Transcripts
1. Introduction: I tell you what, this curl hair is driving me absolutely insane. It just doesn't want to do what it's told. Anyway. Hi, I'm Charles and I've worked with huge creators such as Em Ford, InformOverload, and [inaudible] and brands such as Carlsberg and [inaudible] across a variety of projects, including my own trait successful and engaging content. some of which make it news worldwide and going over 40 million views. I've spent the last six years of my life creating content and shooting video for myself and others. Along the way, you get opportunities to learn from and pick the brain of some of the most successful and engaging video creators across the world. Along the way, I've picked up a lot from that knowledge and the mistakes that I've made, and now I'm going to show a review so you'll have to make them, which is why I want to help you turn your video ideas and concepts into interesting and watchable content, keep your audience engaged and make sure that they come back once more. In this class, we're going to learn what actually makes an engaging video, and then I'm going to go ahead and give you the tools to go and make one for yourself. From knowing your audience and picking your topic to the signs of engagement and film of his success. I'm not going to tell you to go out and buy the most expensive camera on the market because, to be honest, that is not what's important. Instead, the class is going to focus on producing quality content from a tried and tested method. Man, I've got a degree in science after all. From research and knowing your market to utilizing classic storytelling techniques and a strong video format in your production. This class is great for aspiring videographers, content creators, small business owners, or anyone who just wants to get their message across in a clear and engaging way on video. If that's you, then you're in the right place. Congratulations, give yourself a little pat on the back, you've made it. On following this class of being a system of your work is going to get you this much closer to that goal that you've probably been chasing for quite a while now. So make sure to work for the class, take some good notes, and let's get out there and create some killer video content together.
2. Class Overview: For our class project, we're going to be creating a 30 to 60 second video introducing yourself, your brand or your business, or even your product if you have one. We're going to be shooting that with whatever gear you have to hand. Don't worry about having all the expensive stuff. Now, there's no better way to learn how to do something than by actually doing it. This video project is going to allow you the creative freedom to get out there and create some high-quality content that sparks action within your audience. During the course of this project, you're going to be building out the necessary components required to build an exciting and engaging piece of video content, such as research, knowing your audience, strong formats in filming and editing techniques. Pretty exciting. We will then be filming that video with whatever equipment you have access to, be that a DSLR, a smartphone, or something a little bit more professional. Now for this class, you're going to need the following things. One, a notebook, obviously you're going to have to take some notes. Two, whatever you're going to use to record your video, DSLR, smartphone, Blackmagic, RED camera. I don't know what you guys are into, and of course, editing software. I'll be using Premiere Pro for this project, but the techniques we cover will be applicable to any editing suite, so whatever you can get your hands on really. Lastly, I want you to start thinking ahead of topics that excite you and an interesting location to film. Let's get it.
3. What Is An Engaging Video?: In this lesson, we're actually going to define what we mean when I keep saying an engaging video, because it'd be quite awkward if you went through this whole class and I didn't actually explain what I meant by that. Then we're going to cover what actually makes it engaging, so let's get into that. Now, for me, an engaging video is when it successfully keeps me watching the entire way through, evokes an emotion in me, and then makes me want to come back for more. Sounds a bit like one of my exes. It's important to now know that this can vary from person to person, and everyone's going to have a different definition of this. Now, the dictionary defines the word engage in the following way. Would you look at. Wow. Great. Just great. In the past, I've made several videos for my own YouTube channel that despite my much smaller audience, have performed pretty well, to be honest. I'm going to run you through some of the factors that are present in a lot of engaging videos and show you how they break down into the elements of an actual video. Before we start though, here are some things to consider. What makes a video engaging? It hooks you in at the start, which is obviously something we look for in most videos because we all have a very short attention span, keeps you watching to the end, and it has a high retention rate. We'll talk about why that's important later. It successfully gets its point across to you, it's memorable for the right reasons, although they do say that any press is good press. It grows your audience and has a successful call to action, it's shareable and it gets people talking, and it delivers value to its audience. Providing value throughout is a great way to keep your audience engaged all the way through a video. Something that I found very useful in the past when I'm planning a video is to ask myself, what value is this content going to deliver to its intended audience? If I can't answer that, then I try and think of a way to bring that into the planning. Because if it's not going to deliver any value, then why do people want to watch it? Now I need you guys to do something for me. Think about the last video you watched that you found engaging and enjoyed. Ask yourself why you enjoyed it and then write down three things about it that stood out to you. You can do this for as many videos as you like. It's actually really useful because when it comes to the planning stage for your own video you can refer back to these points as inspiration. It's also important to remember to try and stay as true to yourself, or your brand, as humanly possible. People engage way more with authenticity and this builds stronger and longer lasting bonds with your audience. Don't try and be someone else. Now that we know what an engaging video is and what it can achieve, let's learn how to create one. In the next video, we're going to be delving into how to pick a topic. [inaudible]
4. Picking A Topic: Maybe I'll make a magic camera appear there and a globe appear there, who knows? We want to edit it in. I cannot stress this enough when I say that the topic of your video is one of the most important factors when it comes to success. Being knowledgeable on your audience's interests, the current layout of trends in social media, and being able to flesh out topic enough to make an interesting [inaudible] video can all contribute to this. When choosing a topic, it's important to make sure that it's relevant to either yourself or the business, brand or product that you're going to be representing. It wouldn't make sense for me to create a five-minute video on how to knit a lovely woolen jumper because to be honest, I've never ever attempted knitting in my life. So what do we even know about that and what's it got to do with me? Absolutely nothing. I don't knit jumpers in my spare time, I promise. As a traveling filmmaker, it will be far more logical for me to pick a topic that falls underneath that umbrella. That being assumed, I know what overarching theme to my content is going to be, travel and filmmaking. From there, I can expand on topics that fall under traveling and filmmaking and brainstorm thousands of video topic ideas. Sounds easy. Let's break it down a little bit more. Take filmmaking for example. Straightaway, I've got storytelling techniques, lighting, editing, filming, movies, the list goes on and on and on. Now from that list of subtopics, I could choose lighting, for example, and expand