To effectively tell your stories, you’ll need to work toward mastering all of the the tools of video production and editing.

Since you’ll probably film more content then you’ll later use in the final video, it’s important to think about editing along with planning the video shoot.

Editing is the final stage of your video production. It takes all of that raw footage and brings it together in a cohesive and coherent final message.

The editing process really begins in pre-production and in writing the script.

First, pre-production will establish your vision for the final video. It will hone in on the possibilities available for shooting the video. For example, things such as budget, location, crew, and talent. Therefore, knowing what the opportunities and limitations are in shooting your video will help to craft the story you’ll tell.

Second, writing the script gets this vision down on paper. As a result, the script will give you the blueprint for shooting your video. Moreover, it is the first edit of your final video.

Obviously, filming the video is usually the fun part.

Even so, of all of the skills needed for video production and editing, the skills needed to film the video is perhaps the most critical. You’ll have to get all the shots, notwithstanding the time and constraints that your production allows for getting those shots.

At LumaVox, we use Adobe Premiere for our video editing. The specific steps of your process may vary a bit if you’re using a different editing app, but the basic process is the same.

To begin, you’ll import your video and audio clips as well as assets into Premier Pro using the Import Command, the Media Browser, or Adobe Bridge. Whichever method you use, be sure to give a lot of thought to how your clips and assets will be organized. As a result, it will make the editing process much easier if you can quickly find the clips and assets you need.

Not only is Adobe Bridge a powerful media manager, but best of all, it’s free!
You can download it here. 

Next, I recommend that you edit the dialog tracks. These will be the tracks of your voice overs, interviews and talent dialog. People will use different nomenclature for these tracks, but here at LumaVox we call any track that is of people talking a dialog track.

Editing the dialog tracks first will do two things.

First it will help establish the arc of your story. Of course this will be different if your video relies mostly on b-roll clips and less on dialog, but small business marketing videos usually have dialog tracks to help tell the story.

Second, it will make the editing process go much faster. For example, once the dialog track of your interview is cut together, it is much easier to find the right b-roll clips to lay on top of it.

Any music tracks you want to use should be laid in next. Remember to always have copyright authorization to use any music clips.

By the end of this step, you’ll have a rough cut audio version of your final video. To be sure, this is a milestone step along the road of your video production and editing.

Now comes the fun of adding in your b-roll clips.

B-roll refers to the supplemental footage used as cutaways in your sequences. In effect, your b-roll will visually reinforce the story told in your dialog tracks, or tell the story on its own for sequences that don’t have dialog.

Be sure to capture enough b-roll in your video shoot to cover all possibilities in your final edit. Again, this is a good reason to start the process of video production and editing with pre-production and script writing.

The next step is to edit motion and color correct.

The motion effect in Adobe Premiere is used to effect position, scale, and rotation of a clip. You can use the motion effect to do optical pans and zooms, as well as set the framing of your shots.

The color correction tools in Adobe Premiere will effect the exposure.

Now is a good time to put in your lower thirds and your cards with graphics and text.

Transitions come next. I recommend that you leave these for the end of your edit. That way, if you need to switch out clips or need to change the length or motion on a clip, you won’t have to readjust the transition.

Finally, export your video.

If you’re using Premiere Pro, you’ll export using Adobe Media Encoder. It’s a robust program in itself, so if you haven’t used it you’ll want to get up to speed with a tutorial. Where you’ll publish your video is the primary decision you’ll make in adjusting the settings in Media Encoder. Each platform has an optimum setting for export. So it will be slightly different for Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, or for hosting on your own web site.

As with many creative tasks, editing video at first can seem daunting.

However if you break down the process into manageable chunks, in time you’ll find that the process will easily flow along. It’s a matter of gaining experience with the process, and then relying on the process to work through and complete your video project.

The featured photo is courtesy of Jakob Owens.

Any type of construction or production should start with a blueprint or a plan of what you’re building. Therefore, the same is true for video production for small business. Start with some basic foundations and your final video will be much more successful.

The length of your video matters, especially for video production for small business. You have only a few seconds to capture your audience’s attention at the start of your video. Then you have to keep that engagement.

The click away rate rapidly increases the longer the video. Make your video a short as possible, while still getting your message across.

More and more of your viewers will watch your video on their mobile device. So you have to consider the format for presenting your video.

The options for viewing video on mobile devices are:

• Horizontal
• Square
• Vertical
• A hybrid of horizontal or square formatted with text or graphics above and below the video

There is no one right answer. If you’re publishing one video for viewing on both desktop and mobile devices, then choose a format that will work well, if not ideally, on both. A horizontal format might be best for this.

If you have the capability of serving different videos to different types of devices, then format the video for each device. For example, you could format a horizontal video for use on a desktop, while formatting that same video with graphics above and below the video to serve on a mobile device. Remember, most views on a mobile device will be done with the smartphone or tablet being held vertically.

And finally, remember that many views on a mobile device, as well as on desktops, will be started with the sound off. They might be completely viewed with the sound off. So consider adding subtitles to your video.

The budget for your video does matter, but it’s not the only factor in producing a good video. If you have the budget for professional video production, then your video will most certainly have higher production values, and be more effective at producing the results you’re looking for.

However, if your budget is small, or even non-existent, you can start by producing the video on your own using your smartphone and some inexpensive accessories.

The most important thing is to have a story to tell and then to tell it well.

Great video is about the art of storytelling. Think about the story in almost any movie. There’s an arc to the story. Usually you’re first introduced to the main character. Then the character has a problem. Following that, most of the movie is about the character solving the problem. Then everything seems fine, but oops there’s one more problem. Then the character solves that and usually everyone lives happily ever after.

Videos for small business should also have an arc to their story. A small business video isn’t like a feature film, but it should lead the viewer on a journey through the arc of the video’s story.

Anyone producing video for small business can learn a lot by studying screenwriting. One of the best books for learning the craft of screenwriting is “The Screenwriter’s Bible” by David Trottier. In the book, Trottier helps filmmakers think in terms of “showing” instead of “telling”, and helps think in terms of a story’s arc. All of this can help create small business videos that are more compelling and that keep the viewer more engaged.

Finally to help ensure that your video production for small business is seen, you need to optimize the video for search engines.

Things you should optimize in your video include:

• Title
• Description
• Tags
• Custom Thumbnails
• Cards and Endscreens

All of these will help search engines understand what your video is about and help your video rank higher on search engine results pages.

Just as with any type of construction or production, video production for small business takes planning.

I’ve suggested five things to consider in your production. Again, the most important is to tell a story and tell it well.

The feature photo is by Seth Doyle at Unsplash