Great explainer videos are made to answer many questions about companies, products, and services. Explainer videos are typically designed to give viewers a fast-paced, engaging story to follow and leave them with an understanding of what your brand has to offer, followed by a strong call to action. These are often placed on a landing page, your website’s home page, or a prominent product page and they have the potential to drastically increase your company’s conversion rates.
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Creating Explainer Videos
At Akullian Creative, we love utilizing our full creative team to bring these explainer videos to life from “scratch.” Explainer Videos at Creative Agencies like Akullian typically go through this general creative process:
1. Goal Setting
What is the goal of the content? It is crucial to identify your call to action as well as determine how you want to portray your brand in order to attract your target audience. The ultimate goal should be to highlight your company’s product, service, or business idea in an engaging and efficient way. It is also a good idea to plan where the videos will be placed such as your website, social channels, and investor pitch presentations.
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2. Writing the Script
Once the goal is defined, the next step in the process is writing the explainer video script. This step requires the most attention and focus, and is where we pound lead to paper typically followed by countless revisions & wordsmithing. The script should address the problem, the solution that your brand offers, and how it works or how to get started. We’ll then refigure our script to get as clever as we can and eliminate any words or syllables that don’t add to the story. With attention spans at an all-time low, it is incredibly important to cut the script down until you can’t take away anything else. These videos should be very brief (aim for under a couple of minutes) and be sure that your key message and value proposition are found within the first 30 seconds.
Once we get an approved script, we’ll record a demo voiceover and will then move into the storyboard process. The script should stay consistent with the overall brand voice and should align with the style of the planned final video production (live action, animated, whiteboard, etc.).
3. Creating the Storyboard
The storyboarding process is very essential and will determine where the video will end up visually and what will be required for production. This is the step where words will be brought to life to ensure the viewer can comprehend the full story. This should be a collaborative effort and if done correctly, this part of the process will save countless hours in production and editing.
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4. Production
Once the storyboard is finalized, it’s time to begin the production process. Depending on the style of video you end up making, there will be great differences in production. Live-action explainer videos can range from a single subject on a white backdrop all the way up to fast-moving cinematic shots with explosions. For illustrated videos, they may require endless keyframes to make pixels move where you need them to go. With today’s varying digital platforms, many companies are also working to build explainer videos in different sizes to accommodate portrait, widescreen, and square formats.
Each explainer video typically requires consideration of:● Voiceovers / Talent
● Music
● Sound Effects
About the Author: Rich Akullian of Akullian Creative (New York) leads a team of award-winning storytellers. Akullian Creative is a full-service agency that specializes in making content that drives ROI. Check out one of their Explainer Video case studies
