How to Create Incredible Marketing Videos

You gotta understand, Mike played hockey. His dialogue is hip checks and high sticking, right? That's your go to for most conversations. Yeah. Unmoderated. Violence. No, uh, shouts. We love that in you, Mike.

Welcome to the marketing team of one podcast, where we have conversations about the issues one person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets. Now here's your hosts, Eric and Mike. Somebody came to me and said, Hey, um, we should be trying more video to promote our business.

I would probably panic a little bit. I mean, uh, or I'd be like, Oh, that sounds like a lot of work. There might be a lot of people in my, my shoes where they know video is important, but it just seems intimidating, scary, or just like a lot of work. What's really cool now is that the more genuine and less produced video you make.

The more you connect with your audience and the higher impact it has. So what that means is that the barrier is much lower than it's ever been. Yeah. Um, yes, that means that everybody jumps in and there's more competition around it. But that also means, you know, the statistics around how effective video are, are off the charts.

I mean, It seems to be the provide the lowest friction to learn the most about something whatever it is Um, I don't know about you, but like i'm on youtube all the time watching stuff and it's not just shorts or TikTok or things Like that i'm watching longer form stuff because it it just provides a dense, you know, you get to learn so much In one sitting from watching video and it really can be a super effective way to do marketing.

I'm just, I don't want to preach on how great video is for marketing because go research it. You'll find all kinds of amazing statistics. There might be some stuff on the internet about it, right? I think so. I think they say YouTube's like the second most. Visited website after Google, and it's really popular.

So, but what's funny and search engine, the searchability on YouTube is what is it's superpower, but there's all, all the different platforms have their own superpower. I mean, it's really, and you get to choose, you know, the big five, I would say you're, you're talking, you know, the biggest would be. YouTube, but you've also got TikTok.

That's also massive. You've got Instagram, which has reels, which is really powerful, which you could argue as part of Facebook, which is the other one, and then you've got LinkedIn, which is the lowest, uh, amount of people on it. But I would dare argue that depending on where you're at and what you're trying to promote.

Could be the most effective platform. If you visit LinkedIn daily, there is a serious lack of content being fed into LinkedIn, but I also see that they are trying to promote more, try to create their own video type reels and everything. And if there's only a select few doing that, that, that means that there's more opportunity for you to kind of.

The past three years I've gone to VidCon and it's all about content, video content creation, VidCon, the coolest thing about. Platforms like TikTok are it's discoverability and it's kind of rant the powerful aspect of the algorithm that TikTok provides is probably one of the most compelling things for marketers.

Now, is TikTok the perfect platform for your product or service? Might be, might not. Because if you're trying to sell to me, you're not reaching me on TikTok because I'm not. I'm not there. Yeah, exactly. And that's why you got to kind of study the platforms. It's funny because it's, it's in, it's in there, but it's by far, TikTok's the youngest.

Yeah. LinkedIn is the oldest. Yep. Facebook is near LinkedIn. It's one of the older platforms as well, um, but also it's very powerful because it actually has more people on Facebook, I think, than anybody. Yeah. It's the largest of all platforms. If I was a client coming to you right away and I said, Hey, you know what?

Eric, I know you know a lot about videos. I want to figure out a kind of video strategies or what would you ask me? Well, of course as we've preached on the podcast every episode possibly know your audience Yep, figure out where they're at. Look at their age demographics and look at what their behaviors are Understand that video is across all the platforms one of the most compelling Pieces of content you can create by far.

I think HubSpot did a study where they Realized that it beats blogs. It beats all you know content writing and all the other things that yeah Take a lot of time. Yeah, right Just so the time the time thing is kind of not as big of an issue as maybe I would make it out to be Right. Yeah, I think to the other thing to understand is like making videos is a totally different process mentally and you should try to Figure out how to make it fit into your I call it lifestyle What's the lowest amount of impact it will have on your lifestyle?

So don't choose something that's You know, Oh, I got to get all the best equipment and I got to get a team and I got to, you know, look at what realistically you have to work with as far as your your resources and that includes your time and your Equipment and then make your decisions based on that. The nice thing is that a lot of the providers produce a lot of tools that make it easier and easier and easier and So that, that really does help.

As far as equipment is concerned, the bar is super low. Like the newest iPhones, even the older iPhones going back to 12s and 11s, anything. Those are way fine. You know, you don't need to get, go invest in a bunch of stuff. Unless you're gonna amp up your production levels and do like a three camera shoot, you know, like we're doing here.

