Face Time Is Golden Time

Just came back from shooting a web video for a financial adviser in Wilmington, DE. This is one of several videos we've done for Ameriprise, Inc.

I'm actually constantly astonished by how few professionals have videos on their websites, especially considering how much they can benefit from having them. Say someone is looking for a lawyer. A listing will give that person a firm's name and address. An ad might include a picture and some copy about what the firm does. A video takes the firm's marketing to a whole new level.

A web video allows a lawyer (for the purposes of our example; it could be any professional) to make the case for himself directly to potential clients. A video gives potential clients a taste of the lawyer's appearance, demeanor, personality - all important factors when considering which lawyer to put your trust in.

Furthermore, lawyers in particular are adept at making persuasive arguments. That's an essential part of what they do. Well, if you're a lawyer, why not show off what you can do best: argue a case. You can't do that with an ad or a website without video. And you certainly can't do that with a mere listing.

Of course, it's difficult to get any professional to devote his most precious resource - his time - to sit down and actually shoot the video. What many don't realize is that the shoot itself will be an hour - 90 minutes at most - and can be done right in the professional's office.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a thousand pictures. To get a picture of what a Reel Stuff professional video looks like, you need look no further than the following link, which will take you a previous video we produced for an Ameriprise financial adviser. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/user/ReelStuffEnt#p/u/17/9SHR-lsfmJA.

What else can I say to sell you on a web video? How about a statistic? Online listings that are accompanied by a video get a whopping 70% more views than those that don't.

I can't say it any better than that.

The Preditor's Natural Habitat

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm fond of pointing out that Reel Stuff Entertainment has produced somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 videos since we launched in 2005. The vast majority of these have been web videos for merchants, meant for search engines like Yelp, Yellowpages.com and Citysearch.

Typically, these are 60-90 seconds long, and are shot documentary-style over the course of an hour to an hour and a half at the business that commissioned the video. They'll include an interview with the owner (or other designated representative) as well as (sometimes) other employees or customers who have been recruited by the owner to give a testimonial.

And what are these businesses that commission videos? All kinds. Restaurants are often clients (happily so, because nine times out of ten they'll conclude the shoot with a free meal for Jesper and me). We also do videos for spas, boutiques, daycare centers, dentists - professionals of every kind. One time we even did a video for a school that teaches women how to pole dance (the proprietress claimed it was great exercise).

The shoots generally go like this: Jesper and I will show up at the location a few minutes before the designated time. With us we'll be carrying all the equipment needed: an ENG (Electronic News Gathering) camera, a camera light and a wireless lavalier microphone. That's it. That's all you really need. We've since added a few more items into the mix, such as a Zoom digital recorder, which records sound with an astonishing clarity and fidelity.

We've also started to substitute a DSLR for the ENG camera. Yeah - I know acronyms can be intimidating, but these ones are fairly straightforward. Spelled out, DSLR stands for Digital Single Lens Reflex. In other words, the camera is basically the SLR that anyone acquainted with photography would be familiar with, except that it also shoots high-quality HD video.

These DSLR's have become all the rage lately. We have a Nikon D-7000, a model so popular that B&H - the New York City photography super-store that's looked upon by photo enthusiasts as a kind of Santa's workshop, full of wonderful toys - got a shipment of about 500 the day they came out. By noon, they were sold out.

The picture quality of the D-7000 is simply amazing. Reportedly, Darren Aronofsky used it to film some of the scenes from his movie Black Swan. There are shortcomings, however. You can't plug an external audio source into this camera, it doesn't have a power zoom and you can only shoot 20 continuous minutes at a stretch before the camera automatically stops recording.

Usually, on these web video shoots, we like to do the interview with the business owner first. The advantage of doing this is that whatever the business owner talks about becomes the guide for the B Roll we'll get after the interview. For anyone who doesn't know, B Roll is basically anything that's not part of an interview, dialogue or a talking head. If a bar owner talks in his interview about his beer selection, you know right then that one of the B Roll shots you're going to have to get is the beer selection.

