Pre-Production • Planning for Your Video

When you are planning a new video here are some helpful steps and areas to consider to help you produce great video content for your business. There are a few main types of content for you to create:

• Educational - share your expertise and teach the viewers something related to your business (easy)
  • Tutorials, screen captures, demos and more
• Marketing - Purely promotional content for ads, media, news and updates think small commercials (hard)
• Inspirational - move people with emotional content to motivate and energize them (harder)
• Entertainment - using comedic, music and high energy to excite and entertain your viewers (hardest)

All of your videos should always be a true value add and viewers should hopefully feel something authentic after viewing your videos.

Are you making it easy for people to get to know you, want to work with you or learn from your expertise?

Remember people have to know you, like you and then trust you to want to do business with you. Video is a fantastic mechanism to help them in this process.

4 Most Common Types of Videos with PitchHub

Scripted

Non-scripted

Compilations

Voiceovers & Music

Preparing For Your Video

1. Write down each topic and the exact bullet points you want to share in your video. Here are some content strategy ideas to consider.
   1. Answering common, recent or on-going questions from your FAQ, or create a new FAQ
   2. Review trends in the industry you are noticing, add your unique perspective and insights
   3. Dive deeper into a topic, product or service your business, company and users deal with
   4. Use the three themes above to educate, inspire and entertain your viewers
   5. Consider the typical three part structure of: introduction, content body and closing
   6. Collect your additional content in advance; photos, video clips, audio files, documents like PowerPoint slides or other media to add to the video. In the video industry we call this media "b-roll" or "cut-away" footage. Have them ready to upload into your project when creating one in ClipPress
2. Locations are where will you shoot your video; in a studio, an office, at home, outdoors or on-location are most typical options. Depending on your video style you can use a variety of them.
   1. Studio - consider the background and lighting that you can fully control
   2. Office - clean up your desk area or use a clear background for your video
   3. At home - find a quiet space to shoot, where you will not be interrupted
   4. On-location - add value to your video by shooting in a location related to your video
3. Lighting is really important and can be the difference between a great video and a poorly planned one. Place the light in-front of you, towards your face, if you can position it in front of the camera easily. If you have two lights position them at 45º angles on the sides of you to light you evenly. Bulbs are important as some are more white (cooler) and some are more blue (cooler).
4. Backgrounds are also critical to the professional quality of your videos. We recommend you only use backgrounds that add value to your video and never distract from you the speaker. If you are in a busy area with lots going on it may take away the viewers focus from you personally.
5. Gear is important and a smartphone camera nowadays can do so much as far as quality. Before you run out and spend money on new gear, do a test shoot and share it with your colleagues. If you need to buy gear we recommend the following:
   1. Microphone, either a wired mic or a more expensive wireless mic will help with audio
   2. Lighting, try lights from home or a variety of lighting options from ring toLEDs are options
   3. Backdrops, as mentioned above choose fun backgrounds or buy a backdrop to use
   4. Tripods are critical and please get one that will not wobble and shake easily, be sure to get a phone mount holder if you need one.
   Test all your gear in advance before you go live on the day... it will really help you be more efficient and effective when recording your videos.
   You can find the PitchHub recommended gear in this help page.
6. Schedule your video in advance so that you have a date and time for it. If you have others involved you will need to notify them in advance.
   1. Plan for about 1 hour to write a 3-5 minute script
   2. Plan at least 15-30 minutes to set-up all your gear and more if it is your first time
   3. Plan 3-5 times more time for the production, so a 5 minute video give it 15-25 minutes.
   4. Plan time to break down your gear and download or upload your new videos

Contact us for any questions, ideas or creative strategy we can assist you with. Remember starting is the hardest part... we got your back!