When you produce a promotional video there is a very good chance that you will want to use it on as many of the social media channels as possible, but they all require different video specs so what do you do? Well, the easy answer is to produce different versions of the video all of which still tell the same story. The harder answer is how this is done and this is what I will look at below.
First off you need to work out what the absolute key messages are and what shots are niceties, this will be a surprising exercise as the important key messages are usually a lot less than you may think. Once you’ve done this it is then a case of selecting the right shots and making sure that the story is still clear and the viewer is still able to take away the right message. It can be quite challenge reducing a 1min45sec video down to 15 seconds so this is where the skill and experience of a video production company comes into play.
One thing to mention in regards to video length is the idea that everything needs to be as short as possible because people attention span is so short. Now, there is a lot of truth in this but it is also important to remember that sometimes it’s more important to show the entire process as it better illustrates the care, attention and amount of work that goes into producing a product.
I’m going to use our Culture Collector project as a great example of this because we created three versions which were all very different lengths –
The full length video (below) was produced for YouTube and Etsy so there were no time limits to worry about. This meant we could tell the story we wanted with all the niceties. We felt this was important for Etsy because showing the whole process illustrates the time, care and attention to detail that goes into each and every frame that Culture Collector produces.
These next two videos are 40 seconds and 15 seconds in length, as you can see the core message still exists but the amount of shots has been dramatically reduced. The 15 second version has also been put into a square format as it was for Instagram.
We also had some fun with the Instagram video and produced a split screen version.
I hope this has been an interesting look into how videos are edited down to different lengths for specific applications. If you’re looking to produce a video campaign for social media please give Will and Andy a call on 01273 911345 or email here to find out how they could help.