on that once again to create myself a video title. Let say, how to light a subject, that's my video title right there. But I think we can do better. It's always better to go further in and niche down more in currently more interesting and specific video title because that's what people are going to be searching for, specific things. It's not going to stand out if you just have the title, how to light a subject, is it? You need to be more specific, more interested, and more niche-able. Let's hone in on this subject even more and create a super specific video topic. How about, how successfully light a subject in harsh sunlight. What we've done there is we started with the topic of filmmaking, we've gone further down that line to lighting, we've gone even further down to, how to light a subject, and then finally, we've ended up with, how to light a subject in harsh lighting, which is a pretty specific title, probably quite searchable, and is actually probably something people are looking for all the time as opposed to just how to light a subject which isn't really going to stand out amongst the hundreds, if not thousands of other videos with that exact same title. You can see now how we follow the yellow brick road all the way down and narrowed in more and more on our subject, until we find something relevant I can provide potential value to our audience. Now you are going to do this for yourself. Grab your notebook and write down three potential broad topics that you're passionate about or that excite you, then ask yourself, do I have authority on knowledge in any of those areas? Topics where you have the most authority knowledge will be used to focus in on your overarching theme. Now it's important to note, do not be intimidated by the word authority. I'm not talking about the police or judges or getting told off by your stepdad. Doesn't mean that you need to have master's degree in any particular area in order to speak on it. It could just be an area of interest, but needs to be something you're willing to take time to research and dive deeper into. Now once you've got these three topics and you've chosen one of them to expand upon and create a video title from, let's write that down. Just as I did with topic of travel and filmmaking, expand and refine upon this and follow the yellow brick road all the way to the end, until there's something that resembles an interesting and relevant video title. I want to do this for three different topics and write down the video titles you have at the end. Now these are some things that it's going to be important to remember while you doing this. Make sure the video title you end up with is important or relevant to the person or business is going to be representing. If you're not passionate or interested in a topic, then your audience is most likely going to be able to tell. If you're talking about something that you find boring, your audience is probably going to find it boring too. So let's avoid that. Make sure you care about what you're talking about and your audience is guaranteed to want to engage more. Positivity and passion is infectious. Remember, you don't need to be the foremost expert on a topic in order to speak on it, but being able to share some useful knowledge on a said topic is a really good place to start. Don't be a faker. But in this lesson, you should have a really good idea of what your overarching theme for your content is going to be and you should also have three potential video topics/titles to take into the next lesson. Now that we've got some ideas of video topics, let's dig a little deeper in the next lesson and see if we need to adapt them by doing our research.
5. Do Your Research: Excited. Today, we're going to be talking about research, which if you read the title down there, you probably already know. Now, picking a video topic because it's something you're passionate about is great. But this rarely translates into an engaging video without some minor tweaking and doing lots of research. Just because you think something is interesting, it does not mean that your potential audience will. Let me say that one more time. Just because you think it's interesting, it doesn't mean the lovely people on the Internet are going to care about it at all. There are a few different methods you can employ to see if the topic of your video is relevant and I'm going to run you through some of them right now using a video demonstration. Let's do that. First up is using Google Trends. Now, this is a supremely powerful tool and it gathers data from the biggest search engine in the world, and what you do here is you can type in your keywords or topic titles, and it will show you how often people have searched that in the last X amount of time. You get to choose the amount of time. You can also choose the location based on cities, countries, continents. It's really is up to you. It depends where you're trying to focus your video and it's great to use it to rephrase your video title in various different ways to see which one is going to be more successfully searched or more SEO, and tweak it according to that. A really great tool and it's worked me wonders in the past. Social media explore pages. Again, extremely powerful tools. These things will only push, according to the algorithm, what they think is going to get the most engagement from its audience. So looking through this and scrolling through social media explore pages and feeds is going to tell you what's trending at the moment and what people want to see, or at least what the algorithm wants to show to people, according to people, basically. Creating content similar to these trends or along the lines of these videos that you see is obviously going to be more successful because again, the algorithm picks your content up then it's going to push it and that's what really does cause it to go viral. Current news and trending topics. I mean, once again, BBC, CNN, Google Trends, any number of news outlets, if they are reporting on something, it's obviously something that's important to the world or that area as a whole. Picking up on these topics and reporting on them yourself is another way to get content that's relevant to an audience. It is my self-inform overload. We would pick topics from trending news or what was happening at the moment in the world, and a lot of the time, these videos would get picked up and push to the fronts of lots of audiences because people are actively searching for it. So it makes a lot of sense going back a bit and take in audience surveys. Now, audience surveys, these again, if you have an existing audience or an established audience, it's really, really easy just to pull out a quick survey and say to them, hey, what do you guys want to see? Would you rather see this or this? You can use Instagram polls, you can use SurveyMonkey. Again, there's a numerous ways to survey an audience, but ask the people what they want. That's the best way to know, really. Another little sneaky way is the Google, YouTube search bar. If you type the beginning of a topic into Google or YouTube search bar, it's going to show you how that ranks according to, again, its SEO capabilities and how popular that topic is at the moment. So let's take lighting for example, again, type "lighting" into the Google search bar and you will get a drop-down bar full of suggestions. The top few suggestions are going to be way more interesting and relevant than the things further down. That's just how Google ranks them. If you do type in, say how to light a subject in harsh lighting and press enter, depending on how popular that topic is in different genres: video, image, Google search general is going to rank those tabs with the most important to the left. So if you type that in and then video is the first tab on the left, what that's telling you is that video content on that topic is quite popular at a moment and quite relevant, so obviously, something you want to go with. If video is all the way on the right after, say, images, translate, and a bunch of other things, maybe tweak that topic and pick something a little bit different and see what does rank higher. One last thing to research is existing coverage of the topic you're going to make in a video one. One, does it already exist? If