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Lessons From The Frontline
We are starting 2019 with a new look for our beloved podcast series, Lessons From The Frontline.
In episode 18, Peter and I will go over how to make authentic webinar content with something that (nearly) everyone owns.
Your smartphone.
As smartphone technology advances, so does the video hardware. Your handheld device is a powerful tool. Take the opportunity to produce video content that will humanize your webinar. This, in turn, will make it a more engaging experience for your webinar attendees.
We will be tackling the following topics in today’s episode:
- How does shooting videos from your phone create authentic webinar content? It all comes down to humanizing your content.
- What gear should you use to record videos on your smartphone?
- When should you leverage this DIY video production project? Think about who is watching your webinars.
- What are things to watch out for when curating video content from your phone? Learn how to avoid common mistakes webinar marketers make.
The Complete Video Transcript
Pete Vamos: Okay. All right, good. Well, welcome to LFTF, the show podcast, Everything You Need to Know About Webinars, Virtual Events, and Content Marketing.
Matthew Ley: Yeah.
Pete Vamos: With me, as usual, Matthew Ley, President, The Streaming Network.
Matthew Ley: Thanks for having me. Pete, we are not in your basement.
Pete Vamos: We are clearly not in my basement. We are clearly not in a studio. This is not a green screen. We have played with green screen. We are doing a whole different thing today. What we are doing today is we’re set up in the Bull, which is a bar in Mississauga, Ontario. And we are here to discuss what?
Matthew Ley: We’re here to discuss video, I think, in a way that’s important because, you know, we have a studio. We shoot video in it because we have that luxury, but we also shoot video in it due to the type of audience that we have.
So, not only do people not always have access to a studio or feel like that cost might be prohibitive, but there’s also the point that their audience may not resonate with that type of, call it stuffy in some ways, point.
So, you want to match your video style to your audience and what it is that they’re going to be looking for. And we’ve said it a million times before, this day and age, where we have to constantly be producing new content, it’s a–it’s a struggle even for us when we have a studio–.
Pete Vamos: –Yeah–.
Matthew Ley: –Scheduling around our customers and support time. So, you’ve got to find different ways of producing content, and it doesn’t always have to be, like you said, in that formal setting.
Pete Vamos: That’s right, that’s right. So, we are here. We also, in order to sort of show how this is done–we don’t actually even have professional camera people–we have Taylor, who is our Manager of Marketing and Business Development.
And he is holding the camera until–turn the camera around to show yourself. There’s Taylor. And so, we have–this is totally–this is as unprofessional as you could possibly get, and hopefully, we pull this off. And we’re going to order some Caesar’s in a minute.
Matthew Ley: Okay, sounds good.
Pete Vamos: And–because we’re in a bar, and that’s what you do in a bar.
Matthew Ley: Yeah.
Pete Vamos: So, let’s start. Now, you have actually some experience in this personally.
Matthew Ley: A little bit.
Pete Vamos: Tell us a little bit about the–your experience doing movies on Smartphones.
Matthew Ley: Well, I have an 11-year-old son who–we love movies. One of the reasons I think that gravitated me towards this business is actually my love for TV and movies and the like. And he’s taken up acting over the last couple of years. We decided we wanted to try and shoot a movie. And in April, we went out and shot our first, which was called Stealing Lady Liberty. It was shot on my phone.
And then, in the summer we took it up a notch with the next movie, and we’re getting ready in the Christmas break to shoot our most epic one yet with a bunch of his friends (unintelligible) read it. So, the gear we’re using here is gear that I’ve acquired over the year just to help make my phone shooting with my son that much easier.
Pete Vamos: So, break it down. What kind of gear are we–nobody can see it?
Matthew Ley: We’ll show some. I think we’ll probably be able to have some image on it. But, I mean, it’s simple stuff, right? So, I went on Amazon. I started looking into it. And you can go down a rabbit hole, and I’m sure I will, as I always do–but, you know, a tripod, a stabilizer, so that you’re able to hold the phone in a different way. There’s–some of the footage that we’re seeing today is shot on an action cam, not a full GoPro because I’m not an extreme athlete, so I don’t need that device–so shooting on an action cam as well for a wide angle.
