INTRO:
It’s 4:00 AM. You can’t sleep either. What’s keeping you up? It’s the 4:00 AM report, a collaborative approach to sometimes finding solutions to the things that keep marketers up at night. Where your hosts, Susan and Will.
WILL:
Welcome back to the last episode of season three of the 4:00 AM report and to close out this season we thought we should talk about the medium of the moment or rather the medium that’s ruled our social channels for the past several years. Video now, in recent years, video has gotten a lot more DIY. You know, we can all make videos on our phones. Those platforms like Instagram stories, you know, tik-tok, they rule right now everybody’s doing it. And the homemade DIY look, it’s very of the moment, you know, it’s what people see. But there’s a big place for the professionally made video still and that’s what we’re going to talk today about with our guest Genevieve Blais. After earning a fine art degree from OCAD university, Genevieve made the transition to digital marketing bringing in artistic edge to all ventures. She’s worked with a variety of clients and agencies across verticals producing digital content with a deep understanding of effective advertising and key insight into placement. She cofounded her production company atomic video in 2019 she specializes in social content commercials, music videos and narrative films, and we’ve worked with her before too, haven’t we, Susan?
SUSAN:
Yep, we have suddenly worked with her team, with Genevieve and a team over the years on video and it’s been a fun experience. We’ll chat through some of that in a little while, but first tell us what keeps you up at night.
GENEVIEVE:
Hi Susan and Will thanks for having me on today. The thing that keeps me up at night is definitely the age old dilemma of expectation vs reality. Managing client expectations in the current moment can be very difficult because you have the ubiquity of streaming services, you have the rise of DIY video production, and so it can be really difficult when a client has an expectation that doesn’t necessarily meet their budget.
SUSAN:
A lot of people tend to overlook the pieces that go into making professional video and really making it work. And it’s easy to assume that just because someone is a pro and coming into the picture that all of the things are possible, right. So there needs to be some education around, this is something that we keep talking about. Often people expect everything but they don’t have the budget. So the budget becomes one of the things that we know is certainly a concern in the space. And while we approach it by going in and asking what the options are, sometimes people just have strange requests, I’m sure. So talk to us about what some common misconceptions are that you come across in terms of expectations vs. Reality.
GENEVIEVE:
It’s a really important thing to educate clients and people who are looking for video production in what is realistic and what isn’t. Just because you have a green screen doesn’t mean that you’re going to get Steven Spielberg quality CGI. One of the big problems is making things look natural actually requires a lot of money from set dressing to wardrobe to hair and makeup. These are all things that clients sometimes overlook when they’re planning. For instance, maybe you want a natural makeup look, you’re still gonna have to hire a makeup artist in order to execute that. It’s a very specialized fields and equipment costs are incredibly high within video production. So for instance, I know iPhone 11 just released that commercial, the snowball fight that was shot in T entirely on an iPhone, but if you watch the behind the scenes, there’s a team of over 20 people. There’s choreography, there’s drones, there’s snow machines and lighting, and so just to get that look, you really require a Hollywood crew. It doesn’t matter the equipment that you’re using.
WILL:
I think that’s a great point. It really is. Those things that go into the planning, the behind the scenes and the professionals who know how to tell a story via video as well. Right? All of that. We think, Oh well I’ve got an iPhone 11 I’m going to do that. But the point you make I think is a good one.
SUSAN:
And as well, you know, it’s on the brands as well where they’re trying to make it seem “I woke up like this”, right? Yeah, sure. It’s shot on an iPhone 11 like you said. But you know, think of all of the pieces that went behind it. And I think this is an important conversation for people to be having. If you look at an ad…that ad, if it’s on the airwaves, paying big media bucks, then for sure it’s not a DIY.
GENEVIEVE:
Absolutely. And I think that we are discussing these issues with things like face-tune and influencers, but in terms of the video production, it’s not commonly held knowledge that so much is required in order to execute something that looks natural.
WILL:
Yeah. And so tell us, when you start working with a client specifically, maybe a new client, someone who’s new to professionally produced video, talk about that intake or we talked about there needs to be an education process involved. Talk to us a little bit about your process when you start working with a client?
GENEVIEVE:
I think it always starts with setting up expectations because you can’t deliver a product without creating boundaries, without being transparent about the process and what is required in the process. So I typically start by opting for references with what they want to see. If they don’t have them then I find some that are realistic and within a general budget I usually present three budgets, a cheap and cheerful version, a mid range version and then the high end and then whatever the client is comfortable with, we go forward with that.
SUSAN:
I know that we’ve worked in the past together, Gen and we put together videos like a whole couple of series of videos and one of the things that did for us is it really took our visibility to the next level. That particular series of content hacks videos that we worked on together. It was probably our first foray into like micro content and understanding that people wanted smaller things and everyone wanted for me to be like, Oh, just try this out and see if it works. For us. Do you want to pay someone for it? I’m like, yeah I do actually because I hate being on video. I am self conscious, I am, you know, uncomfortable about what to look at and things like that. And that is the kind of that someone brings to the table who’s a professional. So I wanted to call that out and you know the value of using high production is something that we’ve seen for sure. So talk to us a bit more about what people should expect in terms of you know like an output. Once you’ve got that next level video, what can people expect from it?
GENEVIEVE:
I definitely think that it stands out when you have something that is more produced within the clutter of the social media landscape. There has been a trend of all of those automated video editing programs that create kind of texts in a moving photo. But because of the increase of people using those, definitely a produced video stands out, in contrast to that. It also levels up what you’re creating. It gives some importance to your video when it does look slick and commercially produced, I think.