not, then well, we found the niche, congratulations, go make that video, probably. Two, if there is already content covering that topic, how new is it? How relevant is it and how good is it? Can you outdo it? Can you do a better job? Do you have new knowledge? Do you have new news on that topic? More information that people are going to find interesting? Basically, if there has not been a video on that topic in a while, then there's a good chance you can outrank that in the search engines, and beat it, and take views away from it, which is really what you want to do. So that you know these things, take a topic of your video and run it through all of these methods that I've just shown you. Tools like Google Trends, YouTube trending tab, social media, current news, and surveys, these are all great ways to do this. So once you've done this, if your research is showing you that video topic isn't relevant or of interested at the moment, then tweak it and find ways to change it until it's something that is. If you really are set in a video idea, find a way to pivot and adapt it to make it more interesting and relevant to your intended audience. In terms of engagement, it's better to adapt and evolve your idea and have it be successful, than stick by your guns and waste your own and any potential viewers' time. Some things to remember, something you enjoy and something that makes an interesting video aren't always the same thing. So be aware of this and do your research before you start to develop your video any further. In the next lesson, we're going to delve into one more additional way that you can make sure your content is relevant to your intended audience.
6. Find Your Angle: Welcome back guys. Today we're going to be talking about the disruptive angle. Using an already established format such as a current trend is a great way to ensure that the video topic you're covering is relevant and of interest. Now we're going to talk about how you can use these with a slight twist to make them your own. For me, it's all about disrupting the status quo. How can you take a current trend and put your own angle on it? I'm sure you would have all seen the videos that were going around a little while back now of that dude on a skateboard with a drink of cranberry juice, skating along, just jamming, listening to some Fleetwood Mac. We're going to call him guy on skateboard. Now, it will be super easy just to jump on this trend, copy it and hope and pray that the algorithm gods pick it up and make it go viral. But that's not good enough for us. We don't do hoping and praying. How can you jump on a trend and make sure it stands out? Easy. Make it your own. Take the formula of that trend and break it down into its component parts. Once you know what these component parts are, you can use them to turn the trend on it's head and make it memorable. For the guy on skateboard, let's say we break it down into these following component parts. We've got someone on a skateboard, that's the first part, easy to see. We've got the Fleetwood Mac music playing in the background, again, pretty easy to spot. Finally, we have the person drinking cranberry juice. These are things that are present in every part of this trend where it's reproduced, you can't have the trend without those things. Or at least that's what you think. What can we switch out here? Well, obviously the easiest option is going to switch out the cranberry juice drink. But that on it's own wouldn't be enough to make it memorable, would it? How about the person? How about a pumpkin on their head? How about a pumpkin spice latte poured into the pumpkin on their head whilst they're riding the skateboard and listening to Fleetwood Mac music? Perfect. Now you've probably seen that video as well, I'm hoping. This person has successfully taken the format of this viral trend, put their own angle on it and made it their own. Now I want you guys to do this for yourselves. Pick a current popular trend or one from the past, add your own angle to it and make it your own. These are the steps you're going to need to follow. You can write these down. You don't need to film it by the way. But if you do film any of them, please do submit them because I would love to see. Step 1, select a current trend. Step 2, break it down into its key component parts. Step 3, ask yourself which of those you can change and make your own without removing its core identity. The more exciting and outlandish, the better. Step 4, remember it's all about making it your own. Anyone can copy a trend and have a little bit of success. But to really get your content out there, you need to have a disruptive angle. To recap, a good way to create content that you know would already have a pre-built in audience is to jump on a current trend, break it down and make it your own with a disruptive angle or two to really succeed. In the next lesson, we're going to move on to how to tell a story, an important component when it comes to planning a video. See you guys there.
7. How To Tell A Story: Now, we all know the story of Humpty Dumpty. He went up and he sat on the wall. But then unfortunately he did have a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men, they couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I'm not just telling you this story for fun, there is a reason behind it, thankfully. Just like the tracky tale of Humpty Dumpty, all good stories on a basic level have a beginning, a middle, and an end. In storytelling, we call this the three-act structure. The same applies to any video that you're going to create. The audience needs to see how the video has a clear start point, an interesting middle, and an obvious end. How you get from the beginning to the end though makes all the difference. Most of the video you're going to be creating will be telling a story in one way or another. How-to videos, travel vlogs, product advertisements, tutorials, these are all stories. In this lesson, we're going to be going over some of the different types of storytelling techniques used in videos and how you can use them yourselves to make your videos even more engaging. Sounds good. A strong storytelling technique using movie making is the free act structure. You might recognize this from probably a ton of films you've watched in the past. It works by splitting the story into three consecutive posts: the setup, the confrontation, and the resolution. This can easily be applied to your own video to give you a recognizable and easy-to-follow format. For example, begin your video by introducing yourself and the topic of the video. This could be the setup. Follow this up with the main meat of your content, delivering your message in any way you see fit and setting your audience up, the confrontation for your call to action, and your signing off the resolution. Wow, it all makes sense now. Now that you know this, ask yourself, what kind of story are you trying to tell with your video? What message are you trying to deliver? Take a few minutes to brainstorm and think about this and then make a note of it. It's going to be important to refer back to this when planning a script in your video to make sure that you stay on track. Remember, a story needs to follow a set path from beginning to end. This applies to your video too. If your audience can't follow the story of what's happening in your video, then they're most likely to lose interest and disengage, which is obviously not something that you want. It's important to take this in a little sense too. When telling a story, you want to keep it interesting the entire way through. Any dull moments or slumps in your story are going to drive your audience away, so try and keep those to a minimum. You should now have a solid understanding of the free act structure and storytelling and how it can be applied to your own videos. You should also have a strong idea of what the story or message you're trying to get across with your video is. We've covered the bases of the storytelling. In the next lesson, we're going to jump into the science of engagement. Don't need a lab coat or some safety goggles, just don't worry. We're going to find out what's going on behind the scenes that makes us want to engage with something that we watch. See you guys there.