So, I mean, we’re not talking thousands of dollars. We’re talking hundreds of dollars. And much of it is based around stuff that you already have, right?
Pete Vamos: Right.
Matthew Ley: So, the iPhone camera is great. The microphone is pretty good, too–and anything just to help enhance the overall experience. So, it works for that. But I thought it would be good to show it in this environment because I think that it offers a level of authenticity. And when I started thinking about all the things I learned in shooting with my son, I think there are lessons that would go for any marketer who is looking to use video.
Pete Vamos: Right.
Matthew Ley: Interestingly, David Soderberg just released a movie on Netflix that was shot 100 percent on an iPhone.
Pete Vamos: Right, and that’s stuff that’s worth talking about, is that experience.
Matthew Ley: Yeah.
Pete Vamos: That is quite–because it’s not just any old schmo can do this thing.
Matthew Ley: Yeah.
Pete Vamos: The pros are now playing in this arena as well.
Matthew Ley: Yeah, and, you know, you’ll see when you see that maybe–you know, with that besides, you know, Stealing Lady Liberty or Who is El Gringo, which is our second one, you know, the gear–the consumer equipment is getting so good. It’s really the know-how behind it that makes it the big special.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: Because, I mean, you can tell that sort of (unintelligible) in digital, but, I mean, he is a wizard in normal means. And so, this looks a lot different and a lot better. But it is important to note that it’s not the cost of the gear that makes the production. There’s a lot of other things that go into it.
Pete Vamos: Right, okay. Now, one of the things as well–you know, audio is a concern, obviously. So, I’ve got my phone right now. It’s recording audio here–.
Matthew Ley: –Yeah–.
Pete Vamos: –Hopefully.
Matthew Ley: Yeah. It looks like it.
Pete Vamos: Yeah, yeah. So, just in case, because it’s for safety–but we’ve got a whole bunch of different mics as well. And hopefully, it’s all being captured. Otherwise, we’ll do a pantomime of this–.
Matthew Ley: –Audio is a concern in studio on events. It’s the bane of existence when it comes to these things. Often the picture looks great, but if the audio is bad, no one gets the message. And it’s one of the biggest concerns with doing a DIY production of any sort.
Pete Vamos: Right.
Matthew Ley: People need to hear you.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: Nothing worse than going home–like when we’ve done this–not being able to get back together and not having that.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: So, definitely a watch-out is audio and recording on (unintelligible) devices is–it’s generally very important. You can get–I haven’t invested in it yet–you can get labs that connect to your laptop or to your phone as well. Since we didn’t have it, I thought, let’s not cheat (SP) it and (unintelligible) in the studio.
Pete Vamos: Right.
Matthew Ley: Everything here is my rigs for my little (unintelligible).
Pete Vamos: Right, and clearly if–this is a podcast first, so not having audio, that would be–.
Matthew Ley: –That would be an issue.
Pete Vamos: That would be really weird.
Matthew Ley: Yeah.
Pete Vamos: So, let’s talk about–there’s kind of the idea that, you know, some things just need to be shot in a studio.
Matthew Ley: Yeah.
Pete Vamos: And some things can (unintelligible). So, like break that down for us, like what are the factors where you maybe decide that you’re just going to do things, you know, on the fly for those things?
Matthew Ley: Yeah. Well, first of all, you and I were at a great presentation the other night, Entrepreneurs’ Organization presentation with a gentleman who was a–he was a B2C marketing consultant, a social media guy. And him and I got into a bit of heated argument about something he mentioned.
And what he said was that he watched this commercial video, this viral video, 16 minutes long. And it was so awesome that he watched it for 16 minutes. And I raised my hand and said, “But there are rules.” And he said, “No, just make good content,” which I said later I thought was a dangerous statement.
