One of the main goals of social videos is to grab a scroller’s attention. They’re in their feed looking to kill time and get updates on their friends’ lives, so you have to really stand out to get them to stop swiping long enough to watch your video.
But that doesn’t mean you have to buy a drone and get crazy footage of some influencer diving off of waterfalls when your product is a CRM tool. There are much simpler ways to get attention… Just don’t tell the influencers! (We still really like those waterfall jump videos!)
One way to make simple footage stand out is by adding overlay effects. Overlays, sometimes known as layout effects, can add new structures and shapes on top of an otherwise static shot, creating eye-catching movement that grabs a viewer’s attention.
Check out the overlay we created for our client HeyBuddy’s DM Sales Buddy service.
In this video, we highlighted HeyBuddy’s sales service in action by using a paneling overlay effect, dividing the shot into a layout consisting of multiple, rectangular panel-shaped boxes and creating movement where there otherwise wasn’t.
The key here is to identify where you can create a more dynamic layout to highlight key aspects of your original shot without losing any visual information. Notice how as the layout effect unfolds in each shot, your eye is drawn to the computer screen first, and then you glance around at the rest of the scene to get more context of what’s going.
Without selling the service directly, we were still able to accomplish the goal of grabbing a viewer’s attention to find out more. Using similar effects in your videos, you can create your own overlays to makes your static shots more dynamic and stand out better in a busy social feed.