Top 5 at Home Content Creation Tips
At Dolphin Image Studios, we’ve worked on projects of all shapes and sizes. From Commercials Public Service Announcements to Feature Films, we understand the wide variety of content that exists in the world and how challenging it can be to create it. Nowadays, of course, we need to bring all those challenges into our home as we practice social distancing and working from home. As we’ve done this, we’ve realized that there are a few things that you can do at home that can add production value to your content without requiring, for instance, a Studio or giant LED wall. So, from Dolphin Image Studios, here are our top five tips for creating video content from home.
#1 Your Phone Camera
If you’re used to working with a professional camera, using your phone to film something may seem like a step backward at first. But honestly, phones have come a long way in a short amount of time. When it comes to picture quality and clear audio, most modern smartphones provide a good base level for creating content.
The only adjustments we suggest are to your background and your lighting. A lot of phones have a sensitive auto-focus feature, so having a relatively static or plain background will help make sure that when you’re filming yourself that you are always crystal clear. Also, even though phones can capture good video, placing lights around you and your environment can very easily enhance the look and ambiance of the final product.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with it, especially since plenty of tutorials are available on sites like YouTube or learning platforms like Lynda.com or Skillshare.
#2 Mobile Editing Suites
In addition to their cameras, editing apps on phones has improved a lot. By editing on the phone, you save the time of transferring the footage to a computer, opening up a heavy program, adding the fancy graphics, rendering, etc. With how powerful the phones are, a lot of mobile apps have added the ability to incorporate all those things with less of a hassle.
And there are several solid apps to choose from. If you have the Adobe Creative Cloud, then we can’t recommend Adobe Rush enough. When you create a project on your phone and add footage to it, it all automatically syncs to the cloud so that if you want to open the desktop app all of your footage and files are right there.
Another one that we really like is VLLO, which simplifies its toolkit to the ones that you will use the most and is great for doing Instagrams, TickTocks, and Bytes. Finally, there’s always Apple’s iMovie. If you’re an iOS user, then this is an app that was built and optimized for your device and is going to be a very efficient way of creating your video.
#3 Notes and Scripts
Whenever you’re creating any type of content, having notes or a script is essential. These allow you to layout the game plan of your content so that as you film and edit it, the content remains consistent right up until the end. On the Internet, you can find all sorts of optimized formats for notes and scripts, but the best one is the one that works for you, your Team and your Project.
As far as tools go, there’s an incredible variety to choose from and they’re all very different from each other. We recommend that you do a little bit of research to find out which one might be best for you. For me personally, all of my notes go into an app called Notion because it’s very flexible and has a great free plan. For writing proper scripts, my go-to app is Highland 2 because I can format the script as a screenplay or as a formal document depending on my needs.
#4 SEO
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is an underappreciated part of the process but is one of the most important. In terms of getting your content found on Google or YouTube or whichever platform you’re on, optimizing your content for those search engines is critical to its success. This means refining your content’s title, tags, hashtags, description, etc.
Our favorite website for helping with this is called Answer the Public. If you type in a term, such as the topic of your content, it’ll give you so much data from related searches to frequent questions. This allows you to make informed decisions that can boost your content to the top of search results when people are looking for content in your category or market.
#5 Motion Graphics & Stock Footage
This last one is sort of a Two-for-One. Motion Graphics and Stock Footage are cheap or free to acquire online and can add a lot of production value to your video. To be clear, Motion Graphics are things like Lower Thirds or colorful scene transitions. These are simple graphics that have a practical purpose for the video that is visually appealing. And Stock Footage is simply any asset, either video footage or audio, that is not your but instead licensed for use in your project. Examples of this include an old video that’s in the public domain or Kevin MacLeod’s incometech music collection.
Both of these things can be acquired online for little or no cost. Most of the time, there’s a license attached where you just have to attributes the original author. However, please read the terms of these licenses carefully so that you avoid accidentally pirating someone else’s work. There are also places like Storyblocks and Shutter Stock where you can pay per license or a subscription for its premium assets on its platform.
And that concludes our list of five tips that you can use to make your video content better from home. If you find this useful, please share it with others who are also working from home so that they can find it helpful too. If you’re interested in more articles like this or other updates from Dolphin Image Studios, fill out the contact form below and subscribe to our email newsletter. As always, thank you for tuning in and we can’t wait to hear from you!
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