Quality Audio: Invisible But Essential

Chris Lavigne, video superhero and CEO at Wistia,knows exactly how important audio is to your explainer video project.

“Crappy audio can ruin even the greatest of videos.” — Chris Lavigne, Wistia

Chris stresses the importance of audio—especially in his video production tutorials—because he knows how quickly “crappy” sound can scare away viewers. If the voices aren’t clear, if there’s distortion, buzz, or other noise that makes the audio difficult to follow, viewers will abandon your video.

And don’t expect praise for your amazing audio quality. Most viewers take audio for granted. When it’s good, they don’t even notice. but when you mess it up…prepare for feedback.

Video Production: Audio Expectations

People expect a quality video production to have sound that doesn’t distract or annoy them. That’s pretty much it.  Viewers will cut you a lot of slack as long as you satisfy this basic criteria. You don’t have to produce a platinum record or score an Oscar for best video soundtrack. You just need audio that meets these criteria:

1. Balanced — We’ve all had the experience of turning the TV up to hear the dialogue and then getting our eardrums blasted out by the action sequence. Help your viewers avoid this annoyance by maintaining a good audio balance throughout your video.
2. Dialogue is clear — Make sure people can hear the carefully written words your actor is saying. Don’t overwhelm dialogue with sound effects or soundtrack. And make sure there’s no feedback or distortion in the microphone.
3. No background noise — Wind, video clip transitions, clicks, and even heating systems or appliance hum can distract viewers from the dialogue. Make sure they’re only hearing the sounds you want them to.
4. Headphone friendly — When you level your audio, keep the master volume below 6db to make it suitable for listening through headphones.

For a real-life example of how audio can affect video watchability, let’s compare two real life examples. Both are from one of my favorite up and coming bands—Lake Street Dive. The two videos were shot one year apart, and you can see that the band learned a lot about audio quality during that time.

Let’s start with the video that has lots of room for improvement.

Video Production: Bad Audio = Bad Marketing

Watch this video for just 30 seconds and you’ll notice a few key points.

1. It features a band you might never have heard of
2. It’s covering a well-known song— The Drifters “This Magic Moment”
3. It uses just one mic (outside the shot)
4. It’s shot outside

Oh, and the audio is really, really bad.  The wind noise alone is enough to make me stop listening. It completely overwhelms the band in several places. When you add the fact that the mike is too far away from the band, making them sound distant and flattening the overall sound, you realize how much difference audio really makes.

Now lets look at a video shot one year later to see what a difference great audio can make.

Video Production Tip: Great Audio = Great Video

This video announced their EP release—Fun Machine. Just like the original video:

1. It features a band you might never have heard of
2. It’s covering a well-known song — The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back”
3. It uses just one mic (prominently featured in the shot)
4. It’s shot outside

Yet despite these audio hurdles, the video sounds fantastic. Not only that, it was a huge hit with over 2 million views in the first few weeks.

How did Lake Street Dive accomplish this magic feat? Simple: they addressed the limits of what audio could do in the video, and embraced them. They didn’t try to make the mic do too much, and the result is an intimate, warm video with killer sound.

The audio setup captures the band’s personality and their unique sound perfectly. The production value is high, and the band sounds fantastic, but what’s really exciting is how this video launched the band to stardom. Here’s a quote from them:

It took a casually made video featuring the band gathered around a single mic, performing a cover of Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back,” shot on a Brighton, Massachusetts, street corner to grab the public’s attention. What followed was nothing less than a modern-day music business success story.

The takeaway: Bad sound ruins good video. Great sound makes good video great. It’s that simple.

Video Production 101: Take. Audio. Seriously.

Whether it’s from a shotgun mic in a studio, a lavalier mic clipped to your sweet blazer, or a microphone on a street corner—quality audio can be the difference between success and obscurity for your video. Invest in quality audio production to give your message a chance to be heard.

Receive our free eBook when you sign up for our newsletter!

Learn how to manage an animated video project for your organization:

• How to decide how much to spend
• Gaining buy-in from your organization
• Choosing a provider and style for your video
• Working with your stakeholders
• Working with the creative team
• How to calculate ROI on your video project
• How to promote your video
• Keeping metrics so you can learn

Get the
Free eBook!

The post Why I Didn’t Watch Your Video: Low Quality Audio appeared first on IdeaRocket.

The Hidden Cost Of DIY Explainer Video

In 2012, a freelance content brokerage site, Crowd Content, wrote about how they saved thousands of dollars by producing their own animated explainer video “for only $650.” It’s a provocative claim, even back in 2012 when production costs were high and freelance sites were just emerging, but there’s a lot more to this story than just a budget DIY explainer video. The conversation of DIY vs. professional production is all about value and what quality really means to your company’s success.

Here’s the video in question:

Even if you’re not a pro, you know that video isn’t great. But is that such a big deal? Yes, it is.

A great explainer video can launch a company. Look at Dollar Shave Club, Dropbox, Venmo and practically every successful Kickstarter project ever. A quality explainer video provides viewers with information about why they need to buy your product, download your app, or click on your website—but more importantly it communicates the value of what you’re selling. A video answers consumer’s biggest question: “Why?”

An explainer video is also easy to watch, easy to share, and easy to act on (with the right CTA). Your company video is a sales tool, a marketing resource, and a lead generator all in one tidy 60-second package. You can host in on your site, link to it in blogs, send it in emails, and share it on social media. You will use a quality explainer video in a million different ways over and over again during its years’ long life cycle at your company. So it begs the question—how much is a great animated explainer video worth to you and what are you really paying when you cut corners and do-it-yourself?

How Much Does A DIY Explainer Video Cost?

Crowd Content claims the video they made cost $650. It didn’t. They merely spent $650. It actually cost a lot more than that. What do I mean by that? Opportunity cost. Here’s what it actually costs to make a DIY explainer video.