But, the truth of the matter is if you are producing (unintelligible) content that people want to hear, they will consume it in whatever form it is. But the stakes have been upped. People are doing better and more entertaining content. The medium is becoming more accessible. And so, I’m going to frame this under the belief that, like myself, we are decent content producers, but nothing we are doing here is, you know, breaking the Internet, as they say.
So, when looking to go DIY, or like what we’re doing here, the first thing that I think people need to recognize is, who is your audience, okay? So, I gave a presentation in San Francisco at a conference about integrating and utilizing video in your webinars because that’s what I do.
And when I did that, I had two people come up to me. One worked for a large law firm in the United States. The other was a–she was young. I assume that she was a junior marketer at a non-legal. I think it was probably a tech company, but I don’t really remember where she was from. And I had shown a number of examples of our work. And I was more educating people on how to get the best out of the studio experience, or whatever it might be.
And then, she came up, and she says, “Is that just heal stuffing?” You know, “Can’t people see that that’s contrived, and it’s whatever it is?” And the girl standing beside her was like, “No, what are you talking about? That’s exactly what my partners are looking for, and that’s exactly what my contemporaries are doing.” So, I think that you want to be careful with DIY, depending on who your audience is.
Pete Vamos: Right.
Matthew Ley: Because it needs to resonate with your audience. And that is demographic, age. That is industry, based on what they’re used to seeing. And that is the type of message that you are trying to get as well.
Pete Vamos: Right.
Matthew Ley: If we were two lawyers talking about, you know, changes in legislation around castle (SP), or whatever it might be, going DIY in a bar, no matter how great the conversation is, is not the right environment for it, right?
Pete Vamos: Right.
Matthew Ley: So, you got to know–you got to know who your audience is. And then, if I could–the other point in time where I think it really makes sense to do DIY is when you are trying to capture a moment in time.
So, I have done, you know, a number of videos and (unintelligible) some of them that I’ve got on my phone and, again, after I started movies with my son, where, you know, I was at a conference, right? And we were a sponsor. I spoke. We were there, but it didn’t make sense for me to, you know, have a crew there shooting every moment that happened.
I was able to go around, capture the (unintelligible) of that event, and we talked to a couple people, stitched it together. And that became, you know, two or three different (unintelligible) that we had, helping us promote our involvement in that event.
And so, when you’ve got people like customers–you got people, whoever might be around–and it doesn’t make sense or you’re not able to, you know, have a full production, being able to do this and go DIY is great. People get it. They are used to seeing it.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: So, it does make a lot of sense.
Pete Vamos: And the other reason we brought Taylor is he is of that demographic that you’re talking about. He is–how old are you, Taylor?
Taylor: I am 28.
Pete Vamos: Twenty-eight, 28, a little–starting to get a little old.
Taylor: Yeah, just a little bit, right? I was past my prime.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: So–well, I mean, but that’s a good point, too, is like, you know–you know, Taylor grew up in that YouTube generation. I mean, we all grew up through YouTube, but a lot of us were, you know, not at a point where we were going to straightaway start producing videos and putting them on the Internet. That seemed weird and strange.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: So, Taylor, although he is not part of our production team, that’s something that he did on his own before he got hired here. And what you will find in your organization is that you will often, you know, have people raise their hands, and people who have done some pretty interesting work already for themselves and are good resources to do this type of thing, which would be capturing sort of that DIY content.
Pete Vamos: Right, right.
Matthew Ley: And it doesn’t necessarily have to be your marketer, it doesn’t have to be, you know, you. I do it because I like it, not because I have to. I shot that stuff at that conference and edited it, as you well know.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: Because I could do it.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: Right? So, it works. But, Taylor’s sort of generation, if you will, that sort of mid- to late-30s, sort of a mid- to late-20s–.
Pete Vamos: –Yeah–.
Matthew Ley: –Is the demo that are a good resource.
