4 Lessons from Experimenting with a Canon 800mm Super Telephoto Lens

It’s important to develop an aesthetic and a shooting style for your brand, but equally as important to push boundaries and experiment. So on a whim, I emailed our friends at LensProToGo and asked to borrow an 800mm super telephoto lens. They said yes!

 

Trying new gear, like new lights, new background paper, or a super-specialized $13,000 telephoto lens, can help keep things fresh and inspire creativity. We learned some good lessons from shooting with the 800mm Canon f/5.6 super telephoto lens, and we boiled it all down to four main takeaways for this post. ### Background compression With a lens this powerful, you can create some wild optical illusions. I knew the fundamental rule that zoom lenses will flatten out images, but I had never used a lens that compressed everything like the 800mm. During our time with the 800mm, we successfully recreated the iconic landing strip scene from the movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. We also recreated the “hamster wheel” visual effect from The Graduate, when the main character, Benjamin, is running towards the camera, and the visual effect communicates that he’s not getting anywhere. Every lens can help to tell a different story visually. The lack of depth in each shot was new and fun to work with. The gears started turning for me and our creative director, Dan, when we began to imagine different ways to use this flattened image effect in a video.

“Every lens can help to tell a different story visually.”

### Stabilization is hard I knew that getting a steady shot would be a challenge with this beast of a lens. So I mounted the lens on the largest tripod in our fleet. Even with the lens on the tripod and the lens image stabilizer turned on, it was so incredibly difficult to eliminate camera shake. While we were outside, the wind was knocking the lens and causing shake. Inside the office on the second floor, the camera would shake anytime someone walked within 25 feet of the camera! I must be doing something wrong here. How do you get stable video footage with this thing?! If you know how… let us know in the comments. In the end, I had good luck applying the Warp Stabilizer plugin to our footage in Adobe Premiere. This did a dang good job smoothing things out and minimizing the jello effect. ### Sneaky shots are fun Within the first few hours of renting this lens, we began sneaking around the office, shooting footage of teammates from way far away. Once we set up the shot, we’d send them the “you’re on camera!” message on Slack, and they’d start searching for us. The aha moments were pretty hilarious.

 

Being able to shoot from that far away and still get a quality close-up image was totally eye-opening. It was an entirely different shooting experience to be a fly on the wall. Just like in the movies, you really could be inconspicuous with this lens and still be getting super sharp close-up visuals.

“Being able to shoot from that far away and still get a quality close-up image was totally eye-opening.”

With all that being said, this lens is truly made for the great outdoors. The Wistia office is pretty big and all, but the 800mm wasn’t even breaking a sweat shooting all the way from one end to the other. ### Experimentation breeds creativity For me, this is where the real takeaway is. New gear will give you new perspectives, which ultimately supercharge creativity. It’s like a crazy powerful brainstorm session. In a business setting, it can be hard to justify spending time experimenting, but the truth is, the new ideas, team-building, and creative energy that these sessions inspire make it all worthwhile. If you’re eager to try some new gear, I highly recommend renting. It gives you the opportunity to try something on, see if you like it, and return it at the end of the day. Do we know how we’d use this super telephoto lens for a business video? Not yet. And while the 800mm lens will never make my desert island gear list, I’m really happy to have experimented and ventured past the 200mm mark.

LIBRARY » VIDEO GEAR

Get Creative with Lenses

Chris covers advantages and disadvantages of a fast lens, telephoto lens, wide-angle lens, fish-eye lens, and more.

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The Handiest Trick for Efficient Video Editing

 

Marking your clips during your shoot can be crazy helpful when you’re sifting through footage in editing. One easy way to help your future self find a good clip during editing is to use a technique we’ve dubbed “the hand trick.” ### The technique When I’m shooting, as soon as I know I have a good take, I use my hand to cover the lens for a second or two. This makes my life so much easier when I’m scrubbing through my footage in editing. I’ll fast-forward the footage until I see my tiny hand over the lens, and then find my clip.

“When I’m shooting, as soon as I know I have a good take, I use my hand to cover the lens for a second or two.”

I learned about the hand trick from friends who make skateboarding videos. Since it can take a whole bunch of failed attempts to land a tough trick, the person shooting would use this handy technique to mark when the skater finally completed the move. ### Every rose has its thorn A word to the wise: don’t bite the hand that feeds. My rule is to never EVER mark clips when I’m doing an interview or a testimonial. Once talents catch on to this pattern (and they will), they might become self-conscious when they don’t see the hand fly up to the lens. Trust me, I’ve learned this the hard way. So my philosophy is to only mark clips when you’re working with a scripted video. ### Just because And now, here are some hand puns about the hand trick: The hand trick: helping you edit your videos faster, one hand at a time!
The hand trick: hands down the handiest trick to speed up your editing.
The hand trick: give your future self a helping hand.
The hand trick: giving you the upper hand in post-production.
The hand trick: get your hands dirty while shooting.

