What Makes A Video Good?

As a video production company in Orlando that’s been serving clients for over 20 years we think we know the answer.  But it’s not necessarily an easy one.  One could also ask what makes a house a home?  Or a home-cooked casserole a delectable meal.  Naturally planning is important, and so is technical expertise…but here’s five other elements we think are pretty important.

1.      The objective of the video

Every video has to have a clearly defined objective.  If you don’t have one, you’re just wasting money.  Ask yourself why does my business need this video?  What are we hoping to accomplish?  What are the goals of the project?  Now here it gets a little tricky.  When you’re writing your objective it shouldn’t be anything more than 2 or 3 sentences.  The shorter the better actually.  The reason for that is you don’t want the video to be watered down.  You want to focus on one clear objective.  For example, let’s say your business is an engineering firm.  You want to produce a 2-minute video in order to showcase the firm, your work, talk about your capabilities and share a client testimonial.  Great idea, it’s very focused.  But we wouldn’t want to complicate matters and dive headlong into a rambling piece about the owner and their 25 years of experience and how they were the first engineering practice in the area to introduce such and such service and that they are in the planning stages of building a new office in Acme Park, etc.  Sometimes people think that every point that might be important to them is also important to their audience.  It’s easy to get excited about your business, why wouldn’t you be!  But it’s important to consider your message and streamline it.  What's going to be most important to your target audience?

2.      The video's authenticity

It doesn’t matter whether a video is scripted or not, but a sincere message will always win out.  You can be sincere and authentic reading from a teleprompter because it’s the words that were written for the video that drive the script.  As long as those have meaning…whether intended for your employees or clients they’ll stand out.

3.      Excellent interviews/testimonials

Testimonials always will be powerful content.  Heartfelt interviews with your employees will also be successful.  If an employee loves their job, that will show up on camera.  It doesn’t matter they aren’t an ‘actor’ (we don’t want them to be), we just want to talk to them on camera and find out why they love what they do...and why it's important.  Maybe you're asking yourself, what goes into shooting a successful corporate interview?  We happen to have the answer! 

4.      Sharing valuable information

Videos that educate and/or entertain will resonate well with your audience.  People scour the internet for information.  That’s what they want, that’s what drives purchases.  In fact according to Hubspot, after watching a video 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online. 

5.      Production quality

You have to have a quality product in order for people to watch it.  We’ve all seen countless videos, whether they’re on YouTube or company websites that don’t represent companies well either because the audio recording is inferior, the lighting is terrible, or the composition is way off.  That doesn’t bode well in terms of reputation.  Quality goes hand in hand with proper coordination.  What will we be shooting?  It’s an important question to ask so that we know we have the right gear and personnel for the job. 

These are just five elements we think are important.  There’s plenty of other things that go into producing a successful video…understanding your target audience, meeting deadlines, making sure the video is being distributed properly, determining the proper length for this specific video…the list goes on. 

If you have questions regarding a company project, don’t hesitate in contacting us.