Top tips for creating professional mobile videos during the pandemic

Tune in to the Government’s daily coronavirus COVID-19 update and you’ll see journalists asking questions via webcam.

Many broadcast journalists are self-isolating but continue to speak to an audience via mobile phone, and plenty of celebrities are offering insights into their lives under lockdown through Instagram or Twitter.

Businesses too are turning the mobile camera on themselves to ensure they get their message across during the crisis.

In these unprecedented times, as businesses adopt a digital and social-first comms strategy, mobile video presents a quick and ideal way of keeping visible and relevant during the crisis.

Here we present ten tips for businesses looking to use mobile video to get their messages across through short and sharp productions.

1. Don’t go for length – that’s what webinars are for. A one to two minute roundup on a topic is best, or Top 5 Tips, or quick reaction to the latest government announcement.
2. Know your topic – try not to read from a script, but definitely prepare some notes and have a run-through beforehand.
3. Dress how you’d want to be seen by a client / customer. You might be working from home, but you want to be taken seriously.
4. Choose a quiet spot to record in. Many people have children at home, and other distractions, but phones often don’t have great microphones, so find a room and close the door.
5. Make sure there’s plenty of light – open the curtains, put all the lights on.
6. Check what’s in the background – think privacy (no family portraits or identifiable shots out of a front window). There’s no need to have a blank white wall, but just make sure there’s nothing personal or controversial back there.
7. Have your phone horizontally – YouTube, LinkedIn etc all play videos in a landscape format, not vertical.
8. Balance the phone somewhere so you don’t have to hold it – stand in front of a bookshelf if necessary, with your phone propped up.
9. Just hit record and put your phone down, don’t worry about stumbles, pauses, mistakes or looking at notes between points – this can be edited out afterwards.
10. Be available to react fast – news cycles are lasting hours at the moment not days or weeks, and government briefings are often making the previous day’s information obsolete.

Our video team can polish your video with onscreen text and animation, subtitles for social media, or even advise on what tools you’d need to step up your productions to the next level.

Webinars are proving a great way for our clients to connect with an audience struggling to understand how the lockdown will affect their business and have so many questions to ask. Podcasts can still be recorded quite easily from home office and currently have an audience actively looking for interesting content.

Get in touch for more information on how Freshfield can help.