Video: Direct-to-Camera with “Real People”

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AmydirectsIt happens more often than we’d all like to admit that inexperienced speakers are selected to deliver important information directly to the camera. Whether they are the head of a department, the leader of an initiative, an enthusiastic volunteer, or the child of the executive producer, this person might not be all that comfortable with a teleprompter, or might not work with cameras and crews every day the way professionals do. That doesn’t mean you can’t direct a confident delivery.  But your approach will need to differ from how you’d work with an actor or an experienced on-camera speaker.

I Need to Direct My Boss on Camera, Now What?!

One strategy for encouraging a natural delivery from your speaker is to do a quick Q&A with them off-camera first. I often stand farther away than is truly necessary, and lean forward. This is to encourage a slightly louder speaking voice from the talent. It forces us both to connect on purpose, not simply by default.  It’s surprising how often this Q&A approach works quite nicely, and feels natural.

Another strategy is to suggest in advance of your shoot day that the “host” practices a bit by recording themselves with their phone. Even though I have spoken before rooms with hundreds of people, before I taped my first Lynda.com course, I did the same thing. Speaking to a lens is vastly different than talking to people who react in real time. The first thing that struck me about my pre-recording was I didn’t smile enough. Even thinking about smiling helps the delivery seem more natural and congenial.

What About a Teleprompter?

Most folks aren’t aware of how much skill goes into reading from a teleprompter. Some people also do better with bullet points, rather than full copy. If you intend to use a prompter, you will need to add 30 minutes to your recording time for several rehearsals, to let the person get used to reading the words naturally. Most people trip up on one major issue: that the prompter follows them, not the other way around. They will get progressively slower as they read, waiting for the prompter to “catch up” when the prompter is actually following their speed. You’ll also need to add some big gaps to force people to slow down their read.

How to Work with Kids for Direct-to-Camera Videos

Kids are naturals. Don’t over-coach them. Do give them examples in advance from kids’ shows they like to watch.   Remember that audition pre-interview? Ask a few questions about shows they like, so you can reference them just before and during the shoot. Encourage kids to practice with their i-things at home. But the best thing you can do with kids is be a supportive cheerleader.  Use the same tools for keeping parents out of sightlines that you use with other gatekeepers: give them their own monitor, preferably out of the room. But check in periodically to be sure they’re happy.  Because a happy parent will be a great ally for you as you create a positive experience with your production team

This blog post is excerpted from my new book The Producer’s Playbook: Real People on Camera (Focal Press/Routledge). Purchase the book here Buy Real People on Camera. Or if you are coming to #NAB16 please stop by my Post|Production World session on getting the best with real people on camera – info Amy at NABShow on Real People.

 

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Branding Tips for Creative Freelancers

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The brand word gets thrown around too much. What does it actually mean when you’re a freelancer in creative work? If you’re a photographer, art director, graphic designer, video producer or editor, how do you establish your brand versus that of other folks who use the same tools you do and have similar skills?

Why You Think People Hire You

Most freelancers promote themselves with the skills they think people are looking for. Their websites show software mastered and lists of equipment owned. That’s fine. But this is just the basics. Loads of your competitors have these skills. What clients want to know is what PROBLEMS you can solve for them. So to properly brand and sell yourself, you need to consider what sets you apart.

Why People Actually Hire You

When pitching yourself, describe the personal attributes and abilities that make you a good problem-solver. It might be your positive attitude, your communications skills, your ability to work with challenging personalities, or your ability to lead a team. This is your unique brand value, and that’s what you need to be promoting!

What About My Portfolio?

More and more, prospective clients want me to show them a video that is pretty much like what they want to hire me to produce. This is a tricky problem. I’d love to show them my skills as a director and concept creator for a wide range of productions. But they might not understand how a 5-minute video about a hospital is relevant to their 1-minute opener for a corporate event. So I post custom links to Vimeo–sometimes even password protected–so they can see just the  projects that connect to the problem they want to solve. And I sometimes have to generate a set of brief storyboards to convey my concept for their project. More on that in a future post!

For more about branding, follow my tweets @brandbuzz or join me at NABShow where I’ll be speaking about Essential Business Skills for Freelancers at Post/ProductionWorldatNAB. 

Freelancer Tips Amy DeLouise

 

 

 

 

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Music Tells Your Video Story, Too

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ADMAR 2013

Hey, here I am playing a  violin solo in concert!

Most people focus on visuals when working on video storytelling. It’s a natural instinct. Our world is dominated by visuals-rich social media like SnapChat, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and more. But the audio track for your video is a critical part of your storytelling toolkit.  There are two options for music for video: original scoring and licensed stock music.

