Think about how often you see videos throughout your day, from videos on the social media apps on your phone, to watching your favorite movies or shows in the comfort of your home. Videos are a part of our everyday lives. The majority of us have been watching film and television stories from an early age. And Millennials and Gen Z have interacted with YouTube videos for most, if not all of their lives. Engaging videos are no longer solely an “art”, but a form of universal “communication” that everyone needs nowadays.
- By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic (Cisco).
- In 2020, people watched 12.2 billion minutes of video; that’s 23,211 years’ worth of content. (Hubspot)
- 94% of video marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service. (Wyzowl)
The reach of video will continue to grow and intertwine with our daily lives. Because of this, we at EditMentor envision a future where video literacy is accessible to all. Nowadays, the majority of us have a camera in our pocket, but when making our own videos, we struggle to create a clear message and convey an emotion. That’s why we have come up with a few secrets that you need to know to ensure you create engaging videos that reach the right audience and keeps them interested.
Sign up for EditMentor today and take our free course to learn how to create engaging videos!
1. Have a Structure to the Video
Humans have been sharing and listening to stories forever. The majority of the time, we quickly understand the type of media we are watching, whether it is a commercial, film, documentary, PSA, etc… so it is important to determine the type of engaging videos we want to make, before doing anything else.
Question #1: What do you want to accomplish with this video?
Engaging Videos Can:
- Introduce
- Educate
- Inform
- Promote
- Sell
- Tell a story
One way to determine what you want to accomplish with your video is to work backwards. Imagine the video is complete. After you take your audience on the journey within your video, what do you want them to do? You need to determine the end goal with a Call-to-Action. This is where you state to your audience what you want them to do after watching your video.
Common Call-to-Actions:
- Click a Link to Learn More
- Buy a Product
- Donate
- Subscribe to a Channel
- Like/Share the Video
- Leave a Comment
Once you know your goal, ask yourself throughout the entire video making process, “Is this decision the best approach to accomplish my goal?” Knowing the objective for your video from the beginning will help guide you, ensuring that you don’t get off track.
Question #2: What is the tone?
Imagine you are going to make a video for your company’s next client presentation. Your company has a very serious, corporate tone, as do the clients. In this situation, you might not want to add super fast edits with death metal rock, even if it is your favorite type of music. This approach would quickly disengage the target audience.
Your tone should match your intended audience and the brand of the company the video is promoting. During the process, ask yourself another question, “Is this the best tone for our audience/brand?”
Question #3: What is the Spine of the video?
Once you know your video’s goal and tone, you can determine the structure of the video, also known as the Spine. The Spine of a video gives signals to the audience that set certain expectations about the type of video they are about to watch. You want to make sure you send the correct signals to an audience to meet their expectations.
A video Spine can be:
- Interviews
- Voice Over
- Live Instruction
- Music
- Script
If you don’t have a Spine, your video won’t have any structure. So what you decide to use as the Spine should be the main focus throughout the process, along with the goal and tone.
2. Create a Plan for Filming
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Visual media is a lot of fun to watch. So it might seem that it is relatively easy to make. But the reality is that the stages of video production take time to plan, shoot, and edit. There are no “shortcuts” to making great engaging videos. And don’t be fooled by quick solutions. It is important to understand that video creation is a process, and you can’t instantly “speed it up.”
A single frame in a video contains story information for your audience to interpret, so it is important for you to take the time to determine what information you convey within each shot. These items include:
- Talent
- Wardrobe, Hair, and Makeup
- Locations
- Set Decorations
- Props
The Lookbook
To help figure out the story information that you want to get across, create a Lookbook. A lookbook is like a scrap book that includes visual references of how you want your video to look and feel. This handy guide can help you clearly communicate your visual goals, especially to other people working on your production.
Storyboards
The lookbook shouldn’t be the only document you use to prepare your Mise-en-Scéne. Storyboards can also help to visualize how you will present the information within the frame of each shot.
