How to create great video content?

People love moving pictures. Film is the most effective medium to tell a story, to generate emotions, to convince. Recently technology has reached the point when you can seamlessly watch a video even on your mobile, so it's essential to create a lot of video content if you want your branded communication to be effective. 

Here are two short paragraphs to think about before you start jumping into storyboards, shooting and looking for nice music. I think it's important to highlight the similarities and the differences between traditional tv commercials and video content.

Similarities

From certain aspects, video content is exactly like any other film from the cute clip you just shot about your baby eating spinach to the latest episode of Star Wars. There are certain rules in storytelling, visual composition, sound design that apply to every film in the world. This is why good video content is made by good filmmakers. You can get lucky if you ask your friend to do it, anyone can push the record button and editing software is handled by kids nowadays. But you can also end up with something that just doesn't feel right. You have all the shots you need, but it somehow doesn't work as a film. Better to get experienced people if you want to avoid wasting your money.

The production budget is not connected to the choice of media. It depends on the idea only. If you have an idea that works perfectly with a little money, you can shoot it and air it in the break of the Superbowl. If your concept needs a bigger film budget, you must spend it whether people will see it on their mobile, tablet or desktop screen. An expensive idea shot with low budget will always look ridiculous.

A good film focuses on one main message. You can create an educational video with lots of information, no problem, but you should still have one point that you want people to take away. And this message should rather be emotional. Behavior science has proven that rational argumentation alone won't really help you convince your audience. Talk to the elephant, not the rider. 

Differences

Today's advertising industry was built in the world of Don Draper where TV, print, outdoor and direct mail had to be brought to perfection. The organizations on the client and the agency side, the methods and the rules were created so that the best possible 30 second TV ad comes out as a result. Let's say one film every six months. Today a brand that wants to engage consumers must push a new video on its social media sites every week. 

If you try to apply exactly the same rules to 50 films per year that used to work for 2 films per year, you may end up working 25 times more than before and paying 25 times as much for production. But how to create good films with less money and less working hours?

In my opinion, the solution is trust. We shot this film for one of our clients the way video content should be produced, we didn't follow the rules of 30-second commercials. We saved around 70% of the production budget and 50% of production time compared to a similar film done with traditional tv commercial methods.

But we could only do this because our client agreed to go for less control and more trust. The concept was approved as a script and a few mood photos, and from that moment we were in full charge of execution. 

There was no PPM. Location, casting, props, everything was taken care of by the production house and the agency. The first thing our client saw after the initial script was the rough-cut after the shoot. And it worked. We reached our targets on youtube, the piece was even shortlisted at Dubai Lynx.  

Summary

Video content is important. All brands and agencies should definitely work out some way they can create a lot of it, faster and cheaper than tv ads. 

Last but not least, there is one definite upside of the age of video content: we, creatives and filmmakers, can see much more of our ideas come to life!