That's like the next level up. The one thing that people don't realize that is so critical to video is audio. Yeah, right? It's funny because people just assume that you, if you're outside, that's the biggest struggle, or you're working around noisy equipment. Invest in a microphone, or invest in a sound system that captures it and isn't distracting, because People will turn off a video if the, if the audio isn't good or it's annoying, or there's a sound in the background, they're going to click it off immediately.

It was Wistia's website. I thought was one of the best examples of they showed so many, like at different levels and everything. And I remember one of their things was they said, you could do a simple shoot with. Two iPhones one to record and then for the video and one to do the audio And if you get the microphone close enough to the people's mouths You can get decent coverage because that's how sophisticated these machine, you know These devices are you probably want to try things on a budget first just to see if it even works yeah, it's great advice just start small and understand that you can grow into it if you see results and Keep refining your strategies around it.

So you're gathering all your stuff. You're setting a budget. What you're willing to spend and can spend on this thing. You've, we've considered the camera. Probably the most important thing, right? Closely followed by audio, right? Are there any other things we should be considered? Like to make a good video up front?

I just think the last thing is just, and we're going real basic here and just consider the lighting. Not to say you have to go invest in lighting, but just make sure it's something you're paying attention to because there is a lot of videos out there that I see that are extremely dark and are hard to see.

So if you're shooting outside, it shouldn't be a consideration at all. Just make sure you're not in direct sunlight and you're squinting and you can't, you know, you need to make sure that it's controlled in some level. Um, so just consider it. If you're shooting outside go shoot in a shadow go shoot on the north side of a building or something like that That's all but I mean if you're if you're a basement Refinishing company and you want to show your process of what you're going on You probably do need to make sure that you have lighting considered absolutely before you go into it, right?

Yeah, those are the three technical pillars. I would say those are the very basics make a plan for your video outline it somehow and even if it's a two minute video Have a purpose behind it and have a very clear direction in what you're trying to highlight and make sure you optimize for that as much as possible.

How do I even, what am I outlining here? Write down what the goal of the video is. Whittle away at that to its bare essence. Go in with a purpose and what is the main one thing that you can nail down in one sentence? What is the goal of this video? Yep. Try to get it to one sentence. Yeah. Make sure that you hit all of the main things and understand that two minutes of video you can say Maybe a hundred and fifty words, you know I mean when you say that and I've heard you say that before I had it always just baffles me I'm like wait, you can't fit 500 words in 30 seconds.

That's how it is all the time I get you know, here's our proposed script or an idea for a script and it's two pages of Text yep, and I'm like this is great for a 20 minute video. This will be awesome You know you got to understand you got to let your you got a hook people immediately at the beginning you have three seconds Some say less than three seconds to hook people in, because there's so much competition for our attention at this point.

Yes, short form you need even less time. When you talk about a goal summed up in one sentence, I'm assuming some of those would be, would sound more like, we want to Give, get people invested in why we exist as a company. Answer the most common customer questions or problems. Yeah. That could be a series of videos.

And even if it's not marketing, but it's more like customer service, or to make the customers you have already feel really good about what you're doing, that, I think that's, that's gold right there. What is the most common issues or topics or things that you're constantly repeating? And get those on video somehow and then there's all kinds of tools where you can either embed them in an email or you can Embed them on your website.

There's a tool. Um called video ask that allows you to Have a little q a session down there with pre canned videos, but it's much more compelling. It gives you options you can Click on certain topics and they're just little bite sized one or two minute videos that explain. People love behind the scenes stuff You know, like if you're in manufacturing or food production, like we've done a lot of videos around that.

It's fascinating like how it's made I would love to go to a factory different factory floors like once a month and just see how it all yeah, it's so fascinating It's like this you get like sucked into the automation process and it's just a kind of hypnotic if you have access to a A factory floor, just record little snippets of everything and put them out there.

Because I think there's a lot of people like Eric and I, who would love to just see the behind the scenes and how that's made. People see that stuff. And, and there's so many different ways people interpret that. You don't, you wouldn't even consider it, but some people might be looking, is it a safe place to work?