Pete Vamos: Yeah, and where–to your point, where once it was the guys like you who just had a passion for it. Now, there’s dozens of people probably at any organization of that age who–like everyone is comfortable picking up a camera, everyone is comfortable with (unintelligible), everyone is comfortable with being on camera.
Matthew Ley: Exactly.
Pete Vamos: It’s a completely different paradigm now.
Matthew Ley: Yeah.
Pete Vamos: So, let’s talk a little bit about like you want to talk about some great examples that–.
Matthew Ley: –Yeah–.
Pete Vamos: –You have with DIY video that anyone can produce.
Matthew Ley: Yeah.
Pete Vamos: Let’s dig into those.
Matthew Ley: So, I already mentioned one. Get comfortable with it. The rig Taylor is using right now is a cheap way of just doing it and not looking like a creep walking around with your phone at a conference.
Pete Vamos: Right.
Matthew Ley: You have something like this to let me know what you’re doing. You know, it costs like $30, $40, but if you’re at a conference or event, turn it on, walk around, get those live reactions. It’s great for B-roll, it’s great for all kinds of things. And it even supplements–if you have a guy there doing it, you can only be so many places at once. It kind of supplements that as well.
So, I think that capturing events–your own corporate events–we do that. So, we’ll do–today, we’re doing a couple of get-togethers in our studio. And so, we’ll capture that and put it together. We do that at our–you know, at our Christmas party. Or I was in Vancouver last week, any my Vancouver team–and I shot a little footage. And it–you know, internal, external, it all works very well. So, those are–they are simple, mainly because we don’t need to worry about–right?
Pete Vamos: Right.
Matthew Ley: And then, the other place where I’ve seen it used very, very well is in customer advocacy. So, you forget–you know, it’s different to get permission and/or to set up walking into a customer’s office with a crew and doing that video that sits on your website.
But it’s different if you just go in there and do a small audio or video recording of you talking to them about why it is, they work with you. And it’s likely not going to be the thing that’s going to be part of a massive marketing campaign. But there are snippets of it that can be used because anytime you talk to your agency, they’re going to talk about, do we have the voice (SP) of the customer?
So, getting customer advocacy is good. It helps your marketer, it helps everyone. And it’s a good place for it. And so, I think those are a couple places to start–start internal, try it out, move to maybe capturing conferences and getting to it, and then take your chaps outside and interview a customer or someone like that.
Pete Vamos: And there are actually apps as well, right, on the phone. You can take that video, put it into the app, and you can edit it with music. And it’s quite incredible.
Matthew Ley: It is.
Pete Vamos: A lot of young people know this.
Matthew Ley: Yeah.
Pete Vamos: A lot of others maybe aren’t even aware that this exists.
Matthew Ley: Yeah, and we should give a bunch of lists of them. There are simple editing apps. And then, there’s ones built for marketers. They are realizing that the marketer is the audience, and they’ll have like a $10 a month subscription that allows you to do (unintelligible) graphics, create templates, suggest templates based around the type of business that you’re with–it’s getting quite crazy–and allowing you to do a lot of stuff, or having your team do a lot of stuff.
And I recommend, actually, if you’re going to go this way, that you also kind of go that way. And what I mean by that is you don’t want to do this and try and make it feel like you’re on the news, right? If you try and recreate my super (unintelligible) that we were on last time (unintelligible) on before, for sure–.
Pete Vamos: –Yeah, yeah–.
Matthew Ley: –In your boardroom and use your phone to shoot it, or to stream up with your local (unintelligible) or something, it’s going to look exactly like that.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: It’s not going to look like what you do in a studio.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: And don’t let anyone trick you into that because we did boardroom shoots for a very long time. So, be authentic with what you’re doing.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: If you’re doing it in a bar, do it in a bar. And there’s a reason you’re doing it.
Pete Vamos: Right.
Matthew Ley: Do you know what I mean? Like it makes sense.
Pete Vamos: Yeah, it stops, you know, moving chairs around. And it’s what you’re dealing with.
Matthew Ley: Yeah.