Original Music Scoring

A professionally composed score-to-picture, which usually includes at least one set of revisions, will run you a minimum of $2,500-3,500 for a 30-second spot, at least $3,500 for a 5 minute video, and upwards of $8,000 for a half-hour documentary. Name-brand musicians can cost you much more.  Fees for session musicians (a band or orchestra) are extra.  And don’t think about using your friend who plays an instrument–session players are pros who read every type of music imaginable and have perfect intonation on the first take. Many composers can do without live musicians for smaller-budget projects by using good quality sampled sounds. And most composers will negotiate on fee based on how busy they are right now, how quickly they think they can do your project, or simply because you are offering an interesting challenge or a distribution exposure that interests them.

Before you give up on an original score because of cost, remember that this music works PERFECTLY with every visual on screen and creates EXACTLY the kinds of moods and transitions you need from scene to scene. Trying to find stock music that fits the bill requires hours of your time to audition tracks, and then more hours of editing time to mesh them together and finesse endings that are usually not right for your visuals. So for many projects, an original score is well worth it.

What’s the Original Score Workflow?

  1. Cut Scenes to “Temp Tracks”. This means finding music–even pop songs you can’t license, since you are going to replace them–that are the right tempo and mood to edit your scenes. I might use three or four temp tracks in any given short form project. Or nine or 10 for a half-hour show. This would be a mess to edit, but we will simply replace all of these with our custom score (a process called “laying back”) once the original music score is finished.
  2. Get “Picture Lock”. Before you can score, you need a 100% approved video, with all the images and voices and “sound-ups” (where you hear what someone is saying during a piece of background footage) in fixed locations in your video timeline. Any slippage by even a few frames will mean adjusting the score with the composer.
  3. Output Video to Composer’s Specs. Most composers want a video file that has a visible time-code window, so they can be sure they are achieving perfect synchronicity with your show. Depending on the type of software they use, a composer will request a particular type of video file they like to work with.
  4. Talk! You’ll want to discuss with your composer what goals you are trying to achieve with your film or spot, and what different moods you want to create with various scenes. If I have a particular genre or style of instrumentation that I want, I will also share temp tracks as examples.

An experienced composer may be able to write your music to picture for a very short film in a single day. Depending on how I’ve negotiated the fee, we’ll usually go through at least one round of tweaks before we get to a final score and go to lay back.

Using Stock Music

There are many online sources for good stock music, which can range in cost from $35 per cut to $500 per cut, depending on the source and the kind of distribution license you need. Be careful to purchase a license for online distribution, even if you have other ways of getting your video out, because YouTube now regularly pulls down videos for lacking the proper music license.

Premium music libraries that offer better-sounding orchestrations, a wide range of musical styles, and different lengths and underscore versions of tracks include www.apmmusic.com www.killertracks.com and www.audionetwork.com . A great feature of  Audio Network for me as a musician is that they list the key the music is in. That allows me to search for a related key for a transition from one piece to another, rather than having an ugly transition between two keys that don’t sound good together, or are identical. There are also lower-cost libraries such as www.premiumbeat.com and www.audiojungle.net which have plenty of great tracks to choose from. My only issue with their music is that the mixes are often muddy and require additional audio adjustment work in a sound studio if you plan to use them in a large room for live event playback.

Why Music Matters

Whether you go with stock music or scored music, you need to create the right mood for your message. I recently had a client send me a series of cute kid testimonials in a series of promo videos that they had shot. Something in the rough-cuts of these video just wasn’t working. They wanted me to help re-arrange the soundbites for a more compelling story. But the first thing I did was send them the same cuts but with new soundtracks for each. Presto! You see, their corporate music track was completely undermining the quirky, real-world comments of the kids. With just a little bit of re-tooling, I had a much happier client, and a better video story.

Amy DeLouise is a video director/producer who is passionate about great music. Her new book The Producer’s Playbook: Real People on Camera comes out this spring (Focal Press/Routledge).