Crowd Content’s total price tag of $650 includes 7 steps. I’ll leave off their last step, marketing and publishing—since every marketing and promotion budget varies from company to company depending on scale and objective. Let’s just focus on production costs:

DIY Explainer Video Production: Freelancers

Crowd Content CEO, Clayton Lainsbury, says the key to a budget DIY animated explainer video is to “use freelancers and manage your own project.” Sounds good, right? Freelancers are often less expensive that professional animation studios, but is it really that easy? You just slap a script together, outsource the animation, and boom, here’s your explainer video. Not likely. Even with freelancers, DIY video can cost you a lot more than you think.

Crowd Content hired a video producer to create their 1:20 video for $400, and they auditioned and hired a voice over actor for $250. That means four production steps, including things like scripting and sound design don’t cost a thing. We’re already off to a shaky start.

Even if the freelance video producer—who doesn’t know your company at all—handled every step of production, there’s still the sunken opportunity cost of putting this production together, approving every step, and providing creative edits and input. Every column labeled “FREE” in the table above has a opportunity cost, and a superficial look into the stages of production will reveal the hidden price tag in every DIY explainer video project.

Step 1: Project Research

Crowd Content says finding a freelance video producer is “your first step.” Try to ignore the irony of a company built on eliminating the hassle of hiring freelancers telling you to hire ­ and individually manage ­a freelancer right off the bat. Shrugging, you take their advice and start where most people do ­Google.

You type: “freelance video production” and wait for the perfect video producer to fall in your lap. All of the results are localized, which doesn’t help since you’re looking to hire the cheapest remote freelancer, not the closest, but you press on. The first result is for live­ action, two­-man video crew. A one­-man crew in NYC (my location) costs $1440 for each day of shooting and editing. Hmm…not quite what you’re after. It’s not even animated. So you refine your search with: “freelance animated explainer video” Better.

You even notice one decent site—PeoplePerHour. However, only 68 results meet your requirements, and the average rate is $50/hr going as high as $83/hr, but at least you’re in the right neighborhood.

A handful of creators have positive reviews and after clicking through profiles, watching dozens of videos, and emailing a few prospects you have completed the first part of the first step. Congrats.

Let’s fast ­forward your search a few days and say one of these animators emails you back. You agree on a price and timeline (over several more emails) and hire them. Hooray. Let’s be optimistic and say you go with the first site you browse, and select the second animator you see with positive reviews. You haven’t prospected many applicants or comparison shopped, so the absolute minimum you’ve invested in searching for an animator, viewing portfolio samples, comparing pricing, navigating Freelance sites (sign­up, membership, etc.) and emailing your freelancer is about six hours. If you’re half as valuable ($25/hr) as this creative ($50/hr) you’ve already invested $150 of your “time.” At the absolute minimum.

Your explainer video budget now looks like this:

Step 2: Writing a Script

How hard can writing a 60-­second script be? You know your business better than anyone. You’re articulate. This will be the easiest part of the process, right? Wrong. Your script is the most important part of your video because it does most of the work.

A good script is concise, accurate, compelling, and clear. You’re condensing your entire product into 60 seconds. How do you pack the video with valuable informative content while keeping it engaging and brief? Do you use a personal narrative with a mascot, or create a custom character? Maybe you write a voiceover exploring an in­-depth customer case study? Perhaps a data­ driven product demo or screen capture of your product in action is the best way to highlight your product’s value?

• Testimonial?
• Metaphor?
• CEO fireside chat?

The options for telling your company’s story are endless, and while you’re worrying about the form your script takes, you’re forgetting the most important element of a script—reaching the audience.

DIY Explainer Video Storytelling

Your explainer video exists to affect a specific target ­audience—people that will buy your product. If you don’t know who that is or what your ideal customer or user looks like, you can’t even begin to draft a script let alone know how to captivate and motivate them into action at the end of your video.

Script writing is hard. I’m a writer, (I even went to school for it) and I’ve been doing it for years, and it’s still hard. Sometimes it takes us three hours of brainstorming in a team of three just to get a working draft for a 60­-second spot. After those initial notes get typed up and approved by the client, we gather around the conference table once again to storyboard visuals and improve the strength of the original script. We focus the message to our target audience by defining the tone, accuracy, clarity, and pace of the content. The next step is deciding if the script should be literal, like a product screencapture or computer graphic display, or metaphorical ­with a narrative featuring images like climbing a mountain or dodging obstacles in your path.

Each style has its strengths, weaknesses, and techniques that need to be flushed out and aligned with the brand, the message, and the marketing intent of the video. This is the awesome power of a script, and when done properly, your video can really move the needle when it comes to engagement, social shares, and conversions.

Let’s assume you’re creating a video to explain something technical like accounting or bank software. You have to ask a few questions right off the bat to create the right script:

• Is the video for internal bank employees or customers?
• Are viewers loyal clients or new users?
• What is the age range, location, and demographic of your target audience?
• Is this video for a new product or an established brand?

The answers to these specific questions branch to form more questions that inform the narrative of the story. Searching for the answers to these questions is important, and it takes time. If you invest the same minimal time into your script and pull three people off of other projects to create an effective script, your opportunity cost looks like this:

Step 3: Freelance Voiceover Recording

Let’s assume you hit the lottery and get your script perfect after one draft. Call me if this happens so we can go for a unicorn ride to Narnia. It’s time to hop right back on the freelance treadmill and hire a voice actor.

You jump through the same freelance hoops, except voice acting is an even more obscure field that you know nothing about. Let’s say it takes a minimum of five hours of research and communication just to book a freelance voice actor. Then assume they deliver the voiceover on time, and it’s exactly what you want. That’s a lot of assumptions, but hey, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt because you’re a go-getter. This still doesn’t include the lag time communicating the script to your video producer, then waiting for his production notes and video roughs (each of which costs you money). Before the voice actor turns on her mic, you have extensive email chains between not just one, but two freelancers. So let’s add another two hours, assuming you do all this without any help.

