Canvas to Camera: DIY Video Marketing for Creatives

1. Introduction: Does your to do list have an item labeled marketing video that you keep ignoring because you have no idea where to start? Does this sound familiar? I don't know what to say on camera. I can't afford the proper gear or even the all encompassing. I have no idea what I'm doing. If you've heard yourself saying these things, then this class is for you. I'm going to walk you step by step through producing a short, effective marketing video for your business using tools you already have like your phone, natural light, and free apps. Hi, I'm Bath and welcome to Canvas to Camera, DIY Video Marketing for creatives, a class for small business owners who want to market themselves confidently on camera for little to no cost. I worked in the marketing and communication field for over 20 years, creating marketing plans and producing videos for YouTube and social media channels. I'll be showing you how I made a video for my own business. Beth Doman Studio Custom Pep portraits. We'll cover what to say in your video, even if you're awkward on camera, how to write a script with help from AI, how to film using t your phone and a free teleprompter app, so you don't even have to memorize your lines and how to easily edit and share your video on various platforms in order to speak to your audience. You'll finish this course with a video you're proud of, and more importantly, a streamlined system you can use over and over again. And just so you know, I'm using the exact same gear I discuss in this class. Are you ready? Come on, let's dive in. 2. Project: Your project will be a 32nd marketing video for your own product or service using the skills and techniques I teach in this class. The benefits of uploading a video will be the fact that you will end up with your own marketing video for your own business that you can use right away on your social media channels and your website, receive constructive feedback, and just feel like a champ. I look forward to seeing what you do. 3. What Makes a Good Marketing Video?: Here's a truth you'll find comforting. You don't need a viral video. You just need to make a real connection with your audience so they can feel comfortable reaching out or taking the next step. A great marketing video has three primary goals. Connect with your audience. Your video should quickly help viewers feel seen and understood. They want to know, can this person help solve my problem or bring my idea to life? Build trust by showing how you work. People are more likely to act when they understand how things work. Your video helps by showing your process and what they can expect when working with you. Make it easy to act. A good video gives viewers a simple and clear path forward. Whether that's messaging you, placing an order or visiting your studio. For example, in my art business, I paint custom pet portraits. My clients are pet owners who want their animal's unique personality captured in watercolor. When they're looking for an artist, they're not just buying any old product. They're trusting a stranger with something close to their heart. A short video lets me show my face, talk about why I love doing this work and build trust that I'll create a portrait that I'll love. So keep this in mind, authenticity is the key here. You don't need to be polished. You just need to be clear, warm, and trustworthy. 4. Plan Your Video: We film, we need a plan. You wouldn't start a painting without sketching first, right? The same goes for your video. Step one, what's your goal? Ask yourself, what do I want this video to do? But first, keep in mind, it's best to identify a single main goal for each video so you don't muddy your message. Here are a few ideas. You could introduce yourself to new followers. In other words, put a face to your name or product, or you can promote a seasonal product or service, or you can explain your process in order to gain trust or drive traffic to your website or online shop. The goal from my video was to introduce myself to first time prospects. I wanted them to understand what I do and get a feel for connection to my painting style and personal values. Step two, who are you talking to? Your video isn't for everyone. Think carefully about who your audience is. In many cases, it's actually people a lot like yourself. In my case, I was talking to pet owners who think of their furry friends as family, people looking for unique gift for that friend who has everything. Or someone who wants a memorial portrait of a special pet. So I spoke to them directly with warmth, care, and creativity. Step three, write a simple script. A good script has three parts. The first is the hook. Grab their attention in the first 3 seconds. The second is the value. How does that thing you do help your audience? It's sad but true. People mostly only care about what can help them in their lives. Third, call to action. What should they do next? Here's the script I used. The hook was want to turn your pets unique personality into a one of a kind portrait. The second, the value. I'm Beth, a pet portrait artist who helps you celebrate the love you have for your furry friends