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Want to know how to promote your event? You have probably seen really cool, high-energy, and really inspiring videos that make you want to get there. A great way to create a promo video has 3 ingredients. Let Nate Woodbury explain to you these ingredients and show you how to make a great event promo video.
So do you put on events and want to know how to promote your event? You’ve probably seen really cool, high-energy, really inspiring videos that make you want to get there? We’re going to show you how to make one. Here with Nate. Nate Woodbury, Be The Hero baby. I’m Scott and we’re talking about now producing video to promote events. What kind of events are we talking aboot.? That’s not… That’s Canadian. Just if we have any Canadian viewers? I’m sure we do. Oh, we must. Lots of them out there. Yeah. So we’re talking about an event that you want to promote. Not not an internal event that your employees come to. But if you have an event that you’re selling tickets for or that you have people come to you for free that you’re selling stuff at. Anything you need a meeting planner for, an off-site thing at a hotel, something has to do with the hospitality industry perhaps. Well let’s say you provide coaching or training and people are coming to your event to get that…That has to do with what I do. So there’s a really great way to create a promo video has 3 ingredients. So one will talk about each of these. One is is “B-roll”, second ingredient is “testimonials” and we’ll talk about how to get those and then the third thing is you mix in some background music. Oh this sounds pretty simple but it looks really, really, good. They’re easy to create so let’s talk about B-roll first. B-roll would be you’re not… the message of the video, the audio you’re not really using.
Let’s say the event there’s someone speaking on stage and they’re the main host of the event, so you want shots behind the audience with their heads blurred. Focusing on the person up on stage, doing their thing. You want shots from all different angles. If they come down and they’re interacting in the crowd. If there’s activities that the audience does. Whether they’re interacting with each other or they’re they’re taking a break for lunch. You just get all different types of B-roll of the event but especially lots of shots of the the star of the show or the host of the event. Yeah, I think that term comes from, if I may, you know using the B camera. So you have a principal camera A that shoots kind of the main. Right now we’re looking into camera A. Over here we’d be looking in the camera B and in a way, camera B or the B-roll, is shooting things like you’re saying that are… There’s not a talking head voiceover, there is, but it’s where the voice is talking, you’re seeing other images as mentioned. All the different people, all the banquet, all the stuff, that’s what B-roll is. And the more that you capture, the merrier you will be in the post-production process. I don’t want to jump ahead to that or even talk about it but I mean I’ve just learned from my experience that you can’t get too much B-roll footage. And it’s real easy to get. You just get all the different angles and shots and change the lens, zoom in more and get a wider angle, blur some stuff. Right. Nobody has to say anything. There’s no dialogue. No script and you don’t have to really even ask for anybody permission because a lot of times you’re doing it a bit furtively. You’re getting a wide shot of the hotel. You’re getting a shot of a car, a couple of cars pulling up, whatever it is. That’s big and sometimes you can even do fun stuff. You get permission from the speaker on stage but if I go up there with my, glidecam, my steady cam and I go up behind the person on the stage, so they’re talking to their audience and I’m behind them and you get the whole audience. That’s a real cool B-roll shot. That is pretty cool. Okay, so now let’s talk about the A-roll or the main continent and that’s testimonials. When you’re at an event, let’s say it’s a three-day event. You want to film these on day 3 and that’s because people have been there and experience it.
