Those of us at the Fairfax Video Studio have already stated that creating online video is the only way to distinguish yourself from all of your competitors. But be warned when shopping for a company to help you make your videos. Many of these companies create a top-notch, very professional looking and sounding product for the lawyers who choose to do video with them. The problem with many of these companies is the high cost for a relatively low number of videos. Read on to learn how video is created, produced and uploaded.

The video pre-production phase involves strategy with business owners to determine what they want to talk about and how to get their points across best. Most website video producers fail to recognize this key point and don’t discuss the main items that a potential client wants to know. While searching for a product online, potential clients want to know whether or not yours can help solve their problems. You should also ask yourself what questions new clients typically ask you when they first come into your office for a consultation. These questions will form a set of videos – meaning multiple video shoots; you’ll realize that you have tons of information to put in a video and to put online.

The production stage is the video shoot itself. A team of people comes in and takes over your office; they’re setting up lighting and the video camera, plugging in electrical devices, setting up sound equipment and microphones. They check the sound and calibration of lighting, and specifically, a white balance calibration. When deciding on a place to shoot video, you must think about the best ways to eliminate or reduce background sounds. Although the noise can be edited out, it’s best to eliminate it while taping.

When deciding how long your video will be, keep in mind that there is no perfect answer. With online video, and using our lawyer example again, you can use your time to explain to clients how you can help them. Potential clients however, may have limited attention spans. This does not mean though that you are limited to one or two minutes of video; we think having only one to two minutes of video is not very helpful and might not give you enough time to explain a particular concept or answer a certain question. Two to four or five minutes in length is appropriate. If a viewer has found your video and has a pressing legal issue, he has no problem watching a few minutes of your video if you are answering a topic that applies to him.

After the production stage, we enter the post-production stage. If you have a one-hour video, it will take at least six hours to edit the video, add graphics and background music, and convert the video file to one that is Internet-compatible and ready to be uploaded to your website and the video sharing sites. Once your video clips have been edited and are ‘ready for upload,’ they must be optimized for the video and regular search engines. The videos are useless if they’re not recognized by the search engines and indexed by sites like YouTube and Google.

This can be a very complicated process. Let the Fairfax Video Studio help you.