Sometimes one little decision takes your life in an unexpected direction.
Jessica Piscitelli Robinson is at her heart a storyteller, whether she is on stage with Better Said than Done, or creating marketing videos as the owner of Capture Video.
Growing up, she wavered between her love of visual arts and her love of writing. She always knew one of those things was going to be her career. Then she got an opportunity that showed her she wouldn’t have to choose.
Her high school offered a video production program, Communication Arts and Science Training (CAST). For two years, in exchange for 3 classes, CAST students could work with a local TV station learning to write, direct, shoot, edit and produce video. Jessica fell in love with it. Here was an opportunity to combine visual and written art, both the things she loved best. She says “The videos started out very, very bad, but we didn’t care!”
Jessica stuck with it. She went to NYU and studied film and television production. Once she received her BFA she went to work in the New York City film industry working on indie films and commercials. After three years she realized that she loved the production process, but she didn’t love the film industry hours. She joined a video production company and found her niche. In 2000 Jessica moved to Virginia and started her own video production company, Capture Video.
She still loves creating. Both her passions come together when she writes scripts and sees the video process through to completion, but one of the best parts of the process is the constant exposure to new concepts. “I get to learn new things with every new customer and project. You really need to understand their business and product or service so you can help them. It could be a scientific process or how to make concrete or how to navigate child protective services, but I’m always learning something new.”
When you’re looking for something new and creative, take a look at Capture Video!
Have you thought about videotaping your live event? It can be a versatile investment.
Video recordings let you use the content for multiple purposes. Presentations can be reviewed and analyzed for effectiveness or to refine content for future opportunities. If your event generated ticket sales, you can sell copies of the recorded sessions for anyone who was unable to attend. Or you might just want to offer some of the sessions online, gratis, as a thank you to your members or attendees.
Some of the best marketing for next year’s big live event is footage from this year. Show the highlights from this year. Clips from your best and/or most prestigious speakers and attendees, snippets with the best lines or the most interesting visuals, crowds of happy faces networking and mingling to generate buzz and interest.
‘Graphics’ means a lot of things in video. Any time words or pictures are added over the video, or before or after the video, that’s graphics. Most professionally produced videos include them. It enhances the polished look of the final product.
The most common graphic in a business video is the opening title. Here is what you are about to watch, the name of the video, the relevant information and/or the logo and branding information relevant to the video. This is sometimes a stagnant image, like a slate, but is often animated, with music and/or voice over starting while the title animation draws the audience in. The closing title, or the last thing the audience will watch, is the next most common graphic, and is usually a great place to leave a last thought in the mind of your viewer.
The quality of the audio is one of the things that really makes the difference between a professional recording and something that looks, or more specifically, sounds, like a home video. Using top quality microphones gives you high quality sound, and allows the audience to really hear your message loud and clear.
One microphone commonly used in professional video recording is the lavaliere microphone, often referred to simply as a lav. This is the little clip on that you see on many TV news anchors and on interview shows. Lavs can be wireless or wired. Wireless can sometimes have interference from other wireless devices, like cell phones, but are generally pretty resilient. However, in areas of bad interference, a wired mic could be employed.
Boom mics are the ones that you can sometimes see in a movie, that really shouldn’t be in the shot. If you’re shooting a scenario, where the audience isn’t supposed to notice the technology (like a lavaliere microphone), you use a boom mic, so the fourth wall isn’t broken. A boom mic usually requires 2 people, the boom operator, who makes sure it is in the right places, and a sound mixer or engineer, who records the audio and levels it. (more…)
Capture Video was once again excited to work with the Public Risk Manager’s Association (PRIMA) on their annual PRIMY Award’s video. This is our fourth year producing the Public Risk Manager of the Year Award video.
Congratulations to this year’s winner, Tony Harris. Here is the video we produced that was recently shown at PRIMA’s annual conference and award’s program.
Including video in a a live program has a lot of great benefits. First of all, it’s the best way to take the audience with you, outside of the room. In other words, if you want to show your audience anything that isn’t right there in the room with you, a video can do that for you. (more…)
Video is very different from print. That seems like an obvious comment, but when you’re transitioning from your traditional print media to video, your marketing department is going to need a whole new skill set.
Writing marketing copy is a matter of assembling the important points, putting them in a good example, and arranging the examples in a logical progression. That isn’t going to transition clearly to a video. A good video needs to tell a story. Not just a logical progression but a beginning, a middle, and an end that sums up your points without being obvious. Information needs to be gotten across quickly because motion pictures are fast.
The biggest challenge is to strike the right balance between voice and video, or between ‘telling’ and ‘showing’. What can be implied through dramatization and what needs to be explicitly stated in the audio or highlighted through text?
This Capture Video production shows a mix of text, voice over and video.
Text is paced by the reading speed of the audience and by the concentration of details per segment. How much information can you pack in to 10 seconds of video? How many pages or paragraphs does that translate into? Did you know that if it takes the average reader 10 seconds to read your title, then it should remain on the screen for 15 seconds?
When it’s time to take your marketing to the next level for use in social media, your website, and for demonstrations of all kinds, make sure you have access to the skills and experience it takes to make your video really work.
Jessica Piscitelli Robinson is at her heart a storyteller, whether she is on stage with Better Said than Done, or creating marketing videos as the owner of Capture Video.