Okay, this list is out of hand.

LIBRARY » PRODUCTION

Editing Basics for Business Video

A guide to some basic editing theories that you can apply in any software

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#WistiaChat with Sprout Social: The Evolution of Social Video

On February 11, we hosted a #WistiaChat with Sprout Social’s social media expert, Darryl Villacorta. This #WistiaChat focused on how to make social media video a core part of your marketing strategy, and folks had some excellent tips. In case you missed the live chat, we documented some highlights in this post. You can also see the Storify to look through some of our most helpful tweets. ### Social video is different from the rest Video made for social media has some limiting factors—it’s shorter, it should be really engaging, and most importantly, it should qualify as a “thumbstopper.” In a world where we scroll through feeds all day long, social video has to be engaging enough for someone to stop scrolling—a big ask in today’s social-heavy web. Wistians agreed that social video has to be short, sweet, and to the point, all while being super shareable. - “Social videos allow us to experiment. We can try out new concepts that are short and sweet!” @animoto - “I liken social videos to snackable, bite-sized pieces of content that best utilize social platforms as their venue.” @TheMiddle ### Tailor your videos to your platform Your audience differs across your social media platforms, so why don’t your videos? Content you make for Facebook may not work as well on Instagram, and vice versa. One of the largest differences between the platforms is their time limitations. Be sure to pay attention to video length! Wistians across the board agree that catering to the needs of each platform will give you more engagement and a better rapport with your audience. Think about what does best on each platform and what your audience wants to see. From there, you can create social videos that shine. - “Definitely. Each platform has own audience which engages with different styles of content. Start w/ experiments/research.” @iservin - “Tailor social video content to the strengths of the network it will be published to. One size doesn’t fit all.” @TheMiddle ### Make videos that don’t need sound Autoplaying videos have made “mute” the default setting on everyone’s laptop. Being interrupted with high-volume videos is a terrible experience, and we’ve learned to adapt. Therefore, so should our content! Creating videos that excel without sound has been a tricky challenge, but Wistians had some great tips. For example, use text in creative ways to draw attention and tell a story. - “Internal Facebook tests show that captioned video ads increase video view time by an average of 12%.” @TheMiddle - “Strong visual opening is key. It’s kind of cheesy, but we ask how is this content a thumbstopper?” @iservin ### Great video is meant to be shared Great video should be shared, but there’s no formula for making it go viral. Wistians agree that it’s better to focus on your audience. What would they value? What helps them, and what do they enjoy? Once you have those answers, you can start making video that folks will love to share. - “Never try make something viral. Try make it relevant to your audience.” @Office_Zombie - “Yeah. Virality is a flash in the pan that’ll be forgotten. Helpfulness is how you build an empire!” @fixingyourvideo ### Integrate social video into your marketing strategy Video on social media works, and incorporating it into your marketing strategy doesn’t have to be a hassle. Choose some short video ideas, script them out, and start shooting! Social video doesn’t need to be perfect. Use it as your playground and experiment! Your concepts can engage your audience, explain your product, or just liven up your audience’s day! Social video can reinforce your brand’s identity and help folks feel closer to your company and your team. - “Hands down, social loves video - not that difficult for brands to produce, should be worked into social strategy.” @sarahkwalters - “Social videos help w/ brand awareness. We highlight company culture that helps support recruiting potential job candidates.” @TheMiddle ### Get out there and create! We love seeing great examples of video on social media. Have you created some “thumbstoppers”? Seen any brands making creative and inspiring shorts? Let us know in the Community!

LIBRARY » STRATEGY

Crafting a Social Video Strategy

Tactics, best practices, and creative ideas for social media videos

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How Infusionsoft Uses Video to Delight Their Leads

