The Blog - Ideas, Observations & Opinions

We make movies, that's what we do! one of the things we do regularly is to film real people giving a presentation or "sales pitch" for a promotional movie. This might only be 30 seconds or a minute long but what we've found is that everyone is different. We have one client who in a 2 hour filming session can, without a script, produce over 30 short 1 to 2 minute direct to camera speaches, each on a single take! It's great for him, he enjoys it and it's an extremely productive filming session. So what we've done is put together some handy hints and tips on how to be a super star and keep your cool when you're in-front of the camera:

Practice what you want to say:

Know what you want to say and how you want to say it. If you're not the kind of person who can "ad-lib" without "ummms" or drying up - and let's face it most of us are not, then the best trick is to write your speach out... practice it in front of a mirror, friend or even your mobile phone camera until you can do it without any pauses or notes. On the day it's OK if you want to do it in one take or several, as we can edit it together, but being able to do a single take is great for productivity and your confidence. By doing this a few days before the filming you get to "sleep on it" which really helps you to integrate it.

Breath:

When you're sat there in front of the camera with lights and microphones, the most important thing to do is breath. Taking a few deep breaths will calm you down, relax your vocal chords and slow your mind down a little. You can even close your eyes to relax a bit more. Quite simply as you relax your words flow better, your memory improves and you come across in a much better way too.

Find out about the process:

There's lots of information on this site about what happens, what the factors are that go into pre production and post production. The more you understand about what is going happening then the more relaxed you'll be... you may even find yourself having fun and being really curious. It's a fact that the more familiar we are with our situation, the more relaxed we are.

Choose a role model:

Ever wondered how famous people seem so good in interviews? well one of the tricks is to do a little visualisation:

1. Think of someone you really admire who is great at talking.
2. Close your eyes and relax and see them in front of you doing their thing.
3. Now imagine yourself moving into them so you become them, as you do this take the time to imagine how that feels, what it sounds like and what you would see differently.
4. Spend some time just being there and allow yourself to melt into it.
5. Imagine a big button infront of you, when you're really into the experience and you've got it as good as you want it then program that button so that the next time you close your eyes and press that button, you activate the feelings of being this person.
6. When you go to do your talk for real, sit there and close your eyes for a moment and press that button... you'll be surprised what happens...

This is a technique known as Modelling and Anchoring which many famous people from Princes to Filmstars use.

It's just you and an old friend:

Imagine that the camera lens is just your best friend, that's who you're talking to. Or some people imagine it is their ideal client or best customer... whatever works for you... that way you actually project real feelings into the camera - and it really works!

Get some good coaching:

There are some great coaches out there who can teach you these and other skills that can turn you into an even better public speaker and presenter. We're happy to recommend the following people:

UK - Leeds & Manchester: Nick Kemp Training

UK - West Sussex: Andrew T Austin

UK - Solihull, Birmingham: Jo Waddell

USA - New York Area: Doug O'Brien

Now I've recovered from last months 3 peaks challenge I'm getting ready to tackle the London to Paris bike ride. Over the next 3 days I'll cycle approx 200 miles with my specially modified Giant TCR bicycle filming the 80+ riders of GB Charity Events London to Paris Bike ride.

It's going to be a lot of fun, I've got two ContourHD action cameras, one on my crash helmet and one mounted below the handle bars. I've also got a seriously good and very portable Canon HF s21 High Definition camcorder mounted on the back of the bike. If that wasn't enough weight though I'm also taking a Nikon DSLR along for the ride! It's going to be a real challenge but I'm really looking forward to it.

Ash, is going to be manning one of the much larger professional video cameras as he follows in one of the support vehicles and films from the van. I told him to pack his cycle shorts just in case... :)

In this picture I'm wearing my favorite cycle T-Shirt from corza.net! Well it goes with the event since it celebrates the record breaking bikes for the 1 hour time trial challenge. I don't think I'll be breaking any records on this one though.

I'll let you know how we get on ;)

The World and the Interweb

There are  61 million people in Britain and 1.3 Billion people in China.
The World population is 6.8 Billion people. The internet has 1.8 Billion users, and 53% of Europeans use the internet. There are approximately 200 Million distinct websites ignoring blogs, though it's hard to know for sure so this is a conservative estimate. The top search engines including, Google, youTube, Yahoo and bing provide 120 Billion searches a month. That means on average every person on the planet, woman, child, man and young and old does about 18 searches a month.

Facebook

Facebook accounts for more website hits than google and Facebook has 400 million users. People on facebook have an average of 130 friends which means that when you post information on facebook, assuming you have the right settings then potentially 16,900 people can see your post. But your post is one of 25 Billion posts per month on facebook! Which probably explains why 500 Billion minutes are spent on facebook every month! That's an average of 41 minutes per facebook user per day!

At what Cost?

The average person lives about 41 million minutes which means that 12 thousand
five hundred human lifetimes are consumed by facebook every month! That's 150 thousand
lifetimes consumed by facebook every single year! If you laid those people end to end they would stretch 252 km!

This is quite a sobering statistic!

Standing out from the Crowd.

So the question is how are you going to stand out from the crowd and get some of that attention?
The online movies we produce are a great way of getting noticed because most people would rather
sit back and look at a video and be entertained than do the work of reading information and scrolling through web pages find out why here...

One of the questions I get asked a lot is "How does using custom made movies increase the success of a site?" Well strictly speaking the question is normally more like "What's the point of videos?" or "do videos really make a difference?"
So here are, in no particular order, 5 of the reasons why videos really do make a difference in improving the success of a website.

1. People are LAZY, they'd rather watch a video
OK I know this is a huge generalisation! But generally speaking, folk just don't want to read and scroll around that much. The younger the audience the more this is true, With Sparticle limited, we've done a lot of website usability studies and  found that the under 30's will normally go straight to a video if it's present.

2. Videos are ENTERTAINING.
Let's face it, if you can entertain people at the same time as selling your services/brand/product etc then you're much more likely to get the result you want. And even if they don't bite there and then they still form a stronger bond and positive association to you and your brand and are more likely to refer you to their friends and family and to come back for more (entertainment).

3. People shop EMOTIONALLY.
People make purchase decisions based on how they FEEL and it's well known that the use of sound, color and movement engages people's emotions much more than static images and text.

4. Videos are a great MARKETING tool
Videos drive more traffic to your site because they can also be used in "social media marketing" strategies, for example sharing on Facebook and Twitter as well as being found on YouTube, which is the second most used search engine in the world after Google!

5. DIFFERENCE DICTATES
A video is a great way of communicating your core message and personality to your potential clients, not only that but a professionally done video makes you stand out from the competition because it makes the bold statement "we care about what we do enough to show you properly"

A professional video from Spartmedia is very cost effective and looks great because:

You only get one chance to make a first impression.
Spartmedia getting you moving on the web.

Well following on from our last post, I'm pleased to say that we successfully filmed and finished the three peaks challenge. This picture shows Mark, the founder of Spartmedia with a professional video camera, at the top of Snowdon, the last of the three mountains. There are smiles all round because we'd just finished and to say it was hard would be an understatement. The sense of achievement was great though.

Maybe you can make out the shotgun mic under the rain proof camcorder cover, well we interviewed and filmed the students as they climbed each of the mountains and we're now back in the studio and starting the post production editing. We'll keep you posted on how this project unfolds.

A big well done to all the students who took part and raised money for Cancer Charities in the UK! and special thanks to the excellent team at GB Charity Events.