You’ve spent years carefully developing your product and your image. Your product is perfect, the marketing materials are brilliant, the website is gorgeous, but yourmarketing video looks like you handed your forklift driver a Flip camera and set him loose. While your forklift driver may be handy with a video camera and have a creative streak, communicating a quality image with your potential customers requires as much care as your product’s development.

Video production values speak volumes about your product, service, and brand. Shaky camera work, boring segments, inaudible audio, and other undesirable factors relay a not-so-subtle message to your viewers. It’s a message about quality and since the quality is poor, it’s a message that says that you don’t care about quality.

Is that the message you want to send to your customers?

Unfortunately, in the digital age of YouTube and viral online videos, production values have taken a back seat to the immediate gratification of a few laughs. This doesn’t mean that poor quality videos have become a viable replacement for marketing videos. Video production values matter as much now as they ever did. Consumers are willing to watch amateur videos if the payoff is good enough. However, today’s television viewers are used to Hollywood effects, high definition video, crisp soundtracks, and realistic, fast-paced dialogue. If you’re going to develop a marketing video lacking a well-framed, crystal clear image and audible, easy-to-understand dialogue, your marketing message will be drowned out by the message the video screams out about quality.

Video Production Values – What are they?
Just as your company newsletter conforms to a set of predefined guidelines, so too do marketing videos. With your newsletter, you expect an attractive layout, a nice use of white space, well written and error-free text, and interesting content. You wouldn’t tolerate blank columns or pages, blurry photos, smudged ink, or ripped pages. With a video production, you expect a properly framed shot, clear focus, clear audio, attractive talent, and interesting content. You wouldn’t tolerate blurry images, a lack of audio, shaky cameras, unlit subjects, or “dead air.”

There’s more involved to video production values than these examples. For example, the quality of the camera, lighting, stage direction, set, editing, and other factors all work together to create a video with strong production values.

A marketing video with strong production values actually downplays those values because they’re expected while one with weak production values draws attention to itself. If you find yourself struggling to see a product or image, straining to hear, or simply bored out of your mind while the onscreen talent babbles nonsense, you can bet that video needs work. If you find yourself questioning the quality or credibility of a product, service, brand, or company, the marketing video likely lacks one or more production values.
Excellent video quality is a must; it shows you value quality. A lack of it shows the opposite. What do you think? Share your thoughts below.

Does the thought of appearing in your website’s online video give you stage fright? While you may have decided to launch a Web video, you may not have come to terms with the thought of appearing onscreen. Fortunately, you may not need to! Instead of appearing in your own online video, consider using actors and actresses.

Online Actors and Actresses Give You Greater Control over Your Image
One of the most immediate benefits of hiring an actor or actress is that doing so gives you greater control over the image you project. For example, if you’re a middle aged man running a company that caters to teenage girls, hiring a young actress to appear in your Web video could make much more sense than appearing yourself. Similarly, if you’re a twenty-something entrepreneur selling geriatric products to an older demographic, hiring a more mature actor or actress could be the right move. When considering who should appear in your Web video, think about your audience and the type of spokesperson that would lend the most credibility to your brand.

Online Actors and Actresses are Comfortable in Front of Cameras
Because actors and actresses are professionals, they tend to be extremely comfortable in front of cameras. This comfort level leads to several benefits: a more polished production, fewer mistakes, and faster production and post-production processes. Not only will your finished Web video look better with professional actors and actresses involved, the actual shooting and editing could go much smoother as well. For example, a well prepared actress requires fewer “takes” to deliver the message. Fewer takes translates into more efficient use of studio time and less time in the editing room piecing the final video together.

Online Actors and Actresses Allow You to Take Your Ideas Virtually Anywhere
Actors and actresses play roles – it’s what they do. Because of this, you can fill your Web video with virtually anyone from doctors and lawyers to cheerleaders and fairy godmothers. No matter what you’re imagining for your Web video, hiring professional actors and actresses to play the roles can bring your ideas to life.

If you’re suffering from stage fright at the thought of appearing in your company’s Web video, take a deep breath and consider the possibilities. Appearing in your own online video may not be the best choice. Many actors and actresses specialize in Web video and can deliver several important benefits. Not only can you avoid the stress, you can project the image you want to project, produce a polished Web video with fewer takes, and bring your ideas to life!

If you’re planning on having a video production companyproduce a short Web video for your website, be prepared for a flurry of behind-the-scenes activity. After all, there’s much more involved than lights, camera, and action. When you arrive at the studio, you may be surprised at the lack of a set. In its place, you may see a gaudy green screen.

What Video Green Screens Do
The green screen may be bright and unattractive, but it serves an important function. This green color can effectively be removed from the video and replaced with other images. For example, when you watch a television weather reporter standing in front of weather maps and radar images, the weather reporter is actually standing in front of a green screen. In the television control room, a technician uses a switcher equipped with what’s known as “chroma key” technology to replace the green with a computer generated image. If you’ve ever watched the Suze Orman Show on television, her entire set is chroma key green and computer generated.

Why Chroma Key Green?
Theoretically, you could use chroma key technology with other colors. However chroma key green and chroma key blue are the most popular. These garish colors aren’t commonly used in clothing and props, making them a good choice. Remember, the technology finds all instances of the selected color whether the color is painted on the set or worn as clothing. If the onscreen talent were to wear a chroma key green necktie, that necktie would be replaced with the video intended to appear on the screen behind the talent.

The Green Screen and Online Video
While green screens are commonly used in broadcasting, they’re also used for Web video. If you want a unique background or a polished “broadcast-like” look, shooting your Web video in front of a green screen and replacing the green background with a computer generated or b-roll video background can accomplish that.

Another use for chroma key in the Web video realm involves virtual spokespeople who are superimposed over the actual website. In this case, the chroma key technology doesn’t replace the green background with a new image; it removes the background completely. With a transparent background, only the actor or actress appears. This allows for frameless video overlays and creates the illusion of the actor being a part of the website itself.

When you head to the studio for your next video shoot, don’t be surprised if you’re placed in front of an ugly green screen. If you’re curious, ask the director to show you the composite picture before or after the shoot and enjoy your time behind the scenes!