Digital Video Production Training in Pune

Video Production – Where we are today

1. The industry is in transition. 

Let’s put one myth to bed forever. Video production is no longer a dark art mastered over decades slaving at the feet of your local video Jedi master. Video production is just another technical and creative skill that can be learned by anyone with a bit of ambition and imagination.

2. The means of production have been commoditized.

Software is (virtually) free. For $50 a month you can get every bit of new software you’ll ever need from Adobe. Hardware is quickly becoming irrelevant. Sony just introduced the FS7 (the camera the dude is holding in the picture above) which does everything you’ll ever need a camera to do (4K, low-light, slo-mo, etc.) for under $10k. The purists, tech snobs, and big-budget players will always spend more on gear – good for them, but the differences in final output quality are becoming less and less obvious to the general viewing publicTech (via lower prices and more convenience) changes everything.

3. Everything is trending to Free.

That’s scary because it also means that commodity services will continue to be subsumed by larger companies who can afford to give stuff away. Like Google, for instance. Google makes (virtually) all of it’s money from search. Sure, we all love (/hate) Youtube and Gmail and Google+ (okay, not Google + but we all still use it because we believe doing so will please the Google) but those free services are all paid for by search. Youtube is generating billions in additional revenue and still not making a profit. Google, if they chose to be evil, could literally wipe out any web-based service they cared to. The amount of free stuff online is staggering. Photos, video clips, training, software… the list goes on and the list is growing. The services you provide may not yet be ‘free’ but as Andersen pointed out, bundling services with other things that you actually get paid for is the next wave. “Ya sure, I’ll throw in video production if we get to manage your entire account.”

4. The world is shrinking. 

I’m currently working with people in India, Serbia, and Kyrgyzstan on a variety of projects… because I can. Do you say you’re a really good shooter? So is the eager kid just out of college who’s been shooting since he was 10. You’re an amazing editor? So is a guy in Pakistan that edits for $10 per hour. You’ve got wicked experience in all aspects of video AND marketing? Yep, so does the ad agency that just added video production to their list of services to stay relevant and to keep their creative directors happy. Everyone is doing video production everywhere – and that trend is accelerating.

Corporate Video Production – Where we’re going, and what will matter. 

1. The demand for video is insatiable.

Video is everywhere and the use of video by businesses is accelerating. That’s the good news. The best indication that corporate video has finally ‘arrived’ as a mainstream business activity is the fact that news articles and video production blog posts have finally stopped mentioning this month’s YouTube upload figures. Yep, we get it – the average person ‘watches 25 hours of video each day’ and ‘3.7 years of video footage is uploaded to Youtube every nanosecond.’ We’re finally getting over hyping the numbers to ‘prove’ that businesses should jump on board the video bandwagon. Granted, a great deal of this new video output will be total crap but the fact remains that millions of business videos around the world are being created each year… and somebody has to create these videos.

2. Specialization (adding value) is the key to future success in video production

The company is able to land marquee museum customers because of their unique knowledge of, and experience with museums – not because they are wicked App programmers. This is exactly where video production is heading. Offering generic video production services is going to continue to get more challenging because undifferentiated video production services are commodity services

There are many other ways to differentiate your services. You can develop a recognizable and unique style like Sandwich Video has done, or you can specialize in a type of video like the granddaddy (if your grandfather is 29 years old…) and telling your client how they can use video to solve their business problems – that changes everything.

3. All the world’s a screen. 

Apple’s big idea – the one that changed the trajectory of their company was the re-imagination of the cell phone from a stupidly complex mechanical input device (loads of buttons) to a sheet of glass (a virtual device.) The interface options are infinite with a screen. Today we spend a growing portion of our lives staring at screens. Desktop computer screens, mobile phone screens, tablet screens, television screens, promotional display screens. Our interface to the digital world is through a sheet of glass and we are all becoming digital… and video is the digital rockstar.

4.  ‘Real Reality’ (experiential video) and the coming tsunami of un-staged video. 