through custom artwork. Whether it's a sweet dog or a cat who rules the household, I capture their special character on paper. Third, call to action. Send me a few photos to get started. I have some openings available. If writing doesn't come naturally to you or if you just get stuck staring at a blank screen, I've got some great news. You can use free AI tools like hATGPT to help draft your script quickly and easily. All right, let's get started. So the first thing you need to do is sign up for a new account, so go to chatgpt.com. Sign up for a free account. Enter your email address, create a password. Continue. Enter the code. Enter your name. Click Continue. Once you're in, you'll be interacting with a tool called hat GPT. It's like a helpful writing assistant that responds to your prompts in plain English. Don't worry. No technical knowledge is required. If you can describe your business to a friend, you can use this tool. Now you can enter the prompt. Step two, start with a simple prompt. Think of the prompt like tossing out an idea to a creative partner. The better you explain it, the better the results will be. Here's a great starter prompt you can copy and paste. Write a friendly 32nd video script for a small business owner who offers and here's where you describe your product or service. The goal is to introduce themselves and explain how they help their customers. Make it clear, natural and confident. So I just copied and pasted this prompt, hit Enter, and this is in real time. This is how fast it is. It's actually pretty incredible tool. And as you can see, it suggests what kind of footage you can include. And then you can edit from there. You can type revisions such as make it more conversational and include just the script. And you can just click here to copy, paste it into your word processor, and edit from there. Don't be afraid to tweak the tone until it feels like you. You're not handing over your voice. You're using AI as a collaborator to get the wheels turning. Pro tips. Paste in your rough ideas first. You don't have to start from zero. Give it a sentence or two you've already written. Read it out loud. If it sounds awkward, rephrase it in your own voice. It should sound conversational. Save your favorite versions. You can copy paste them into your word processor and refine from there. In the next lesson, we'll use that script to film with confidence. No memorizing required. 5. Film With Confidence: Okay. So you've got your final script. Let's talk about how to film it now. You do not need fancy gear. All you need is your smartphone, a small tripod, or in a pinch, just a stable surface to prop it up. You need natural light from a window. Indirect lighting is best. You'll need a quiet space. You need to download a free teleprompter app. And if you want to take the audio quality up a notch, you can try out a wireless microphone. See the resources section for more gear recommendations. I used an app called Teleprompter for video. I pasted in my script and recorded using the front facing camera while the text scrolled right near the lens. That meant I could speak naturally without wasting a ton of time and losing confidence. Here's how it works. You'll download the app from the App Store, search Teleprompter for video, and you'll see this red icon here. Text or email this script to yourself. Now, you're going to open the app, and the first window you'll see is the scripts. So you'll click New compose New Script. Give your script a name. Delete this type your script here, default text and then hold down your finger and hit Paste. Scroll to the top. And here I'm just deleting the title that I accidentally pasted in there. I can hit Done. So you'll click the settings. Click font and size. And you can increase or decrease the type size to your liking. And here is the speed. The turtle is slow, the rabbit is fast. You'll need to probably experiment a few times just to get the speed right. When you're ready to start, click the Start button. You'll get a countdown, which you can change in the settings. And here, you'll see that the text is just scrolling. And then when you're done, you hit Stop and then hit save in the upper right. And then click here save video it will download to your photos. If you need to re record a take, and it will happen, just click this left arrow here to scroll the text back up to the top and then hit Start again. Recommended phone settings. Make sure you film in landscape mode for YouTube or Vertical for reels or shorts. You can't change this later, so think long and hard about what platform you're publishing on. Ten ADP is okay for standard resolution videos, or you can choose four k for high res YouTube videos. Be mindful, though, that this takes up a lot more space. Have a glass of cold water handy. If you get nervous, take some sips. It helps with the dry mouth and also resets your mood. Frame yourself in the middle of the screen from the waist up. Leave a small amount of space above your head. A bonus in filming this far away is that the viewer won't see your eyes reading the text. Okay, so you've got your script all loaded up and now you need to find a nice place to fill. So what