4 Things that Will Dramatically Improve Your Videos

While the most important part of your video is the content you provide, the more professional your video is the better response you’ll get from it. Here are a few inexpensive things that will dramatically improve the look and overall impression of your video.

#1) Lighting: Many people underestimate how much light you need to make a video look decent. You want a couple of different light sources (you can pull decent lighting off with a couple of lamps if needs be). If you’re shooting a person talking to the camera, set up a bright light on the right side of your camera (to light up the person’s face) and a less bright light on the left side of your camera (to soften the shadows of the bright light on the person’s face).

The stronger the lights the better.

#2) Professional Footage/Photos: Don’t search for images in Google and assume nobody cares if you use them in a video. If your video gets seen by a lot of people (which is the whole point of putting videos online) the last thing you want to do is use copyrighted material (this includes photos, video footage, and music).

Good places for inexpensive photos and footage are iStockPhoto and iStockVideo.

#3) Add Music: There are places online where musicians gather to strut their stuff and sell their compositions. You can try Acid Planet (sounds like a bad neighborhood, but it’s not) or RoyaltyFreeMusic.com.

If you’re interested, you can compose your own music fairly easily using Acid Music Studio (I have a copy of this program and the first time I used it during a web site project it was the only thing that went smoother than I expected).

#4) Voiceover: Some people have a face for radio and other people have a voice for silent movies (ala that lady in “Singing In The Rain”). Voice talent can be found online at VoiceTalentNow.com or GreatVoiceCo.com. It’s pretty easy–just send them your script and they’ll voice it for you, usually within 24 hours. If you can do your own recording of how you want the voice to sound (inflections, pauses, etc…) then it’s a great idea to record something yourself and make it available to them to listen to.

If you’ve got a friend with a good voice you can sit them in front of your computer with a microphone or get a surprisingly good recording using a phone recorder (I use these for the “Expert Interview” on this site)(it’s also great for getting voice testimonials from your customers). Phone recording devices aren’t the highest quality, but if you want a variety of voices from people anywhere in the world, just know that it’s an option.