Doing the interview first also allows us to spend more time on it, which is important because, chances are, the business owner is not used to speaking on camera. You'd be surprised at how anxious this can make people. I remember on one occasion interviewing a man who was so nervous, he couldn't even say his full name.

The key to getting a good interview is to make it as relaxed and casual as possible. Throw away the idea that you're shooting an "interview," and try to make it as much like a normal conversation as possible with a video camera whirring away in the subject's face.

We actively discourage business owners to write out scripts or any kind of copy (to borrow a term from advertising) that they will then try to recite from memory on camera. When they do this, it usually turns out to be a disaster. Instead, it's best to work from talking points, and encourage the business owner to talk up the business the same way he would with any potential customer.

The interview usually lasts around 10-15 minutes, after which we shoot the B Roll. There's a method that we follow for this. Getting an outside establishing shot of the business is essential, and for the interior stuff (as well as anything else we might be shooting outside) we like to get at least three different angles: a wide shot, a medium and a close-up. If someone's performing some kind of action for the camera, he should be prepared to do it several times so that you have wide shots and close ups you can use in editing.

If all goes well, you shouldn't have to spend more than 90 minutes on a shoot. Then, it's time to take the footage back to the office and cut it together. But I think I'll save that for another post.

Trimming the Fat

Now it's time for reality to set in about the world's reaction to Tolltaker.

I'm not complaining about the reaction. Just the opposite. There has been an outburst of enthusiasm surrounding the movie's first screening at a film festival (or, at least, it was the first screening of the completed film, and not a work in progress). Reactions to it have all been positive - but of course people are going to be that way to your face. They just want to be nice.

Actual, specific criticisms I received, I took to heart. For example, Peter Woortman, a screenwriter who had just taught a semester at Rutgers (no, I was not a member of his class), saw a cut of it and commented that the first scene, the one with the waitress, could be shortened a bit. He suggested that we pick up the scene at a point later than we had previously, cutting off the beginning, which consisted mostly of dialogue that essentially repeated what the voice-over narration had just told us.

"I was ahead of it," was the way Peter put it to me.

Now, I don't know if I had just come across a standard piece of industry lingo, and my ignorance of it was therefore to be considered proof of my amateur status. But that phrase stood out for me. "I was ahead of it."

A valuable lesson to be learned there. The viewer is constructing the story in his head as you, the director, are constructing it on the screen. Sometimes the viewer is constructing it faster than you, at which point he gets frustrated and tunes out, because he's impatient for you to just get on with it already. As the story-teller, you can't let that happen.

So I cut out the opening third of that scene, which was a tough pill to swallow, since we opened with a gorgeous dolly-in that beautifully established the entire diner. But I do agree that it was the right move to make. Now, instead, we open in the middle of a private moment of shared anxiety between the young Bobby and the waitress. We begin at the level of tension that was established by the montage of Vietnam news footage just previous. And the information we're getting is fresh, too. Not a re-hash of what we've just been told.

This operation removed some slackness in the narrative. But there was also Vince's suggestion to cut out Bobby's scenes with Paw-Paw and Nick. I had thought they added different dimensions to the overall story by showing how Bobby had in his grandfather an accomplice in denial, and also showing how earnestly Nick wanted to win Bobby over.

However, Vince said, the focus should be on Bobby. Especially given that this is a short film. Or it's supposed to be. At 23 minutes, it's already too long to expect your average agent to sit through it. So - You must kill your darlings, as Faulkner said, and I cut a version of the film without those two scenes.

I do think that Vince is right about the tighter focus that the shorter cut gives to the film. But does the value of that focus outweigh the value provided by those two cut scenes? I can't tell. It's that whole being-too-close-to-it thing. So, just like the studios, we'll do a couple test screenings. Following are two links, one to the version of the film with those two scenes cut, and one with them left in. If anybody wanted to take a look at them and get back to me with an opinion on which is better, I'd certainly appreciate it. The links:

For the "long" version:
http://www.vimeo.com/29022379

For the "short" version:
http://www.vimeo.com/29781964