Pete Vamos: And it has that authenticity, so it’s all slick editing.
Matthew Ley: Yeah.
Pete Vamos: It’s going–.
Matthew Ley: –It’s going to be–yeah, it’s going to be–yeah, there’s going to be a contradiction there.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: There’s going to–it’s going to be off.
Pete Vamos: It’s a bit fun–bit of fun, too, because you can edit on these apps so quickly that you can literally show it, right, right back to people.
Matthew Ley: Yeah.
Pete Vamos: Well, check this out in BIM. Here’s my phone, look at what we just created, right?
Matthew Ley: Yeah, exactly.
Pete Vamos: It’s kind of a wild moment for–.
Matthew Ley: –And instant gratification we’re now used to as well–.
Pete Vamos: –That’s right–.
Matthew Ley: –Let alone the weeks and weeks of (unintelligible) that comes with the other.
Pete Vamos: That’s right. So, let’s talk a little bit about webinars, like how do you use DIY video in the–in the webinar format?
Matthew Ley: Well, video content and webinars, if you’re not going to go full video, is generally something that everyone is looking to do, to up the engagement factor and to include potential audiences with a bunch of stats to go along with it.
And so, the clips can be very useful to be utilized, right? So, as you’re going through your presentation, rather than you saying–oh, show a slide that says that this customer said we were awesome because of this thing, you could show that customer saying it.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: If you’re shooting, you know, footage of a conference or you’re shooting footage of anything that we’ve talked about already–internal employees, whatever it might be–incorporating that human element into it is important. And that’s where most often our customers start with video in webinars–is not coming into the studio and doing a full production. It’s by incorporating clips that they have already produced–.
Pete Vamos: –Right–.
Matthew Ley: –Or webcam, I guess. But, that’s one way. Another way is that, you know, what we do today–we have done it before–is that we call this a podcast or a video, whatever it might be. But we can take this, and we can run it through a webinar platform and simulate it live or on demand. This could become a webinar, and likely will at one point in time.
Pete Vamos: Right.
Matthew Ley: Right?
Pete Vamos: Right, we can turn on the platform. We can do whatever we want.
Matthew Ley: Exactly.
Pete Vamos: It’s ours.
Matthew Ley: Yeah. So, I think there’s multiple ways. I’d probably start with Eclipse (SP), I’d probably start with the humanizing of the story, whether it be your internal staff, a customer, win (SP) example, why they love you, whatever it might be. That versus the words on screen will be very much–it would be a great way to start. It would also be retained much better by the audience.
Pete Vamos: Excellent, okay. So, let’s talk about when you don’t do this.
Matthew Ley: Yeah.
Pete Vamos: When do you do the professional production? What are the sort of factors that come into play there?
Matthew Ley: So, there’s–I mean, clearly, like let’s assume that everyone, generally speaking, is going to be–you know, you shoot a commercial. You’re going to buy ad time or something. Whether or not–a decision on whether to shoot on a phone, like Soderberg did, or on a red, whatever, super-expensive professional camera, should be a decision made by your agency who is going to do a lot of stuff that we’re not doing today to make sure that it works.
Pete Vamos: Right.
Matthew Ley: So, I would definitely say like on the content and marketing side of it, where you would definitely want to use it is if you’re doing interviews with your executive that are evergreen content, that it’s going to be used as, you know, something on the primary site of your website, part of pitches, and going out like that. Regardless of the industry that you’re in, having a well-produced video where there’s, you know, no mistakes, professionally edited, all that, is very important.
If it’s a secondary message and deeper into the page, like maybe you’re just chatting about it, an industry (unintelligible) more specific, or talking about an announcement, you can go this way. But I think that those core pieces of content you should work with professional teams. They bring so much more to the table than simply the camera.
Pete Vamos: Right.
Matthew Ley: Right? Like they know how to work with you, they know when you look bad. There’s all kinds of things that they do. So, I would definitely say that. On the flip side is–and we mentioned being at conferences and capturing footage–don’t try and capture the presenters with DIY. I’ve heard of this–seen this, too–people popping up webcams and phones and stuff to try and capture what’s happening on a stage.