8. The Science of Engagement: In this lesson, we're going to delve into the signs of engagement and what triggers or evokes an emotional response from your viewers, beat that response engagement of your video, continuing to watch it to the end or switching off in the first five seconds. Finally, I'm going to be able to use my Bachelor of Science. There are many different things that can contribute to making a video engaging. Having every single one of them present isn't necessary, but knowing what they are and how to implement them is an important part of your video planning process. Now, emotion equals engagement. Let's say that one more time. Emotion equals engagement. If you're able to evoke emotion in one way or another, then people will engage with your video. I'm going to go over a few important points now of things that are relevant to evoke emotion in your audience from a video. It's quite obvious that we live in an age where everyone and everything is trying to compete for your attention. Most people have access to internet at any given point in the day. You need to make sure that anyone who comes across your video is hooked in and can tell what it's going to be about within the first 5-10 seconds, if not even quicker. Long and pointless intros, waffling on about something that's irrelevant, or even a dull and lifeless opening shot. These are all things that can actually kill your chance of someone watching your video past the first five seconds. Remember, they owe you nothing. It's your job to convince them that they need to hang around. Another statistic that you might find interesting is that a large percentage of people actually watch videos without sound, most likely because they're sneaking some fine time in the toilets at work or they're sneaking a text under the desk. Naughty, naughty. Regardless, if you're relying solely on audio to deliver your message, you're really missing out on a trick. Having subtitles or other visual cues as to what is going on in your video is a really good way to make sure people stick around and watch until the end. A good audio track can fill in dead space between sentences in a video and also fill in visual segments that don't require any speaking. Make sure you use it correctly, though. If it overpowers your message or doesn't fit the theme of the video, it can also cause people to disengage. You don't want to be playing a really emotional and tear video over a video that's supposed to be really comedic and funny. It just doesn't work and it's going to confuse people. If you are going to use a music track though, make sure you have the rights to use it or it's royalty free. You can use various sites for this such as Epidemic Sound, Artlist, the list goes on. Just google royalty-free music or you can pay a subscription fee and have the royalties applied. Movement. Some some [inaudible] is sitting still or standing for too long, that can also cause people to lose interest. If I was stood here like this the whole time and just talking with a deadpan face in a monotone voice, you'd probably get pretty bored pretty quickly. But I don't actually have to try, my hands move around a lot when I talk. I like to think my facial expression changes and hopefully, you guys aren't bored of me yet. Fingers crossed. Varying your shots and camera angles, and keeping cuts quick and varied is a good way to make sure people don't lose interest. Keep the brain engaged by changing your visuals regularly. Emotion. Evoking an emotion in your viewer is a superb way to build a strong and lasting memory of your video. Different emotions evoke different levels of engagement, and some can be more beneficial than others. Obviously, you don't want to upset everyone and make them hate you, because that isn't going to be beneficial at all. You don't want to make your viewers angry with you or your product or that it will say that any press is good press. Please don't make your viewers angry. In some cases, this can be worked into your favor. Evoking laughter, deep thought, pride, a sense of belonging, or even sadness or nostalgia are all extremely strong ways of getting an audience to engage with, and even share your video or message. Something else to think about is what the people really care about when watching a video or listening to a story. Relationships. Whether that's between two people: yourself and the viewer, or between a person and animal, the story of, maybe, a man and his dog, or any other variation of a relationship between two things. How it develops and is affected is entirely up to you. The people can relate with and build a connection with stories like this. I personally have a favorite short film that is really, really memorable. A friend of mine showed it to me probably 10 years ago now. It's a story of a relationship between a man and his sick dog. It's only short, maybe about six or seven minutes, but whenever someone asks me what my favorite short film is, I show them that straight away. I think the reason of that is one, it evokes a lot of emotion in me, sadness mainly. Two, it's a really, really strong story of a relationship between a man and his dog, and all the things I go for. I mean, two really great ways and make a video engaging. Finally, ask yourself, does your content deliver value to its audience? If people feel as if they've gained something after watching your video, then they're likely to be thankful and consider you a valuable resource to return back to in the future. If you did a good job, there's also a chance that they want to share your content to help others or to show that they found this cool thing first. People love to show off and showing that they know something that others might not is a great way for them to do this. Remember that. Now I need you guys to grab your pen and paper and think about what emotion or response you want to evoke from your viewers of your video. Write down three different ways you'd be able to achieve this, and start to build your idea around them. Remember, emotion equals engagement, you want to maximize this. There are a combination of ways you can get your viewers to engage with your video and a variety of feelings or emotions that you can evoke. Which one are you trying to achieve with your video? You should now have a decent grasp of some of the concepts behind things that fuel engaging video and have a good idea of some ways you can incorporate them into your own project. See you guys in the next lesson.