Is it, are they taking care of their employees? Are they cleaning the equipment? You know, like there's all these like. Wild things that you never even consider as the purpose of the video But all those ancillary things that come alongside of it are super powerful and compelling to people that you don't even pick up on Maybe when you're making the videos, I think getting to that like low friction thing as far as content ideas, too Interview customers if they're open to that, you know, they don't have to just put a video testimonial.

That's a really nice two, three minute thing. You can see a genuine person enjoying, you know, delighted to work with you. You know, there's something super powerful about that. Um, and then also like interviewing, you know, leadership and stakeholders. Important people in your business that maybe have influence over an industry or I'm just encouraging people You know, maybe don't write the blog about it.

Maybe just film a video about it. Yeah replace something where you'd write a blog with a interview type thing or you know, it doesn't have to be Super outlined and super structured. You can still convey that same message. I know one person I had talked to a while back He had replaced Writing emails to people who had reached out like with the sales inquiry or something He just fired up One of those like record your face type things like loom or something like that and he would do a custom message to them and embed it so he could send that back to them and the people would Be able to put a face to the name.

They'd be able to get an idea of was who's this person sound like what are they? And what would it be like and I think that's unless you're a really really good writer or really good at other stuff I mean that's It's better, right? Yeah, it's like that whole thing of like, I can write an email, and then you write it, and you're like, that's super funny.

And then you get a call, like, what's with the email? Like, do you hate me? What, what did I do to you? And you're like, no, it's a joke. Come on, like, you know, that's that's hard to do on an email, right? That's very difficult Yep Now you've had I think you've had a lot of success doing that where you'll put together a proposal And ideally you're as entertaining as mike is I mean, let's face it You if they're not entertaining or there's a low energy level to it.

Don't really Encourage them to be on camera a lot or do a lot of video editing tricks We don't have to do anything with you. You're just a sparkly human being I'm sure when you get on your loom and you present your proposals 100 percent sign me up, right? Those, they get a lot of, you get a lot of good comments from people.

They're like, oh, thanks for filming a video. Or every time I do it, I'm so glad you did that. And I think it's because not a lot of people are taking advantage of it. So it's, it's kind of novel, but I also think it, I do think it goes back to what you're talking about. A lot of people just want to take in the video.

They don't necessarily want to read long passages of. Especially if I'm showing off how to do something. If you can do that in a two, three minute video, I mean, I've had some that are like, if I'm explaining something that's a little complicated, it might be like 10 minutes. There's a response to that. And I'm using it more from a communication standpoint, not a marketing or sales.

A lot of people don't listen to their, listen to their videos. Like, I don't know about you, but you know, when I'm watching a lot of videos, I don't want my wife knowing what I'm watching, but it's, you know, but she's like. Are you watching another marketing video? Like, that is so boring. I'm trying to watch Survivor, man, you know?

So there's a lot of people just watching video and not even taking in the audio. Like, and you're talking about, like Reels or stuff like that where I'm still trying to wrap my head around this where they've captioned it like the auto captioning is there So you get an idea of what's going on? Without listening.

I would say maybe 50 percent of the video into that I watch is I turn the sound off not because of anything more than I just don't want to bother the people around me You know, especially shorts and reels and things like that. It's just people want to read it. Yeah noise can be a pollution Give a hoot, don't pollute.

You're building all these things to worry about in my head. Like how, how can this not be like all consuming? Well, there is a lot of automation that's out there now. Of course, AI is involved heavily. I don't use it myself, but I want to become a evangelist for Adobe Express because I do think that they have done a pretty good job.

Yes, there's a learning curve. No, it's not the perfect solution, but I think it's probably one of the more accessible tools out there for people to use for doing a lot of this. And, and you can do things like, hey, I will caption it for you and it'll make it fun graphics and you can add icons and TikTok, even Snapchat, those, those platforms allow for all so much powerful editing, uh, TikTok, obviously, all those, yeah, it's right there in your pocket.

And that's probably sufficient for doing a lot of that kind of short form stuff that we're talking about. I mentioned short form and I'm just in the short form mode because. I think there's a stat that said like, 60 percent of the marketing videos produced out there are less than two minutes. Yeah. I'm not saying that's perfect for every situation.

I mean, some things need 10 minutes, some things need 11 minutes. But that goes back to the purpose of what you're trying to do. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And knowing that helps set your constraints for mm-hmm . Right? We wanna educate people about this new product that we have coming out an 11 minute video is not a good way to do that.

