We had an incredible video shoot last week for a client. It was a series of interviews for a personal documentary and they were all filmed against a white backdrop. When the shoot was over, I took the opportunity to have lighting and sound expert Tim Rosenberg interview me while cinematographer Conner Quinto filmed it all.
As tends to be the case when I get in front of the camera, we had no idea how it would turn out, or even what I was going to say. But after conducting five interviews in one afternoon, it was neat to have Tim turn the tables on me and guide me through some questions about Fossum Creative and my thoughts on social video.
In the course of about 12 minutes (the maximum clip time on the Canon 5D and 7D we shoot with), I provided enough material to frankenedit my thoughts into six separate social video spots.
And instead of covering all of the edits up with b-roll as we did with the Thoughts on Storytelling video, I left the cuts as they were for two reasons: first, I thought it looked cool and worked stylistically with the video; and also, I wanted to provide you with a glimpse of how we piece these videos together from longer interviews to create the seemingly scripted and single coherent thought.
The editing process takes a lot longer than it does when you use a script (though writing a script would balance out any time savings), but the result is much more natural and spontaneous. Thus the impression of transparency and authenticity with the viewers—and we all know how important those attributes are in the social media world.
So I hope you enjoy this first video in the new ad series. The others will be posted in the days to follow and each will touch upon a different aspect of social video and the power of visual storytelling. Please share your comments below. And if you really like it, be sure to share it with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.
P.S. I look forward to the day when Facebook and YouTube let you upload your own thumbnail image.
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