9. Know Your Audience: An important part of making an engaging video is knowing who you are trying to engage with it. You can create the coolest looking video ever, but if the people you show it to don't care about anything you cover in it, then it doesn't matter. In this lesson, we're going to get you to think about who you're trying to reach with your message and if they actually find it interesting. Let's get into it. I'm going to give you guys some examples now of a poorly targeted video, and a extremely well targeted video. Wandergasm. Let's get into that. This is one of my very first travel vlogs, and you can see from the response it was poorly targeted. I had no existing audience and to be honest, why would anyone care about some random dude traveling through the states in Canada, honestly. This is nine things to do in Soho, I pivoted, I switched my style and I targeted my content much better. The video was useful, it provided value, it was searchable, and it's still relevant to my audience on top of all of that. They were mostly Americans who were interested in London tourism. What's up guys, this is Wandergasm, I'm in Soho today filming a guide to Soho. Jess is going to be filming a similar video over on her channel Love and London of Covent Garden. Let's do it. From this, it's clear to see that my audience are mostly Americans, who were interested in traveling to London and wanted to know cool things to do in a city center. By looking at my analytics and looking at the breadth of their location, their age and based on previous successful videos, I created content that I knew would do well with them. Also collaborated with another successful video creator, who worked well within that niche. Now I need you guys to do something for me. I want you to ask yourselves, who are my target audience, think about their age, their gender, their social status, their interests, all of these things. If you already have an audience, you can look at analytics from existing platforms you may already have such as Instagram, Facebook or YouTube, or look at past research to confirm all of these things. Find out what you can deliver value that they're going to be interested in. If you need to pivot on your content idea, that is totally fine, happens to the best of us. The whole reason we do our research and planning is so that we can pivot and adapt as we go, come out with an end product that is actually useful to everyone. Now you should have a good idea of who your audience are, ask yourself, "Will they find my video interesting?" Write this down and make sure that you can justify it. If you don't have a good enough reason for this, then chances are your audience aren't going to find it interesting. Go back, look at notes from previous lessons, and adapt your idea until you do. Next up, we're going to be covering another strong video. This is going to help you deliver your content in a logical and interesting way. See you guys there.
10. Create The Scaffolding For Your Video: Guys, a lot of the time, a video can follow a loose set of rules that keep the content exciting and engaging. A scaffolding that you can build your video around once you know the topic and content. What I'm going to do here is I'm going to run through a video of my own, and show you guys how my own scaffolding applies to it, and how you can apply this to your own videos in turn. Let's get into that. First up, we have the teaser or the hook. For me, this normally runs for about three to five seconds. Sometimes I'll cut into an introduction, intro reel, or something like that, and sometimes I just skip it out completely. What's up, my dudes? What's going on, guys? This is Wandergasm, I'm in London today, for now, and today, we're going to be talking about five super-useful tricks for traveling alone on trips. Let's get right into it. Next up, we have a brief introduction or something that I'm going to introduce later in the video, and this can run from around 25 to 30 seconds. I did a lot of my travel alone or at least used to, and for me personally, I do think it's one of the best ways to travel. It's the most fun, and it's just a pretty cool experience to get out and experience stuff on your own. I'll be dropping five tips, traveling on your own. If you haven't done it before, this might be really useful. If you have done it before, you might learn some things. Sit down, relax, get some popcorn, and let's get into tip number one. From there, I jump straight into the main topic. I don't waste any time waffling on, I just keep it nice and brief and short at the start, and get people into what they came to watch. This can run for as long as it needs to run, it's entirely up to you, it's your video. The content takes how long it takes. Tip number one, which you might think is lame, and I'm going to be honest, I think it's lame too, but it is still super important, and that is touch base. Somewhere towards the second, third of that main meat of the video, I like to deliver the teaser, and pay off that I introduced at the start of the video. I said, I'm going to show you this later on or have a teaser of something that might be coming up, and then I pay that off nearer towards the end. It is really important where you pay this because if people are sticking around to see that thing, if it's further towards to end of the video, they're going to watch more of it to get to it. You don't want to deliver it right at the start because then people will be like, "Well, why am I here? I don't have another reason to watch." You also want to try and introduce some engagement opportunities for viewers. Ask them to comment something below, and ask a question, or maybe respond to something from a previous video. You want to do this for about 20 to 30 seconds. But again, these times can all vary, depending on what you're doing and who you are. These aren't the bible of how long things should be taken. Finish things off with a call to action from 10 to 20 seconds if you're using a YouTube channel or something like that. Then finally wrap it up and say goodbye to viewers, and thank them for being there. Again, probably about 20 to 30 seconds. I want to know your favorite experience of traveling alone in the comments below. Let me know the best thing that happened to you while you was traveling alone. Look forward to seeing that. Thanks for watching guys, I'll see you in the next video. Don't forget to subscribe. [MUSIC] You don't need to always follow these steps to the letter, but they are a good starting point. Adapt it to your own content and style and think about what works best for what you yourself are trying to achieve. Now I want you guys to go ahead and use the knowledge gained from this lesson to go out and create your own personalized scaffolding. Keep this scaffold in mind when planning your video, and more than adapt it to what you need to create yourself. It's most important to entice your viewers in with a good hook, but also make sure you deliver value and follow that up with some good quality content. You don't want people watching it and getting annoyed for you. Just click, bagging them in. Next up we're going to be discussing how to plan for success, pairing the message you want to show in your video, and refining it. See you guys there.