 

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Photos: Five Tricks for Keeping Track

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labyrinth copyright B.DeLouiseThanks to digital photography, organizations now have millions of photos to use in their promotions, websites and videos. But a photo is only useful if you can find it! As a video producer, I’m often fishing through massive files of photos labeled IMG1024 etc., trying to find just the right shot. Here’s a way to avoid that hassle and expense:

  1. Assign a Photo Guru. Even if multiple departments use and shoot photos, make one person responsible for your photo management system, and your tagging process. This person should create a cheat sheet for item 3 below.
  2. What Gets Measured Gets Done. Set a target for each quarter tied to institutional goals. Metrics might include not simply the number of photos to labeled and archived but how you are making them accessible to multiple departments/users/members/donors and how often they are getting reposted and linked back to primary content.
  3. Use Metatags. When an event is over, ingest all media cards and batch rename the files (while checking the box for retaining old metatag info) with the name and date of your event. If you hire professional photographers, give them the names you want to assign to each event or each day of a multi-day event. Your tagging work is not complete, but at least you have a good start. Most photo archiving systems will allow you to add other information such as who is featured in the photo and other keywords.
  4. Be Clear and Consistent. Don’t label your Los Angeles Gala photos “LAG” one year and “LA Gala” the next. In five years, no one will be able to find the LAG photos.
  5. What’s Old is New Again. From #TBT posts on social media to anniversary videos to website timelines, old photos get new life. Organizations that have been around since before digital will need to scan (at 200dpi minimum) old photos so that they can be re-purposed for web, social media, video, print and live event uses. This is a great job for a summer intern! But the intern will need to speak with the Photo Guru, above, so s/he understand key categories, institutional themes. Provide a handy photo “crib sheet” of important people for reference.

 

Amy DeLouise is a video producer/director who often finds herself slogging through unlabeled photo archives in search of the perfect shot!

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What (Not) to Wear on Camera

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While Sarah PalinJacketPalin glittered her way to a Donald Trump endorsement, most of us can’t pull off that on-camera look. In fact, it’s generally advised to stay away from shiny, high contrast fabrics, let alone shiny stuff dangling off a fabric. This is because contrast can confuse the camera sensor, and may cause a “moire effect”–the image may seem to vibrate. Especially once the quality is degraded through broadcast or Web compression.

So what’s best for your next event or appearance that will be recorded on video?

In this heady pre-primary season, take some cues from our political class. For women, solid jewel tones work well. Reds can be tricky. ButStateofUnionRed you’ll still see plenty of women wearing them for televised events like the inaugural swearing-in ceremony or the State of the Union address. (To be honest, purple stands out more, as in this photo of the SOU a few years back.) For men, a pop of color in a tie works well (see Lindsey Graham’s canary yellow). The same rulespopofcolorties about avoiding busy patterns and high contrast apply to both ties and scarves. The Prince of Wales is a natty dresser, but this combo of polka-dot tie on striped shirt would be a nightmare on camera.

It’s always best to bring a few options to a shoot, and if you have time, do a short screen test. And Prince-Charles-too busyif your production is against a green-screen back drop, of course avoid green (remember to check earrings, ties, etc!) or those elements will disappear–just like magic!

 

 

 

 

Amy DeLouise is a director/producer who works hard to make people look great on camera. Her book on producing with real people on camera comes out this spring from Focal Press.

 

 

 

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Tips for Branded #Storytelling with #Video

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Storytelling through video can help you advocate for a cause, raise awareness and money, train, and motivate.  And with video engagement levels and distribution platform options at an all-time high, charities, associations, government agencies and corporations are producing more reality-based short video content than ever before. But many communications teams launch into producing videos without a solid script. That can throw up unnecessary roadblocks to success. With a plan for your  nonfiction story arc and a script-to-screen process, producers can lower their overhead costs and improve storytelling impact and audience engagement.

Identify Characters: Be sure you’ve identified a main character (protagonist), which might even be your organization. Are there supporting characters? Those might be other people who can speak about this person or product or initiative.  Don’t use more than 3 or 4 characters in a less than 5-minute video, or you’ll overwhelm viewers and confuse your narrative.

Write a Script: You wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint. Don’t shoot a video without a script. Even if your video is largely based on real people interviews, you want to have some kind of game-plan going into those interviews so you can craft a compelling story. Your script can include bullet points for the topics of potential “soundbites”–something that helps you create your interview questions and craft the story line on paper before you start spending money in the field or studio.

Create Storyboards: Particularly if you’re producing a graphically-driven piece, you will need storyboards to help guide the way before you invest in animation.  For other types of videos, your storyboards can be as simple as stock images in a Powerpoint with a few descriptions beneath each one. These visuals can really help you when you’re faced with choices of how to light, shoot and edit your production.

Get Interview Transcripts: If you are interviewing people for your show, get transcripts made–a very small investment of a few dollars per minute–so you can select your soundbites on paper before spending time and money editing clips together.

Build an Editing Script: Once you’ve inserted your favorite soundbites or options into your initial script, you’ve created an editing script. Add in your selections or options for stock music and other visuals, such as stock or archival photos, videos and graphics, and you’ve got your guide-posts for a streamlined post-production process.

