Ironically, shooting quick videos to promote our work at Ignite CSP is something I procrastinate about. Even though I spend all day coaching other people to present, give speeches, and yes, show up on camera, it’s still a skill I’m working to improve.
Making polished, concise, compelling videos, particularly ones that need to reflect your value and/or your business, is tricky. When the Ignite CSP coaches create videos to support our work, it requires enormous amounts of preparation and many, many takes. (And even then, it’s easy to see what could/should be better!)
There are several reasons shooting video is challenging, but I think the main one is this: we have to be incredibly precise about what we want the outcome of the video to be. This isn’t just true of the Ignite CSP videos—it’s true of all of us.
The video embedded here started as a “quick holiday greeting to the email list.” Neela, Vivian, and I got together in the theatre, turned our camera on, and thought we would get this in one take. How hard could it be?
It took us close to an hour to shoot this 25 second video. After the first take, we realized that we had not answered this question:
How do we want our audience to feel after watching this?
Once we knew the answer, we could decide what approach to take to the video. What’s our energy like? How fast or slow are we going to sing? Should we all be in the same frame? Should the song be in unison or in harmony? We spent, as I recall, a lot of time figuring out how close to be to the camera, what order to stand in, and who would sing which parts. In addition, we had to adjust the lights to make sure we were visible and there wasn’t too much glare.
Is the video perfect? Nah. But the response was what we hoped, which was that it made our clients and friends feel cheered and warmed in the holiday season.
How do you want your audience to feel when they watch your video? What outcome are you hoping for?