No, not the interim. Do you have an in-depth interview with the CEO that where they're talking about a big. Change in the company. You probably don't want to try and get that down to two minutes, right? They'll do a bit major disservice. Yeah. Yeah, so so knowing the purpose that goes to the time and but in General the shorter you can make it more concise the better, right?

Like you don't want to have a lot of filler in there again. We're competing for attention and it's You s these platforms make it so easy to just boom, swipe, swipe, swipe, you're done. You know, oh, the two seconds. Hey, you know, that's one of my funniest examples as I showed in a short form video that was 30 seconds long to somebody to give me a give me some, you know, I want some feedback.

Like, how could I make this better? I didn't get to the end of it. I swiped. I'm like, what? Like, I asked you to look at this and you couldn't even put together the attention span to watch 30 seconds. 30 seconds. So. That's, that's, yeah. I was doing something wrong, I guess. I mean, that's the thing about it is, like I said, you get one or two seconds at the beginning, you know.

Some people argue it's even less than, it's 7 seconds or something like that, you know. 18 milliseconds, you know. It's a crazy game. I don't want to get on that, you know, hamster wheel. I was gonna say, I could get, I could get very, uh, Get off my lawn, E, about this. I'm not going to do that. What are the things that you would consider when you are setting up a shot or a collection of shots that you want to put together in this video?

Are there some things that you, uh, look for in setting that up? Yeah, I think the one thing is to pay attention to the attention span. We just talked about that and understand that, you know, the platform or most of the time. People will spend and give attention to things for about three to five seconds, and then they want something to change.

Whether that's adding a graphic in there, or whether it's adding b roll, maybe the audio is consistent over the top, or something like that. What I'm getting to is like, capture a s a variety of Things that you could put together in that video that whether it's still imagery that you dwell on for a second or two Hands doing things.

Maybe it's super close up. Maybe it's super far away Maybe it's some drone footage if you're lucky enough like capture Way more than you think you'll need. Yeah. Right? And so you have more to work with. What gives it context? You know, what tells the story even more, better than just somebody standing in front of a camera talking?

Yep. You can have a majority of the videos, somebody just standing in front of your camera talking, but you need to also mix that in with other things. Put on you know that art director hat like what are some things that you want to do when you're setting up these shots If I'm if I've never done this before what are some considerations to get the look right?

Well, I think you depending of course on the video if you're just shooting one person It's nice to and you're shooting not vertical but horizontal. Let's say Cause vertical shots I think lend themselves really well to just full on just face or somebody standing there talking and you can set that up and usually it's a little bit more dynamic and those are, you know, maybe if you're doing something where you're the camera is moving, do a couple of practice sessions first with it just so you know you're not going to bump into that table or knock over that light or you've got enough room or everything in the background.

That's the thing that I think people forget about sometimes is what's in the background because You may not see it, or may not even care that it's there, but there are other people who are part of your audience that are hypersensitive to things, like that light over there is now peeking out over your shoulder, or now there's a bird feather sticking out of your head, or What are you looking for?

What are you looking to avoid in backgrounds for that? I, I, so I first start with compositionally the rule of thirds. So I always like to keep my frame broken up into three parts. And usually the face or the head is on one of those accesses. It's either to the right or to the left. And then I consider what's to the side of them and what's usually, I like to break things up to where there is some angles or some sort of dynamic elements, furniture.

Window lines things like that that point to the face or point to something relevant You know when you're doing an interview with somebody you want to probably put them on one of those thirds and then you want to have something That's over their shoulder. That's not super interesting and then have some sort of a lighting Maybe the elements in the background are broken up into halves So you've got the stuff in the foreground is divided by thirds The stuff in the background is maybe just this half is the wall and this half is the window.

In some cases it's better if it's, it's kind of just fades off into the distance and there's nothing competing for the attention, right? Yeah, if you've got control over like f stop or that bokeh effect where you can make the background go into a faded, you know, soft. Uh, that's really beautiful stuff. It takes a little bit of extra stuff.

You can still do it on your iPhone. You shoot with a higher level, I think it's portrait mode or something like that. Uh, no, it's cinematic mode on the, on the video. Uh, you can focus on one thing and then everything else kind of blasts out, uh, out of focus in the background. That really helps people focus in on the face.

You want to focus on faces, obviously. Somebody's talking, especially if you're doing an interview type thing or something like that. You can see on these shots when we shoot our video, we isolate the face inside of a blue background. That's very plain, but everything else around it is pretty visually stimulating.