For more detailed tips about how to create an effective short-form branded stories on video, try my new Lynda.com course in nonfiction Scriptwriting.

Amy DeLouise is a director/producer, speaker and author who makes branded short-form videos for impact.

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5 Social Sharing Tips

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Social media writing challenges us all. So many platforms, so little time! Keeping a few easy tips in mind can help you focus on big picture goals.

  1. Be Yourself. Write the way you talk. Share what you think. Be authentic. If you write for an organization, be authentic to the character of the organization.
  2. Share Others’ Stories. Don’t only write about yourself, your work, your company. Share success stories of colleagues, clients, or industry innovators.
  3. Be Relevant. Post about issues that are current and trending. Look for hashtags to use that help your content break through the clutter and get reposted.
  4. Repurpose. Some content is too topical. But lots can be repurposed. A 5-minute live event video can be cut down into a 30-second webisode. A 7-second time Behind the scenes photos can accompany a tweet. Rework, reuse, recycle! Oh, and please make your media findable internally in your organization–label photos, put them in recognizable folders, metatag footage with names that people outside your edit suite can understand.
  5. Time it. Not every post will get equal views, depending on the time you post it. Weekend viewing is best for longer video clips. Late afternoons, later in the week will get you more forwards and shares. Post test messages on your favorite platforms and see what works best for your social community–each one is slightly different.

 

Amy DeLouise is a writer and video director working in short-form nonfiction that gets distributed at live events and via social networks. She speaks and writes regularly on challenges and solutions in communications, branding and video production. See her slides on social media from her workshop at #GVExpo on the speaker tab of this site.

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Top Writing Challenges for Short Nonfiction Video

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“Helping people understand what can and can’t be communicated through video” and “Keeping viewers engaged” are two top sticking points for the video writers who attended my workshop during GV Expo this morning. We covered strategies and tools for writers to get better results with video. Top tips include:

  1. Define the goals for your video. Use a Creative brief to outline these goals, along with your story approach, point of view, creative look, and any budgetary or scheduling requirements.  Include a few success measures–“if this video is successful, what does that look like?” This might mean a lot more than number of views. It might mean the number of minutes reduced in customer service calls, or the number of registrations for next year’s event. Think measurable goals!
  2. Define your characters. A 1-2 minute video doesn’t need more than one main character.  Supplemental characters include setting and music, which play an important role in how the audience views your subject.
  3. Define your story arc. Everyone thinks about narrative arc with fiction, but engaging nonfiction stories have them, too.  What’s your hook? It needs to grab your audience in the first 15-30 seconds, before the dreaded initial drop-off in viewing happens. What’s after your hook—how do you give the back story quickly and efficiently? What’s the central challenge of the character and how do they overcome it (the climax)? And as your story winds down, do you include a call to action?
  4. Use tools and workflow. Get transcriptions done if you are creating an interview-based story. The roughly $25 per person will be worth it! Then you can focus on finding those elements that move your story forward. Plan a writing workflow that gives you the flexibility to find the hidden stories, but develop creative that meets your goals. Especially if you are writing for animation, you will have to be very detailed in your approach to story so that you allow time for storyboarding, keyframes and animation tests.

Amy DeLouise is a scriptwriter and video director working in short form nonfiction. A slide deck from her writing workshop at GVExpo is on the Speaker tab of this website. Don’t forget it’s #GivingTuesday. Join me in buying a gift for a child in need through Central Union Mission Operation Christmas Miracle.

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Ram Tough Branding to Women

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Women are Ram tough. That’s the message from Ram Truck’s newest commercial “The Courage is Already Inside” featuring women doing hard things. It’s a well-produced and welcome message in the usually testosterone-obsessed truck segment. (Dodge has even produced some negative portrayals of women, notably in its Charger commercial during Superbowl 2010.)

As many of you readers of my blog know, I am a car-lovin’ gal, and so whenever there’s a convergence of great branding and car stuff, I’m all ears and eyes.  This new ad from The Richards Group agency caught my attention. Directed by Jaci Judelson, the spot breaks new territory in car marketing to women. Judelson’s images are gritty, nuanced, and human. She has worked on Dove’s “Real Women” series, among other commercial ventures, and directed the new Sundance series Single Stories.  Marketing to women has come a long way.  And by positioning this brand to appeal to strong-minded women and men, Ram is leading the charge.

 

Amy DeLouise is a nonfiction Director/Producer and consults and speaks on branding, marketing, and digital storytelling. Join her with fellow speakers at GVExpo December 1st and 2nd at the Washington DC Convention Center.

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