How to shoot your promotional video correctly
Pay attention to the following points when shooting your promotional video
Follow the briefing
Read the company’s requirements carefully to find out which terms you should use and how the individual scenes are structured.
Plan your shoot
Find the right location, the right outfit, a good look and any additional items you need in advance.
Don’t use the front camera
Of course, you’d much rather see yourself while filming, but the front camera on your smartphone has a much lower resolution than the ‘normal’ camera on the back of the device.
No shaking or wobbling
To ensure that the recording is not blurry or shaky in some places, we recommend attaching your smartphone to a tripod. Don’t have a tripod? No problem! Just use household items to position your smartphone or build your own tripod out of books, for example → be creative!
Test, test, test
You can forget the idea that every video will be an easy one take. Of course, sometimes you’ll get a scene right the first time, but to improve the quality of your videos, it’s good to do lots of takes from different angles and keep checking what you can do better. This is where your ability to be self-critical comes in!
Put yourself in the viewer’s shoes and think about what it would take for you to watch your own video.
Perform a white balance
To prevent colours from accidentally changing during recording, it is always a good idea to perform a white balance. It is best to do this once your smartphone is in the correct position and before you start filming. Simply hold a white sheet of paper in front of your camera and tap your smartphone with your finger for a little longer until your camera focuses and a sun appears. Then the white balance is done!
Shoot lots of takes
The more video footage, the better. Record your video from different angles so you have more material to work with when editing. This can also be very valuable if the company wants to make changes.
Keep your distance
Even though we love your face, you should always stand at an appropriate distance from the camera. Standing too far away is not good either. Just make sure you leave some space around your face/body.
Stay in the centre
You and the product should always be the centre of attention. Therefore, don’t move the product to the edge of the screen so that there is still enough space to add text or other animations, for example.
Do you particularly like one take? Mark it
We’ve all been there: you make 10 different videos, but which one was the best? To save yourself a lot of time, always mark the take you particularly like after you’ve filmed it.
Learn about the product
Viewers will notice if you don’t really know anything about the product. That’s why you should only participate in collaborations where you genuinely think the product is cool and learn everything important about it in advance.
No cheating
No one likes listening to someone reading from a script; it comes across as inauthentic. Try to remember the most important points and bring your own personality to the table!
Keep your background clean
People often forget this at home, but a clean background is very important. There should be no distracting elements behind you so that viewers can focus solely on you.
