Why are you going through the exercise of creating videos? Is it to get new website visitors, customers, back links and/or demonstrate your product/services? What ever your reason, you would want to give the impression that you are serious and an expert in your field. (OK, you may want to use humor in your video, so being an expert is the minimum). Here is a mini list of tips that will improve your “Video 1st Impression”.
A Professional Intro
Many times we shoot video from the hip and other times it is a preplanned script and we get the necessary shots and assemble. Either way if you create a well produced intro and use it on a series of videos, your videos will come across like a professionally packaged TV show!
The Sound Track
A good intro usually consists of a memorable and mood setting theme. Every good show has its own intro and extro video clip that appears in every episode. It might consist of music, sound effects and/or narration.
Music – What’s the Score?
Your music has to be legal, in other words you must have the rights to use it. There are basically 4 options for this:
1 – Compose music yourself. (Knowledge and skill required, as well as, time)
2 – Buy music from a royalty free service. Lowest cost, however others may be using this music on their productions. You are buying the license to use it, not all out ownership. (Just type “buy royalty free music” in Google)
3 – Get someone to compose a piece of music for you. There are many home studio composers out there, who would love to create a music theme. However, price and rights need to be addressed so both parties know where they stand.
4 – Arrange to pay for the rights to a popular song. Want to use a song by Coldplay or from a movie… How big is your bank account? And how many lawyers can you get together for lunch?
In most cases the royalty free way is the way to go.
Sound Effects – Did You Hear That
Sound effects can add tension, create excitement and leave your audience with a “you are there” feeling. There are many free sound effects libraries on the Internet. Once again just type into Google and you will get many choices of free SFX sites. You can also create your own SFX, and record them either to your hard drive or any recording device. For the record, creating live sound effects in sync with a video is called Foley. The people who do this well are called “Foley Artists”
What’s That You Say… Narration?
Using a script and keeping the visuals of your intro in mind, you may want to:
1) Say the name of the series
2) Read a short dialogue to setup the show
3) Use narrative from some of the video clips that you decide to use in the intro video clip.
If you decide to record narration be sure to be close enough to the microphone and in a quite room so you get a good, clean recording of your narrative.
Note: If you find this difficult, there are many voice over artists who are looking to do narrations (Ummm… for a fee…)
In part 2 we will talk about visual elements.
If you need help with your video intro clip go to http://www.youtubedirector.com
Bernie Landry is a website MacGyver. He has 27 years of audio communications experience, played on BBS’s and has been doing new media websites and marketing since the net started. The term website MacGyver was given to him by his clients because he fixes web site problems and marketing situations with what ever is available on hand at the time to get the problems resolved quickly.
Author: Bernie Landry
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Guest blogger
