Try these tips and get a more interesting video

4/6/2023

You’re sitting around scratching your head with messy ideas. You are trying to find a way that makes the latest video less boring.

This video is a guest interview. The guest will share his exciting experience with the audience. The content is good, but it feels too boring to watch when you turn it into a video.

It’s all just a man sitting on a gray chair, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, with a background looking out the window behind him.

How to make that dull video more attractive? If you are in a similar situation, follow these tips.

1. Use abstract/nature visuals

When your video is about someone telling her experience, it’s very effective to show viewers footage in which the video took place.

Things such as cityscapes, skies, leaves can evoke emotion. This effect is often enhanced by speeding up or slowing down the footage.

Try these tips and get a more interesting video

Use cityscapes, skies, leaves to evoke emotion

Make sure to adapt your scenery to the story’s tone – sadness can go with rain, happiness can go with the sunlight, etc.

Depending on the mood you strengthen, dissolves or cuts can be used. The emotion can also be enhanced by visual stylization.

If memories are sad, you could turn the footage into black or white or increase chrominance if the memories are happy.

Additionally, blending modes like screen or multiply can be taken into consideration to superimpose your footage on the interviewee or other footage.

Most editing systems have this feature built-in, but you might have to look around them a little bit. These modes can improve the connection between the footage and the interviewee’s story.

The woman tells the story about how she was kidnapped at a bar from :13 to :56 of this package. (Reference: https://blog.frame.io/)

The bar’s footage was heavily processed to recall the dark mood. Some of them are accidental swish pans to empty restaurant ceilings (the setting where the event was held).

In addition, you will want to make the footage as abstract as possible in case the event is traumatic, so that the bar is not identifiable.

2. The design of the sound

When it comes to emotion, the sound is a potent generator. Try to imagine the sounds which may occur in the interviewee’s events.

Add gurgling water to your cut if she tells a scene along a quiet lake. A recall of events during a tornado would be strengthened with wind, storm effects and destructive sounds to illustrate homes are torn to pieces.

Very few of our packages don’t go with the music, so your selection and music score obviously has a profound impact on the emotional effect of the video.

You should also display an interview transcript (or even have a hard copy of one produced).

You will find that it’s a good time to switch to a fresh music track when paragraph breaks occur.

In the “Man On Wire” video, Phillipe Petit tells about the start of his tightrope walk between the Twin Towers from around 1:00 to 1:30. (Reference: https://blog.frame.io/)

When he starts his walk, the audience is involved in his experience by the sound effects of the wind and the birds.

You’ll notice the line “something… called me upon that cable” is the indication for these sound effects. It’s an elegant introduction to the “calling” of the sound effects.

The more you practice, the more you will develop the skills if editing what your interviewee tells you to do.

3. The use of stills

Sometimes you will have some coverage, but that’s not exactly what you need or almost not enough of what you need. This can be a common problem with stills.

You may have interviewees’ stills from a different period or in a different setting from the story’s context.

Manufacturers must avoid being constrained by these considerations. Audiences usually forgive such things.

If the person who was interviewed tells a story about her adolescence, you can usually take a picture from her general period, even if they are in her twenty.

It’s a few editing tricks that might take you more time.

You can zoom in close on the eyes in a photograph using the editing system’s native tools, or a third-party plugin like StageTools.

Viewers lock their eyes instinctively. This may excuse a host of sins that may occur due to mismatches of time or setting.

Try to get high-resolution photos as possible as you can, as this will allow you to zoom in close without losing resolution.

You will sometimes have very few stills to use. This could be because they are the only remains that exist, or are the only ones you can use within budget limitations.

We can see the first bikini ever made modeled from approximately 2:00 to 4:00 in this clip from Love, Lust, and the Bikini. (Reference: https://blog.frame.io/).

One still is used again and again. But because so different ways of treating color are applied, many cameras move used (pushes, pulls, pans, 3D treatments), many different highlighted details, the problem of having limited stills is not a big deal.

Developing the camera movement always makes sense. When a specific feature is discussed, it makes the most sense to push this detail in. Pull-outs are much more like disclosures that show the scene as a whole.

If you have several stills, you’re going to find an esthetically pleasing pattern of push-in, pull-out. It can become boring quickly by repeating the same movement.

You may use multiple low-resolution ones to fill the screen if you could not yet get a higher resolution. It’s a common practice to blur and blow the still if you need a background.

This technique can be seen in the Love, Lust and Bikini clip in certain standard archival definition footage.

4. Use “second” camera angle

With higher-budget shows or packages, you often get the chance to choose from several camera angles of the interview.

In this case, you can cover your jump cuts with this second (or third) angle. You don’t need more techniques listed here, though it may be great to improve the interview esthetically if you want to.