11. Planning for Success: So you've gotten this far and you should have figured out who your audience is, what your video is going to be about and how to format it. Now, it's time to start scripting and storyboarding that idea. Most of you should know what a script is and how it works. It's basically a run-through of what is going to be said during the filming process. It can vary from person to person into how much detail you go into. For me, I normally just write down the few key bullet points of topics I want to discuss and anything I'm going to go into during the video, and then I free-ball from there. A lot of people I know may actually write down word-for-word exactly what they want to say, and then run through this during the video. It all depends on what makes you comfortable and what works best for you. Now, the script can also be used in conjunction with the scaffolding that we talked about and created in the previous lesson. You can break it down into an intro, a teaser, the main meat of the topic, a call to action, and an outro. Again, it all depends on what works best for you, but it's useful to have because you don't want to set up the film and then get there and like, "Wait, what am I talking about again?" You want to be able to keep things flowing and keep things going and just get things done. That's why it's important to have some rough idea of the script on what you're going to talk about during the video. Again, you don't need to stick to this routine, you can go off script if there are things you think of during filming, but as long as it's there, it's good to have. Another thing we're going to go over here is storyboarding. What a storyboard is, is a visual representation of the story you're going to tell broken down into short visual bullet points. I'm going to put an example up on the screen now. Again, it can be as detailed or as rough and brief as you want it to be, but if there are special instructions, or locations, or scenes, or things that are supposed to be happening during certain points of the video that is easier to draw visually, then it's really good to have a storyboard. For me, I normally use them when I have certain shots in mind at certain parts of a video, I want to make sure that I depict it on video how I need it to be. But for you, it could be something totally different. The storyboard can also include important information such as locations, time of day, the type of light, or any other important instructions that you might not be able to include in the script. Something else I found incredibly useful whilst filming over in the past with myself or others, is the need to run for a few takes or warm up to filming when you're going to be talking or presenting a topic. The amount of times that I've shot a video, finished it entirely, and then going back to look at the intro of the first scene and thought, "Man, what's wrong with me?" Then reshot it and got a completely different end result. I can't count them, but it's always good to go back, have a quick look through your footage and think, "Man, we probably should have warmed up a bit there," and then jump into shooting. An incredibly useful thing to have, because you're not always going to be switched on as soon as the camera starts rolling. Another thing which you can find useful depending on the video you're creating is a shot list. Once again, it can be as basic or as detailed as you'd like, but it definitely comes in handy if you're shooting a more complicated video. I personally just write them down as bullet points with a note of what type of shot I'm using, and maybe the type of lens, but there are also templates such as this one which might come in handy. They can be extremely useful if you're heading to a location and you only have limited time and you need to get coverage of x amount of shots, you're rushing around and you want to make sure you can just tick each one off as you go and leave with everything you went there to get. You also want to think ahead about what locations you want to shoot at. I will need permission to shoot their? Best to check beforehand. What is the light going to be like there at the time you arrive, is it going to be enough, or you're going to need to bring additional lighting? Are you going to need to bring warmer clothes, food, etc.? What access to electricity do you have? For me, I personally like to do a little tech scout the day before or a little while before a shoot is about to happen and figure all of these things out, get there at the time of the day we want to shoot, and just have a mental note. It let's me relax because I know I've been there, I know what I want to frame up, and I know how I'm going to get things done, so think about those things. Finally, it's always good to visualize the video in your head. Run through from beginning to end and think about what finished shots you might need. It's not always going to be a talking head, or A-roll shots. Sometimes, you're going to need in-between shots, transitions, and little fillers that can get you from A to B. It's important to gather these while you're around on the location, or maybe source them from stock footage. Now, using what you just learned from this lesson, I need you guys to create yourself a shotlist and a rough storyboard for the video project you're going to be creating. You can use the templates that I've left in the resources for this video, or just make them up yourselves. Don't be scared to ask for feedback or help during this process or any of the steps from the previous lessons. A fresh brain of set advice can make all the difference to an end product. If you need a visual, feel free to use the template I've included in the resources section of this class. It's also important to remember that the script and storyboard is just there to guide you, it isn't the end of the world if you go off script. Everyone has different approaches to filming and talking on camera. So to recap, figure out the rough visuals and discussion points of your video before you begin to film will make the entire process run a whole lot smoother; I promise you. Do not go in unprepared if you can help it. It's going to help you come across as a lot more comfortable or much more in front of the camera. The number of times that I started out in my career and I go to a shooting, I'm like, "Cool, I'll just wing it," and end up wasting so much time, and then leaving him a product that I wasn't entirely happy with because I had to rush things and forgot things here and there. It's just not worth it, so plan, plan, plan, please. Now we've got the script and the storyboard for your video covered, it's time to think about filming. Get excited.