No matter how small the stage is, that’s not going to work. You are going to want the proper lenses and depth that comes along with doing it. I think I’ve already said it. It’s more of a watch-out, but don’t try and create your own studio to go DIY.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: If you’re going to create your own studio, which many of our customers have, buy the right gear, get a guy who knows what he is doing or a girl who knows what she is doing.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: Set it up properly. If it’s a studio, it needs to operate that–like a studio.
Pete Vamos: And also it goes back to the demographic you’re talking to as well because in certain instances where it’s–if your audience is younger, they’re going to be way more accepting. If your audience is a little bit older, they may just go, “Why am I watching this crap?”
Matthew Ley: You also got to remember about the people you’re putting on camera.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: So, whether or not this is right for a business, if that CEO, President, whomever it might be, is, you know–I’m like 40, so I can now say this, and I can talk about it. If they’re like, you know, over 40 or in their 50s, is that they are–they haven’t grown out their entire career always being on camera. And if they have, it’s probably like, you know, BNN or interviews. It has been done in a big way.
They remember when the camera was like this big. And this idea is not something that they are going to probably be comfortable with. And if you’re not comfortable as the presenter, first on camera, it’s not going to go well.
Pete Vamos: Yeah.
Matthew Ley: So, you got to remember that. You got to remember that as well, is these guys know–not only just know your audience but know who it is that you are capturing. That audience you said it is accepting and you’re right but they are accepting of it being you know a little shaky on the (unintelligible). They’ve grown up with a lot of that type of media. They’ve seen it, they’ve grown up with it.
But it’s not just that it’s that they, they want us as brands to be authentic and I think that they have a distrust of items that are overly produced. They don’t have commercials influence them as much as we did. They have social influencers, they have other items that are. And so I think comes to being authentic and it comes to being about trust and the DIY look got to say look, there’s a lot of things that look DIY which we all know are not they are produced by very highly skilled professionals designed to look DIY but that DIY look the (unintelligible) that comes with it speaks to a certain environment.
Pete Vamos: So if the meeting is the message to quote (unintelligible) maybe DIY, guy in tie you probably not.
Matthew Ley: Yeah, probably.
Pete Vamos: Probably maybe depending on the thickness of the tie. All right. Let’s talk a little bit of about when should you 100% get a professional shooter involved? What’s the, what are these sort of imperative, what’s the parameter of that?
Matthew Ley: Just asked that question.
Pete Vamos: Did I? I’m asking when can you get professional camera involved?
Matthew Ley: That’s all right. I answered both those questions.
Pete Vamos: You answered both those questions, we’ll move on.
Matthew Ley: I answered both those questions.
Pete Vamos: (unintelligible)
Matthew Ley: Maybe not. Maybe not. I am looking at the questions you’re going to ask.
Pete Vamos: I’ve got the questions right here.
Matthew Ley: So I can at least know what’s coming next. It would not be an add off the cuff.
Pete Vamos: Okay. So what should you, what are the watch outs for DIY? This is a very important thing because people make all kind of mistakes which we–.
Matthew Ley: So watch outs for DIY is audio. First one always. You want to pick a venue that you can do audio and this one’s a little airy a little background noise which we wanted but you want to be sure that you can handle the audio and it’s not an easy thing. There’s a reason why the guys that we hired to do audio are called audio engineers, not just techs. And so you want to be able to (unintelligible) audio in the room. That’s a big watch out.
The other watch out is like and so on Instagram you get the filter and alter that and it works (unintelligible) on video but not quite as well and you don’t get a second chance for shooting here for what 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour and so you want to have a place with good natural light which we’ve done great here, lots of good natural light. We don’t have to worry about what’s going on. We don’t have any lights on our gear and that’s going to allow us to pick up a really good picture which is important.
