In the age of Tik Tok, it seems that about anyone can produce impactful content. But not you, right? You’re too busy leading projects, change or trying to keep up with your workload. And your workload is about to increase- there are lots of people out there you need to persuade. Surely there is a budget for a marketing or creative agency to produce a video for you?
Maybe there is a better, more pragmatic way for you?
Not long ago, I was involved in a short and commercially sensitive change. Several teams were involved in triaging upset people involved in the transition. Late on a Friday afternoon, I came up with an appropriate escalation model to help manage the volume of upset or confused people. Subject matter experts helped me craft and polish our message. Yet we knew the emotional intricacies of the change to employees.
Due to the commercially sensitive nature of this change, we expected emotional responses. With an emotional response, would logic prevail? We expected an influx of questions; an appropriate escalation model would come in handy. If we had a strong escalation model, as a team we could handle the deluge of questions ahead.
How would I convey this escalation model to the teams involved? I carefully drew together the main points and escalation model diagram. With this in place, I recorded myself talking through the model in a concise presentation. With some editing, my commercial in confidence video was under five minutes and was ready for distribution to the teams.
Does a brief, polished video make a concept easier to consume? Everyone across the several teams involved could absorb the core message at their leisure. I found the video was an excellent precursor to a couple of brief meetings to address questions.
Are videos within your repertoire? Do you put it in the “too hard” basket? Agile video production is within your grasp, and you don’t need an expensive video production company or software. By mastering your “agile filmmaking” skills, you can level up your business communication skills!
Guiding principles
What should be overarching principles for your “agile filmmaking”?
- Video introductions and conclusions should be consistent;
- The tools used should be either free and accessible. At least, these tools should be readily available within your organisation;
- The video production skills should be straightforward for most change and professionals to learn;
- Videos should have timeless content, so they don’t need continual updates once they are handed over from you to operational teams;
- Videos should follow your organisation’s brand guidelines;
- Videos may the “creative envelope” in your organisation yet are within acceptable creative limits. Your video is there to add value to your organisation. Will your organisation’s branding, communications or internal marketing teams recognise this value?
- Brevity is a close cousin to clarity — can you convey your topic in 30–60 seconds, including your introduction and conclusion?
- Training videos need brevity and structure. Can you convey a “chunk” of information in less than 90 seconds?
- Only use videos to “meet your audience where they are”. Videos are out of the question if your audience is not likely to see your creation. For example, factory workers may not need access to a computer to watch your video and their shift leaders brief their team verbally.
Tools
These are tools I use in practice; I am not affiliated with any of the applications mentioned here.
- PowerPoint (for animated introductions and conclusions);
- Your organisation’s brand colours and guidelines (including fonts);
- OBS Editor (a free tool for you to download);
- Audacity (another free tool for you to download);
- Video editing tools — free ones like Kapwing also help you add captions;
- Paid soundtrack files;
- Wetransfer.com.
You can use Microsoft PowerPoint or Canva for your video introductions and conclusions. Either way, prepare a single slide as your “template”. This template helps give each of your videos a consistent look and feel.
What is the focal point of your slide? You can then animate this focal point. Your animations could be moving text, or an image. Recent versions of PowerPoint have excellent functions such as Morph and Zoom. These functions have elevated PowerPoint and take the best parts of similar software like Prezi.
In practice, I may be preparing a series of videos rather than a single one. This video series may be from a one-hour online webinar, which I have cut up into several bite-sized videos. I used Microsoft PowerPoint to prepare an animated intro. A single slide often has my organisation’s logo, corporate colours, and font, and I animate the text. My single slide becomes a template, which I save as .mp4. It’s amazing to see the many formats you can save your PowerPoint in.
I often “batch” my video production, so I produce a video series in the one go. For the next introduction, I update the introduction text. I also have a conclusion (or outro) with the same logo, corporate colours and font. This conclusion also ends up as an .mp4.
Need screen footage in a hurry? You may be demonstrating a new system, and a picture speaks one thousand words. Software like OBS Editor is free. You may be able to download it onto your work system (depending on your system administrator). In practice, I have this application on my personal computer. My video production work at home gives me a distinct advantage. I am undistracted, have unfettered access to video editing software, and can also produce my voice-overs.