Updated Budget:

We’re about halfway through the DIY video production process, and already the cost is more than double what you expected to spend. And it’s taking longer than you expected because you’re not interacting with one, but two freelancers (at minimum), and the project has likely hit at least a few production speed bumps along the way.

Too Many Cooks: Freelance Production Costs More

You’ve probably heard the phrase “too many cooks,” and you know how cluttered a project can get when too many people have input, especially when they’re not all working with each other. What you might not realize is the true cost of inefficiency and how it can ruin an otherwise “budget” bottomline. For a better understanding of the real cost of outsourcing, just look at Boeing’s outsourcing disaster for their new fleet of planes.

Forbes reports that, “Boeing enthusiastically embraced outsourcing, both locally and internationally, as a way of lowering costs and accelerating development to reduce the 787’s development time from six to four years and development cost from $10 to $6 billion.” However, the “end result was the opposite.”

Jim Albaugh, Chief of Commercial Airplanes at Boeing, explained in January 2011 that, “We spent a lot more money by trying to recover than we ever would have spent if we’d tried to keep the key technologies closer to home.” At the time, the project was billions of dollars over budget and three years behind schedule. Not awesome.

The problem wasn’t outsourcing, it was rampant outsourcing and the assumption that each phase of production would work together. Boeing hired 50 independent contractors, and each phase of the project met delays because you can’t move forward with certain production steps until others are met. The daisy chain of freelancers was cheaper, but wildly inefficient leading to terrible budgeting problems and woeful production delays. And that’s from a multinational, billion dollar company that’s been outsourcing for decades. But back to your freelance project…

Step 4: Freelance Sound Design

After the video producer and voice actor have delivered their creative products, and the VO has been added to the animation, accounting for length, pacing, and message, you’re finally ready to add background music to jazz up the video. Again, you can outsource this to your producer (who knows next to nothing about your brand or your video goals), but let’s say you have some input.

You stumble across the nightmare spiderweb that is “free archived music sites,” each packed with libraries of songs in the thousands. Some sites provide “genre,” “instrument,”and “emotional” search terms and categories, but they blur into scrolling pages of nonsense within minutes. Others just feature the most recent uploads from hundreds of musicians you’ve never heard of, because you can’t afford anyone else.

• Do you want your video to be positive and confident, or thoughtful and emotive?
• Should it feature acoustic guitar, piano, ukulele, or electronic dubstep?
• How does it match up with the script “beats” and punctuation notes in your already finished project?
• Does it match the pace of the voiceover?

I personally spend hours every week pouring through music licensing databases for an array of video projects. Even with my familiarity, listening to tracks on repeat and matching them up with the visual from creative takes longer than you think. It takes hours just to come up with four or five suitable options to send to our clients, and without fail I’m drained after my acoustic workout. And I haven’t even covered licensing yet.

• Is this video only going to be on your website?
• What about YouTube?
• Is your channel monetized?
• Will you need the internet rights for one year or in perpetuity?
• Is your video going to be hosted on more than one site or featured by affiliate bloggers?
• Will you use the song for a unified campaign across social media?

Every one of these answers determines a different commercial license for even the “Creative Commons” or “free” music archives that litter the internet, let alone the premium music licensing channels. It’s complicated, but the right track can make or break a video. I’ve found that music licensing­ is one of the most straight­forward examples of “you get what you pay for” when it comes to quality. However, since you’re pinching pennies, I’ll assume you purchase the cheapest song available.

Shockwave­Sound has songs starting at $30 for a standard licensing, but since you’ll probably want the video on your site for more than a year, and you’ll want to blast it on YouTube or other social channels, the $75 extended license is your only option. Add to that five hours of searching, listening, syncing, and a little back and forth between the owners of the site (this happens more than you’d think) and you might have a song ready to send to your video producer. Maybe.

Updated Budget:

You’re now around 3x the initial dollar spend. Time to wait for the finished product. Be patient, it might be a while.

Step 5: The Finished Animated Explainer Video

You’re done. Weeks have passed like a time lapse movie. You’ve sent dozens, maybe even hundreds of emails and attachments between multiple freelancers and members of your team. You’ve joined several different freelancer networks and music archive sites and your inbox is cluttered with downloads, logins, and spam, but it’s all worth it—you finally have your animated explainer video.

Sure, you exceeded your budget by $1,000 and you didn’t get a lot of other work done the last few weeks because of the script meetings, music selection, freelance research, and never­-ending project management, but you’re proud that you had a hand in creating your business’ explainer video. You even brag about your involvement to clients and friends. You’re a “creative” now.

When you get the finished product it’s exactly what you asked for: 60-seconds long, animated with your script, your story, your style, and your hand-­selected voice actor. You’ve never been so proud. At first. But then something strange happens.

You watch your video a few more times. It feels a little long, you’d edit that sentence out in the middle or trim the ending. The dialogue doesn’t quite pop, and the actor doesn’t deliver the lines quite the way you remembered. The characters that looked amazing two weeks ago now look flat and puppet-­like, and when you revisit your animator’s portfolio you see that they look eerily familiar to every video he’s produced ­ even the one he made for your competitor.

But it’s too late now. You’ve invested hundreds and spent weeks on this video. You can’t scrap it because you didn’t catch the mediocre content or avoidable glitches, so you shrug and post it on your site hoping no one will notice.

Days pass as you wait for the flood of traffic that never comes. You’ve read about the power of video to increase engagement, SEO rank, and conversion while lowering bounce rate—heck, that’s why you wanted to create one in the first place—but nothing’s happening. Why not?