I normally do is focus on two main things, lighting and background. So this is what not to do. Don't stand against a wall. Don't sit on a couch against a beige wall because it's just really, really not interesting. So what you'll want to do is just move around and just experiment while keeping an eye on the light, on your face, and the background. Shooting into a corner is often interesting. And I'm going to just to have a seat. You can sit, you can stand. So I'm just gonna sit here and just see how the light changes when I face into the window. And then away from the window. So the shadows change. So just move around and see what kind of shots you like. You'll see there's a radiator down there, which is not the most attractive, so I'm going to avoid that. And I have a cat that just joined me, so that's kind of fun. So yeah, I'm just going to maybe frame like this. Are you ready to hit record? Keep it conversational. You're not giving a speech. You're talking to someone who might become your next customer. Feel free to live a bit. Inject your own personality in there. Don't forget to smile. You'll relax once you've done a few takes. Even if you mess up, I recommend keeping reading until the end. It's good practice for the next take. Your first take won't be perfect, and it doesn't have to be. You'll feel when you've nailed the shot. You can always just deleke takes you don't like and start again. And here's the best take. I had to redo this quite a few times until I was happy, and it's still not perfect. You'll see that the lighting needs tweaking and we need to trim some pieces out. But I liked the tone, and the cat did a stretch at a perfect time. So I just liked the overall vibe. Want to turn your pet's unique personality into a one of a kind portrait. Hi, I'm Beth, a pet portrait artist who helps you celebrate the love you have for your furry friends through custom artwork. Whether it's a sweet dog or a cat who rules the household, I capture their special character on paper. Send me a few photos to get started. I have some openings available. And here's how to add some sprinkles. Now that you've recorded your main video, often called the talking head, it's time to gather some extra footage to bring it to life. This additional footage is called B roll, and we'll layer it over your main video during editing. But don't worry, your voice will still play in the background. But instead of just watching you talk the whole time, viewers will see visual examples of what you're describing, making it richer experience for them. In fact, I've been doing it already in this video just like that. Did you notice? What types of rl shots do you need? Well, using the script as a guide, write down shot ideas that could help support the story. For example, here's some categories and shots I captured for the Pep portrait video. You've got your behind the scenes category, which could include sketching and painting, mixing paints, prepping tools, and scrolling through Pep photos. Finish portraits, side by side of photo and finished piece, artwork framed or displayed, and then the client connection, which is really important so people can envision their own pets. So you can take photos of the dogs next to their pictures, packaging, thank you notes, unboxing moments and lifestyle touches. Your pet sleeping nearby as you work, studio details or natural light filtering through objects like glasses of water and drinking coffee in your studio. In the next lesson, I'll show you how to put all these pieces together on your laptop. 6. Edit and Add Some Polish: Now that you've recorded, let's do some editing on our computers. You don't need complex software. I recommend the following free apps. Their interface layouts are similar, so try them all and decide which one works best for you. We have EMV, which is free for the MAC, DaVinci Resolve, which is free for Mac and PC, or you can use CapcuT which is free and beginner friendly. My favorite beginner app is ImoVe. If you don't have a MAC, I would recommend trying DaVinci Resolve, which is quite similar. If you need a deeper dive into editing, see my video on Editing I movie. To prep our video clips for Import, you can airdrop them from your iPhone. Or you can export using your Photos app as long as your iPhone and your MAC are synced and they're using the same Apple ID. If you just open the Photos app and scroll down to videos, you can click hold down Command, click again. And then you can go File, Export, Export two videos. Make sure the quality is ten ADP or four K, your choice. Click Export. And I would just for now save to the desktop, make a new folder, call it video, hit Create, and then click Export. You can also plug in your iPhone and import into IMVe. You just click the video you want and then click Import Selected. Depending on how many videos you have on your phone, it could take a while to load. And of course, I do understand that not everybody has animac or an iPhone. So transferring the files from your phone to your laptop, you can use an intermediary service on the Cloud such as Google Drive, if you can't figure out how to transfer directly from one to the other. So in Google Drive, you