What if you have no second camera? Well, so it’s not necessary.

In the past, remember the days of 720 times 480 non-square pixels of glory. It’s terrible because enlarging an image by more than about 20% in most editing systems would turn your photo into a pixelated mush.

But, we are now in a world of 2K, 4K, 6K, and even 8K. A single-camera can become a two-camera shoot (or even a three-camera shoot if the capture resolution is 6K or higher).

Even 1080p images can be used if you edit your web, where 720p remains a common delivery resolution.

Higher-resolution shooting enables you to crop in without losing quality. You can get a large and moderate closeup in one shot.

Current technology makes it entirely possible to punch in for a straight cut. If the camera is locked off, you will usually find this is the best. This technological capacity can also be used to move to a different level.

Make your camera moves with the editing system software. Listen to the interviewee’s emotional tone and let it guide the camera’s stage.

These cover the range from dramatic zoom-to-face (usually for a comic effect), to subtle drift-ins/outs.

Listen to the interviewee’s emotional tone and let him move the camera’s stage.

From Dr. Phil’s show about a son terrorizing his parents, some drift-ins are used in his parents’ sit-down interview shots. (Reference: https://blog.frame.io/)

It’s a subtle but powerful way to increase the work’s urgency. In addition, A slight drift-in part used in an emotional bite ending is necessary.

5. Add stock footage

Packages usually show a very unique and personal story, so you might wonder how effective it is to add stock footage in conjunction, particularly with previously covered techniques.

A quick search from Google reveals a wide range of resources available for stock footage.

Some even have stock footage which is free with a Creative Commons 0 license (i.e., you can use them without crediting the creator. The warning is that many CC0 stock sites don’t check contributors to ensure the format for the model is proper).

Avid and Adobe have also connected to the field (whether directly or through affiliates) and created in-pack links to connect you instantly to stock image libraries (if you are online).

You can find plug-ins from some prominent stock footage companies that offer similar convenience.

If your project is a sensitive subject, you will face some restrictions. In your serial kidnapping documentary, no one with a recognizable face, stock footage or not, wants to be tagged in, or at least not without further compensation.

So how do you find the best footage to tell the story in your video? You can clearly look for footage that has actors who coincidentally recreate the event in your work.

But it will take a great deal of luck. In addition, footage with actors’ faces tends to look staggering and cheesy.

Therefore, it’s better to look for footage featuring body parts that could be sent quickly to the interviewee.

On a formal basis, footage like this shows what the camera is shooting in the storytelling. However, it may also be equally effective to look for footage that articulates what the person would see.

In this episode of Frontline, The Man Who Knew Too Much, from 2:55 through 3:40, agent John O’Neil was described arriving at his office at night. (Reference: https://blog.frame.io/)

This production had a higher budget, so it was probably not used stock footage, but the principle is the same.

All the shots in this sequence show what the protagonist’s POV might have been. Generic lift shots were used for “moving” him from point A to point B were readily available on stock image sites.

6. Use solid colors

Most editing systems can build a solid color or gradient. This is not something that is usually regarded as coverage, but this is precisely what it serves as you fade to or from black.

The hottest trend in film trailers fades in and out of black at the time of this writing. The opening and closing of a curtain was compared.

Transitions to and from black can also work if your story is sad or dark.

Transitions from or to white create a more ethereal feeling for your material.

In addition to the clear purpose of hiding these cut-outs, the interview can be greatly improved by using your music scoring.

A woman tells about her near-death experience in this Dr. Oz show package, between 48 and 2:24. (Reference: https://blog.frame.io/)

Cuts and fades to black, white, and gradient occur in several ways. The death’s subject covers both dark, solemn, and spiritual subtexts, and a creative creator can use tools as simple as colors to express this.

7. Keep it bare

Finally, don’t make the mistake that so many inexperienced editors encounter after the above six methods for creating and/or dressing up your coverage. It’s a sin of overcrowding.

If you have an excellent interviewee who tells an engaging story, there will be moments when the interviewee is emotional, if the story is sad or poignant.

Or, it could be a funny section in which a humorous verbalization or gesture actually occurs.

These are powerful and attractive moments. And during these moments, viewers will want to see the interviewee’s face and eyes to evoke an emotional connection.

Leave them there! Don’t lose the primary purpose of your video — emotional excitement.

Some editors cover an interviewee’s emotional film break with footage that is not close to the intensity of a person crying.

This is such a sad thing that an editor missed an excellent opportunity to get the audience’s attention.

Here are 7 techniques to help you turn a boring video into a more interesting one. However, “Content is King”, and content is the vital factor to attract viewers. That’s why you should invest time to find the most compelling story before trying to make your video great.

Then, don’t forget to confidently apply the above 7 techniques, and use a great video localizing tool to produce professional and emotional videos.

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