So that it is still interesting. And I, we do that because when we click back and forth from one camera to the next camera. There's consistency, so that when I'm talking here, and then I click to the center camera, my head is basically in the same spot compositionally. And then I switch back to this camera, it's basically you, you don't lose contact with my eyes.

My eyes don't move from here, and then they're over here, and then they bounce back over there. You want to make sure that you're not shooting in front of a bright window. Yeah, right. Yeah. Lighting is such a consideration. We talked about it earlier, knowing the lighting, but let's say it's in our office here.

Like we don't want to be pointing the camera towards the light. Right. We want to actually have the light behind the camera in most cases. Yeah. Even if you have light behind you try to overpower it with light in front of the subject behind the camera so that it pops it off of the background as best possible.

Another trick Two is we use something called hair lights, which are just kind of borderline lights, which you can see here. Like the edge of my head is lit up to separate it from the background. Same with the edge of your head is you've got a highlight over here. Maybe that's more over here is your angelic glow.

It's my aura. Yeah, it's your spiritual aura. I don't know if this physical aura that you've set up matches my actual aura. I got, I know there are people who can see that. If you know somebody, I'd love to know what, what color aura mine is. Reach out. I assume it's a dark blue or something like that. Does that mean horribly violent or?

Oh, I don't know. I don't know what the colors mean. I just, I just think like you buy the color rain clouds and but with a hint of optimism open skies So if they're talking and they're talking this direction You don't want to have the plane or the edge of the composition here and then all this empty You really want to shift that over so that they're not feeling crowded.

Yeah, it's maybe simple but You know, ideally you're shooting with, some people shoot with two or three lights, you know, we shoot here. We've got five or six going, um, the overhead light makes us, you know, works well with our makeup. We have access to all these LED lights now where you can adjust all the color, make it hot, make it warm, make it purple, make it red, you know, I mean, those can be really fun, you know, you can have a lot of fun with them.

Those are 50 on Amazon or something. You could do some really cool things Highlighting, you know bringing drama to your videos having a little bit more fun. What about your subject? You've got it like we're back on this interview thing. Are there things they shouldn't wear? Do you want the focus to be on the face?

I mean everybody just by being human beings were naturally drawn to looking at people's faces So we can't turn that off if you have like a checkerboard shirt or maybe a blue with some half circle Oh, I guess you didn't this is my way of asking if it should I be wearing this? This is probably the that's a borderline.

Yeah, that's borderline. But yeah, back in the olden days, there used to be the issue of like these, uh, more a lines where you would get like a herringbone jacket and then all of a sudden you'd just see these vibrations of pattern and things like that, that you definitely are trying to, I have a couple of shirts I've noticed on, on our zoom calls that do that quite a bit.

So it still is an issue. Um, but yeah, you're the center of attention then. Nobody can take their eyes off of your shirt. And not in a good way, like, what are some tips that you have as far as like collecting all this stuff and finding what's going to be your final video. This is why it's really good to keep your mission statement for the video as short as possible.

Go back to that and then use that as a filter to go through all of your content because I would say that could be the most time consuming piece of doing any sort of video editing. You know, having to look through two hours, you literally have to sit there for two hours and watch every second of that video to make sure you're not missing something you can, you know, uh, tools as far as software, Premiere Pro, Final Cut.

Those are great. Obviously pro level stuff. High level learning curve there. Yep. iMovie is great though. iMovie will work good on a Mac. It'll work good on your phone. You mentioned Adobe Express earlier. Adobe Express does really good stuff too. Yeah. Um, but there's all kinds of different video editing tools that make my 12 year old uses a thing called CapCut.

And cuts together a bunch of them and she doesn't have a computer. She just uses, at this time, actually it was an old iPod. Like, I know we use Opus. That's another tool that we use for kind of clipping things down a little bit. What are some things in editing that you do? Are there some, like, do you have some tips and tricks that like, are things that you like to think of when you go through and editing things?

Keep it really concise. You can refine the edit of a video. By just clipping out the first half second of somebody ending a sentence or starting a sentence. Or making a funny noise and then going into a word kind of a thing. It has such an impact on, on how it's perceived. Be, be aware of that when you're editing is that you got to look for those moments when even if it doesn't feel like gold, if it's the only time that that certain subject matter was mentioned or something like that, look back to where, just try to cut that little.

