5 Tips On Utilising Video Whilst Working From Home

Working from home has undoubtedly become the new normal and will continue to be a huge part of how we work in the future. One key ingredient to keep this alive is the use of video. No matter if used for communication between clients, colleagues and suppliers or to communicate to the outside world in form of marketing, the use of video is crucial for every business. In this article, we are going to provide you with some tips & tricks on how to create video content whilst working from home (don’t worry, you can use these tips in the office too).

1. Thinking About The Right Background & Lighting

Make sure you, the person or the object on screen sits or stands in front of a wall or a background that is as neutral as possible and no unnecessary background noises are audible during the recording. If that is not possible, services like Zoom also offer the opportunity to upload custom backgrounds helping you to mask yours, in case you would like to record yourself or others during a Zoom call. When it comes to the right lighting you should neither be overexposed nor underexposed.

Especially when it comes to built-in laptop cameras or webcams these still don’t have the exact same quality as usual cameras or smartphones and therefore can’t cope with too extreme lighting conditions. The best light is either natural or indirect, shining towards you, preferably not behind you or the object that needs to be videoed.

2. Learning The Basics

There are basic and simple tricks anyone can follow to make a video as professional as possible, and don’t worry you don’t need a fancy camera to do this. In this day and age, smartphone cameras are better equipped than ever, with most of them even being capable of filming in 4K (however 1080p still does the trick and uses up way less storage but let’s not get too technical here).

The first tip is to film in landscape mode / horizontally. The only exemptions for filming in portrait mode / vertically is for certain Social Media platforms like for example Snapchat or Instagram stories.

Ideally, the Phone and/or Camera is not handheld to avoid shaky footage. Use a tripod if available, or place the camera on your desk / in a shelf if possible.

If you need to interview people while working from home but can’t film them in person, you can also record Zoom calls as we’ve mentioned earlier. The quality might not be excellent but it definitely gives the footage a videoconference touch, meaning the audience will know as soon as they see and hear it that it was recorded on zoom which definitely excuses the quality.

3. Sharing Footage Remotely

With more and more people working from home, it’s important that information and shared-resources remain easily accessible. If your company or client base uses Google Drive or other filing systems, like Dropbox, it can be really helpful to use this common ground to (for example) share footage for feedback or editing.

If however, you need to send footage to someone not sharing the same filing system you can simply make use of WeTransfer. WeTransfer is a very user-friendly tool to transfer larger size files. You don’t even need to create an account, all you need is your email address and your recipient(s) email address(es). The only drawback is that the individual file or folder size in the free version is limited to 2GB, however, 2GB is a big size for a single video (unless it is shot in 4K).

4. Editing A Video

Video editing from scratch is a skill that takes time until it is refined to a degree where it is representable. It is not hugely difficult, it is just a question of time and repetition, trial and error to familiarise yourself with the editing software and being able to make use of all the effects and commands. Simple cuts without transitions are probably something everyone can learn within a short period of time. If the video should be simple, either try to record it in one go so you just have to cut beginning and end or with as few cuts as possible.

If you would like to make use of video but editing is not your cup of tea you can still create quality videos or even animations with software like ‘Invideo‘, ‘Biteable‘, ‘Renderforest‘ or ‘FlexClip‘. These, however, require a paid membership. If you would like to communicate your brand message to your customers but don’t want to be involved in the hassle of producing it yourself, get in touch and we will sort you out no matter the size of the project.

5. Going With YouTube Or Vimeo?

When it comes to uploading the final product to social media you might ask yourself where to upload the video and off the top of your head, you will think about YouTube. It is the go-to platform with an audience of 2 billion logged-in monthly users. But that doesn’t mean that Vimeo should be disregarded.

Vimeo works a little differently. With Vimeo, you can have a free account like it is the case with YouTube but this account is restricted to 500MB per week of upload space. Anything above that requires a paid membership. Vimeo claims that by using paid memberships they can keep advertising out of the equation and that they are purely funded by their users which is a fair point to make. Where Vimeo scores better than YouTube is with its video privacy settings.

At YouTube you can upload a video to the public, so everyone can see it, you can upload it unlisted so just people with the link can see it and you can upload it privately meaning just you can see the video. With Vimeo, you have different options. You can choose just people that follow you to see the video, people that you manually choose or people that have a password to access the video.

These options are important if you would like to create content for internal use only like training videos, and you would like to make sure that these videos are not published or shared elsewhere. In this case, Vimeo is the go-to platform for you to choose. In any other case, it does no harm to have them uploaded to both platforms to reach as many people as possible.

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If you were hoping for something a little more related to video marketing, you’ll find plenty of related articles amongst the News & Insights section of our website