Timelapse Tips and Tricks

May 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In our recent Media for Hire episode, you saw the amazing (well, pretty cool at least) transformation of our office. While we are pretty quick here at 12 Stars Media, it did take us a bit longer than 2 minutes to completely re-arrange the office, hang artwork, and build a cabinet (even with the instructions).

Timelapse photography is a way to show something in a short time, that would normally take hours, days, weeks, even years to view at its normal pace.

Believe it or not, you don’t really need any special equipment to do a basic timelapse. To get started, simply place a camcorder (flip camera, iPhone, or any other video capture device) on a tripod and hit record. Once the event is over, just speed the footage up in post production and voila!

And that is how a basic timelapse is done. You can also use a still-photo camera to capture super high resolution images to do a “pan and scan” where you digitally move around the frame to highlight different things. The only extra piece of equipment you’d need is an intervalometer - some cameras even have this feature built in to their settings.

Timelapses are just like everthing else in photography and videography – eveyone has their own solutions and work-arounds – just find what works best for you.

If you enjoy watching timelapse and want to learn more about it, check out Tom Lowe over at TimeScapes.org, he recently released a feature length film featuring his astro-timelapse photography.

Also, for a nifty behind the scenes, check out how it took the BBC two years to complete a 60 second timelapse for the TV series “Life.”

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4 Video Ideas that Give Your Audience a Behind the Scenes Look

May 7, 2012 By Leave a Comment

One of video’s greatest strengths as a medium is the way it allows people on either side of the camera to connect on a personal level. If you’re looking for a way to really invite your viewers into your world, you should consider pulling the curtains and offering a behind-the-scenes look at what makes you awesome. It’s a simple and easy strategy, and allows you to work with what you already have to offer something meaningful and intimate to those on the outside.

Looking for some inspiration? Here are four ideas to get you started:

1. Show off a bit.
Television shows like “How It’s Made” and “Unwrapped” have proven that people love watching stuff get put together. You can shoot a short video showing how you make your product (without, of course, giving away too many trade secrets). Recording the process can do a few things for your company – it shows that you know what you’re doing, which can create some trust between you and your customers, and also establishes just how much expertise goes into your process. Very impressive.
 

 
2. Unleash your inner Ken Burns.
Documentaries are huge right now. If you want to give a behind-the-scenes look of an event you host, the origins of your organization, or a big change you make in your company, a documentary-style video can appeal intellectually and emotionally. Check out some example documentaries and you’ll find common elements: mood-setting music, interviews with the key people, and the live events before, during, and after. This idea may take the longest to plan and complete, but it has a large effect.

3. Mellow out.
You may have a very professional voice for your company, but if you want to connect on a more casual level with your audience, you have the option to use a more personal tone in your videos. Try sharing some video that has less to do with your products or services and more to do with your people and the culture of your company. For example, footage from a fun company outing or a simple interview that gets into the personalities and hobbies of your team members.

4. Pass the camera around.
Along those lines, it could be a fun exercise to open up your videos to ideas from your team members. Let them be an anchor in describing your company’s activities. Give them a chance to sound off. In essence, you’re letting them produce a “day in the life” video about the people who know your company at its deepest levels.

These are just a few examples of what you can do to appeal to your audience, but the sky’s the limit. How do you open up with your web videos? Share your experience in the comments!

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YouTube’s New Suite of Advertising Tools and Resources

April 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In a blog post last week, YouTube rolled out a host of paid tools which further assimilates Google’s advertising platforms with the YouTube interface. Luckily, they’ve also included some educational resources and giveaways to bolster subscription. Here’s a quick rundown of the new offerings:

Google AdWords For Video

Google AdWords for video, which has actually existed since last September, is now out of private beta. It was previously only available to a few users.

If you have a few extra dollars in your budget, you can put your video content in front of a targeted audience in the same way that advertisers utilize paid search results.

With “TrueView” video ads, you won’t be charged when viewers skip your ad or if they have already seen your video. In other words, you pay only when viewers choose to watch your video.

There are four types of TrueView ads:

  • In-Stream: theses ads are essentially pre-roll ads attached to another video. Viewers see 5 seconds of your video and then can keep watching or skip it.
  • In-Slate: these ads are longer form commercials that play before YouTube partner videos, similar to a 30-second commercial that you would see before a Hulu.com program.
  • In-Search: these ads appear at the top of the search results page.
  • In-Display: these ads appear alongside an on-page YouTube video.
The AdWords platform allows you to easily set a budget, choose the video you want to promote, and attribute thumbnails, headlines and descriptions.
TrueView Ads

While In-Search and In-Display ads allow you to own search results and attach your content to similar (perhaps competing) videos, In-Stream and In-Slate offer you the opportunity to produce specific video advertisements and target other content as its playing.

New AdWords users can receive a $75 credit when you sign up. YouTube plans to give away $50 million in free advertising. You can request the free credit here.

Advertiser Playbook

The YouTube Advertiser Playbook is essentially a free white paper that “outlines best practices and strategies to create compelling content and build an audience on YouTube.” If you can spare the time to read all 121 pages, you may pick up a few tidbits along the way. It includes a Workbook, which contains helpful templates and checklists to help you produce your video content.

YouTube Ambassador Program

The YouTube Ambassador Program is a video series following 9 small businesses across the country who have experienced success with video marketing and AdWords for video. Although it’s nothing more than a promotion of YouTube’s ad platform in general, it is fun to see how other businesses are utilizing online video to drive traffic and sales.

YouTube for Marketers Google+ Page

If you’re a G+ user, add this page to a circle right away. While the page serves as a mouthpiece for YouTube’s paid services, you may find some meaningful interaction amongst other video marketers.

Do you plan to try any of the paid advertising options available to you as a YouTube user? Let us know in the comments section below.

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