Nugget as best as possible. Are you ruthless with your editing? Do you think would you, is that a word that you kind of keep in mind when you get in there? Like, like, well, it all has to be towards the message and the goal of the thing. Right. And if people start talking and then they. Keep going. And then they talk for five more minutes and then they talk another two minutes.

There's also funny effects that we experience all the time on this podcast. Cause it's just human nature is you'll ask me a question. I'll ask you a question. And, um, we're, I think we're getting better at it, but a lot of people, um, so. Um, that's how they'll begin every answer to every question. So be aware of that.

You can try to mitigate it. Good luck. If you know, this is going to be more social media focused, you're probably going to be leaning more towards the portrait type. Orientation. Yeah. Yeah, if you're if you're trying to repurpose and you've shot it horizontally and then you want to make it vertical You need to make sure that you're going into the shoot with that idea Yeah, and understand that you can change the edit and move the subject matter into the center But if that subject matter moves it looks weird.

It's not natural and it does create kind of a odd challenge to try to make that look right. What's going to be more forgiving when it comes to composition? Is it going to be better to capture horizontally and just know that you're not taking up the full vertical space? Or is it easier to go from vertical and then cut down to a horizontal?

Yeah, I don't. That's the tough one is to go from vertical to horizontal for sure. I would recommend shooting everything vertical or horizontally and then edit down to that. So when in doubt. Yeah. Stick with the horizontal. Yeah. Yeah. When we're creating, we're always trying to think flexibility, multiple uses, multiple edits.

Sometimes it's a unique situation, which you will never recreate. Maybe it's a process, or it's somebody saying a certain combination of words that's just like, Ah, nailed it. You know, that's perfect. You gotta look at those opportunities sometimes as just a goal. Shooting in a unique situation that's really gonna help tell your story.

Make sure that it's as flexible and as evergreen and as available to as many platforms or editable to as many platforms as possible because strong content is like gold. And if you can't optimize it for many, many different types of distribution channels, then it kind of limits you. And it's, it's frustrating when we're doing interviews, it's nice to be able to.

Ask the question, have them answer it, go back, shoot it again, maybe four or five times, by that fifth or sixth time, they've kind of nailed it. I thought it might be fun to talk about maybe just a little bit of behind the scenes, because we've talked about behind the scenes stuff a little bit here. What'd you do to set this up?

First, I think we worked on, we strategized what would be the best space that we could just carve out and say it's permanently going to be our set. So having a permanent set. Awesome. But getting this right was a lot of research around look and feel. Did we want a light set? Did we want a dark set? How did we want to do it?

The best way that I've had success in the past when I shoot photos or videos is to start and remove everything. So start with just a black room with nothing. And then build in the things that you want to have with it. The first thing you need to consider is where are people going to be and you remember the first version of it was just one couch where we're both sitting on the couch talking to each other sideways.

If you had to give that aesthetic a name, what would you have given that aesthetic? Um Bachelor pad basement in collaboration. It was nice to kind of choose like, Oh, we've got some nice cloth textures that are bright and colorful. And so filling the space with these elements, I think was really helpful.

And we wanted to kind of have this, you know. The chair was the authority and the fun funky was the orange couch And so that was that was where things started, but then we started to add in things like Patterns and natural elements because we didn't want it super structured around like going back to the bachelor pad vision Then we started to look at the plants and then this wonderful element here, which you picked out Yeah, which I thought added to that kind of 70s, mid century kind of vibe we're kind of going for.

Yeah, talk show type feel. Yeah, those kind of funny Lawrence Wilkes set. To let everybody know, there's two gigantic lights above us right here to make sure, and so those are providing downward light. Which is flattering more flattering and everything. Um, we talked earlier about the the hair lights that so there's one back here You've got one back there that helps provide that separation between the background But then you the composition here you talked about trying to get the cameras lined up just to point out We've got three cameras.

You got one here one there and then The other one right and so that gives you options, but you you intentionally place those in different places Mm hmm to Allow for more pleasing cuts between the different cameras. What really helps is to develop the space, uh, to where you can have a little bit of depth in there.

The lighting needs its own space. You can't have lighting right up against something because then it'll just blast it out. So that, I think, was one of the next challenges, was trying to place the lighting strategically so that it accented what we were doing. didn't become part of the set. Yeah. So you've got a ring light behind you there that lights up this area right around your head and face that kind of gives you that accent so that when this camera cuts to you, you've got a really nice lighting and everything kind of seems to fit right.