And you don’t need to be an artist to design storyboards. Use a blank storyboard document, like this one, to draw some awesome stick people or find a storyboarding app that can bring them to life through digital design. Here are a few favorites:
Shot List
A Shot List is also a must for any production, as it is a great way to create a checklist of each shot that you need in your video. After making your storyboards, begin to organize a list of every shot. Feel free to use our Shot List template or any sheet of paper you can find. You can organize this list based on location, time of day, performer’s availability, etc… Take this document with you to set and when you record each shot, cross it off the list.
3. Show, Don’t Tell Your Video’s Story
Audiences are smart. They learn a lot of information by what you show them on the screen, even if you don’t say it. “Show, don’t tell” is a common phrase in video production for this very reason. The audience doesn’t need someone dictating what they can visually see.
For example, imagine a shot where the person looks sad. There is no reason to also include that person saying, “I’m sad” because their face expresses everything the audience needs to know. It is also more interesting for audiences to learn this emotion by seeing it on-screen than to hear about it from a character or narrator.
Since, as video makers we can deliver a lot of information through the shots we use, it is crucial to have a strong understanding about how an audience perceives various shots. Different types of shots collectively are known as Coverage, because you must make sure you are “covering” the entire scene or moment.
The most popular types of coverage include:
Wide Shots
The wide shot helps the audience see where all of the people are located in a shot and establish the location.
Medium Shots
A medium shot capture the subject or subjects from the waist up and includes some of the surrounding area within the setting. This is the most common shot coverage recorded on set, as it gives the audience a lot of information.
Close-Ups
Close-Ups capture a subject from about the neck up and includes very little of the surrounding area within the setting. This is a very powerful shot because we can see a lot of details on a subject’s face, especially their eyes, which shows us the most emotions.
Insert Shots
An insert shot is a type of close-up that captures specific objects or movements from a close range, giving the audience more information and a closer look at something.
If you plan to shoot a variety of shot coverage in locations that help tell your story, you will be giving yourself a lot of great options when you begin to edit. These options will allow you to create engaging videos with powerful visuals.
These are just a few examples of the powerful shots that can be used in your engaging videos. To learn even more about shot coverage, angles, compositions, and visual storytelling, sign up for EditMentor today.
4. Enhance Your Videos with Audio
George Lucas once said, “sound is half the experience in seeing a film.” This quote is relevant to more than just films. Even though we say it is “video” content, engaging videos are nothing without audio. Beautiful visuals can catch the eye, but audio makes a video “feel” real, bringing life to a project.
Production Audio
But you can’t always “Fix it in Post” when it comes to bad audio, so try to get the best audio possible when recording a project on set. Some important tips to remember when it comes to audio include
- Find quiet locations to record your audio
- Don’t use the internal microphones on cameras and phones
- Wear headphones to ensure you are recording proper sound levels
- Record creative sounds on-set like the natural ambience of a location, sound effects, and room tone … but what is room tone?
Room tone is a low-volume recording of the subtle sound present in any room. It is typically recorded before leaving a location. Everyone is asked to be quiet as 30-60 seconds of sound from the room is recorded. This recording can then be used to fill in large gaps of missing audio and smooth audio cuts between different shots.
Post-Production Audio
Audio should also be a major factor during the editing process. Making sure sound levels aren’t too loud or too soft is top priority. You want to ensure the audience can hear all dialogue as clearly as possible, while making sure sound effects, room tone, and natural ambience are more subtle in the background.
You also want to make sure every sound included in your video helps tell the story – even sound effects!
Forgot to record sound effects on set? No worries! There are many sites on the internet where you can download free or low-cost sound effects, such as FreeSound.org.
And you can’t forget music! The right music can enhance the overall video, as it can set the tone or tell a story on it’s own, especially if it is the Spine for your video. But finding the right music takes time. Make sure you are using music that you legally can use in your video. You might want to download the latest hit song, but be aware that YouTube or other platforms could remove your video if you don’t have the proper rights. Instead, we recommend using royalty free music sites, such as:
An audience is quick to forgive bad camera work, but bad audio can quickly turn an audience away. So remember to include audio discussion during the entire video making process, not just in the editing stage.