Most marketing video today is fake (staged). Even the video that is supposed to be real – testimonial video – is staged to some degree. Most people watching corporate videos understand this. Marketing is the art of positioning (faking) stuff to sound and look real and important. All of us who work in this industry live on that continuum. We simply decide how much ‘fake’ we and our audiences can stomach.

Un-staged (or ‘slightly  staged’) is becoming more relevant because it seems less fake. Most successful viral videos today look real even if we all know how much behind-the-scenes planning went into creating all of that reality. The next wave is going to be Real Reality – video that is genuine and spontaneous and not stage-managed. Where is this video going to come from? Everywhere.

We all now carry really impressive video cameras in our pockets and we’re all getting quite good at using them. The flood of the experiential video is going to change the corporate video production landscape and it’s going to change the style of corporate video even more. Winning with fake is going to get tougher and tougher. Entertainment will be the exception here, but as we begin to see real reactions to products and services it’s going to be tougher and tougher to show people how they should ‘really’ feel about your product. And for those futurists out there.. the bionic eye is already here. Very soon we’ll be capturing everything we do. And we’ll be sharing it. Nowhere for businesses to hide anymore.

5. More efficient video production processes

Back in the day, if you wanted to get help on a project you’d either call somebody over to your cubical or give someone you know a call and try to explain your dilemma. Today there are so many online resources like training tips (I.e. Google: How do I extrude a 3d shape in After effects) or Royalty-free video and collaborative tools that allow video producers to be more efficient in their jobs.

6. We’re entering the Post-hardware Era of video production

Remember when it used to matter which desktop publishing platform you were on, or which photo editing software you used, or what coding platform you developed on? No one cares any more. Really, no one cares. Same thing is happening now with video

The hardware you had owned used to define your position in the video production industry. Today you can do great stuff with just about any camera out there and if you’re missing a special bit of functionality wait a couple months and some company will be dumping that into their newest model release. How you solve your customer’s business problems is what matters today. Having expensive video equipment doesn’t make you a good video producer any more than having an expensive pen makes you a good writer.

Some near-term video production trends

1. Video continues to go in-house. Businesses will continue to create their own video because they can and because, for certain types of video projects, it makes sense to do so.  Businesses will also experiment and waste valuable time and resources on more complex video projects that they will ultimately out-source but, like a petulant toddler, they’ll have to make these mistakes and suffer through the pain in order to learn.
2. Better integration of video with marketing 
   Video continues to be a bit of a stand-alone activity for many businesses. This will change. Video has to be integrated with all other marketing activities. As an example video has to be properly optimized for SEO, video always benefits from building a strong landing page presence to support the video and video needs to part of a larger distribution process. Putting your video up on your website and on YouTube isn’t enough any more.
3. Metrics
   You can’t manage what you can’t measure. If you don’t know how people are reacting to your video (open rates, completion rates, where people drop-off, call-to-action completions, etc.) you can’t tell if your video is having an impact. There are many online services / platforms to assist you with both video hosting and tracking.
4. Shorter continues to be better for business video
   There is no correct length for a corporate video. Your video should only be as long as you need to make your point and not a second longer. There will always be exceptions and with certain business uses of video such as training and post-sale support it makes sense to produce longer videos. But, all things considered, shorter is better. Mobile is beginning to overtake desktop as the primary venue for watching online videos. Attention spans continue to shrink, particularly when people are using mobile devices.
5. Pre-production is where all the value is today in video
   If you don’t have the right message and the right concept and the most appropriate style all decided beforehand in the form of a final storyboard that everyone understands and agrees to then your’e wasting your time with video. Having some video up on your website used to be a goal in and of itself. If you don’t start your video project by first identifying the specific business goals that your video needs to accomplish then you’re waisting your time with video. No amount of shooting and editing and creative is going to save a video that is not on message or delivering a specific business outcome.
6. Personalization and mass-customization.
   We’re still a few years away from technology allowing us to easily mass-customize the delivery of video, but there is no question that personalization and the creation of focussed, targeted content is the future of video. Broadcast viewing is being replaced by personalized, mobile viewing. That means a video targeted to a mass audience is going to have less and less value. Context, where you are and what you are doing is going to require videos that are created and delivered to meet the needs of a very specific audience, wherever and whenever they are.