Actually have their testimonial. They are comfortable. They have some good things to say about the event and so when you set it out outside, you know the main event holler or wherever and you set up your light in your cam and your mic and then you use solicit people to come. “Hey, will you please give a testimonial” And they’ll come over and there’s really 3 steps you want them to take. One, you’re never going to use in the video but you have them introduce themselves. Right. And what that does is it kind of eases their mind like, “oh, yeah I can talk about myself. Yeah, this is me and this is who I am and what I do and so they’ll talk for 10,20 seconds about themselves and then you have them talk about a change that they’ve experienced or how this event that they’ve attended is changing them or what’s different now that they’ve attended the event. Hmm-hmm. When you ask them the question in that way, it really gives a good response. It’s like, “well, yeah before in my business, I was struggling with this this and this. But now I see and I’ve got a plan and I can… And so you get a dozen at least a dozen people. Maybe even up to 20 different people that have all told you. You have this event that’s made this transformation. It’s going to allow me to accomplish this and I have so much clarity. You can go through and create a story. I’m going to use this piece from this testimony. On this one it’s kind of similar, I’m going to put them together because they say similar things. And then these two people, I’m going to put right here and you create a storyline and so the testimonials are the main content. It’s kind of like that A-tracker, that A-roll. And while we’re seeing them and we’re hearing them but then while we’re still hearing them we switch over and we show a shot of that person up on stage. Where we show a shot of the event and then it goes back to them. So we switch back and forth with that B-roll back to the testimonial giver, the B-roll testimonial giver. So the audio is always of the testimonials. And then the third ingredient is the music and I’m going to recommend a website. pond5.com. P-O-N-D-5 dot com. As the number 5? The digit 5. Got it and then the reason I recommend that. That’s just the layout of their website. They have a good selection but it will show out a whole bunch of boxes representing each music track and when you hover your mouse over, it just starts to play. So when I have my promo video put together with all the testimonials. I’ll just hit, play so the audio is playing in my ear and I can hear the sound of it and then I’ll just say, “okay, how does it sound with this music? Oh, how does it sound with this one? How does it sound out this one? And I’ll just go for the feel kind of…Now are these like royalty-free clip music or… No, it’s like pon5 you pay but it’s like 20 bucks, 30 bucks for the music track that you can then use and you can use it in multiple videos as much as you want. Of course, yeah. But you want to find the right music track that’s emotionally engaging. It’s like yeah, this is inspirational. So if you go to pond5.com, type in the word inspirational and that will bring up a whole bunch of options and you can find one that you like. You don’t want any lyrics or anything like that, right? Right. And you put it at a volume that you can clearly hear the speaker and it’s just background but it’s enough that it will get them emotionally engaged. What are you going to recommend in terms of the length, the total running time of a promo video. Oh yeah. A promo video good link to shoot for us between 2 and a half and 3 and a half minutes. Hm-hmm..
Wow! okay. So people are have enough time to get a sense of what the event is about through the perspective of these folks that are giving their testimonials and then the cool kind of flashing back and forth B-roll. Yeah, I mean if we film 20 testimonials and they each talk for a minute, I mean we’ve got 20 minutes of video, Yeah. Okay, we’re really compressing it down and so it’s a real effective video. Well and you’re probably even when you’re shooting 20 people, I mean you’re not using all 20 of them because… Even if it’s just for a second or two? I mean you’re not under no obligation to use all of those. So brevity, clarity telling the story is really what matters most and by golly if it means that 3 or 4 or 5,6 people don’t get on the video, their hearts are going to be broken. They probably won’t see it anyway. So and I’ll talk about that because sometimes, you know you’re petitioning people to come, “hey, will you help me out?” And you’re… See.. I would like to get a testimony from that person. You want to mix it up. You want to get a good mixture of gender and yeah and everything. But yeah, if there’s somebody and they just do it, that actually wasn’t very good. It’s “oh, yeah, great job! appreciate your help” But yeah, you’re not going to use that one. Yeah, yeah. Right, right. And by the way, if you end up selling this video or doing anything from a sales perspective where it could be seen outside… In other words, they need to know the scope and the use of this promotional video otherwise you’re talking about… Yeah, you know I actually forgot the third thing. And then… But so two points here. One point is you can say do we have permission to use this in our promo video and then when they say yes on camera, you’ve got their verbal permission. Right. Okay, here’s the third point. So point one… I knew there was three. Yeah, I just forgot. So it was a dangling third. Point one is to have them introduce themselves, you’re not going to use it but it’s kind of their icebreaker get them uncomfortable talking a camera and then you ask them kind of the before and after. How did this event change you? Yeah. Or how’s it going to be different now? The third one is to actually say would you recommend, you know recommend that people come to the event or recommend this person that’s putting on the event.
So, they’ll actually say like, “yeah, you really need to come to the event. You know. If you have any hesitation about being here, this is the event for you.” And you’ll get all types of stuff like that. So you piece all those together. Yeah. For the the ending 30 seconds of the video, and it’s like, “you need to be here. You should come. This is great.” You know. Yeah. If you have the pond5 music along with all of that, itwraps up really nicely because let’s always have a good finale at the end of those music beds. Which is great, yeah. So that’s that’s it. You take those 3 ingredients with some strategy of filming and testimonials. Yeah and it makes a really good event promo video. Thumbnail up. Okay, so let me know what you think. Was this video helpful? Comment below, let us know. Obviously, subscribe. We like you coming here to this channel. Absolutely and by the way, if you’re making a video for a really cool event, send us the invite. See the video at the 10th events where the food is free.