WILL:
You know what, that’s a really great point you made about kind of cutting through the clutter. Years ago it was the DIY video that stood out and now because everybody’s doing it. This makes sense what you’re saying that a professionally produced video does kind of stand out in the scroll of the handheld homemade whatever and also those video platforms that you mentioned that kind of an image with some text and moving. It’s almost like I think everyone’s kind of gotten over that as well now and you know you see it and you don’t click and watch it anymore.
GENEVIEVE:
Yeah absolutely. And I think with video it is such an all encompassing medium. You have the audio element, you have the visual element, you maybe have a tech element and supers and it’s a lot more engaging than a static photo and copy.
WILL:
So something that I was excited to talk to you about Gen. Cause I always like hearing from the professionals in their field on, you know, 2020 we’ve gone through a lot of that new year trend predicting. So I wanted to hear from you, what’s like hot right now with video production? What are you being asked to do or what are you seeing? Any predictions, that sort of thing.
GENEVIEVE:
I definitely think a big trend is the cinematic look, so making things very dramatic, very color graded, produced, and I think that that is occurring because of the ubiquity of Netflix and streaming services and also the sophistication of technology has certainly raised the bar on video production. Another big trend is comedy, so a lot of the big commercials that we’re seeing nowadays take a very comedic approach. I think that because of the social climate right now, definitely people are looking for a bit of humor and that’s what’s really resonating with audiences and making something that’s very sharable and definitely authenticity is still key on social media and it relates to video as well. So I know we’re talking about budgets and production and pre-planning every element, but I think that definitely coming from an authentic position and being more natural in the presentation is also something that’s really popular on social media right now.
SUSAN:
Those are some great points. Now, let’s look at the flip side. I’ve suddenly been in conversations where people have talked about how they’ve hate being hostage by that slideshow video or that text on top of a picture kind of a thing. So what’s on its way out? What is like seriously tired, no longer effective and we can just go out on a limb and said, stop doing these things guys.
GENEVIEVE:
Well I definitely think the slide-show video has run its course and that is definitely on its way out. I would say that another video style is explainer videos. They’ve seen their day. Unless your company is a very niche B2B area where you need to get into detail about the product. I don’t see that those are being very effective these days.
WILL:
And when you say explainer videos, is that meaning, you know, here’s the product, the product’s benefits, are this, that sort of thing is what you’re referring to, right?
GENEVIEVE:
Yes, definitely. I think that it’s more about lifestyle and creating a need for the product and showing the product in situ as opposed to explaining the benefit of it.
WILL:
That makes so much sense. Now, something else I wanted to talk to you about is we’re on our phones in our scroll, a video will come up. Usually the sound is off, so talk to us about the importance of captions right now on top of videos, especially when it’s related to mobile
GENEVIEVE:
Placement is something that needs to be considered before you go into your video and before you start conceptualizing your video. Is it going to go on TV? Is it going to be for social media? Because nowadays most social videos are not listening to with sound and so it’s absolutely integral that you also have your message clear within the copy on the video.
SUSAN:
Yeah, I remember we did a fair bit of that. Right? We would put supers together to make sure it was seen and then we were like, where do we put the super so that a close caption situation doesn’t go over the super. People don’t think about the amount of detail that needs to go into having a seemingly flawless final product, do they?
GENEVIEVE:
No. And I think a lot of times people will say, Oh, I’m going to make a video. And they don’t put it in the proper preparation for that. Everything needs to be considered, especially placement.
WILL:
And you know, say it say I was like, okay Gen, I want to work with you and we’re going to do a video. Here’s the concept after production. How much planning I guess goes in beforehand when it comes to the specific channels. So is that something, I guess at the beginning that you’re talking about, like where is this video going to live and do you film differently based on the channel that it’s going to live on? Is that happening?
GENEVIEVE:
Yes, absolutely. I think sometimes we’ll do two edits the same video because it’s going to go on Instagram and it’s going to go on LinkedIn. So channel placement needs to be established right at the forefront and the video needs to be created with that in mind. And then post production can accommodate in terms of ratios. So if you want to shoot for Instagram stories, that’s a totally different ratio than LinkedIn. And so you’re going to need to keep that in mind prior to shooting prior to the production.
SUSAN:
Yeah, you make such a good point. This is why sometimes in briefs when we ask something ridiculous like horizontal or vertical and people look at you oddly or like this is the reason a production brief exists. Right? So that we can catch all of the details, the number of times where we’ve had to redo something, you know, because it needs to feature in the vertical format. Even if it’s just a slide show video, it’s work.
GENEVIEVE:
Yeah, it’s definitely time consuming. And so I think that that’s why things need to be established before even going to production because otherwise you’re going to end up with horizontal video with big bars on it for Instagram stories. And that’s definitely not the ideal aesthetic for that format.
SUSAN:
For those small businesses who are perhaps intimidated by the idea of video or not sure if they can afford it, and you know, are probably thinking, this is out of my league. What might you be able to say to them to be like, no, it doesn’t necessarily have to be.
GENEVIEVE:
I think keeping it simple sometimes is the easiest way to manage budget vs. expectation. The more involved the project is, obviously the rates go up for that, but I think that you can accomplish video on pretty much any budget.
WILL:
Okay. Some great advice there from our guest on the very last episode. Thank you very much, Genevieve. This has been a great discussion all about professionally produced video. Also, thank you for being the last guest of season 3. It was very nice to chat with you again.
GENEVIEVE:
Yeah. Thank you for having me. It was great.
SUSAN:
Thank you. Bye.
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About Genevieve
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