5 Stages to a Video Journey (Episode 189)

[00:00:00] Chris Schwager: Welcome to DIY Video for Professionals Podcast. I'm Chris, the host that has been running this podcast for four years now. Title of this podcast is five stages. Is it five stages to a video journey? And the reason why I've called it five stages to a video journey is because my mate, Chris Lloyd Ross, who's my investment coach.

[00:00:33] Chris Schwager: He put one together called four stages to a financial journey. And I'm a big believer is don't reinvent the wheel. I've got a similar methodology and it's worth just swapping out a couple of words, changing it from finance to video and problem solve. I've got myself a podcast. And the reason why you might be hearing me.

[00:00:50] Chris Schwager: Maybe panting from time to time as well as perhaps some footsteps or whatever is because I'm on my treadmill. It's Friday afternoon. I need to get my steps up and I thought, let's kill two birds, one stone, walk and talk. And it's also a test for my editor, Claudine, who I've been working with this week on making sure that we get the best sound possible out of these podcasts.

[00:01:14] Chris Schwager: So I'm doing a couple of different tests here to make sure that she can also wipe out a vast portion of these steps in the background so that we get you nice, crystal clear, good quality sound without the noise in the background. So this is a bit of a test to see how it goes, but it's also to give you huge amounts of value to get you understand, particularly if you're fresh to video, you're starting out for the first time.

[00:01:38] Chris Schwager: There are so many of you out there. And I forget that from time to time. I've lived and breathed this ever since I was a kid. Video has been my world, right? I just forget that there's people out there that don't understand the fundamentals. Very rarely go on camera and very rarely do any camera work, right?

[00:01:55] Chris Schwager: Apart from the inevitable iPhone of family and friends and whatnot. So what I want to do is take you through our. Five steps to a video journey, just five stages, five stages to a video journey. This is something that we put together back in 2020 as we rolled out the DIY video program, and it was put in place to simplify, a lot of the jargon, that was already in the video production industry, things like pre production and post production.

[00:02:28] Chris Schwager: Production and post production, which are all very clever, sounds very clever to video guys, but may not actually make any sense to somebody that's starting out. So what we're doing is constantly looking at ways to communicate clearer with you. And I'm talking to you, the person that hasn't gone and done a video yet is still new as very fresh.

[00:02:48] Chris Schwager: And this might be just a bit of an overview on what's possible how you might approach video and making sure that you. Do it the best way possible first. Now I'm a big believer in learn from your mistakes, but I'm also a big fan of changing the perception of DIY. I think when people think of that DIY video or DIY in general, DIY kitchen, right?

[00:03:17] Chris Schwager: Do it yourself renovations. People think about cost cutting and savings and. Giving it a crack and rolling up our sleeves and doing it ourselves. And I think in business particularly with video, I think what people are underestimating is the amount of steps that it takes to actually do this properly and do it well.

[00:03:38] Chris Schwager: It's a trade, guys study for this for years to get this right. It's easy for me because I've lived and breathed this for so long. But it's worth recognizing these five stages. Let me rip in and start with equipment first. Okay. Streamlining video equipment. Now, when we think about the nature of video, we think about big productions crews and whatnot, but the real, Situation is that it could be you pulling, diving into your pocket, pulling out your iPhone and recording yourself or recording others, right?

[00:04:12] Chris Schwager: That makes you a video producer. And that really, we had to change the language of video production when the iPhone made it accessible to the masses to not only just, film video, but also to distribute it. There was actually no other device in the world that allowed people that Level of accessibility.

[00:04:34] Chris Schwager: So when the iPhone came out, it really changed everything. But when people are trying to deliver a level of consistency and quality, and they're not turning to their iPhone to do that. Okay. So the iPhone gives you speed and gives you mobility. Okay. And, but it doesn't give you consistent, you don't get quality, right?