And I think that the location in any situation is really important. You might feel that shooting outside at a beach makes a lot of sense but it’s near impossible to get that right. Even the pros struggle with it. If you’ve never seen what it looks like to see outdoor movie being produced you would be shocked at the number of humans just holding light balancers and the amount of times that it happens. And so you want to be careful with your venue selection for all of those reasons.
And how do you know if it’s going to work? Well, you try it. You come in the day before, you turn it on, you see, you do a site survey to figure it out. We came in yesterday, we had a lot of conversations. We knew what we were getting into. We sat down, we knew where we were going to put our cameras. That is so important when you’re doing something like this. And stop and check, stop and check, stop and check. If you don’t do that you are going to miss or lose or whatever.
Pete Vamos: Which we haven’t done by the way.
Matthew Ley: I know.
Pete Vamos: This is the first take, we’ll let you know if this is the second take after we do the whole thing again.
Taylor Hreljac: We’ve lost I think the battery in the Go Pro.
Pete Vamos: Did we? Battery in the Go Pro is gone.
Matthew Ley: That’s fine.
Pete Vamos: That’s fine. That’s why we have three cameras going and a phone just doing the audio. So covered sort of the watch outs and you gave some suggestions in terms of recommendations DIY space, what else can you recommend?
Matthew Ley: So suggestions that I would make our that you do record on multiple devices always as simple as phones or whatever it might be. If you are going to invest in anything invest in a microphone, a condenser, a zoom, something that is going to help you get that audio (unintelligible). And think about the location before almost anything else.
So when we were–when me and Jack that’s my son’s name, came up we went away. We did a little shooting and editing one day I was like next weekend we’re going to make a movie. He’s very creative I said go and come up with some ideas. And he came back and his ideas were about doing a sci-fi; we were going to escape a spaceship and we’re going to do all of that. He has such a vivid imagination that he could see any room being turned into a spaceship and I said you know what, Jack, it’s not going to look that way to people no matter what we do. It will look like a (unintelligible). The location is key like I don’t know the art galleries.
And so we decided to write our story around a heist at the art gallery which would enable us to (unintelligible) permission for this so let’s not talk about it too much, to run around an art gallery and shoot and then we–.
Pete Vamos: Not the art gallery, another art gallery.
Matthew Ley: Another art gallery and so the next time we did the movie we followed that when we shot outside Castle (unintelligible), we shot down by the beaches, by the boats. So we shot in places that added to the–that we were able to shoot to that added to what we were trying to accomplish. And so that’s something to look at.
This works, we were talking about a media, DIY media for the audience authenticity, you and I very commonly do go to bars like this including this one, drink some pints or whatever but also, it’s a neat thing. You will see us all of the time in the second video and it works. This is a good choice in venue if I do say so myself and so you really want to get that done.
And again I know I’ve been talking about this but I just want to keep talking about this juxtaposition. So you’re doing the DIY and then you don’t want to go to a stuffy boardroom that has no—shouldn’t say stuffy but most of our boardroom have nothing (unintelligible) TV and some white walls and some chairs. You’re not going to get the advantage or the feel of DIY when you do it when you do it in that environment. So you’ve really got to scout your locations, get some imagery, get some shots and know where you are going sort of before you do it.
Pete Vamos: Right. Excellent. We already talked about the (unintelligible) the other night which was going to be my next question. Is there anything else you wanted to add on that particular subject because the question I was going to ask is, in the end, it is the idea that (unintelligible)?
Matthew Ley: It is but really it is right like and we’ve seen this, we started seeing this with the advent of digital filming where we started seeing movies that are being made for $16,000 you know things like Blair Witch that changed the world forever as far as filming goes and it wasn’t about the budget and all of the humans and all the folks and all the special effects that made it what it was. But those are few and far between.
