The future of video production

Video production is on the rise for everyone. Once a niche skill, everyone is now a video producer - from your aunt to your niece, using a camera with ease has generally become the norm, with video editing specifically becoming a skill that can be learnt by anyone and everyone with creativity, ambition and nothing more than a smartphone.

What we can see is a real transition in the way in which video editing has been commoditised. More video making software is now online and affordable (many are free), and therefore accessible to all. Meaning we have more equal opportunities to the same razor-sharp result.

As a result it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate professional creators from amateurs. Everyone, everywhere, can be skilled at making videos.

The increasing dominance of social media has seen a huge increase in video production and consumption across all platforms - including TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, with a trend in a surge of user-generated video content. Resulting in businesses quickly following suit and incorporating user-generated content into their own marketing strategy, as the demand for video increases day by day (see my article on UGC here). In addition, a shift taking place over recent years is new types of video production companies that specialise in particular sectors - such as healthcare or property, where there is application of unique expertise, perspective, and ideas to the video production process for this sector/business specifically.

Across the board it is obvious that video is no longer a ‘stand-alone-’ activity and are now an integral part of any good social media presence or marketing strategy.

So, what about the broadcasters and streaming services? What does it mean to them that everyone can make quality video content? Clearly, it means there is much more engaging and relatable content out there for them to cut through. We are constantly bombarded with content and standing out amongst the masses is increasingly difficult. This combination has created a challenge for larger production and broadcast enterprises as the demand for content keeps growing, but budgets are not raised accordingly. Their production and editing teams simply do not have the time or means to create enough content.

In this article last week I discussed the merger between Discovery and WarnerMedia as an expression of how these production houses and platforms struggle to keep up with viewer demand. Merges allow them to gain more extensive libraries and increase investment and capabilities in original content and programming. However, if they do not claim more space on social media platforms I doubt the difference it will make for audience engagement and retention in the long run. As stated above, video is needed as an integral part of any good marketing strategy and social media presence.

Luckily, we humans keep innovating and coming up with crazy ideas. Technological innovation continues to make video production drastically more efficient, with a variety of online tools and software available to assist anyone working in video production to make their lives notably easier. Particularly A.I. is starting to be used in video production and content management. Primarily its role is to simplify tasks and make them easier and more efficient to perform with greater accuracy. Relieving users of the most time-consuming, manual tasks. Take for example our own platform, Nova A.I. It analyses all forms of video content and automatically labels each second with who/what/where appears so users can find exactly what they need, instantly. Alleviating them from the manual and labour-intensive task of watching, labelling and annotating what happens in a video. This speeds up and streamlines the overall video editing process for users dramatically.

Other innovative developments include tools to automatically monitor diversity in any audio-visual content and automatic compliance reviews.

So, what is the future of video production? There is no doubt that ‘personalisation’ and the ‘creation of focussed, targeted content’ is still the future of video, with broadcast content viewing being replaced by personalised mobile viewing (unless the broadcast industry steps up their social media game). Additionally, the increasing integration of A.I. within video production and content management will also become ever more normalised - primarily due to its capability of simplifying tasks to make them easier and more efficient - from labelling to colour correction, object removal and editing video content at speed. A.I. is fundamentally revolutionising the video editing process, by taking the ‘nitty gritty’ bits out of video editing, to transform the video editing workflow for creatives remarkably.