Budget DIY Explainer Video

“Video” by itself doesn’t increase engagement or conversion. Good video that adds actual value increases engagement and conversions. Quality production informed by extensive research creating your custom audience, targeting your script to perfection, working with talent designers and animators to make a video that people want to watch, and pointing all of that at your specific marketing objective are how you get results.

A helpful explainer video produced by a team of dedicated professionals can catapult your website into the SEO limelight. A mediocre throw­away DIY explainer video is white noise at best, and an embarrassing brand fail in most scenarios. In the competitive marketplace, video can increase your SEO, reach, and above all conversions. DIY videos just don’t.

Can you make an animated explainer video for less than $1,000? Of course you can. Companies do it all the time. Should you? Let’s take a look at how Crowd Content’s DIY explainer video has aged over the past few years, to find out.

Oh wait. You can’t, because they don’t use it on their site anymore—not even on the video tab or the “How It Works” page. Guess that’s what you get for making a budget video that no one watched. Hopefully they learned their lesson and invested in a video strategy that actually works.

Download FREE eBook for more information about how animated video can work for your business.

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Learn how to manage an animated video project for your organization:

• How to decide how much to spend
• Gaining buy-in from your organization
• Choosing a provider and style for your video
• Working with your stakeholders
• Working with the creative team
• How to calculate ROI on your video project
• How to promote your video
• Keeping metrics so you can learn

Get the
Free eBook!

The post How Much Does A DIY Explainer Video Cost? appeared first on IdeaRocket.

A poorly made whiteboard won’t “save you money” if it hurts your brand and drives away customers. So to help you get started with animation for your company, we took a look at some of the most popular DIY whiteboard animation tools on the market.

Some are good, some are bad, and some are just downright ugly. Here’s your review of the best DIY whiteboard animation software for any budget.

VideoScribe  — $29/month

Best Use: Education / FAQ section

When it comes to DIY whiteboard animation tools, you get what you pay for. A lot of “free” video tools are garbage (more on that below), so even though it’s tempting to make a video for $0, remember that this is a marketing tool that represents your brand. If you’re not willing to pay $30 for what will quickly become a keystone piece of content, maybe you need to rethink your business model.

The video interface is easy to use, if a little simple, and will produce passable whiteboard animation for a variety of uses. Choose from a library of stock images, set your animation points and timing, add voiceover and/or a soundtrack, and you’re all set. VideoScribe is great for education and simple technical explanations, but lacks the flexibility for creating impactful sales tools and branding videos. It’s great for specific explanations, but definitely not something you want to build your marketing strategy around.

Technical Problems with DIY Whiteboard Animation

The problem with DIY whiteboard videos isn’t the quality of the animation (or at least not entirely). No, the problem is that DIY videos often lack a clear objective, point of view, and call to action. Because of those flaws, they rarely produce the same results as a studio production.

Even “nice looking” DIY whiteboard animation just lacks all the tiny details and professional precision that today’s viewers expect from online video. If your video doesn’t meet viewers’ expectations, you’ll lose their attention. And that’s not ok.

TruScribe

VideoScribe is fine if you need to explain something in a very simple way. However, this isn’t a brand building tool. You can try VideoScribe free for 7 days, and pay a $29/month to create as many videos as you want. You do have to pay for some of the premium images in the templates, so be aware of that. Make a bunch of videos and cancel after one month, (they even say it on their website) or sign up for a whole year—the flexible payment options is another great feature.

Best Use:

• Educators
• Simple, technical explanations (not sales oriented)
• FAQs

Not Recommended For:

• Brand Building
• High-End Products
• Convention Presentations
• Lead-Generation
• Sales

Raw Shorts

Raw Shorts is another DIY whiteboard animation company with decent looking videos. Here’s a sample called Whiteboard Template for Accountants:

The animation is a little hokey, but passable, and the color palette is pleasing to the eye. This video is closer to branding purposes, which is saying a lot. However, watch the video for longer than 15 seconds and you’ll start to feel your attention drifting. It’s because this video simply isn’t engaging. It has all the necessary pieces of a good explainer video, but lacks the professional storytelling touch that makes it actually engaging. This animation is animation for the sake of having a video. It’s not an actual marketing tool that you can use with confidence.

This video is good for what it is, but it’s still obviously a template. And you never forget that. The generic slogans, vague statements, and stock animation footage just drone on. Accounting isn’t exciting stuff, but this video doesn’t provide any reason to keep watching, and that’s a problem.

Best Use: Time sensitive event landing page

Raw Shorts

If you want a simple paint-by-numbers animated explanation of your business, the list of pre-made templates is a great option for adding some video content to your website. It’s easy to use, smooth, and will look just fine. If however, you’re looking to take your business to the next level, this DIY animation software comes up a little short.

The free plan includes a Raw Shorts watermark and outro, so you’ll want to upgrade to remove that. The free plan also only includes YouTube uploads, so you’ll only be able to link to that YouTube page. If you want to download the raw video file to use for your website or other marketing materials you have to upgrade to the premium plans.

Best Use:

• Time sensitive or product landing page
• Company Overview

Not For:

• Brand Building

TTS Sketchmake

Apparently every company that makes terrible DIY whiteboard animation software decided that $37 was the magic number they could get from gullible creators. TTS Sketchmaker DIY whiteboard software is hilarious. They rely solely on Text to Speech audio tools, so every video sounds like it’s narrated by a stuttering robot. Do yourself a favor and watch a few. They’re awesome…ly bad.

TTS Sketchmaker is not a professional whiteboard video maker. Period.

DIY Whiteboard Animation Software: Use At Your Own Risk

Whiteboard animation is a great way to make your brand stand out, but make sure you stand out for the right reasons. A quality explainer video will drive engagement, social shares, and brand awareness. A poor whiteboard video will scare off potential customers and degrade your business. Identify why you want to make your whiteboard video, then move forward with the right tools that fit your budget.