can just click there. I've made a new folder called video, and you can just drop your files here using Bluetooth or plugging your phone into your laptop. And from there, you can save them onto your desktop for the next step. Okay, so I have now opened I movie. There are just two tabs you need to understand media where your photos and video and music are stored and projects where your main projects are stored. So we're going to create new movie, and then we are going to import I'm going to navigate to the desktop, and here are all the videos that I have saved. So I'm going to just click the first one and then hit Command A to select all of them, and then import all now, I won't be going into great detail on how to edit an I movie. You can see my other class for more details. But what we're going to do import this video. This is the main talking head video. And so what we're going to do is just drag this down into the timeline, or you can just hit E, and it will append the video onto the end of your file. This bar increases or decreases the volume. And then when you hit Spacebar, you can play it. Now, I'm going to increase the viewer here so I can see more detail. And you'll see down in the sound wave here that there are gaps, and that's where the teleprompter was a little bit slow. So what we're going to do is just pull this, just tighten all the gaps up a little bit here. And then we can select the blade to trim. So I can actually just right click here and I can split clip. And now I can drag and just tighten up those holes here. So I'm just going to tighten up this gap here. Again, right click, split clip, drag this over to tighten it up a little bit. And then one more time here. And then pull. And then at the end, you'll see those little arrows left right, so I'm just going to drag here. Now we have four pieces, and you can see here it's 21 seconds long. But I think we're aiming for 30 seconds, and we will be putting some footage in here to make it a little bit longer. Now what we want to do is match the B roll to what I'm seeing as we discussed in the planning section. And because we need a hook at the beginning, I am going to put something interesting in here rather than my face. So the text says, Do you want to turn your pet's unique personality into a portrait? So I'm going to find some footage that talks about pets unique personality. So I think, actually this is pretty cute here. What I'm doing right now, I'm not clicking. I'm just running my mouse over top. And I don't want this whole clip, so I'm going to just go here and I'm going to hit I for in. And then, oh, for out. And now you see those yellow bars for the in and out points. So now I'm just going to pull this section of the clip down on top here. So now this is stacked in layers. So you can still hear my voice, but you're actually seeing the dog. So I actually feel like that clip is a little bit too short. So what I can do is just drag this over a little bit and then drag the beginning. And I don't Okay, there, I think is a good spot. So now I'm going to g drag and click to the left. So I have another cute clip of the cat here. So, again, I'm going to go in point, out point. And let's see if that fills the space. Oh, yeah, see how much longer that is. So I'm going to hit space. Okay. And there's sound on here, too. So I'm going to just drag that sound down to mute the B rule, and I'm going to drag the endpoint here. Okay, so the second part is me talking about who I am and what I do. I feel like this clip is probably too long to have all of me talking. So the point at which I say celebrate your pets unique personality with a portrait, I could include this clip I have. To zoom in on the clips, you can click this little gear icon up here. To show 10 seconds at a time, because if you pick a clip that's too long and drag it down into the timeline, it could interfere with your other clips. So I like the part where I hold it out, so I'm just going to back up just a bit, hit in, and then out, drag it down. And then just tidy that up a little bit. And here, so I'm saying whether it's a sweet dog. So let's just hear in and out, just show the artwork again or a cat that rules the household. So let's so we've already got this orange cat in here. I have a black cat who looks like he likes to rule the household here. I'm going to drag that down. Okay. I do actually have a painting progress video that I'd like to just maybe pop in there. I am going to just click in and out here just a little bit, and then I'm going to just pop that in between here. And again, split the clip because it looks like it's quite long, so I'm just going to delete that. Again, I'm going to mute. Now I'm going to add my logo at the end. I've just imported this file here. I'm just going to hit E to put it at the end. And something I Movie does automatically is pans the picture. I don't want it panning like this, so I'm just going to go up here to the crop and see how it says Ken burns here. What we don't want is that. So we just want to fit. So it is a little abrupt. So let's just check out transitions up here. I think I'd just like to try a cross dissolve. You just drag that in the middle and