12. Filming for Success: If the viewers can't hear or see what they're watching well enough, then no matter how hard they try, they're not going to be able to engage with it, no matter how good your content is. We're going to make sure that you guys know how to know the basics when it comes to filming. For me, there are three core basics that need to be covered when it comes to filming a video. You want to make sure that the subject is well lit enough to be seen, you want to make sure that the audio can be heard well enough to be understood, and you want to make sure that you're framing your video correctly and shooting in an environment that adds to your final picture. Here we have a clip that does none of these things. I hope you guys can understand me because the audio has been turned off and so have the lights. Isn't that great? But as you can see, by simply changing one of them at a time, the video instant becomes more watchable and attractive. Can understand me because the audio has been turned off and so have the lights. Isn't that great? Let's talk about how you can do this for yourself. Framing, when framing a shot, you want to make sure your audience can see exactly what you want them to see. You alone are in control of everything that is within the frame of your shock, whether this is the person speaking, your product, or the surroundings. At the end of a day, you want to make sure you frame your shot to focus on what needs to be the focus of the video, and that you're not distracting your audience away from that focus with your framing. An appealing background will make your video more memorable and you can even use complementary color palettes and set design to enhance this if you wish. Now, I personally have framed this shot and I've actually got some mountains behind me. You can't see them because they're out of focus, but I've got some nice lights here, which are just adding a little bit of color to the shot. You can see my face, you can see the top of my hat, which is not that important. But all in all, I don't think there's too many distractions in this shot. There is not things moving around behind me. The main focus is well lit, which is me right here. Let's move on to lighting. When it comes to lighting, you just need to use whatever is you have to hand, be that a well-lit window, a household lamp, or just a well-lit room. As long as your exposure is set correctly and the focus of your video is lit well enough to stand out from the background, you'll be just fine. I won't delve into more professional lighting techniques here, but a basic understanding of the three-point lightened system is going to be useful in most filming situations, and you have a quick look at it here in this little visual. Something else that's quite important is understanding how to expose your camera correctly. Having a quick look at this little info graphic here is something that's going to help explain that better. Ask yourself, can I see all the detail on the subject in the video? If so, you're doing all right. You want to make sure you don't have any extremely blown out white areas in your shop or any extremely clipped black, dark areas in your shop. Avoiding those using different lighting around the room and just adjust and exposing your camera is a great way to do that. Finally, audio, ensuring you have a good quality of audio recording will make sure that your message can be delivered efficiently and do its job, and you don't need to invest in expensive microphones or recording devices to achieve this either. Before you start filming, make sure you do a sound check and listen out for any background noise in that recording, think about any potential audio disruptions that might take place during your recording, and keep an ear out for them, and see if you need to adjust your audio levels to hear your subject better. This is something that can be adjusted in your camera or settings if you're using a DSLR. There is absolutely nothing worse than spending 20 minutes recording a video and find that there's an air conditioning unit humming over the audio the entire way through or that there's a police siren blaring on in the background during the most important part of your video. Believe me, it's happened before and it is the biggest pain, especially when you're editing a video from maybe a few weeks later and you have absolutely no way of res-hooting. For example, right now I have someone hammering a stone outside the window every 30 seconds or so, so it's making this recording extremely fun. Thank you, person with hammer. Paying attention during recording and doing checks before you yell action can make a world of difference when it comes to editing, even if you are using something as simple as a smartphone with voice notes to record your audio, you're going to thank yourself down the line. To recap, make sure you have the three basics covered when it comes to filming. Make sure you've got lighting and exposure set correctly, you want to make sure your audio is great and you don't have any disruptions while shooting, and you want to make sure that you've framed your subject efficiently and there aren't any distractions going on in the shot. If you've got all three of these things covered, then the outcome of your video film is going to be pretty decent. Now that we've covered all three of these basics, you guys are ready to go out and shoot your own video. In the next lesson, we're going to pick up with some editing techniques. See you guys there and good luck.
13. Editing for Success: Even if you've planned and shot the best video in the world, if you can't edit it together in a coherent and efficient manner, there's a good chance it's still going to fall flat on its face. In this lesson, we're going to make sure that when it comes to editing, you know exactly what needs to be done to produce the brilliant video. Here's a quick demonstration of two sequences, exactly the same clips. One of them is going to be edited quite poorly, and one of them is going to be edited quite efficiently, and you're going to see the stark difference between the two. It's only going to be minor tweaks in the editing process, but the outcomes are going to be very different. Don't be scared to ask for feedback or help during this process, or any of the steps from previous lessons. A fresh brain, a set of advice can make all the difference to an end product. Now you've seen those two clips. Here are some things to remember that are important when it comes to editing to make sure your video remains interesting and exciting. First up, you want to try and keep your cuts short where possible. For online content, a quite fast-paced video is normally necessary. So you don't want to have to many shots that are dragging on for minutes and minutes. Keep those cuts nice and short and quick, and keep things moving along nicely. When editing and looking at a shot, ask yourself, "Does this shot contribute to the story that I'm trying to tell?" If not, cut it out. Why does it need to be there? Which leads us nicely to our next point, which is, don't let yourself waffle. If you're finding yourself sat down in front of the computer while editing a shot and you're listening to yourself and you're starting to lose interest and you're getting a bit bored, there's a good chance your audience are going to feel exactly the same way. So find ways to cut that kick down, make it shorter, and make it more efficient, and only keeping the parts that actually contribute to your story. Cut the fluff. Also important not to overcrowd the screen when you're editing. Don't be adding in loads of different cool effects and titles, and images, and GIFs, and all sorts of things. Yeah, it can look cool, but if you're distracting away from the focus of your video and the message you're trying to deliver, then it's not really helpful, is it? Keep your shots nice and clean. It's okay to add things in, but don't overdo it. Make sure your story flows well. Watch a video from start to end a few times before you render it, because it's important to see how clips connect together. Sometimes you'd get so into the editing process, you might be cutting out things here and there, and when you watch it back, the sentences don't make sense. You've missed out words by mistake