With less and less younger viewers tuning in to traditional cable networks, social media sites are now among the most important platforms you can use to reach an audience. Because sites like Instagram and YouTube are now the best places to get customers to watch your videos, it’s important not to overlook your social video strategy.
While creating and sharing videos on social is a no-brainer, one video element you might overlook is the addition of camera and motion effects. Social videos can often seem small-scale, which is why you might not think to add cool visual effects to a 15-second social video. But even a small effect in a short video can make a big difference.
Check out this video we created for Rochester-based restaurant Perlo’s, that uses lens flare to great effect.
As part of a social video series highlighting the restaurant’s key offerings, the goal of this simple 15-second video was to show off the menu, including gluten-free options, and entice the audience to click through to the website and become part of the Perlo’s family. Simple, right?
Now watch it again. Notice how we establish a simple pulsing lens flare effect around the three-second mark, that we then play off again with a big lens flare at the end. By establishing your effects early, they become less jarring to viewers when done later in a video.
While we could have opted to leave effects off the video altogether and gone for a more down-home kind of feel, by including them, we aimed to elevate what was an otherwise basic series of product shots into feeling more upbeat, hip, and urban.
Using simple effects in post-production, you can create similar videos for Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to attract new viewers. By spicing up your content with simple effects, you can bring out the life in your footage, and even play around with creating different versions with different vibes to test against one another and see what resonates better with the crowd.