It’s finally time.

The moment you’re finally about to film a team video, after months of planning, getting feedback from the team, and looking at how other businesses have made similar videos for inspiration.

You sit your interview down and turn your camera on, but something doesn’t feel right. Is it the setup, the sound, the person? You can’t put your finger on it.

Welcome to the fourth month of The Odyssey Newsletter - let’s dive in.

Filming great interview videos 🚀

Every business needs great interview videos. From team members to clients, these are essential videos that you need to have in your marketing arsenal, but they’re not ‘easy’ to create.

A fine balance of technical knowledge, creative approach, and on-camera personality needs to be found to make the perfect interview video. We know from experience. We’ve created hundreds of them.

It becomes even harder when you’re filming in a location that looks scarce, with an individual with no previous on-camera experience.

So, here’s what we did to overcome this challenge with a brand-new client:

• 1) Have a conversation: It sounds obvious, but rather than asking preset questions, have a free-flowing conversation that you actively listen to and reply to. This puts the interviewee at ease and made it a much more comfortable experience.

• 2) Use your surroundings: The office we were filming in was challenging to make look visually interesting, but we found a plant nearby and used this as a bit of background interest. Whilst this seems generic, this made a big difference to a plain white wall.

• 3) Have multiple cameras: Cutting the bad takes out of a good interview can seem jarring if you don’t have another camera. We used two for this production, and this really helped to add variety and seamlessly cut out the bad parts of the interview.

• 4) Summarise: Interviews can last a long time. So, one of the things we’ve recently started doing is filming a section where we summarise everything that’s just been discussed. You’ll find this condenses the entire interview into small soundbites, which from our experience, we tend to use over the full interview.

• 5) Great lighting: You’ve got to have lights. If you don’t, you can use surrounding windows to add a bit of extra depth, just like we did in this interview. This helped to separate the interviewee from the background and made the video much more dynamic to watch.

Whilst filming a ‘quick’ interview video seems easy, there’s a lot that can go wrong. So much so, that we spent much longer than anticipated to make this interview look and feel perfect.

It’s a much more hands-on process with a lot involved in making it visually interesting, engaging to watch for longer than 30 seconds, and a smooth experience for the interviewee.

Lesson Learned: If you’re filming interviews, expect to spend more time on the setup and the interview itself. They aren’t a “five-minute job” and can take several hours to get right once you factor everything in you need to get right. But, the outcome is worth it, and the results pay off.

Odyssey: Month Four

It’s been yet another hectic month here at Odyssey.

This month we’ve been working with a household technology brand (that we can’t mention), building animations for a conveyancing company, filming ads for a property development company, and much more!

Our new Video Editor, Scott, joined the team. He’s a great guy and is just settling into the madness with an always-on flow of videos that need working on.

One of our latest videos for a brand called Nourished reached thousands of views in a matter of weeks, increasing daily orders and customer engagement overnight.

We’re currently pitching for three big projects that could change the game for us as a small team. Whilst we can’t say who they are just yet, we’re hoping we can start shouting out about these soon!

Take your marketing to new heights 🚀

If you’re looking to start your video journey and improve your marketing, here are a few ways that we can help:

1) Book a free 30-minute strategy session with Jack, our Founder. He’ll review your current marketing, and give you a few video ideas that will take your marketing to the next level. Click this link to book a time that works for you. 

2) Join The Odyssey Subscription, and have our team of professionals plan, film, and edit your videos for your marketing every month. Click here to find out more.

Until then, we’ll see you in next month’s newsletter!