Don’t sell yourself short with whiteboard video software that will cost your company new leads and more business in the long run.

If you’re interested in producing whiteboard animation, check out our portfolio and see what can be done with a customized approach.

Receive our free eBook when you sign up for our newsletter!

Learn how to manage an animated video project for your organization:

• How to decide how much to spend
• Gaining buy-in from your organization
• Choosing a provider and style for your video
• Working with your stakeholders
• Working with the creative team
• How to calculate ROI on your video project
• How to promote your video
• Keeping metrics so you can learn

Get the
Free eBook!

The post A Closer Look: DIY Whiteboard Animation Software appeared first on IdeaRocket.

Why are people freaking out about a cooler? Sure, the design is great – it has thicker wheels, a built-in bottle opener, and the on-board blender and bluetooth iphone speakers are bananas – but at the end of the day, this is just a sweet version of a product that most people already have in their garage.

So why are thousands of people lining up to pay $185 for a cooler?

Because the script tells them too. It’s written with an objective in mind (sales), and it has converted over 43,000 backers – making it one of the most successful campaigns in the history of the site.

Character Is The Coolest

There’s no doubt that the star of this explainer video is the “Coolest” cooler. It’s in nearly every shot. But the protagonist of this video is you, the viewer.

You at the beach in July. You surrounded by friends at a bbq. You making margaritas around the bonfire or killing it at a picnic in the park with your sweetheart. You are the star of this explainer video. The Coolest is just your wingman on all your outdoor adventures.

Notice how the first line of the explainer video doesn’t explain anything about the product. It’s not about the space-age design. It’s not about the company. Heck, it’s not even about the inventor and his story. It’s about you.

“That’s the sound of a cooler coming off the shelf. It’s the sound of imminent fun.”

I love that opening line. It immediately sets the scene, and makes your imagination the star (with your trusty cooler in hand, of course). A great line can hook you just as fast as a killer video thumbnail. Never underestimate a strong start.

Conflict: Put The Boring On Ice

After setting you up as the star, the explainer quickly shifts gears from how awesome the concept of a cooler is, to how much they suck in reality. They’re “boring, break easily, and are difficult to get to and from your destination,” says inventor Ryan Grepper.

True.

He lays out the problems with standard coolers – the conflict – in three easy-to-picture, easy-to-relate-to talking points. Again, he keeps the script focused on you and how you feel when you experience the shortcomings of regular coolers. It’s simple and speaks to your own experience.

Now that the conflict is well established, it’s time to get to the “explainer” part of the video.

Quest For The Coolest

Now – at the 0:13 mark – the explainer video smoothly transitions into the quest for the perfect cooler. In the time it takes me to walk to my kitchen and stare into the empty fridge, this explainer video has made me remember all the great outdoor fun I’ve had in the summer, while pointing out that my cooler is terrible. It’s an epic switch, and a great narrative development. I’m ready for a quest.

That’s when the video lays it on.

“I wanted a cooler that was really well built, yet had so much fun built into it I would look for excuses to get outdoors.”

The Coolest literally beckons you on your own outdoor journey – with your trusty Coolest by your side. That’s an amazing accomplishment for an explainer video, and this creation of need is the reason this video has raised over 170x times the initial goal. It tells you a story, and you love it.

The “Quest” is the longest phase of the script, and rightly so. Here is where your explainer video… explains. Why it matters. What it does. Why you should care. It lays out all the features that you expect in a cooler while wowing you with more than you ever dreamed of.

The viewer is taken on a trip where they imagine the Coolest as the life of the party for every outdoor destination. Here are a few lines from the video.

“Become a summertime hero.” On-Board 18 V Blender 

“Dance parties may happen.” Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker

They even manage a little rib-nudging humor – “Maybe you have an iphone and want to use it after two in the afternoon” – which is tough to do when describing a USB Charging Port.

I gotta respect a script that can get a chuckle out of a USB joke.

Resolution: Close The Lid On The Deal!

When you’ve made the sale, stop selling. It’s time to wrap it up.

True, this video runs a little long for most explainers, but it fits the form on kickstarter, so we’ll give it a pass. After the quest, the script steers us to the end – the objective of the whole video. To buy the product.

“I create products for a living,” Grepper states. “A world-class sourcing company with years of experience” he continues, is “standing by.” He’s bringing us home – instilling trust, making claims, and promising you’ll be happy with your purchase. He’s giving us closure.

“By backing this kickstarter, you can be one of the first people in the world with a cooler that’s actually cool.”

Where do I sign?

I’d like to say that I am in no way being compensated by the Coolest for this gushing endorsement. I’m just thrilled when I see an explainer video script do its job so perfectly. Grepper wrote a great script and great scripts get results.

Oh, and in the twenty minutes it took for me to write this, eight more people bought the Coolest. Just saying.

Whether it’s sales, awareness, or entertainment, a great script guides viewers toward your explainer video’s objective. Contact us today to get the coolest-possible explainer video script you can imagine, and achieve your goals with a great explainer video.

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If you’re not familiar, a Rube Goldberg Machine is any complicated contraption built from everyday objects arranged into a long chain-reaction to accomplish a simple goal. The winner of the 30th annual Rube Goldberg Collegiate competition in 2014 (yes, they’ve been competing for 30 years) zipped up a zipper. In 75 steps.

If you’ve ever stacked dominoes in a row, you’ve built a Rube Goldberg Machine. Welcome to the club, nerd.

The beauty of “Rubes” is that it doesn’t matter what parts they’re made of – ping-pong balls and dominoes, or hammers and balloons – or what they’re goal is – these machines captivate people by bringing everyday objects to life. Rube Goldberg machines are stop-motion animation in real-time, moving the action along like a story. But more on that later.

