Skill Scout BlogInspiration, tips & stories to help you make awesome videos.
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One question we get a lot...
"Can you guys make videos to show potential customers what we do?"
Yep, we can do that. Customers, like prospective employees, are interested in a peek behind the curtain of your company operations. They want to get a feel for what things are like and what they can expect as a customer. BTS (behind-the-scenes) video is all the rage these days. While you could easily spend $100k on a commercial ad video, customers are often more interested in hearing a message directly from your employees and other customers. That's why we take an ethnographic approach to discovering stories from your customers and employees alike. Talk to people who experience your company, and you'll uncover stories to share! Here are 4 examples of videos that speak to customers and prospective employees. Want to make your own video?Brighton Eggert Animal Clinic
As a small business, Brighton Eggert didn't need to be convinced about the virtues of video to show off their sparkling clean facility, happy pets and caring veterinary staff. They chose to create a video that would get the most bang for their buck: an overview showcasing what they offer to their clients and employees.
Purple Bloom School
Lisa, Katie and the team at Purple Bloom School wanted to share their approach to early childhood education -- something that potential families and teachers were interested in! So they used the Skill Scout DIY Starter Kit to create this video.
SSM Health at Home
The team at SSM Health in St. Louis had just created a recruiting video. In the interview with this fantastic nurse, there was way more content than could fit. We created this video about their Health At Home Program for them to share with families who wanted to learn more about enrolling in the program.
Skill Scout Client Experience
We believe in video (obviously!). So sometimes we ask our DIY video clients to send us a few clips sharing their experience. This video from the team at Thermo Fisher Scientific in Grand Rapids tells prospective partners and friends what it's like to film a video with our DIY Video Kit. Even better -- they filmed this on their own with our kit.
Download the recipe to make your own video!
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That phone in your pocket has the potential to be a powerful tool to capture and share video. With a few pieces of equipment, you can go from amateur cat videos to high quality workplace videos before you can say "action!" Here's the list of our team's favorites. You can get them all, along with an edited video in our DIY Video Starter Kit.
Need a hand with any of this? We've got you covered.
As a video client, you get everything you need to discover, film and share stories on video. We assign a Story Guide to lead you through pre-production planning and do the editing for you!
You also get a DIY Video Kit shipped directly to you. It includes everything above, plus a Video Recipe Book to know exactly what to capture, a sassy t-shirt and tote bag.
Continuing our month of gratitude this November, hear from Erin, Jason, Elena, Zoei and Abby share the people they're thankful for. Video is a human-centered way to send a message to your team, work besties and customers.
What are you most thankful for this year?
Thank YOU for following along with us. As a token of our appreciation, we've put all types of video on sale through the end of the year. Click the button below for details, or email abby@skillscout.me.
So I asked an original |
Join me and my amazing team at Skill Scout in a month of gratitude, celebrated through video. With love, Abby p.s. If video is in your plan for 2020 check out our End of Year Sale! p.p.s If you know Elena, you know she's hyperventilating right now, because The Office is her favorite show (she's watched 4 times all the way through). |
Video will make up 70% of all mobile traffic by 2021. And most viewers are opting to watch video without sound. Facebook reports a whopping 85% of videos are viewed without sound.
So what does silent video mean for you, video storyteller? Two things: captions and using text in the narrative. Both of these tools can make your videos more likely to be viewed, and without losing your message!
So what does silent video mean for you, video storyteller? Two things: captions and using text in the narrative. Both of these tools can make your videos more likely to be viewed, and without losing your message!
There is a difference between burned captions and modern captions.
Let’s start with the easiest and fastest way to get ready for silent video: adding captions to your video. In years past, captions were sometimes burned directly into video, which creates a layer of text over the video. Burning captions into the video forces the viewer to see them all the time. It also misses an opportunity for your content to be found by search engines byway of the text in your captions.
Modern captions give your viewer the option to toggle them off or on and can accommodate multiple languages. Captions are different that subtitles. It’s important to offer the option of both if you have viewers who span languages.
Modern captions give your viewer the option to toggle them off or on and can accommodate multiple languages. Captions are different that subtitles. It’s important to offer the option of both if you have viewers who span languages.
Here’s how modern captions work.
Rather than editing your video itself, you can use a tool to auto-generate captions (ex. YouTube’s machine-generated captions), or a service that has a real human transcribe and timecode your captions. Captions transcribed by a real human are more accurate, in my experience.
Both methods generate a separate file, called an SubRip Subtitle file or “SRT” file. An SRT file is just a text document with time codes that you can generate and open with any text editor. It doesn’t contain any video or audio, and is usually a pretty small file.
Both methods generate a separate file, called an SubRip Subtitle file or “SRT” file. An SRT file is just a text document with time codes that you can generate and open with any text editor. It doesn’t contain any video or audio, and is usually a pretty small file.
Here’s how to upload SRT files.
Let me pause and save you the hair-tearing frustration I experienced when first uploading captions to Facebook, who’s interface is pictured above. Sometimes you need a really specific file name and extension for your captions to be ready correctly. Facebook likes you to have your file structured like this: filename.en_us.srt
Pay special attention to the name of your caption file if you’re having trouble. Not speaking from experience or anything…
Pay special attention to the name of your caption file if you’re having trouble. Not speaking from experience or anything…
Captions are an easy win to get more views of your video, in the way your audience wants to watch. A+ for human-centered design.
Now, let’s talk about another cool way to design your video experience for silent viewing: text narration.
I’m pretty geeked about this trend, and I don’t think it’s going anywhere soon. Rather than captioning words that someone is saying in your video, think about using text as your silent storytelling narrator.
Use text call outs to tell the story.
Using text on screen to call out moments in a visual story is powerful. It allows for the viewer to consume a beautiful video without sound, and forces the filmmaker to be thoughtful in crafting a story with visuals and text alone.
Into this silent video? Here are some other helpful references.
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Elena and Abby bring you innovative stories from the workplace.
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