[00:04:53] Chris Schwager: So you can't set up a DIY studio at your home and have one button switch and have that [00:05:00] consistent look like I'm giving to you now, if you're on the YouTube channel, check it out, this is the same look that you would have seen from me from four or five years ago, go back in time, 2020 and you'll see what I'm talking about with 2019.

[00:05:13] Chris Schwager: Even you'll see what I'm talking about again, the iPhone just is not going to be able to do that because. It's not set for manual situation and also people's understanding about how to eliminate the endless variables in order to get that consistency and speed into it. They're not, they don't have that understanding.

[00:05:31] Chris Schwager: So it's part tech, but it's also part knowledge of people, lack of knowledge of people are not realizing that they've part of video production. No matter whether it's professional video production or amateur video production is about eliminating variables. It's just that's what we're doing all day long.

[00:05:48] Chris Schwager: Think about any video crew. So if you have maybe dabbled or thinking about dabbling in getting a professional video crew to take care of you, because you're not really sure whether the DIY option is something you'd like to take up. And you thought, you think it might be better just to deploy a professional crew to get you started.

[00:06:08] Chris Schwager: Do it. What you'll understand is how they work and how they operate and how they're continually trying to eliminate the endless variables that are going to make either their job harder or more complicated for the crew and the talent. Okay. So an example of this is. If you have say a talking head, right?

[00:06:26] Chris Schwager: And the person says, Oh, I'd like to come out of that doorway. And I'd like to walk toward camera and talk, walk and talk, right? It's first thing I'd be saying is, okay, have you ever read from a teleprompter? Have you presented the camera before? That's one element the lighting and the sound, who facilitates that, who moves the camera while the person's walking and talking.

[00:06:45] Chris Schwager: They're variables I'm talking about, right? That's just an example. There's so many. Variables in the world of video. So one could be the blinds are open. Therefore light comes in. And when light comes in from outside, there's a possibility that cloud could cover over or because we extended the shoot day that by the time we want our final shot for the day, it's actually dark outside and therefore it's dark inside and we can't see what we're doing.

[00:07:07] Chris Schwager: That's another variable. Back 10, 15 years ago in our company, we decided that was going to be one of the biggest things that we needed to try and minimize for our clients is to squash as many of those variables as possible, make it easier for them to buy and purchase and do their thing.

[00:07:24] Chris Schwager: Therefore increasing effectively the lead flow and People's ability to consume video, but it was never more important than when we sold desktop video studios and got people to do it for themselves. So an example of this is when we installed the desktop video studio for our first clients, some of them decided to mess with the gear, right?

[00:07:44] Chris Schwager: Look. tweak it and change it, but not having any experience of understanding what they were doing, trying to do something better, but also the intention's good, but reverse engineering, what we've actually set up and put in place for them for good reason, right? And so there's often situations where I'm going into clients offices with their desktop studio and tweaking it.

[00:08:04] Chris Schwager: And it's taking me five minutes to get back to where it looks great again, for them, it would. That would be near impossible. It's like a computer guy hacking into a system without knowing what he's doing and yet you've got an IT nerd that can come along and do it in three seconds, so the experience, the understanding is there.

[00:08:23] Chris Schwager: So no matter what you're doing, whether it's handheld, Bloody iPhone, a proper studio, go and deploy a crew for a day to film you and go into that environment. Deploy us if you want to get into that environment and understand how it's all about minimizing as many creative variables as possible to make things more streamlined, to make it faster.

[00:08:45] Chris Schwager: Don't walk and talk to the camera. Lock off the camera, stand in front of the camera in a stationary position. The cameraman will love you for it because he doesn't have to do too much work. He can lock the camera off. He can lock off the sound. He can set you up with some nice lighting that way, because there's nothing changing.

[00:09:03] Chris Schwager: Everything's set in place. It's everything's fixed, bolted to the ground. It's what they call a lock set. When I was back in the day, anytime, or hot set a lock set, lock it down, we used to say, lock it down. Meaning. Everything's in place, nobody touch it, lock it down, leave it all in the one spot.

