And How to Work With Them

Videos require collaboration. It also helps to keep your camera steady and avoid having your subject backlit against a window. Landscape is what you use for something profesh. Portrait is the way to do social.

Anyway. That’s a pretty high-level view. Videos range from commercials, to product videos, to customer testimonials, to organic social, to interviews, and on and on. And because videos require collaboration — you need to have a plan going in. You need a script.

The script is where you figure out your hook. You have to distill your message down to the essence and then distill it down a little more. The rule of thumb used to be that one page of script is one minute of film. I have found that very rarely to be true. Going by word count is more reliable.

You’re not really going to know how everything times out until you get into the storyboarding phase. The script is where you work out the structure and timing. You’re building the frame for all the rest of the stuff you need to built on top.

And things change as you get into the real work. Clients have suggestions. Budgets get cut. Deadlines come up faster than you hoped. You can’t be overly precious. You have to do what it takes to get to the final cut.

So pay attention during the storyboarding phase. Be relentless about time. A sixty second video can feel like an eternity. And to get there you might only need half a page or maybe you need five pages.

A good script makes everyone else’s life easier because it creates an idea of the finished product in everyone else’s mind. That idea is what you work toward. nd how to work with other people