First, let’s get to know these contraptions – and they’re link to animated video – better by looking at their history.

What Is A Rube Goldberg Machine?

It’s no coincidence that the creator and namesake of the Rube Goldberg machine – Reuben Lucius Goldberg (born 1883) – was a famous cartoonist and animator.

Originally a trained engineer (he received his degree from Berkeley in 1904), Goldberg’s passion for animation led him to leave a promising career designing sewers for the City Hall to illustrate part-time at the San Francisco Chronicle while he swept the editorial floor. He made a whopping $8/week ($175/week in 2014) at his new career and never looked back.

Goldberg’s imaginative illustrations “quickly ensnared the public’s interest,” and by 1915 his comics were the toast of the art world, earning him over $100,000 a year ($2.3 million today).

His work was syndicated in New York Dada (published by Marcel Duchamp), The Literary Digest, and he went on to found the National Cartoonists Society in 1946. Goldberg even received a Pulitzer for his animations. Shortly before his death in 1970, Goldberg’s work was curated by the Smithsonian in an exhibit aptly titled “Do it the Hard Way.”

In 1931, Rube Goldberg machines got so popular that Merriam-Webster adopted the word “Rube Goldberg” to mean “an adjective defined as accomplishing something simple through complicated means.” Goldberg himself said the machines were:

“A symbol of man’s capacity for exerting maximum effort to achieve minimal results.”

How Animated Video Production Is Like A Rube Goldberg Machine

To understand how animation is a type of Rube Goldberg machine, let’s examine the first feature length animated film ever created – Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, released on Feb 4, 1938.

Over 570 animators and water-color artists labored for nearly five years to compile two million sketches and paintings, though only 166,000 comprise the final film. Production soared $1.25 million over budget (6x the original figure), and Hollywood insiders described the film as “Disney’s Folly.”

Talk about “maximum effort” for just an 83-minute cartoon. But that’s the exactly the point.

Snow White isn’t just a “cartoon,” and far from the “folly” predicted by Hollywood professionals, Snow White became one of the most cherished films – animated or otherwise – of all time. It single-handedly transformed “cartoons” – a medium widely discredited at the time – into the respectable, lucrative creative field we recognize today. Five years of foolish toil resulted in a timeless tale.

Snow White’s initial release earned $8.5 million at the box office making it the most successful movie ever. Fast forward to 2014 where Frozen became the first animated production to gross $1 billion. Rube Goldbergs – as animation – are alive and well.

But here’s the wonderful thing about Rube Goldbergs and animation – no one needs them.

Let me clarify: People don’t need a self-operating napkin anymore than they need quality animation for their product. Hundred of studios churn out cheap, cookie-cutter animation – and they manage to eke out a profit.

But Rube Goldbergs and great animated video aren’t about “scraping by” or making things “good enough.” They’re about using extraordinary means and “maximum effort” to accomplish something fantastic – make a lasting impression.

The bottom-line was never a concern for Goldberg or any of the great animators – from Disney to Miyazaki – and it’s exactly that disregard for convention that makes Rube Goldbergs and quality animation so adored – and so valuable.

Overcoming Production Challenges

Every Rube Goldberg machine and every great animated video production is unique – hand-crafted to fit the situation. Their success depends solely on the skill and vision of the creator, whether it’s nailing a walk cycle or stacking 1,000 dominoes – each has their technical challenges, and when it’s done well, a story inevitably emerges.

A story from a bunch of things crashing into each other?

Absolutely.

In his book, The Storytelling Animal, Jonathan Gottschall writes that people inherently crave storytelling, and will find it anywhere – from dancing mice and fairy princesses to a cog rolling down a plank.

Rube Goldbergs are packed with drama. Will the fan blow the book over? Why is that sledgehammer pointed at that T.V.? Will the glass shards fall on the scale and tip the bag of marbles? What if the marbles roll the wrong way?

It’s been 100 years since Goldberg illustrated his first contraption – “Automatic Weight Reducing Machine,” in 1914 – and people are still creating this cherished contraptions.

Viral video kingpins, OK GO, created a music video for “This Too Shall Pass” featuring a massive Rube Goldberg machine. This monument to superfluidity took a hand-picked team of 60 builders lead by 20 Syyn Labs engineers, via the thought collective “Mindshare,” weeks to complete.

Over 43 million people have watched the video. Quality craftsmanship and imagination stand the test of time.

I love Rube Goldberg machines and animation, but maybe I’m just old-fashioned. I take pleasure in all the world’s perfectly complicated contraptions because for all their bells and whistles, squiggly lines, and non-sequitur, they do something so beautifully simple amidst the chaos.

They tell stories.

If you want to make your own beautifully complicated animated video – or just stack dominoes around our office – shoot us an email and we’ll talk about your story, because it might  take us ten minutes to answer the phone as we wait for all the marbles to drop into a basket…

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18 months later Forbes updated this survey – Video in the C-Suite – to track how executives use video – like animated business videos – as a learning tool. Turns out that executives like video. A lot.

According to the study:

• 80% of senior executives watch more video than they did the previous year
• 75% watch work-related videos weekly on business-related sites
• 52% watch work-related videos weekly on YouTube
• 65% visited a vendor’s website after watching a video

So, 8 out of 10 top-level executives watch more work-related video than ever before, and more than half of those videos led directly to a conversion.

The study also revealed that executives are more likely to watch video directly on a website rather than host services like YouTube or Vimeo. This is great for your sales funnel because video on your homepage is far more likely to lead to conversions. Embedded videos capture the target market when purchase intent is high and the path to conversion is only a click away.

At the start of every project we ask our clients to define concrete goals for their video, because this knowledge of where and how people view your video is as important as what your video looks like. We want you to do more than “reach viewers” or “go viral.” We want you to achieve your conversion, sales, or lead generation goal.

