INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS VIDEO PRODUCTIONS ON THE RISE
Over the last six months we’ve seen a substantial increase in productions that are intended for internal audiences. Not just training material, but general communications efforts intended to deliver important messages about the client company’s future. The productions we’re creating for clients are used to communicate information about the company’s performance or goals, report on the company’s fiscal condition, explain changes to operations or to deliver other important messages that keep the workforce feeling informed. In most instances producing a video is proving to be a quicker, more economical and more effective alternative to sending executives all over the world to deliver key messages.
NEW PHASE OF TRAFFIC CRIME CAMPAIGN COMPLETED – RADIO SPOTS, BILLBOARDS, WEB ADS
We’ve just completed the next phase of the “Feeling Lucky?” campaign we’ve been working on for about a year now. This stage includes radio spots, radio mini-spots called adlets, billboards and web ads. This phase focuses on aggressive driving and child passenger safety. The material is on our site at www.Texas-Pictures.com/clients/HPD_Campaign. Check it out. We feel so fortunate to be involved in such a worthwhile effort.
PRODUCING ON THE ROAD – QUICK DELIVERY
We’ve recently expanded our tool kit to include comprehensive, portable post production capabilities. Not just editing but complete production capabilities including DVD and Blu-ray authoring right from a hotel room, office, car, anyplace. We’ve used the system to produce rushes for client review while still on location as well as to create an entire program before leaving the country we’re working in. In one trade show environment we shot interviews on the first day of the show and had a finished video that included clips from those interviews in the client’s booth the next morning.
COUNTDOWN TO OTC
In our last update we announced a page on our site devoted to helping our clients get the most out of participating in OTC by presenting samples of different types of trade show video displays. With less than 45 days left before the show opens we thought it might be worthwhile to update the site with a clock that counts down to OTC. Here’s the link: www.texas-pictures.com/clients/OTC. Last year we started a production for an OTC booth just four days before the event opened and finished the project with time to spare, so there is still plenty of time to put together an effective presentation that is ideally suited for trade shows.
If you’re considering producing a looping video for your booth at OTC or elsewhere, here are some general guidelines you might find useful:
Don’t use narration, bullet text is better – Your audience is much more likely to read a concise line of text or two than to listen to any part of a presentation in a trade show environment. A narration would have to compete with fluctuating trade show noise levels, conversations and event announcements. It isn’t realistic at all to think that a looping video with narration will receive any attention.
Create the video with no beginning or ending – Your audience will walk up and start watching the video at anytime, so only a small percentage will actually arrive at the beginning point of the loop. You’ll achieve better results without a distinct opening or conclusion.
Deliver a key message every 20 seconds or so – Your audience will only devote a short amount of time to your video loop and will begin watching the video at anytime (gee, we already said that), so the video should deliver an important message to the audience frequently. This ensures that viewers receive one or two messages before they move on.
Use strong, dynamic visuals and avoid a PowerPoint like format – Your audience has suffered through enough badly produced PowerPoint presentations to be likely to run screaming from any display that resembles the last presentation they had to sit through.
Use enough visual diversity to stay fresh – Don’t rely on one background for the entire presentation. The video should show your audience things and take them places they don’t usually get to see.
The design of the graphics should complement the booth design – Make the video look like it actually belongs on the booth rather than an afterthought. Here’s a couple of examples: The color scheme used as the background for text displays could use the booth colors. The fonts used for the text could match the fonts used in other parts of the booth.
Messages should focus on the audience’s interests – The video should deliver concise points about things that actually matter to the audience. The points should be brief, easy to understand and make clear what benefit you’re offering to the audience at a glance. Instead of saying something like, “Our new system will enable drillers to minimize downtime by eliminating traditional setup time,” you could simply say, “REDUCE RIG DOWNTIME.” We all know a claim like that will stop traffic.
Use sound effects before music – the repetition of looping music becomes annoying to the folks working the booth much more quickly than sound effects. Booth workers will be less likely to sneak over and turn down the volume on your display if you use whooshes, zips, zings and pops to reinforce movement within the video as a stronger element than the music bed.
UPCOMING LOCATION SHOOTS
We have video and/or photo shoots tentatively scheduled for the spring or early summer in the following locations:
Los Angeles, CA (frequently)
London, England
Santa Fe, NM
Las Vegas, NV
If you have anything in the same area you need footage or photographs of, this may be an opportunity to save some travel expenses by sharing the trip.
