Here is a two-minute video I made for a client to promote an affiliate product of hers, Blog Success.com.  B.S. is a membership site  I personally do NOT recommend, and think their initials sum it up but hey, I still really like the video and think you’ll get a lot out of this description of how I made it.

Here is how I made the video.

First, the script was written.  The format of this video was to be a voice over with music and sound effects and royalty free footage from  my library.  This is a low-budget way to get a highly polished finished video.

The basic skeleton of the script is a fairly standard formula.   I started the script with a few questions aimed at the target audience.   Questions I figured most of them would answer, “YES.”  The questions were all based on typical problems the product will solve.

The script leads the audience to become aware of a problem, and of course offers the solution in the form of the product being advertised.  That basic format can be used on a video like this whether you’re selling cars, membership sites or wrinkle cream.

For me, script writing is a PROCESS.  I take the first draft and refine it by getting more precise and and colorful with my word choices.  I ALWAYS consider potential visuals when making word choices.  Video scriptwriting is unique in that it is a marriage between visuals and the spoken word.

Copyediting also means I delete superfluous words to maximize conciseness.  This process of script writing basically hones the formulaic script to make it more creative, unique and specific to the product.

POST PRODUCTION

This was a brand new project for my editing system, so I opened up Final Cut,  immediately created a new project and named it while doing a standard “save as” command.  Exact same process as with any other style of computer program, such as creating a Word document and saving it.

Next step is to gather visual elements that will fit well with the script.  I leaf through the sound effects, stock footage  and royalty free music I keep on my Mac Pro computer.   Since I edit a lot, I have tons of that sort of thing on my computer already.  It’s important to have stuff like this stored in an organized filing system so you can find it quickly and easily.

I drag what I want into my Final Cut project.     It shows up in the browser window in FC.  I gather everything I need for the individual project,

I needed some screen capture footage of the the actual Blog Success website.   You can do this one of two ways.  The obvious choice is to use a program like Camtasia but it will give a different look if you shoot it with a camera.

So the screen capture video is is shot simply by pointing my video camera at my computer screen.  This is an easier, lower tech way of obtaining computer screen video than doing a screen capture with Camtasia.  It also gives a totally different look at feel.  

I can get more angel variety with a camera than I could with a screen capture program.   You can get in super close on the pixels.   I do not have to worry about file format compatibility and losing quality by running it first through camtasia and then into FC.  My camera is an easy transfer into FC and takes fewer steps than doing it via camtasia.

I did not want to do the entire project in camtasia as  Final Cut gives tons more editing options and is way more precise.  For high level editing you do not really want to use any screen capture program.

I often transfer Camtasia footage into FC but chose to use camera footage with this project.  You can do it either way.

RECORDING THE NARRATION

I voiced the narration right in Final Cut using the voice over tool.  Many novices are under the mistaken notion that you  HAVE to have audio editing software to make video.  That is one huge advantage of using a higher level VIDEO editing program, it eleminates the need for separate audio editing.  A low level video edit program will accept an already recorded audio track, but it will not record it for you.  A higher-level video program will, plus you can mix multiple audio channels and alter the sound using audio filters and other adjustments.

I use an Audio Technica USB 2000 microphone plugged straight into my computer.  It has USB commections on both ends.  XLR mics are more common and you can use any XLR mic with a computer if you have a cable that has an XLR connection on one end and a USB connection on the other.  I have one and absolutely LOVE this cable.

This is what an XLR audio cable looks like. XLR is the standard professional mic cable.

The first shot of the video was a slow-mo of a computer monitor being smashed with a hammer.  I added the sound of the glass breaking.  The next shot was a still image I’d gotten off iStock.  I needed something to represent a lonely bus stop in Siberia.  The image was actually an Eskimo holding a harpoon.  I turned the harpoon into a bus stop sign in Final Cut by adding a gray square with a red border and some text on top of it.  I also added the wind noise.

The next shot was a combination of two royalty free stock video shots. The happy business man was dancing in front of a white background.  I used a white chroma key effect to put him on top of  the computer animated money shot.  You’ll notice that the happy business man has a soft white border all around him, that is left over from the way I set the chroma-key filter.  Generally with chroma key you want to eliminate all of the original plane colored background, but if it is white and not green, I often leave a soft border.  I actually think it looks better this way than if I had tweaked it and gotten rid of all the white.  For one thing, he was wearing a white shirt and I didn’t want his chest to disappear too.  Plus, getting ALL the white out will leave his edges rough looking and I think that looks terrible.  Given all that, I think the soft white outline is acceptable.  If it had been a green chroma key I would not leave any in.

I added a crowd cheering sound effect with the happy businessman.   I flipped the happy businessman off the screen using keyframe animation and rotation.

At this point, I was transitioning from the “beginning” of the video to the “middle” of the video, so adding the music facilitated that transition.   I added some jazzy royalty free music that was long enough to take me to the end of the piece.  The music adds lots of pizzaz.    In addition to the uplifting nature of the music track, another reason I chose this particular cut was because it timed out just right! Royalty free music comes in different lengths and fitting with the timing of your narration is always a major deciding factor in which one of the zillions of cuts you choose.

After a few seconds of the music up full, I brought the music down to about 50% once my narration came back in.  Obviously you can’t have the music drowning out the narration

MORE VIDEO EDITING TRICKS.

From here, it gets a bit more simple by just using the screen shots of the Blog Success website.   I thought that was looking a bit plain and boring, so I decided to add the overlays of the freeway traffic and the binary code. In a program like FC, it’s easy to do this overlay effect.  You put one shot on top of the other in your timeline, then lower the opacity, or transparency, of the video on top.   I also changed the color of the binary code stock footage shot from green and yellow to black and white by adding a tint filter and setting the tint to black.

Both the traffic shot and the binary code shot are put on top of the Blog Success video, with the opacity reduced to about 60%.  This makes them transparent so you can see both shots at once.  An awesome but easy to achieve effect.

I spliced in a point-of-view shot taken from inside of a race car with some natural sound.  This is also a royalty free shot, although I would have loved to take the time to go shoot that one myself!

I generated some text in Final Cut which I put on top of  the website video.   I used keyframe animation on some of it to make the words float across the screen.

When I gave the list of the five key concepts, I added a blur filter to the website video.  This helps the text stand out.

To make an “ending” to the video, I re-used the happy businessman color keyed on top of the money.  This is a technique called “coming full circle.”  By re-using this shot, plus having the narration come to a logical conclusion and having the music stop, I created an ending.  All videos should have a beginning, middle and end.

Next, I converted the video to a quicktime movie file.  Quicktime is one of the better looking file sharing format.  I uploaded it to my main online video host, Veeple to add the clickable link.  Veeple is a great online video hosting service I talk about in detail in this post and this post.

Thanks to my Veeple service, the video image now contains a hot spot button affiliate link.  Notice in the bottom right it says “Click here to join Blog Success.”   That is a flash overlay added in Veeple and is a clickable affiliate link.  Right inside the video!  Now how cool is that?

As the video host, Veeple generates embed code which I add to the HTML  of this post and put on other websites too.

There you have it!   Another online marketing video in the can!  If you’d like more detailed information on how I made this video, drop me an email with specific questions.

Thanks for reading Video Production Tips

Lorraine Grula

Internet Video Gal

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