B2B Video Marketing Is On The Upswing

The research shows that B2B video targeted to executive-level decision makers is a fantastic path to conversion.

And it’s only getting better.

More than half (51%) of executives under 40 have made a business-related purchase after viewing a video. That’s an amazing CR.

“But wait,” you say pointing to another piece of data from the study. “Only 26% of executives over 50 made business-related purchases after viewing. That’s not good.” Well spotted, sir or madame. Way to keep me honest. However…

Lower conversion rates among older executives is actually kind of what you want. It means that animated business video is an effective conversion tool with younger execs – and younger execs are the demographic that’s growing.

In a recent Creative Mornings talk, Joe Stewart from Huge says companies need to begin positioning themselves for the explosive growth of digital media in advertising budgets.

“When Generation Y holds the purse strings, digital becomes incredibly important.”

He goes on to say, “When those kids become CMOs, then the game really, really, really, changes.”

Animated business video is becoming a consumer vehicle before our eyes. Cisco predicts that by the end of this year – 2014 – video will account for 57% of all consumer traffic.

That’s not lol cat videos or skateboarding fails – that’s consumer traffic complete with purchase intent from upper-level decision makers. Remember, Forbes Insights only surveyed executives at companies with over $500 million in annual revenue.

Top level executives are watching video right now. Is your brand positioned accordingly?

Or do you still think video isn’t for you?

Rethink your marketing strategy with animated video. Contact us today.

Top photo by bruce mars via Unsplash.

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IR: Quick fanboy moment – What voice(s) did you portray in Spirited Away?

BOB: A few things. I did a character called “No-Face.” I did this little frog that No-Face ate. That’s all I can think of right now. I think those are the two characters I played. Really fun movie – really creative. It’s one of those you know kind of “honor to be in” movies. Anytime you work for a genius like Miyazaki is pretty cool.

IR: You’ve had a lot of success as “Luke Skywalker” in Robot Chicken: Star Wars, as well as other Lucas characters in the Star Wars universe for TV and video games. How much of voice acting is mimicry or impression and how much of an actor’s arsenal are emotive “genuine” voices? Is there a difference?

BOB: OK, your Star Wars question about voicing “Luke Skywalker.” Here’s the thing:
I’ve been doing the Star Wars games and whatnot for a long time now – close to twenty years – and when I got the audition for “Luke Skywalker,” I turned it down. I told my agent, “I can’t do Mark Hamill. I just don’t do his voice.”

And so my agent called LucasArts and she said, “He’s gonna pass,” and they said, “Well, we wanna hear him anyway.”

And my agent said, “You got nothing to lose. Go to the audition.” So I went to the audition, and they were very nice people, and I said, “Guys, I gotta tell ya. I don’t sound like Mark Hamill. I can’t mimic Mark Hamill.”

The producer – I think Darragh O’Farrell – just a superb, fun, great guy to work with – and Darragh said to me, “Don’t try to do Mark, just do Luke.”

And I thought for a second and I was like, “Oh. That makes perfect sense.” Because I didn’t go for trying to sound like Mark Hamill, even though our voices – when he played “Luke” – I’ve got a similar voice to him – I don’t sound like him, but we’re the same type – but the character, the personality – the heart of the character – that’s what I tried to go for.

There are two versions of “Luke:”

There is pre-Jedi and post-Jedi – and very different personalities. It’s almost like science-fiction puberty. So I really worked on and studied the character traits, and what was in his thought process, and his growth, etc., as I would attempt to play the character.

It’s funny – the first game I ever did, the LA Times did a review and one of the comments was “Isn’t it great that LucasArts used Mark Hamill for ‘Luke Skywalker?’”

So I popped a note to the producer and I said, “Did you replace me with Mark?”

And he’s like, “No. That reporter obviously didn’t read the credits.”

So that’s my “Luke Skywalker” process.

IR: How much of voice acting is informed by your personal take on the visuals (the animation) as opposed to direction alone? Are you aware of the final creative that you’re reading for before you go in for an audition or spot or are you reading “blind?”

BOB: When you do cartoons, most of the time, they record the voices first, so there is no visual. It’s the written word. It’s you and a cast if it’s a series animation, or it’s you alone if it’s a feature. The only visuals you might see is a storyboard, and it’s rare to even see that.

If it’s an audition – if it’s a really good audition with a very smart casting director – and fortunately the majority are very smart – they know what we need as actors. You’ve got a script, a description, and a picture. If you look at the character’s body language, facial expression, what they’re wearing – that really does help in creating a character.

When you’re in the actual session, a half hour cartoon is, by contract, four hours, and an animated feature is, by contract, up to eight hours. An animated feature might take you know, one to four years to complete in the recording process, and you don’t record in the order of the film. So you might go in and do five pages, in the middle of the film, and come back in a month and do one page, then come back in a week and do twenty pages. Then they do some rewriting and you come back and do that first session again.

Then they’ll animate – both the feature or the episodic cartoon – and they’ll want to do some tweaking or some changing, and you’ll do what’s called ADR, which stands for “Automated Dialogue Replacement.” Then you are working to picture and matching sync.

But that’s really the only time during the process you get to see the visuals, unless you’re doing anime dubbing, where you are dubbing from Japanese to English, and watching the picture, and matching sync, and reading the dialogue, and acting, and staying in character – all at the same time.

There are times in an animated feature I won’t get the entire script – I just see the pages I’m doing when I’m at the studio recording. Then I see the finished product and I’m like, “Oh! That’s the story,” or “Oh…that’s what my character looks like? I would have played that totally different.”

