This week on Video Marketing Insights, co-founder Johnny Eaker talks about locations and how important they are in telling your story.

Show Notes: Time Details

1:50 – Why location is key

2:54 – Where you should not shoot testimonials

3:25 – Recording outside of a studio

4:26 – Planning out a time schedule

6:00 – Importance of audio

6:58 – Good lighting

Transcription:

Hey, this is Johnny Eaker, and this is this week’s episode of Video Marketing Insights. I am live in downtown Columbia, Flat Branch Park. Even though I’m crazy busy, I want to stay committed to actually providing these weekly Facebook Live videos. I’m getting some good feedback from folks that maybe you’re learning something more about video and story that maybe you didn’t know before. When we started this, I just wanted to start sharing what I know about video marketing because in general, it’s what we do. It’s what we’re passionate about; and if you’re out there trying to figure out the world of marketing for your business, it’s a space you need to be in. So, we can help you do that.

With that said, this week I am live on location, and I just want to go over how locations can help your videos. Right? Location is a key character to the story, so if you don’t select locations properly, then you’re not going to be able to tell your story correctly. As of right now, let’s say we’re downtown here in Columbia, and this is a story that’s about the city and its alignment. This probably isn’t the best location to select; but if this is a family playing in the park and talking about how great Columbia is, this location probably makes all the sense in the world. Right? So today we were filming in a customers house, and what I want to impress upon you guys is to get into locations that make sense.

If you have consumers that you’re trying to get testimonials for, then the next step is, “Where do you film those testimonials?” Well, for the love of all things great please don’t bring them into a conference room! Please don’t put them in front of a solid backdrop because your video won’t look as good as it possibly can. You can get outside of a studio, I would say 90 percent of what we do is on location, because that’s what adds the most to the story. Today for example, we went into a customer’s house and we were talking to them inside their apartment. It was a small space, but it really set the person being interviewed at ease. So that’s a benefit of selecting great locations. You’re not in this stuffy conference room where people can’t concentrate. It also gave us the opportunity to see their world. We were able to get footage, they were able to talk about what they did, and it was pretty cool.

So, if you’re in an industrial space, don’t be afraid to go into warehouses. Don’t be afraid to go into things that are kind of off the wall because it makes it that much more interesting, right? For us, that’s what we look at all the time. When you go to select the right location, I can’t stress enough how much planning becomes an important part of what you’re trying to do. It’s one thing to say “Hey, we’re going to go film in a customer’s home.” But, you’ve got to set the proper expectations because you’re not going to get in and out in just 30 minutes. For you to tell a great story, you’re going to have to set an expectation of it being 30 to 45 minutes to set up. It’s going to be probably at least a half hour to have that interview, and have a conversation. If you’re going to film after the fact, it takes that much longer to get the footage that you need. So you’re probably looking at a couple hours, right? To tell the story effectively, you’re not going to be able to do that in such a short amount of time.

The other thing that locations really do is enhance the story overall. If you go look at some of our films, they just do a good job of establishing place. Place is a character in the story. If you’re able to first establish that, that’s pretty awesome. Even if it’s an office building, just make it as interesting as you possibly can. You can always scout locations and make sure they make sense. Even though I may fall in love with this beautiful pavilion back here, it may be too noisy; and if dialogue needs to happen here, it’s just not going to work. So I would scout that ahead of time. If we are really married to this location, then maybe I’m bringing in additional staff. An audio engineer type person that can really just focus on the audio, and make sure that we are getting what we need whenever we are here if we know it’s going to be a challenge. Or, maybe we just don’t use this as an interview location, we may use this for something else. When you are selecting your locations, audio is a huge factor, and time of day is also really important.

What is the lighting like whenever you are on location? Right now, cloudy day. This is actually a beautiful day to film. Everything is very diffused. Everything will look very nice. I’m even on my phone and things look pretty good. I could probably use a little light, a little pop right here, but I’m running and gunning today. So, this is what you got. But a cloudy day is a great day to film, unless there’s going to be rain. Anytime you’re going exterior, there’s a sea of things that could go wrong but that shouldn’t stop you from doing what you’re trying to do, right? You want to fight for those great locations. I cannot stress that enough. Get out of those boring conference rooms, get out of backdrops. People want to see the environment of other people. It’s a key character in making your story really, really interesting.

So, that’s about all I’ve got for this week. Please go out cosmicsauce.agency, and if you go to our blog you’ll see all the video marketing episodes, the video marketing insight episodes, and you’ll be able to see the previous weeks. Next week, I will be in Chicago, of all places, filming. I will try to make sure we do something cool there in Chicago and talk to you guys about all things video marketing. Until then, you guys have a great week.