you'll see what happens here. All right. Okay, so I've imported a few more pieces here, a couple process photos and a final piece. And I've imported my logo. And let's add the music. So I've downloaded a piece of music here. I bought some stock music off my stock site called Invato elements. I'm going to click here. And I'm going to import. And now to insert the music, which is exactly 30 seconds long. I'm going to drag down underneath here. And you'll see from these yellow marks here, those are called peaks, so it's very loud. I won't be able to hear myself. So it's really important that you drag it way, way down. I'm going to try four. Alright. So I think that's pretty good. The last thing I want to do is just fix the color on this clip because it's a bit washed out. So I will select the clip here, so it's outlined in yellow, and then I'm going to go up here to the palette. So this, you can see if I drag it to the right and to the left, it changes the exposure, and this is the contrast. So I feel like I want to make it a little bit darker. It's not perfect, but again, like I said, this doesn't have to be perfect. It feels more authentic. There's the saturation, so I'm going to just pump that up just a bit. And then this is just the warmth or the coolness. You can see if I drag it to the left, it goes quite blue. So I feel like I could maybe warm it up just a tiny bit. So I've just made those little adjustments, which hopefully will help a bit. I am now happy with my video, and I'd like to export. Go up here, click Share. Export File. You can name your exported file here. Marketing video. This description is what will show up in YouTube. And you can change the resolution here, quality and compression. And I'll just save it to the desktop for now. And this little pie here tells you the progress. It should only take about a minute to export Want to turn your pet's unique personality into a one of a kind portrait. Hi, I'm Bath, a pet portrait artist who helps you celebrate the love you have for your furry friends through custom artwork. Whether it's a sweet dog or a cat who rules the household, I capture their special character on paper. Sally, a few photos to get started. I have some openings available. 7. Share Strategically: Now let's get that video seen. No point in creating a video that's just going to sit on the shelf, right? Each platform has its own formats and unwritten rules. So here's a quick guide on using each to its full potential. Instagram Reels. Best for vertical or portrait videos under 60 seconds. Add text overlays since many watch without sound. Use relevant hashtags and a short caption to help with discovery. Post to your feed, as well as reels to boost visibility and consider uploading behind the scenes or shorter cuts of your video here. You can repurpose a longer video by trimming it into bite size clips for reels, as long as it works vertically. Your business Facebook page, upload your video directly to Facebook. YouTube links do not work well here. Include a descriptive caption. This helps with SEO and engagement. Ask a question or include a call to action to invite comments. AI tools like hat QPT can help you write a friendly caption or blurb if you're stuck. Your email newsletter is a great place to share a video, but never attach a full size video in an email. The file size is way too big. Instead, you can link the video to your YouTube link or your website link, mention the video in the email body and include a screenshot or thumbnail with a play button over it, which is linked to the video. Free platforms like Substack, Mailer Lit or ConvertKit, make it easy to include these visual links. Video on your homepage can boost trust and engagement, especially for service based or handmade businesses. Embed the video using a link to YouTube or video. Place it on the homepage near the top or somewhere prominent. Add a short intro recaption underneath for context. Your Google Business profile. Log into your Google Business account via Google Maps or Google Search. You can upload a 32nd video directly under photos, video, keep it short, vertical or square, and relevant to your business. Google My Business videos show up at local searches and maps, a great way to connect with nearby clients. Reuse and recycle. Your fabulous new marketing video is not one and done. Post it again in a few months, recycle the content into Instagram reels or YouTube shorts on a regular basis. 8. Congratulations: Congratulations. You did it. You just produced your first marketing video. You can check that to do list off using gear you already have all while gaining confidence in your abilities. This process works, and the more you do it, the easier it gets. So what can your next steps be? Well, you could reflect on your success and think about what you can improve for next time. Watch other creatives on YouTube and take note of what they do well. See if you can channel those qualities. Are you pumped to do more? Consider creating a series of videos. One for each style, product or FAQ. You've got the skills now. Don't forget to upload your project. I can't wait to see you shine on camera, and I'm cheering you from the sidelines.