But you can’t. You did it years ago and it’s animated, and you got paid and you probably already spent the money. But it is also very collaborative. When you record an animated series you’ve got a voice director, you’ve got producers and writers, you’ve got often times network people, studio people, and when they’re on the other side of the glass – the people producing and directing you – they’re gonna do their darndest to get the performance they want out of you, and they’re also relying on you to bring life to the page. The script is a skeleton, your job is to give it a body.

They have specific ideas of what they want, but they’re also extremely open and available to what else can you bring to the character and to the project.

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For the past 30 years he’s honed his skills with legends like Daws Butler (Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound) and June Foray (“Rocky” from Rocky and Bullwinkle), while making appearances in top-grossing films such as Wreck-It Ralph, Wall-E, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., and Robot Chicken: Star Wars, not to mention a host of commercial work.

He’s received two Primetime Emmy nods and an Annie nomination, and as a veteran working voiceover actor he teaches the ins and outs of this oft-misunderstood craft to the next generation of upcoming voice actors in LA.

He was kind enough to chat about his experience and share his wisdom about the rapidly changing explainer video voice over industry with us that we’ll feature in a three-part suite about voiceover acting.

Below is the transcript: 

IR: Most kids are so captivated by the action – the “magic” of animation in a cartoon that they never think about where the voices behind the characters come from, but you say you were bitten by the VO bug at a young age. When did you realize that the voices were so important and what initially drew you to voice acting – especially for animation?

BOB: I was drawn to the voices in the cartoons really young. I was five-years old. It was the Looney Toons cartoons. I would listen to the cartoons and for some reason I could figure there was one guy doing every voice.

And I would record cartoons. My mom would tell stories about how she’d be in the kitchen on a Saturday morning. I’d be in the living room watching cartoons, and she would hear a line on the cartoon and then she would hear the line again. And she found it odd that the cartoon repeated the same line. So she stood behind me and she watched me mimicking the cartoons back to the TV.

It was something I just got passionate about, but you know, kids get passionate. Some kids want to play baseball, some kids want to, uh, be a fireman, some kids want to be superman, you know, fantasy life. I wanted to be Porky Pig. I wanted to do voices for cartoons, and I had a talent for it. I was able to manipulate my voice.

IR: Obviously a huge part of voice acting is commercial – TV spots, announcements, radio, etc. How do Voiceover actors find the balance between their creative animation pursuits – like Porky Pig – and the realities of casting and making a name for themselves in such a commercially driven industry?

BOB: How do you find the balance? Well, um. Hmmm. It finds you.

A working voice actor’s life – even if you do a lot of cartoons – is going to be primarily commercials. For me it’s commercial narration, games, promo – I do everything but audio books. You basically go where the work is.

The auditions come in, you read for them, your agent calls you and says, “You’re booked on Thursday.” Thursday might be a cartoon. Thursday might be commercial, but you really don’t find the balance, the balance finds you, and this is why we have agents. They work the schedule. They balance your schedule so it all fits in.

IR: We work with a lot of freelance voice actors for our animation spots. Is freelance voice acting becoming a more legitimate alternative to landing an agent on either coast, especially with the improvement of home studio setups, or are most of the great gigs still going through casting agencies?

BOB: More people are pursuing voiceover than ever before but fewer are making the kind of living that the average working voiceover actor enjoyed 15 years ago, and that’s because of home studios.

Fifteen years ago the majority of the voiceover work was Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago.  Today, anybody with a $99 snowball mic, Garage Band, and a walk-in closet has a recording studio.

There are online casting sites. The problem is, when I started out in this business (when everybody started out in this business of my generation) we were actors – you wanted to be an actor.

You didn’t necessarily want to get rich or make money at acting. Your need, your passion, your goal was to be an actor – and for me it was voice acting.

When the voiceover industry was in the major markets (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago) you trained. You studied. You studied acting.

I studied voiceover for four years. I did two years at an acting conservatory, three years of improv, then I was ready to go out there and compete and pursue.

But today, people get a snowball microphone, they have access to some online auditions, and they want to call themselves a competitive, working voice actor.

And they might. They might make money at voiceover, but their goal is to make money at voiceover.

To be an actor – to be an artist – if you’re a sculptor, if you’re a dancer, if you’re a musician – if you’re really an artist your goal can’t be the end result of making money. Your goal has to be the satisfaction you get from acting or performing.

If you’re fortunate enough to make a living at it – that’s icing on the cake.

If you look at the top actors in the business – the Meryl Streeps, the Pacinos, the Dustin Hoffmans – these aren’t people who said, “How can I make money acting,” but today because of this new generation of being able to pursue voiceover anywhere, people just want to make money at it and wonder why they’re not.

So, do you need an agent? Well it depends on what you want out of your career. Do you want to compete on a national level? If you’d like to do voices for cartoons – series or feature – you’ve got to pursue this in Los Angeles.

If you live in a farm town and you’re content getting $50 to do a local spot, or $500 to you is a lot of money to book a non-union spot, then, hey, great enjoy – have a good time. But to compete on a national level – yeah – you need more than just the online voiceover casting sites. You need a top agent. You need to be union – SAG-AFTRA.

Those of us who make a substantial living at this, and are at the level I’m at – don’t get me wrong; it’s not just about the love of the acting – after a while when you get to make a living at it, it is a business.

I’ve got health benefits. I’ve got a pension when I’m 65. I get residuals. I live off my residuals. When it’s slow as a voice actor – or any acting – you have residuals coming in all the time from past work. That is how the very successful actors really continue to be very successful – it’s those residuals they have coming in.

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Learn how to manage an animated video project for your organization:

• How to decide how much to spend
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• Choosing a provider and style for your video
• Working with your stakeholders
• Working with the creative team
• How to calculate ROI on your video project
• How to promote your video
• Keeping metrics so you can learn

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The post Voiceover Tips From Bob Bergen, Voice Of Porky Pig appeared first on IdeaRocket.