Category

Video Marketing

Steve Stockman
In Tips and Tricks, Video Marketing, For Pros

Telling the Truth with Testimonials

Testimonials work in a video when they are true.

“They’re fake!” “They’re actors” “They’re reading from a script!”

You hear these disparaging comments every time you play testimonial commercials in a focus group. Every. Single. Time. But after people talk about how fake it all is and how they can’t be fooled, something interesting happens. When they talk about the messages in the spots, they believe some of them.

The ones they believe? The testimonials shot with real people, saying real things that are important to the viewer. It seems that at some instinctive level  we can sense the difference between actors and real people– between ad copy and … Read the rest

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Steve Stockman
In Video Marketing, Your Questions Answered

Single Camera vs. Multi-Camera for a New Director

single camera or multi-camera

I’m new to shooting, and I’m about to shoot a marketing video for my company. It’s just two people talking to each other in the office.

I want the rhythm of the dialogue to be pretty fast, so I’m wondering if I should do it single camera or with two cameras. I’m mostly worried about editing dialogue together with multiple angles coming from different takes since the dialogue is very fast and often has people talking over and interrupting each other.

–Shania, New York

Shooting two cameras for complicated dialogue is a great idea– but it’s a very high degree … Read the rest

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Steve Stockman
In Video Marketing, Your Questions Answered

The Dreaded Video Committee

Video committees

I work in-house for law enforcement and was given a pretty big video to shoot, but its definitely going to suck.

The video is supposed to explain what our Probation Department does. The video committee decided that it’d be “funny” to start the video off with “here’s what you think Probation is” showing our staff being aggressive, dismissive, and generally dicks to clients. At the end they’d show the reality: officers working with clients to help them re-enter society successfully.

What the video committee thinks is funny is awful (plus they want an 8 minute video, so no one will

… Read the rest
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Steve Stockman
In Tips and Tricks, Video Marketing

How to Do a Zoom Meeting that Doesn’t Suck

Zoom meeting

Zoom meeting

While there are plenty of posts on Zoom Meeting Etiquette out there, much of that advice is painfully obvious. (Pro tip: You can tell if advice is painfully obvious if the words “you moron” perfectly complete the sentence. Like this one: “Unmute before you talk.” See what I mean?) As the pandemic wears on and it’s clear that zoom meetings are here to stay, it’s time to go a little deeper.

We just shot a series of commercials for Saatva via Zoom Meeting. This made sense as a) there is still no actual production here in LA and b) we … Read the rest

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Steve Stockman
In Video Marketing

Don’t Start Your Video Marketing Conversation with SEO

video marketing does not equal data managementGoogle “video marketing” and you’ll get—as of this writing—2.63 BILLION hits. That’s way more than Kim Kardashian (266 million), weed (382 million), Donald Trump (1.4 billion) and, surprisingly, porn (also 1.4 billion).

Books, articles and videos (and more videos) offer you “21 Video Marketing Tools” or “5 Super Secrets” or “8 super-successful tips” every video marketer should know, all of which revolve around data manipulation: jacking your view count, tracking prospects, a/b headline testing, the latest changes to the YouTube algorithm, and reams and reams on Search Engine Optimization schemes.

Scrolling through this mass of information, you could be forgiven … Read the rest

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Steve Stockman
In Video Marketing, Feature Film, Television, For Pros, Your Questions Answered

Shooting Ratio: How Much is Enough Footage?

Shooting ratios are different for different productions.

How do I know if I’ve shot enough footage? I hate to waste money and time, but I’m nervous I won’t get what I need for the edit.

PS: Absolutely love your book! I’ve read it cover-to-cover twice now and starting my third time through.

–Jamal

Directors always shoot more than they think they need. Which means some of it will always be wasted. That’s how it’s supposed to work. It’s so normal that there’s even a name for this waste. It’s called the “shooting ratio” and it simply means the ratio between how much footage goes on screen, … Read the rest

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Steve Stockman
In Tips and Tricks, Video Marketing, Teaching and Training, Press

Teaching Video: Summer Stars Foundation

Summer Stars campers perform live August 2019

I do a lot of speaking and consulting on video, but by far the most rewarding is teaching I’ve done almost every year since 2000 at Summer Stars Camp for the Performing Arts. This is the camp’s 20th Anniversary and I’ve managed to attend 17 sessions, teaching music video classes to 12-17 year-old disadvantaged kids from New York and Boston who pay nothing to attend. Much of my book comes out of my work teaching those kids.

(I’m also on the camp board, so now must suggest that you donate at www.summerstars.org)

The first step in creating a … Read the rest

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Steve Stockman
In Video Marketing, For Pros

Why Making Video “Ask for the Order” Doesn’t Work

This week a post on Linked-In reminded me that all good video must “ask for the order” and contain a clear “call to action.”

This concept was, as far as I can tell, invented by someone in an ad agency, maybe in the ’80s, and repeated enough that many people take it as gospel. The idea is that your marketing video must tell the customer exactly what you want them to do, and then request that they do it.

Thus a TV commercial that includes the magic phrase “Buy a Toyota tomorrow and save $200!” is presumed to be way … Read the rest

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