Making videos isn’t as simple as ABC. There are a lot of finer details that go into ensuring the final product is of premium quality so that the target audience appreciates it. Moreover, some of the video production aspects are technical, and you might need professional training to have a good grasp.
For many businesses it may make sense to hire the services of a video production agency, such as Singularity Film – hiring an agency is typically the recommended option if you have the budget and are looking for an incredibly high quality final film.
However, if you want to try your hand at video production, you have to understand the essentials, as explained below:
- The Pre-Production
Before turning on the camera to start shooting a video, you must prepare adequately. Here are some of the things you have to take into consideration:
- Target audience: You first have to specify the exact kind of people you’re trying to reach with your video. This enables you to focus on a particular group’s interest and avoid shifting goalposts now and then. Ensure you carry out extensive research to understand what your audience finds interesting. A pretty good approach is to hang out with them on social media long enough to get a deep grasp of what they always talk about. The result will be a relevant video with a high likelihood of being watched.
- Finances: Nearly all stages of video production have an associated cost. Thus, it’s critical to craft a budget to determine whether or not the project is doable. You’ll have to set aside finances for purchasing cameras, hiring the video crew, renting shooting locations, dressing the subjects, and editing the videos. (1) (2)
- Plan for what should be filmed: You must create an engaging storyline, prepare the necessary scripts, and decide on the scenes you’ll use to help tell the story.
- Actual Production
The next step is the production phase, which is basically everything that involves getting video footage. Below are some aspects you must get right:
- Lights: Proper lighting ensures the viewer clearly sees all the relevant details in the scenes being captured. You’d most probably have to supplement natural lighting with artificial lighting for the best results.
- Setting up the cameras: You must put up the cameras at an angle and location that ensures they perfectly capture the raw footage. Moreover, video cameras have a wide range of settings that you must master, including frame rate, shutter speed, video resolution, and white balance.
- Broll: This is a crucial process, wherein you get secondary videos to complement the primary scenes you’ve been capturing. It comes second after the A roll. Its primary role is to assist with telling the story.
- Sound: For an engaging video, the actors’ words must be audible enough. On this account, you must use cutting edge microphones to capture and amplify their voices. This assists you with conveying information and enhances the video’s worth.
- Post Production
The final part of the process, post production, is also known as the editing stage. This is where you fine-tune the individual bits and pieces and merge them into a presentable final piece. Below are the primary elements of the video post-production stage:
- Editing: This involves merging the different clips into a single coherent piece. It also entails cutting out unwanted sections to make the final video as precise as possible. You’ll need sophisticated video editing software and high-end computer hardware to achieve perfection.
- Color correction: While shooting the raw footage, it’s not uncommon to have varying degrees of lighting, especially if the recording was purely done under natural lighting. Some sections may have too much light while others may have too little light. Color correction aims at altering the lighting using digital filters so that they all match.
- Sound perfection: Similar to lighting, some sections may be louder than others, perhaps due to differences in microphone settings or the voice projection of different subjects. This ought to be equalized so that the final piece has a given volume level throughout. Also, this is the stage to add the right kind of background music to make the video interesting audio-wise.
- Special effects: To make your video visually interesting, you might want to stabilize shaky clips, integrate animations, change the speed of particular sections, add text, replace backgrounds, remove the red-eye, and perfect blurred or grainy sections.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that video production entails a lot of planning and resources. The points above briefly highlight the major requirements that you should consider throughout the entire process. Take time to study each of these aspects in detail. You may also consider hiring the services of experienced video agencies for consultations, so you don’t have to do it entirely alone. Ultimately, you’ll pull off highly engaging videos with the potential of attracting millions of views.
References
- “Importance of Location Scouting in Film-making”, Source: https://medium.com/@hdbuttercupvenues/importance-of-location-scouting-in-film-making-cd85f53cef37
- “Makeup”, Source: https://www.britannica.com/art/makeup-performing-arts
- “Types of popular video effects”, Source: https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/video/discover/video-effects.html