[00:09:19] Chris Schwager: Don't try and move a light stand or get start moving stuff around cause it's all ready to go. And that's the whole foundation of the DIY video studio and the program, the premium kit, all of that is based on that principle. Okay. So that is stage one. I'm going to fly through the other stages now.

[00:09:38] Chris Schwager: Stage two is Messaging. So when you actually got your equipment organized and you've leapfrogged that hurdle and you understand exactly how you're going to deploy the filming side of things, you're gonna understand what you're actually going to say. So scripting messaging, is it ad hoc? Is it off a script?

[00:09:55] Chris Schwager: Are you going to try and formulate something? Do you have an understanding of [00:10:00] the scriptings, right? Who is the audience? What is the goal of the video? Where does the video live? And what are the key messages? Okay. The four kind of pillars to our scripts. And if you can actually get those organized, the thing I find with scripting and anyone doing scripting is the writing without any conscious understanding of those four elements.

[00:10:24] Chris Schwager: They're just writing, putting words on a page. It's lots of fluff at six minutes long, it should probably be 30 seconds, but they don't really understand the attention, the audience, the goal of the video, what the messages need to be like the essential messages need to be. And also where it's going, what is the deliverable, right?

[00:10:41] Chris Schwager: So it's a lot of planning in that scripting phase that is underestimated. People think it's just words on the page. I think it's the subtext of the page. It's the feeling and the emotion and the decisions of the viewer that is actually the most important part about writing scripts. So just consider that.

[00:10:59] Chris Schwager: Script writing is completely underestimated, is exactly like the video production side of it. People get very frustrated with it. They think it's shit hot. They'll spend their entire bloody day on it. They think they're ignorant and they're arrogant at the same time. They're thinking that they can, that they're what they've written is gold.

[00:11:19] Chris Schwager: It's just not, I don't think there's been a single script that I've ever gotten in my life that I've not edited. And yes, it's perception, right there. I'm always a big believer that is human perception. That is the reason why that's edited. But also give good reason why I believe that it should be edited.

[00:11:40] Chris Schwager: It's too long. It's too wordy. It's too robotic. Doesn't flow, dives into certain areas. It shouldn't. There's a whole bunch of reasons. And I argue those points and I win every single time. So video scripting, we've got video scripts, man reach out, get access to those because they're so valuable.

[00:11:57] Chris Schwager: I'm sure they'll be great for you, particularly if you're going to just start out on something. The scripts are broken into different types of videos, which is even more valuable. Hit me up and I'll give you, I'll give you a sneak peek. There's 20 different script templates. And some of them are as simple as a little 32nd.

[00:12:16] Chris Schwager: Personal profile video, really good, great little video to get your training wheels on just to give yourself a trial. See if you can meet the designated word count, put it into the framework. It's fun. And there's plenty of examples of the output of those types of videos as well, which gives you a good, clear indication of what it should look and sound right?

[00:12:34] Chris Schwager: Keeping it short and sharp to the point, getting an audience from A to B boom, done, in, out. So that's video scripting. That's stage two, stage three, one of the most valuable stages because everybody that goes through this stage absolutely loves the process and they get so much of it because it really does overcome a lot of the fears and phobias.

[00:12:55] Chris Schwager: We're talking about the realm of public speaking in fear of spiders, right on camera training, presenting on camera is one of the biggest fears out there. People are deluded when it comes to what their expectations might be of presenting under this situation with the camera lights, sound, teleprompter, bloody people standing around, fluffers and makeup artists and everyone getting in the way.

[00:13:20] Chris Schwager: It's why would it be any other way? Why would you not feel out of your comfort zone in that particular environment? It's not something you do every day. In fact, you've probably never done it before. Therefore, just acknowledge that breathe into a baby. It's not something that's going to just happen immediately.

