How To Make Your Videos Look Good When You’re On A Budget
Producing a video can often be very costly, especially for small businesses that are rather cash strapped. Over the years, video-making equipment and tools have become cheaper and more accessible to the average marketer. However, not understanding what makes a video good can still injure the potential of your video. Ergo, fully maximizing the equipment that is available to you is a skill that every business owner needs to know.
Lighting your video
The most important thing about the lighting in your video is to always LIGHT YOUR VIDEO. For small businesses, studio lighting can be quite costly, but thankfully, as humans, we are blessed to have a powerful source of light that we can all employ, The Sun. And what’s better is that it is absolutely free! Use the windows in your studio to your advantage. But if you’re using this, note that the best time to shoot is an overcast or cloudy day as the light tends to be flat and consistent.
However, don’t mix light sources. Every single light source has its specific colour temperature and gradient, and mixing these colours together can make your video look weird. For example, if you’re using daylight, which leans towards blue on the colour spectrum, switch off any indoor lights because adding that will make your talent look orange or green.
On the flip side, if you aren’t familiar with how colour gradients work, avoid it altogether by closing the blinds to stop the sunlight from creeping in. In fact, you can actually get decent results from just about any lighting options that are available to you, you just have to make it work for you.
Perfecting your videos’ audio
If you want to make a professional-looking well-made video, one of the biggest mistakes that you must avoid is to focus solely on skillful and deft videos while completely disregarding the sound quality. Surprisingly, the general audience can actually be quite forgiving about the video quality, but when it comes to having less-than-decent audio quality, it will come off looking like a complete amateur. So if there is one piece of equipment that you would invest in, let that be a decent microphone.
You would want to place your microphone as close as possible to your subject, shut all the windows, switch off the air conditioning, and turn off the fridge to kill any unwanted noise. Additionally, what can help with dampening the echo is to place blankets or curtains around the recording area.
Your ears may be trained to tune out the “white noises” around you since young, but your microphone will pick up most of it. So it is always better to have your video recorded in a silent setting.
Focusing on Composition
Grabbing the perfect frame for each shot is a work of art in and of itself, but the good news is that there are certain common practices to follow. If you’re filming an interview, you might want your subject at various angles, but never in profile. Placing the interviewee straight from the lenses or cornering them to one side of the screen is just not aesthetically pleasing.
On top of that, don’t go too wide or you’ll capture the unnecessary items in the background that may distract the audience. Your audience needs to connect with the subject’s facial expressions, so either zoom in a little or move closer. Careful though, because being too close to your subject will bring you to a claustrophobic feeling shot.
Also, it is important to keep your camera as steady as possible. Shooting a video handheld is going to result in some horrific and low-budget-looking footage. Mount the camera on a tripod to keep it perfectly still or if you have absolutely no budget, just place it on a table or a chair that has a stable base.
Adding graphics to your video
As a bonus, integrating graphics into your videos here and there can spice up your video in a big way. And this can easily be done inside of Canva. You can create a couple of graphics inside Canva and then simply bring those creations into your non-linear editing software.
Just overlay these graphics on top of your video, add some smooth transitions and you will have yourself a professional-looking video. Although this method won’t allow you to create the highest quality effects, it is the simplest one because you can get it done in a short amount of time with literally $0 budget.
Once you master these 4 elements or pillars of video production, you will minimize the chances of your video looking amateur-ish. Not having these items planned out or just winging it is a bad choice. In fact, your audience might very well fly away after just one video. So plan and schedule ahead of time to save you and your business time and money.
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