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Short Videos (Since we're supposed to be video production studios now...)

Short Videos (Since we're supposed to be video production studios now...)

March 2023

March 17, 2023

Videos are a pain in the butt. Now what?

So we all know the social media algorithms prefer videos but the multiple steps of thinking of an idea, filming something, making it look nice, and uploading it, doing even regular short videos can feel like a slog… because you know this one’s done but you’ll have to make more!

We launched Content Day last year with our clients whose social media we manage and began offering it as a one time fee for those who want an occasional ‘film crew’. What that has resulted in is a streamlined filming schedule for the client, cool edited videos to post all over social media, and a series of content that aligns with their marketing goals that will actually show up to followers and strangers in the social media feeds. (Because we have to give the social media websites what they want!)

If that kind of service doesn’t work for you or you want to DIY at least some videos but are just running out of stuff to work with, this newsletter is for you. We have tons of ideas for you to make great content with footage you’ve already filmed, audio recordings, Canva templates, blog posts, and more!

Video is fun once you get the hang of it, I swear!

Nicole and the Breaking Even TeamPS. If you want to see what content days are like, here are two times we made videos about them on Instagram:

Seven Tools And Tricks For Short Videos When You Don’t Feel Like Being In The Short Videos

1) Look on your camera roll.

One of our clients had this little clip that we added music to, some text to and posted to their Instagram. Within an hour of posting, they had two website inquiries!

Look into wherever your videos are uploading to (iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.) and see if there are some gems you can cut into very short videos (minimum length is three seconds). We like to do this in Capcut which is a phone app but you can totally run on your computer if you have a Mac. (You can probably do this on a PC too but I can’t verify it works.)

2) Use an audio recording and let Descript make magic captions animate.

Descript.com is a free video editor for under 2 hours of video a month. Here’s a a good but short tutorial about how to use this feature. And below is an example of how you can make an audio file into a video:

3) Use Canva to animate slides.

Canva has templates which you know can export as video files but you can also load video clips as animated backgrounds when the videos you have are very short. Here’s an example of one we did about content day combining stuff we would normally throw out on our camera roll with text to create a cohesive message.

4) Autocreate videos with Lumen5You give Lumen5 a link to, say, a blog post you wrote and it will generate a video with images, pictures, etc. as slides. You can edit overall design like fonts and colors (free version is limited) and you can adjust designs on individual slides to create the exact look you want (ex: change out the background image in one slide and edit the text of another).

6) Use meme templatesClipchamp and other online editors have meme templates you can customize.

7) Try user generated content UGC (User Generated Content) is what all the cool kids are doing. With permission, you can repost what customers are already saying about your business… AKA if they’re making videos you can (with permission) repost them. Here’s a really good article about how you can do this efficiently.

And if you aren’t too shy to get on camera, try having your own #ContentDay by doing the following:

Make a list of video ideas. You won’t get to all of them but that’s what next time is for! Group like videos together so you don’t have to move filming location for every video.
Treat yourself, being on camera is hard. Get yourself a tasty beverage on the way to film, plan to order takeout after, and otherwise give yourself a carrot for your effort.
Bring 3 outfits. By changing outfits, filming location, and who is in the video, you can vary the content… and if that gives you anxiety, film everything in one spot and don’t worry about it!
Get a bluetooth microphone. Your brain can process video at 15 frames per second but your ear likes to listen to audio recorded around 40,000 times per second. A bluetooth lapel mic that is compatible with your phone combined with a tripod will make your videos so much better, especially if you are outside, standing back from the camera, and otherwise far from the built in microphone on your cell phone.
If you recorded a video that’s almost under 60 seconds, don’t worry about it. From cutting the second you weren’t talking at the beginning in editing software or changing the speed to 1.05 so you talk slightly but not noticeably faster, there are editing tricks you can do to get a second or three off.
Almost perfect but you moved the camera for a second or looked off to the side a little too long? Elton John it. This is a term I’ve coined because you notice that we never talk about Elton John age or similar? It’s because he’s always wearing cool outfits and it’s distracting! So over that spot that's awkward, we can overlay a gif, graphic, animation, etc. to distract with fabulousness!
Upload your files at the end of the day. We like to go to our local coworking space so this takes less time but chances are your phone memory is getting full so get those files off your device and into the cloud.

In short, once you do it, you might realize it’s not so bad and find yourself enjoying it… and if you need help doing that, let us know and we can be your roadies, film crew, creative directors, marketing team, and hype squad.

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