[00:13:36] Chris Schwager: It's going to take some skill and time and rehearsal and practice and whatnot to get it right. But on camera training is a vital step that I've not really seen anybody get good from, Rehearsing in front of a mirror, right? You've got to get the help from a professional video coach for this.

[00:13:53] Chris Schwager: There's really no other way to there is another way, right? You do it. You do it by trial and error, which I know that there's lots of people that have done it that way. But they've also told. War stories of spending hours in their car trying to perfect the most awkward bloody take one minute video and never been happy.

[00:14:13] Chris Schwager: So it's like my journey in the film industry. I never went to film school. It took me 15 years to get to where I needed to be. It probably could have done it in five. So went the long way. I don't regret it. But I went the long way and, I paid the price in time, right? I'm almost 50 now I'm settled in my skin.

[00:14:33] Chris Schwager: I know the space. I'm very comfortable and comfortable to teach it as well. But I could have done it earlier. Okay. So I feel like an old shit man saying all this, but look, the reality is I couldn't give two hoots. It's the best part about where I'm at the moment is. That I can depart my knowledge to you and give you the real of this environment.

[00:14:59] Chris Schwager: What I see [00:15:00] is the real, the no bullshit, this is the way it is. You want to get better, follow these five stages. Okay. So on camera training in a nutshell, gets you better prepared for camera by giving you the tools to read any script from a teleprompter. And have it come off sounding like it's not being read.

[00:15:24] Chris Schwager: There's a lot of anti teleprompters people out there, Jeremy, I'm talking to you right now. But if you teach the skill, it means that you can put any script in front of anybody and then they'll be able to read it with the same level of enthusiasm they should if they were to be just doing it verbatim.

[00:15:41] Chris Schwager: And you take all of the pressure off them for trying to remember lines. I've seen so many stressful presenters out there, people that have never done it before. presented on camera before they've been thrown in front of the camera. They've got lots of, it's just horrible to watch. It's terrible.

[00:15:56] Chris Schwager: It puts so much stress on them. It actually puts a lot of stress on the crew as well, because this there's time blowouts and all this stuff, get the skills. This is a 90 minute session. I can do these sessions over zoom. I can do them in the studio in Sydney. It's useful to have this skill.

[00:16:12] Chris Schwager: It's not only a great skill to learn from a presenting on camera perspective, but also how you interact with others in life, presenting in human interactions, daily meetings with clients and colleagues. It's really great because there's a lot of attention hacking information in there that gets you to understand how you continually command attention In your video, in your presentation.

[00:16:37] Chris Schwager: So hugely important. Reach out. If you want more information on camera training really great. Can't recommend it highly enough. So video editing is number four, and then I'm going to rip in and try and wrap this up in the next couple of minutes. Video editing. I think everybody knows enough about video editing.

[00:16:56] Chris Schwager: To understand that there are so many different ways now that you can video edit. Again, you can do it on your iPhone. You can do it on the desktop studio. You can get Fiverr guy in India to do it. You can do it yourself. You can hire a local contractor. You can bring someone internal to it. There's just so many different options for editing.

[00:17:15] Chris Schwager: And the idea is to try and create a workflow around editing. That's going to be the best solution for you at the right price point, right? So we have a solution, which is basically. Hours based editing, meaning you deploy our team. We do the edits for you. You do them under a certain amount of hours and that's a plan that you just have every month and it just ticks over.

[00:17:36] Chris Schwager: We keep track of the hours, super clean, super easy. We're not worrying about project based editing hours where we're putting quotes out and all that kind of crap. We don't want to get involved in that because we just want it nice and streamlined and easy. Use the editor. She'll do whatever you need to do, right?

[00:17:53] Chris Schwager: But what's good about, the pros and cons, outsourcing versus doing it yourself. Doing it yourself, you're going to have to accrue those skills, but more, more so you're going to need to repeat those skills in order for you to be able to commit those skills to a practice, right? To a regular practice.

