In December I am holding a workshop with Deep Sea Productions in Stockholm on how they can start working with YouTube. They have thirty years of underwater footage that nobody has ever seen.
Preparing for it got me thinking about what I could share that applies to more companies than theirs. Because the questions are the same for most companies that make film.
Decide where the film will live before it is made
A documentary nobody finds hasn’t done its job. Yet that is how most company films end up: on the home page, in a LinkedIn post and in a newsletter. Then nothing more.
Before we set a budget, we go through who the film is for, where it will be published, how it will be used and how it will reach people. The answers shape how the film is made: the length, the formats, who carries the story and which shorter versions are needed.
A film can live in many places:
- Your own website, where it explains who you are.
- Social channels, in shorter and vertical versions.
- An event or a premiere. Lykke’s film from Uganda premiered at their café in Stockholm, for customers and invited guests.
- Sales and recruitment. Candela’s films were made first of all to attract engineers.
- YouTube, where it can be found for years.
Sometimes the film shouldn’t live with the company at all, but where the audience already is. I wrote about that in the article on the three roles.
Why more companies should run their own YouTube channel
YouTube isn’t a feed where a film disappears after a day. It is a search engine, where a good film keeps being found long after it was published.
Most companies use YouTube, at best, as a place to host videos to embed on their website. Random videos, made for something else, not for anyone on YouTube. Making films for a YouTube audience is a different thing, and it changes how you choose what to produce: you start from what that audience wants to watch, not from what you want to say.
The effect compounds. In the beginning it is slow, often for a long time. If you do it well, the effects then come faster and faster. That is why it is so easy to give up too early.
Sometimes you hit it
My film about Martin, who built a resort on Gili Trawangan, has more than 250,000 views. Sometimes you hit it. That doesn’t mean you can repeat it on demand. What you can control is to keep going, and to learn from every film.
How to get started
- Start with what you already have. For Deep Sea Productions, that is the archive: thirty years of footage that has never been shown. Many companies have something similar, in material, knowledge or people, that nobody outside has seen.
- Find your voice. Should one person at the company be the face? Should it be a voice without a face? Or will it be different stories with different people?
- Make a hypothesis. What possibilities do you have, and what can your budget keep up, regularly and over time? It is better to do a little and keep going than to do a lot once.
- Find the stories and make a production plan.
- Create, test and learn. See what works and do more of it.
Every video needs a story
That goes for a long documentary and a short film for YouTube alike. Every video needs:
- A story, something that goes from A to B.
- A character who learns something or changes.
- Something at stake, if it doesn’t work out.
- Uncertainty about where it will land.
- A lesson, whatever happens.
We can help you get started
We help companies get started with YouTube: finding the voice, making a hypothesis and a production plan, finding the stories and making the films. If you don’t know where the stories are, we can start with Story discovery.
Want to talk about what could work for you? Book a free 30-minute call.