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Video has proven to be more engaging and more memorable than any other medium. Great video can illustrate a story and take the audience on a journey. By producing videos that offer the audience a glimpse behind the scenes of a production or an in-depth review of a museum’s artefact, audiences have the chance to see much more of an organisation’s personality and what makes them so unique.
Typically videos produced for YouTube have a longer run time than Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. But don’t aim to reach a certain run time, quality not quantity is the name of the game here. If a video is perfectly right for its audience it doesn’t matter if it’s 5, 10 or 25 minutes long.
The absolute focus of your video should always be on the story, answering the questions below internally will help you determine whether it’s going to be right for your organisation.
Audiences have relatively short concentration spans with video, so you should always look to keep your video moving along as swiftly as possible. Also it helps to start with impact, explain what the video is about, what you will cover and aim to do that within the first 30 seconds.
Long drawn out intros might look impressive but if the audience fails to understand the video’s significance to them they will simply move on and in doing so harm your statistics in the eyes of the algorithms.
There are billions of people in the world and millions of niche interests, so don’t convince yourself that your voice isn’t important, it is!
With your knowledge, passion and incredible access to behind the scenes action, you are in an incredible position to produce engaging content that will most likely be loved and shared.
A quick glance at YouTube will illustrate this next part perfectly, but the most successful videos on YouTube are videos that don’t sell but inspire and inform. It is worth thinking of video like the scene in Jerry Maguire where Jerry says: “Help me, help you.”
The types of videos that you can make depends a lot on your time and resources.
Here’s a guide to the most popular videos and what goes into making them.
Type |
Description |
Example |
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Only got a camera and mic? Prepared to talk to yourself for hours and edit the best bits? Well in that case these types of content are a great way of educating, informing and inspiring your audience when all you have is yourself. |
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Got friends and an extra mic? A conversation is probably one of the easiest things to film if you have at least one camera and two mics. It’s also great to get to know the subject and uncover aspects from someone else’s perspective. |
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Lots of time and equipment with a story that needs telling? Well although these types of videos are hard to pull off and are often less engaging, they do have the power to stick around and be entertaining for many years to come. |
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We have got all this way and only now are we covering equipment! That’s because the greatest camera in the world doesn’t equate to the greatest video in the world. Story will always be what people come for and importantly stick around for… though we still need to record the image using something!
Your mobile phone is likely to be a good solution, especially now most of us have a smart phone capable of recording great images. Whether it’s an iPhone or Android most will have the ability to record pleasing video.
Keep it simple at first. Film during the day in a well-lit room with no background noise and you should get nice images.
Better still face the window (face into the light, not away from it) and as long as you are not in direct sunlight you’ll get an even exposure that won’t overwhelm your phone’s camera. If you can buy a plug-in directional mic this will improve your audio quality by reducing unwanted background noise.
InShot remains a reliable, easy-to-use option. It’s free to download and trial, with a low-cost licensed version available if you wish to remove the in-app watermark. The app allows you to import clips directly from your camera roll, trim footage, adjust audio levels, add titles or captions, include simple graphics, and apply basic colour adjustments.
CapCut is another widely used editing app, offering more advanced features while still being mobile-friendly. Alongside trimming and audio controls, CapCut includes tools such as auto-captions, background removal, motion effects, and template-based editing which is useful for creating short-form video content quickly.
If you are creating content primarily for Instagram, the platform’s native editing tools (often referred to as Instagram Edits) are also worth exploring. Editing directly within Instagram allows you to trim clips, add text, apply filters, include music, and optimise formatting for Reels and Stories without needing to export from a separate app.
Consider adding captions to your videos if there is any spoken dialog, most social media users have the audio turned off so to illustrate what’s being said in your video clear captions can really help not only those with accessibility needs but those with the volume on mute.
Most editing apps are advanced enough to offer automated instant captions, but there might be a subscription charge for this premium service.
Whichever tool you choose, it’s important to keep edits purposeful. Over-editing can distract from the story you are trying to tell, so a light, considered approach is often most effective particularly for social media content.
Once your edit is complete, videos can be exported in platform-ready formats and shared directly to your chosen social media channels, all from your mobile device.
You’ve spent a long time on your project and it’s easy at this stage to forget about the importance of thumbnails, descriptions, tags and titles.
Using a website like Canva you can produce free great looking thumbnails that will have clarity and brightness, be the perfect size and aspect ratio, and look appealing to your audience.
Couple this with a catchy title, and a lengthy description full of keywords, an you are on your way to being discovered on YouTube. Hashtags and Tags are also important as it helps the server locate the answers to audience queries and serve up your video. Therefore, it’s key to make sure you don’t become too generic with your Tags and actually home in on what your particular niche audience is searching for.
VidIQ and TubeBuddy are great for helping you to identify areas in your description, tags and title that could do with being improved.
For equipment, here is a list of equipment that adds quality to your videos, although there are plenty more to choose from on the internet. We’ve provided Amazon links, though of course, these are widely available from a variety of retailers.
And if you need more support, check out our very own video here on how to produce videos using a mobile phone.
Digital Culture Network video: How to make videos on your smart phone
The Digital Culture Network is here to support you and your organisation. Our Tech Champions can provide free 1-2-1 support to all arts and cultural organisations who are in receipt of, or eligible for, Arts Council England funding. If you need help or would like to chat with us about any of the advice we have covered above, please get in touch. Sign up to our newsletter below and follow us on X @ace_dcn for the latest updates.
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