[00:18:09] Chris Schwager: And if you're not doing that, and if you just decide to take on video editing to save a buck, that might. Come unstuck because it's, you'll never get that time back, right? You've just wasted time doing something that's not that great in the end because a professional editor could do it in, third of the time.

[00:18:26] Chris Schwager: It's like doing your own logo, right? I've been there. It's terrible, right? You want to try and cut that shit out, go straight to the pro, get it done. Spend your, save your money on the things that you do best, right? And deploy and spend it on things that you know that will save you time. So video editing, definitely find yourself someone that's going to be right for you.

[00:18:51] Chris Schwager: Watch them bring your shit to life. A good editor will really rip in and do a great job. I can't recommend them highly enough. Heaps of options. Let us know if you need to get some more advice on that. I do teach some editing skills and I do recommend certain editing applications, depending on what it is that you're needing to do.

[00:19:14] Chris Schwager: So you can get me as a video coach, which is my point number five video coaches strategy. To allow you a bit of an option, a couple of those options that are going to be suitable, whether you just need to trim your video or put some basic things on it. There's applications that I can recommend that are going to be really suitable, but something more detailed and thorough, something that you want to maybe repeat every month and you really just want to get it off your desk.

[00:19:36] Chris Schwager: Get an editor, proper editors to do it. Stage five. And the final is video coaching. Now video coaching I've put as this ongoing process building and implementation element, right? So video coaching really umbrellas a whole bunch of different things really around, The four, three different areas of video production.

[00:19:55] Chris Schwager: So strategy, yes, video production, that's building those skills [00:20:00] that will enable you to shoot videos, get stream or streamline, understand sound, video, camera, lights, blah, blah, all that would be bundled on the video coaching. And then the distribution, the delivery, the execution. Okay. And also understanding why it is that you need the video in the first place.

[00:20:16] Chris Schwager: Does video serve as its purpose? So it's video coaching is like video coaching to support you, to understand how you get the right strategy for you and how you do it really. Is it something that you do all of yourself or is it just getting the understanding so that you can depart that knowledge to others to be able to do it for, or with you?

[00:20:36] Chris Schwager: Okay. I've been video catch for many years now. I get asked all sorts of different stuff. That could be from tweaking tech gear to helping people buy equipment, for instance, right through to deeper level strategy stuff, where we're actually looking at buyer's journey and understanding that all videos that have been created or need to be created in an organization are fulfilled and that the company is actually doing that in the right way.

[00:21:03] Chris Schwager: They're not all sitting down as a marketing team or a board team going, okay, guys, let's think about what video should we do first? It's actually governed by a challenge, a business challenge and aligning the correct video for the right audience at the right time. There is nothing better than getting crystal clear on that and working through that cyclical wheel, spinning around, what do we call it?

[00:21:30] Chris Schwager: We say spin the flywheel. It's the same thing. We keep going around and around that five stages to be able to make sure that you maximize every element. Of the content creation process and making sure that every one of those elements is carried out to RT. It's flawless. You have good knowledge around it.

[00:21:49] Chris Schwager: And more importantly, you can repeat that process morning, noon, or night. And get better and better, right? This is always about constant improvement. So that is the five stages to your video journey for empowering you. We want you to avoid getting caught up and tangled up in the complexity and any sky high fees of video production companies.

[00:22:16] Chris Schwager: And this is in aid of championing you to move in the right direction to choose is a DIY driven method right for you. And if so, making sure that you. Look and sound outstanding while letting you crack on with your business, the business that pays you, the thing that is going to perpetuate you forward.

[00:22:42] Chris Schwager: You are not a video producer. You should not be calling yourself a video producer. You do what you do best. You do the job that pays you. And the video production is a part of your business. Okay. If this podcast has been absolutely a hundred percent useful, I'm sure it has. Please go ahead and subscribe on Spotify.

[00:23:02] Chris Schwager: I'd love to hear your thoughts. Give us a thumbs up, a rating stars comments. We'd love to get your feedback and have an amazing rest of the week. Bye for now.