We all know many starving filmmakers especially in the city of Toronto who are way more talented than I and not having any level of that success. And so I think that with everything in marketing whether it be your webinar, your blog post and whatever is that there are guidelines that we should all work, try and work within. We can ride outside the line sometimes, that makes sense if you’ve got a really good idea you can prepare to kind of go for it but as you are getting started and once you are getting started with DIY, I think you want to stay within (unintelligible). Start some of the rules that I gave and then once you are comfortable you will get ideas and do much, much more. My dream (unintelligible) in my movies. First, it started off with very simple one camera back and forth dialogue, little dialogue then it moved to 17 locations in the second one which we found that really worked in costume changes a bunch of weirdness.
Pete Vamos: Your comfort level was increasing.
Matthew Ley: Increasing because I started to see what’s going on and now, I’ve got four parents who agreed to let their kids have speaking roles in the movie and stay with the director for the whole day a bunch of extras. I’ve got a drone that I bought for Christmas like, like now we are able to go and be a little bit more ambitious and I think (unintelligible) follow that. And once you get comfortable with it it’s like everything once you’re comfortable with any sort of content production then you can start taking chances. You are prolific, you are going out there, people trust you. Take some chances and it might miss but take them.
Pete Vamos: Right, and be willing to fail, be willing to make those mistakes because even when you make mistakes there’s still some comedy in it. You can always cut it or leave it in, we don’t know.
Matthew Ley: Hey, I mean you see it I always bring this up because you know I’m a big fan of AC360 but I mean mistakes happen on CNN, they laugh and it’s awesome. They keep going. You stay watching. You don’t turn it off because he stumbled or because someone made a mistake. You talk about it with your friends.
Pete Vamos: You watch and see how they recover, that was good how they recovered.
Matthew Ley: Exactly. They are there for that message, that’s what they’re there for, yeah.
Pete Vamos: So the last thing we usually do on these podcasts video shows is the (unintelligible). I’m not sure how you can prepare. What have you got in mind?
Matthew Ley: Well, I saw it in the paper because I am looking at it.
Pete Vamos: It’s right here.
Matthew Ley: Yeah, it’s right there.
Pete Vamos: Has a question mark, moment of Zen?
Matthew Ley: Some guys do it and some don’t. So I don’t know (unintelligible) podcast but people say that video is worth 1000 words. Some guys at Forrester’s actually went and looked it up. It’s worth millions of words on the Internet or just over 1 million words on the Internet and the idea behind that is that video content is retained more than written.
People are every stat whether it be check out this video in an email that you blast out or present it to a customer, a social post with video, webinar stats on video events are watched longer. Everywhere we go adding video to what it is that people are doing is improving engagement. It is being seen, heard, retained more than the written word and so we have talked about strategies for utilizing a studio, repurposing a content and showing you how to work video. DIY self-produced, having a layer within your content strategy that allows for stuff like this allows you to get just get more video and fuel more of your channels.
And so we are going to continue talking about video because we are committed to it. We are going to continue to share what we can about ways of producing all kinds of videos for webinars and everything else because it’s not going anywhere, right?
Pete Vamos: Which is ultimately you know I mean this is a podcast and yet we captured all of the time on video because why wouldn’t we?
Matthew Ley: And you know what? I’m sure (unintelligible) people who watch the show over and over again but you (unintelligible) podcast and I said to you why don’t we record it in the studio and video and you said why would we do that? It’s a podcast.
Pete Vamos: It’s a podcast.
Matthew Ley: Then will have video too and then you know we’ll have that asset and so yeah, I mean this is boils back down to the same piece of content that we do delivered to a captured audience and a webinar, delivered show format on social media, deliver the podcast for subscribers, those from there. I mean we get a lot of legs out of everything that we do because we are recording (unintelligible).
Pete Vamos: A lot more. That’s it.
Matthew Ley: That’s it.
Pete Vamos: That is it. Lessons from the frontline webinar, Matthew Ley, thank you very much. This has been a really interesting way of conversing.
Matthew Ley: I’m interested to see–.
Pete Vamos: I’m interested in it. I’m very interested to see how it turns out. So until next time, we will see you again.
Matthew Ley: Thanks.
