It looked easy at first: an idle piece of equipment on our ‘final test’ line. “Let’s shoot a quick video of it operating,” I said.
The final production was more work than that, but I think this sets us on a trajectory to do more, and do better.
This video was for a less-common, but more interesting product, so the risk-factor was low in doing this. In the end, it is a video that does so much more than the rest of the web page that I’ve posted it at does.
Here’s what we did to make the video:
- Shot video, with our digi-cam & a tripod, of the unit operating.
- Created ‘powerpoint’ slides to cover product description, plus openings & closings.
- Shortened text on slides to absolute minimum.
- Used Windows Movie Maker to lay out the video & slides.
- Made the video in two sections: product info, and demonstration.
- Led the video with a snip of the demo, to interest the viewers.
- Recorded voice-over of the video (using WMM’s narration tool) three times.
- Wrote down what I said during the voice overs, and recorded a final take.
- Overlaid the voice-over with a music track using Audacity (music from Wired’s Rip Sample Mash Share CD)
- Adjusted timing of ‘slides’ in WMM to fit the voice-over.
- Export to WMV file and upload to YouTube.
It’s not the ‘YouTube’ style video that I imagined–it’s actually pretty bland and corporate. But it is quick (just over 2 minutes), and covers all the bases on the product.
Covering ‘all the bases’ slowed down the the production, and made this format much easier to complete. And as much as I wanted to be in front of the camera being all glib about our product, doing a voice-over worked much better. Saying it first, and writing it second, made the voice-over much more listenable and authentic than using a script.
Take a look: YouTube -Dust Chambers
(FYI: that’s not me in the video, that’s my assistant Chris. He did all the fun stuff with WMM to put this together. )
A B2B marketing blog by an honest-to-goodness marketing manager for an industrial manufacturer.