video. They're the wrong color, nowhere near bright enough, and put shadows and highlights in places you don't want them to be. And natural light from outside the building may not be your friend. Quality video lights make a big difference in how the finished a video looks. Remember, although this video may be primarily viewed on the Web, it is still representing your company. Good lighting is one of the key points that differentiate quality video from homegrown footage.

Sound check!
Another differentiator is audio. Capturing good video is not too hard these days, but audio is still a challenge. Shooting video of press operators in your plant with masonry floors and walls, a high ceiling and equipment running is way beyond the capability of the microphones on typical consumer cameras. You need wired or wireless personal mikes or boom mikes to get good quality audio and control ambient noise.