Video content has become one of the preferred mediums to tell a story. It is more engaging and leaves a greater impact on the audience. In 2019, video content generated around 80 percent of the entire traffic on the internet. With smartphones in every hand, there is no dearth of interesting content. Content creators are facing the challenge of creating great content that is engaging and shareable.
A video can go viral within minutes, but it requires a lot of research, creativity, unique techniques, and planning to make it a reality. Thanks to OTT platform service providers like Phando and DaCast, several Live Video Streaming services have emerged in the last few years. And every one of them is striving to produce great content. While it is not easy to create viral video content every time, here are a few essential tips and techniques that can help in creating great videos.
Know Your Audience
It is essential to define the audience to create a bulletproof content strategy. Audience geography, language, dialect, age group, culture, beliefs, interests, and literacy level, among others; all these factors play a key role in devising an effective content strategy to produce videos. However, you can’t meet the expectation of every person.
Hence, focus on a specific group while producing the video to get more refined content. Do exhaustive research about the subject to incorporate small but crucial elements in your video to help viewers relate to your content.
Great Story
As they say that “content is king.” People forget the visual effects, direction, and crisp editing of a video, but they never forget a great story. Try to weave a story that touches the emotional chords of the viewer and keeps them engaged through the end. Apart from building the protagonist’s character, it also crucial to build other interesting characters in the story. Never keep the sole focus on lead actors. If not equal, give appropriate footage to other important characters of the story.
Decide A Budget
It is essential to chalk out a budget for video production. A pre-planned budget can help you in more efficient resource optimization. In the absence of a budget, you might over-promise to incorporate expensive elements in your video content but end up not delivering them due to budget constraints later.
Hence, it is crucial to have a budget beforehand. Depending upon the budget, you can clearly decide the equipment you need, casting budget, VFX budget, and locations, among others. Having a budget in hand will also help you to maximize resource utilization and return on investment.
Come On The Point Immediately
Crisp and to the point editing of movies always keep the audience hooked and engaged with the video. In the digital era, viewers have a dearth of choices; if you don’t come to the point within the first 10 seconds in your video, there are high chances that the audience will either scroll down to the next video lose attention.
The human attention span has dwindled drastically in the last decade. Viewers are not even ready to benefit from the doubt to videos that appear to be uninteresting from the start. Hence, it is crucial to start the video to keep the viewers engaged from the very start. Several writers start the story with “mid-res,” which means “into the middle of things.”
Starting the video in the middle of the story excites the viewer and makes them inquisitive enough to stay engaged and find out about other details. The idea is to give viewers a solid “why” at the very start and make them engaged to find the answer throughout the video.
Length of The Video
The length of the video depends upon the type of story and format. Movies and TV series are supposed to be hours long; however, if you are making a short movie or short commercial, then the length of the video becomes even more important. Editors need to weave the magic through crisp, to the point, and relevant editing to summarise large stories in a short video effectively.
Users also love to watch short and entertaining videos that don’t eat up a lot of time. Hence, for better engagement, work on minimizing the length while delivering the story and message efficiently.
Follow A Storyboard
A video script is a pre-production tool that helps to visualize the story and requirements for the video. Likewise, the storyboard helps in the efficient implementation of the video. A good storyboard includes a sequential pictorial representation of the story that involves all the required shots. It gives everyone on the video production team a solid reference to what needs to be exactly.
It would also help decide crucial technical aspects of the production, including lights, camera angle, required lenses, tripods, location, and required visual effects. Several online tools can be used as efficient storyboards.
With the above-mentioned points in mind, you can easily create a well-produced and engaging video that could become the next viral thing on social media.