5. Keep Your Engaging Videos Simple
Once you’ve captured all your beautiful footage and clean audio, it is time to move into the editing stage. Your first instinct might be to add all the fun stuff like fancy visual effects, cool graphics, and color correct all the footage, but those take a lot of time and work, and might not be relevant to the final story. The best way to ensure you are creating engaging videos is by staying focused on your goal and keeping the video simple.
Edit the Spine
As you begin the editing stage, focus on the video Spine that you selected in the planning process. Laying down the Spine on your timeline first will allow everything else to fall into place. For example, if your Spine is an interview, you want to find all the best sound bites, then shuffle it around in the best story order before adding graphics, color correcting, or starting any other process.
Find the Hook
Think about how you’ll get the audience’s attention to take time out of their day to watch your video. There is so much content nowadays, that many times you only have a minute, if not seconds to hook an audience to watch your video. Videos typically start out with a Hook, meaning an interesting shot or sound bite that grabs the audience’s attention within the first few seconds.
Studies by Facebook and TikTok show that a viewer makes up their minds after watching only 3 seconds of a video!
Here a few easy ways to hook an audience early:
- State the question or problem immediately, giving insight that the video will solve it.
- Start with a compelling interview quote that highlights the heart of the video.
- Select a great opening shot with catchy music to draw your audience into the upcoming journey.
Add B-Roll and Audio to Enhance the Video’s Story
Once you’re happy with the Spine, you can begin to add more footage and audio to your sequence. Use B-Roll footage, a variety of shot coverage, sound effects, natural sound, and music to build up your edit. Everything added to the video in this stage must enhance the Spine of the video, making sure you are sharing the most important information with the audience.
Create Graphics
Next you can add graphics, but don’t go overboard! Do we see someone on screen doing an interview for the first time? If so, add a graphic with their name and title. This is called a lower-third graphic. And it is always good to include a title and end credit. But think back to our “Show, Don’t Tell”. Graphics have a similar rule. If we can see something visually happen or hear someone clearly explain something, don’t use a graphic that says the same thing.
Rewatch your Edit
Once you have an edit together, rewatch it a few times. Ask yourself the following questions as you watch:
- Are there too many storylines?
- Does it feel like moments are going too fast or too slow?
- Do I feel bored?
- Are there places that lack clarity, even for me?
If you say yes to any of the questions above, go back and do a deep dive to see what areas can improve. Take note of where you FEEL things are going off track. Many times there is too much in a video after the first cut, so see where you can simplify the edit.
And it never hurts to have a friend, colleague, or family member watch the video in the early stages of editing. Ask their thoughts with open-ended questions, such as “After watching the video, what was its goal?” or “Can you tell me in one sentence what the story of the video was?” If they say something different than you intended, you know you need to go back in and re-evaluate.
Once you feel you have a strong edit, you’ll want to do some fine-tuning to tighten it up before you post it live.
6. Keep Your Engaging Videos Short
In our Fine Cut lesson within The Art of the Filmmaking – Basics course, we talk about if a filmmaker can remove 10% of the shots within their film, and tell the same story without losing any critical information, generally, they should do it. This is sometimes called “Killing Your Darlings”, because it can be difficult to part ways with something you worked hard to shoot, but it is an important part of the editing process. At this stage, determine what information you need, while analyzing every shot and moment, to decide if your video will be better off without it.
As you edit, consistently ask yourself:
- Are there moments that are slowing down the video, making it boring?
- Do multiple shots repeat the same information?
- Are there any parts of the video that are not related to my main goal or tone?
- Are there too many vocal pauses – um, ahh, you know, like, and hmm?
- Can I use fewer shots to tell this same story information?
If you say yes to any of the questions above, you need to get rid of those parts of the video because they’re making it long and boring. Remember, we want to keep the audience engaged from start to finish.
In conclusion, no matter what, when you’ve completed a video, you should be proud of what you accomplished. It takes a lot of time and energy to make a video and YOU did that! But after you make your first video, you probably won’t want to stop. So keep thinking of other great engaging videos that you can tell, then start sharing them with the world. We can’t wait to watch them!
To learn even more about shot coverage, angles, compositions, and visual storytelling,
sign up for EditMentor today and take our free course.