or you've cut off the beginning or end of something, and it just doesn't flow very well. So make sure you always check through and play through a few times before the video gets out to render. Honestly, the amount of times I've gone for editing the YouTube video, I've been in a rush, exported it, uploaded it to YouTube, made the thumbnail, done everything, made it live and then watched it back for the first time and seeing that I've missed out a huge clip or left a little bit of black frame in and it's just made the video entirely useless is uncountable. So do your checks before you export. When editing as well, it's important to ask yourself, "Does this video need text?" Remember, a good percentage of people who actually watch videos is they value sound. So think, "Can I add to this video some more value by putting in texts, subtitles, or some short explainers here or there?" If it helps you achieve your goal, then it's worthwhile putting it in. Something else to take into mind when you're editing is that different edit styles can relate to different audiences. By different edits styles, I mean, sometimes a quick, fast, funny, almost meme style of editing can be quite applicable to a younger audience. If it's going to be in a documentary, for example, though, you would never apply those same editing techniques to that style because the audience who are watching that aren't even going to get it and they won't be able to connect. So think about the style of your edits in your applying and who the audience is going to be. Take PewDiePie that I installed, for example. If you watch any of these videos, you'll quickly see that they're quite quick, funny, meme comedic edits and has a lot of inside jokes and they don't take themselves very seriously. Take another creator, for example, who might cover much more serious topics, then you're not going to see the same style of editing from their channel. So think about this. If you can, vary your shot styles. Fit in some different shots and different cameras if that's something you've got. Like I said, it's good to keep things moving and change things up as you go in for the video. Keep the visuals in motion. If possible and you're going to be creating numerous videos over a longer amount of time, think to yourself, can I create a repeating format here? Is there something you can do that you can implement in your editing style that is recognizable throughout all these videos and helps your audience create a better connection with you? Finally, don't be scared to show people your drafts, get feedback on them, and then revise your edit accordingly. It's always good to have someone who has watched through because again, different opinions, different brains, different eyes, all see things differently and find different things interesting and attractive. So if we take anything away from all of that lesson, remember to only actually keep in a video what helps you achieve your goal. Make sure it flows well, and cut the fluff. In the next lesson, we're going to run up everything that we've learned and discuss different ways that we can actually measure the engagement of a video once it's been released into the world, and what we can do with that information to improve for the next project.
14. Measure Engagement: First of all guys, congratulations on hopefully finishing your video project and releasing out into the world. But now let's talk about how you can measure engagement in a given video and the things that you should be looking to achieve. First up: forget likes, forget shares, forget views, forget all of those things. Think back and ask yourself, what was the goal of the video that you created? Was it achieved? If so, then the video is a success. Congratulations. If you didn't achieve your goal, then why not? What can you change or adapt next time to increase the chances of success? Now that aside, if we're going to dive into analytics, there are several different ways that we can look at a video to gauge its success. A lot of hosting platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, they all allow you to view your analytics for your video once it's gone live. This is a very useful tool. Statistics such as audience retention, comments from viewers, how many people shared your content and on a larger scale views and likes, are all good measurements of engagement. If people care enough about your video to take the time to leave a message below it, then clearly they're invested on some level. If people take the time to share your video, send it to friends and start having been about it, then that's even better. If it goes to drive traffic to a certain page or start a conversation on a certain topic, then how many people clicked your link or visit the site. You can use tools such as Bitly or your web host analytics and measure things like this. If people weren't clicking through, then again, ask yourself why. Pivot and adapt for next time. Did you deliver your call to action too late in the video? Did no one see it? If so, bring it to a video next time, maybe do one at the start. Was your message too dilute. Did you offer lawn too much? If so, change that and edit for next time. Change your script, plan things to be better and more concise. Did you drive people away by being too pushy? Did you ask for too much from your audience? Again if so, dial it back. Looking at your audience retention analytics can give you a good indicator of where people dropped off, where you bought them, or even sections where people wanted to go back and watch the clip again. If so these are maybe things you can double down on in the next video or do less of next time. Adapt and pivot in your plan of attack based on previous successes and failures is what would allow you to succeed in the long run. Being aware is key. It's important to listen to feedback from your audience as these are the people who are consuming your content. Study your analytics carefully and see what works and what didn't, and then use it to your advantage. Using analytics from your video and Web posts alongside feedback from your audience should allow you to gauge the success of your video. But most importantly, if your video achieved the goal that you set out to achieve with it, even if it only received a 100 views, then you have engaged your target audience. Congratulations. Now, go take everything you've learned from this class and start working on your next project.
15. Fin.: Congratulations guys, you successfully made it. You're at the end of the class and in the process, you've created killer video content. I am super slope to see the outcomes of all of your projects. Just a recap. Here are some important things to remember when planning your next video project. Do your research. Don't forget who your audience are, remember to pick relevant topics, and make sure that you talk about things that people are going to find interesting. Remember your scaffolding when planning the length of your video. This is a key part of the planning process. Cover the basics when filming and editing. Don't forget to expose and light correctly, check your audio levels during and before filming, and make sure you frame to focus on your subject. When editing, remember less is more, cut the fluff. Finally, remember what you want to achieve with your video. Always look back to what your intentions were when creating it. Remember, before you do anything, ask yourself, is a stranger going to be interested in this? If you can't answer that, then the chances are that they won't, so pivot and adapt. Now that you know the basics of how to create your visual and engaging video content, is your turn to create your own video introducing yourself or your brand or product. Remember, it shouldn't be more than 60 seconds and you can use whatever kit you have to hand. You don't need to go all out on buying expensive equipment. Once completed, welcome feedback and constructive criticism. These are two of the greatest tools you can have when it comes to growing and improving as a video creator. I'll end here, I just want to say thank you so much for taking part in this class. I really hope you found some applicable skills and knowledge for your next video project, and I can't wait to see your content go viral. It's been real, peace.
