How to film a video for your business (For people who are great at other things) 

I was at the FSB Marketing and AI bootcamp last week and got asked a question regarding what kit and skills people who know nothing about it need to get started. It's a question I've heard quite a bit and thought it deserves a yap on here!

First of all, the best kit you can use to film your first video is what you've already got. If you're just doing a piece to camera, a 7 grand camera, lighting rig, boom mics & production studio is not only overkill - it goes against what social media is meant to be. Any phone released over the last 5 or so years is perfectly capable of doing what you need, if you happen to have lights, then that's brilliant, but natural light by a window is great too.

If you're absolutely feeling the need to invest in something, I'd invest in a mic. You needn't spend hundreds of pounds on something top of the line, anything between the range of £30-50 will be more than enough to start out. Why is sound quality more important than video quality you may ask? Bad audio turns people off more than bad video - have you ever noticed when you're watching a video with bad internet? They'll always drop the video quality before the sound quality.

One more thing while we're on the subject of audio, captions. A huge proportion of people watch videos on silent, with some studies suggesting it's as high as 85%. If your video doesn't have captions, you're losing a big chunk of your potential audience before they've even given it a chance. The good news is that adding them has never been easier. CapCut, Instagram Reels and TikTok all have auto-caption tools built in that do most of the heavy lifting for you. It takes a couple of minutes and it makes a big difference.

The problem I see come up again and again is analysis paralysis - people thinking over and over about what kit they need, what softwares etc. The best time to start was yesterday, the second best time is now.

If you know me, you'll know I yap on about story a lot. And that's because it's the make or break for video content. Nobody remembers which camera you used, or cares about what editing tricks you have in your back pocket. They remember the story. That's not to say that the technical stuff doesn't matter, it does - but the best videos, the ones that people actually watch, keep the story at its heart. I could write a blog about this all on its own!

So if you’re reading this and you’ve been overthinking getting on camera, stop! Grab your phone, stand in some natural light and just start! Happy creating.