Speaking of voice-overs, my investment in a good microphone has paid off in spades. Are you new to an organisation and need to prove your worth? You are likely to impress clients and stakeholders if you can produce a professional quality proof of concept video. What is quality in this context? To me, a brief video that sells the merits of a change. Or your video provides clear guidance on a complex or contentious topic. Regardless of the purpose, your video needs a high-quality voice-over and soundtrack.
You can use software like Audacity to record clear voice-overs. This application allows you to edit your voice-overs efficiently. In practice, I need many takes for even sometimes a simple sentence. I tend to have my lines already written down; my focus on brevity forces clarity. I aim to have videos between 30 and 90 seconds; my voice-over needs to cover only the key concepts.
I also invest in soundtrack files. I sourced my soundtrack files online from a company called Melody Loops. These soundtrack files may sound quite “corporate”. Yet there are thousands to choose from, and sourcing soundtracks in this way offers a distinct advantage. Your video length may vary, although you don’t have to source a soundtrack based on length to fit your video’s duration. Melody loops offer a function called Longo Loops. Longo Loops is a facility where you can “cut” your soundtrack to be as long or as short as you need. You can then download this amended soundtrack so it is ready for your video. In practice, I keep the soundtrack in the background and lower the volume significantly. My soundtrack should not eclipse my voice-over.
How do you bring all these variables together?
Your video editing software can make a massive difference with this. In practice, I use Wondershare Filmora. This brings together my introduction, my screen footage or “body content” and my conclusion. I then overlay my voice-over and soundtrack. Filmora lets me make on-screen edits where necessary. For example, I have used OBS Editor to record a training system environment for an impending software rollout. I may need to scrub out specific information. For example, an onscreen label showing how I have recorded the training environment. Quite often, I also need to de-identify team member information.
I also find that many people will watch my videos on their mobile while sitting on the bus or train. They are happy to watch my 30 to 90-second video, yet may expect subtitles so they can quickly read the main points. I am learning and have started to use software like Kapwing to add the subtitles. You can also create subtitles manually. If you use Microsoft Notepad, you can create .srt files. These files sound rather technical, but are straightforward to create once you have the hang of it.
Where can you begin?
Rather than take on an ambitious video as your first foray into video production, start small. I am still intimidated by high-quality videos, as I wouldn’t know where to begin. These videos are where someone has a lapel microphone attached, is in front of a camera, and has lighting set at particular angles. I used to see internal communications teams take this approach for videos starring senior executives. This style of video has its place, but it is not what I consider “agile film production”.
My videos are a little bit more rough and ready but serve as brilliant ways to promote future changes or support training. If you want to start somewhere, record a one hour webinar. Invite some “friendly” people involved in your transition. You can walk through the major concepts you want to impart and encourage the people to ask questions verbally or use the chat pane in your online “training room”. Ensure that you present your material in a structured manner, as it is easier to break up this webinar into components later.
Once you have recorded the entire webinar, you can download this footage and aim to slice it up into several videos. Your video duration may be between 1.5 to 10 minutes.
You can then create your introduction and conclusion animated slide in PowerPoint. Thankfully your audio is already available. Yet, I have found that many webinar recordings pick up the narrators “umms” and “ahhs”. Using your editing software to scrub out these unnecessary elements elevates your video quality.
If you wish, you can add your soundtrack. As final videos can be pretty large, you can use a free application like wetransfer.com. File transfer applications like wetransfer.com help you transfer massive video files anywhere you need.
Lastly, where can you save your videos? Do you have an intranet or other “single point of truth” which can serve as a durable platform for your videos? Your organisation may have an internal (or external) video platform where you can publish these videos. Some intranet sites need an authorised administrator to perform the video uploads. Whatever the channel, practising your video production skills includes publication and link distribution. This means you have a complete/” end to end” skill set in video production for your organisation.
With practice, you will get into a particular routine when you need to produce videos. It does help if you can avoid a busy office and can get away from distractions. By having all relevant software, hardware and materials on a home computer, you can produce videos regardless of your client or employer.
I hope these suggestions and shared experience means you have another impactful way to impress your employers at work.
Our book — The Change Manager’s Companion — is available now. You can also check out our online course on Change Management.