And you've got the hair light that separates you on the back. We've got about two feet behind each piece of furniture here that gives us that separation. If we had a bigger space, I'd have even more room. I'd even push these further out so that you've got the depth and breaking down and you've got darkness that is a little bit more dramatic.

Um, we did like these dark blue cause blue pops warm flesh tones off of the background, better than any color out there. So you see. You don't focus on the background because the flesh tones of our faces are popped off of those backgrounds in a nice way. And it was a lucky coincidence that we already had this room painted a dark blue.

Yeah, this is page design blues. Then there was adding the organic elements and making sure that those were lit properly so that they didn't become what I like to call rock stars. Yeah. You know, you don't want the, the rock stars are us. Yep. Or our guests. Damn straight. That Not the plants. But the plants are nice, because that's another organic element that Helps soften things, right?

Helps soften things, and doesn't provide this like, harsh, like, prison cell, uh, atmosphere. They're all fake. It's all plastic. Uh, and then Tell me about these things. Like, maybe people don't even know. It's, it's because it's so small. Easter egg element in there. Well, Mike, you have this collection of old type.

Which, you know, this is old lead type from old printing presses and things like that. We've got a huge collection of that in a, in a case behind us. And so I pulled out, because it's the crying couch, um, the words, uh, I'm crying. And I've spelled that out here because we, I do, we do a lot of crying. We do.

Yeah. Even off, off set, uh, we'll do a lot of crying. Yeah. Or when this is all shut down, we'll just come in here and cry. Yep. Yep. Um, and then of course the salt lamp, because we just need positive vibes. Because we put a lot of the work up in up front and you talked about the process and honing that process the Doing regular videos for us hasn't become like super daunting or super Challenging, right?

Highlight of my week too, Mike. If they wanted to do this, Mm hmm. Like, how much time could people expect if they wanted to do something similar to what we're doing? We record sometimes up to two hours of footage. Everything comes off the capture cards and goes into Premiere Pro. That's the platform that I use for editing all the video.

We record all of our audio on Audition. And we have, we bring all those files in and Premiere Pro syncs them all together in one big long file. There's other platforms, I know that OBS is one that's, I think that's a free platform where you can do multi camera shoots and things like that. Um, but basically when it's in, in the editing bay inside of Premiere, and then I just sit there and let the video play and switch back from camera to camera.

Clip out all the stuff that doesn't make any sense. We developed an intro and an outro animation. Thanks to our team We have licensed music that we bought from Adobe. That is our intro and outro music Yeah, like how long do you how long are you editing? This takes about six hours to put together one episode Yeah, and that's everything so I'll go through it Two, and then maybe a third time, and then post it for everybody else to look at.

Sometimes there's some refinements, or here's one intro, here's another intro, let's try different intros. We know this isn't a quick hit thing that you're just gonna consume and move on. You know, if that was the case, we probably wouldn't be spending nearly as long. Yeah, I mean. On all of these production things, right?

We're doing video and audio. What I'm hearing from you is it like, I mean, it's about eight hours of, two hours of recording, six hours of editing, right? So. If you're writing ebooks, if you're doing all these things, like it's pretty even, so it doesn't have to be as intimidating again. Set up the system, right?

Yeah, I get practice in the system. And luckily I had enough time to do that and build the system early on to where I knew the focus needed to be build a system. So if you have that passion for creating video, definitely turn, turn that into, maybe that's what will make you a unique marketer is the fact that your passion for producing videos on whatever platform and whatever format it shows, get that energy comes through.

Yeah. That's what's so great about it. It's harder to get it into a blog or an ebook or something like that. It's. It seems like there's this less friction to get that kind of cool, positive energy where people can connect with you and your brand super easily through video, right? All right, I'm I'm sold.

You're a new video guy. I'm gonna, I'm gonna start creating video. Making videos, cool. Me washing my car on the weekend. People want to see that? There's whole channels dedicated to it, believe it or not. No, I know, but those are for the people who know what they're doing. Do they want to watch people who don't know what they're doing?

I think that would be a funny thing to see how you mess things up all the time. There's a lot of cursing and hitting your head on. Things and yeah, a lot of you just add in noise sound effects. Oh my God. Thanks Eric. Thanks a lot. Thanks everybody.

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