With great automation, comes great responsibility (and opportunity). As our campaigns and workflows multiply, our customers receive increasingly tailored treatment (great). Relevant content sails in at opportune times, and assuming companies set it up correctly, the whole system is scalable (even better). That’s all well and good, but as humans and content creators on the other end of this automated system, we have a responsibility—an opportunity—to shine. Now that marketers are spending less time thinking about delivery and segmentation, we’ve got more energy and resources available to take our content to the next level. We’ve got more time to make our communications more captivating, more personable, and more human, than ever. To offset these efficient systems, we’ve got to double down on those personal touches. At Infusionsoft, a software company that offers a CRM and marketing automation platform geared toward small businesses, their lead development team relies heavily on video and email to make their email campaigns more “human.” ### Infusionsoft’s automation architecture With over 30 different email campaigns customized for specific user behaviors, Infusionsoft’s lead development team is able to cater to different people’s demonstrated interests and use cases. Jared Kimball, Demand Generation Strategist at Infusionsoft, explained, “Our lead scores are made up of two parts—one is based on demographic information, the other is related to their engagement level on our site and email activities.” If lead scoring—the process of prioritizing and ranking your sales leads—is new to you, check out this blog post on lead scoring and video to learn more. When prospective customers perform certain actions on Infusionsoft’s website (like watching product videos or entering their email addresses to engage with content), they accumulate scores. When their scores reach a certain threshold, they appear on the lead development team’s radar. Based on this information, members of the lead development team will call prospective customers and gather more details. ### Video for every behavior Phones can be tricky. In an ideal world, your prospective customer picks up the phone, you have a friendly chat, and you connect them with your sales team (if the chat goes well). Sounds easy enough. But what if they don’t pick up? What if they entered the wrong number? What if you start a game of phone tag? Woof. No one likes phone tag. These one-to-one communications quickly become complicated and time-consuming. Enter video. Combining video and email can go a long way when you’re trying to reach your customers and leave a lasting first impression. Instead of sending a generic email saying, “Sorry we missed you. Call us back at your convenience,” why not take the opportunity to delight someone with a video that speaks to their experience with your company? #### “Wrong Number” campaign When a member of Infusionsoft’s lead development team attempts to call a prospect and realizes they have a wrong number, they send an email that includes a link to this video:

 

In only 30 seconds, this video conveys personality and elicits empathy from the viewer. Obviously, this scene exaggerates the experience on Infusionsoft’s end, but it also reminds the potential customer that there is an actual, friendly human (with a sense of humor) who is eager to help them. With 91 plays to date and an average engagement rate of 88%, this video has delighted leads and encouraged future action, all with a relatively small amount of effort up front. #### “MIA” campaign When a lead doesn’t answer a call, they qualify for the “MIA campaign” and receive an email with a link to this video:

 

You’ll notice that the production for this video was pretty much identical to the previous one—a smart strategy for creating videos at scale. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to making several small, low-pressure videos. For important pages on your website, it’s worth the extra time and effort to make your videos unique. On the flip side, for one-to-one communication meant to deliver a simple message, there’s no need to spend hours on concepting and production. Knowing when and why to crank up your production value is important for a comprehensive video strategy. With 226 plays so far and 86% engagement, this video has been a success for the lead development team. While 226 may not seem like a large number, that’s 226 people that Infusionsoft’s team didn’t have to keep calling. More importantly, it’s 226 people who developed some familiarity with their brand and the people behind their product. #### “Phone Tag” campaign Often, Infusionsoft’s team finds themselves caught up in games of phone tag with leads who’ve demonstrated considerable interest. It’s frustrating to try to call back and not receive an answer, so why not preemptively defuse the situation with an absurd video depicting a literal game of phone tag? You’ll notice this video’s production required more time and effort than the previous example (and a team-wide cardio workout), which makes sense, given that the prospect is already well-qualified.

 

### Making online business more human Think about the last dinner party you threw. How did you welcome people at your door? Was your greeting the same for each guest, no matter who they were? Chances are, it wasn’t. I’m guessing you didn’t give a 10-second bear hug to a friend of a friend whom you’ve never met. That would be weird. When creating email campaigns to welcome your prospective customers, think about that dinner party. Are you treating people differently based on their behaviors, preferences, or familiarity with your brand? Are you taking the time to create a personable first impression? If you’re not, you might want to start thinking about it. With marketing automation gathering data and qualifying leads, we’re perfectly positioned to offer dynamite, tailored experiences to our customers. So instead of following up with sterile, automated interactions, stand out from your competitors with memorable, personal touches. It’s all within your reach with video!

Sign up for the webinar on video for lead generation!

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4 Ways to Animate Your Video with Keyframes

Post-production can be daunting when you’re just getting started, and it may seem like you have to know your software inside and out before producing impressive effects. In reality, getting comfortable with a few tools and techniques can go a long way. For this post, we’re going to focus on one of our favorite techniques: keyframing. Keyframes can be thought of as beginning and ending points. When you set more than one keyframe, you can create smooth animations over time. Using keyframes in video editors, you can animate things like a video clip’s scale, motion, opacity, rotation, crop… anything! The following are four concrete examples of ways we use keyframes in Adobe Premiere to add effects to our videos at Wistia. Please note: there are many more use cases for keyframes. This is just a sampling. ### 1. Mimic camera movements Sometimes what we envision in pre-production doesn’t work out as planned, whether it’s framing, how we rack focus a shot, or something like snap zooming. Most of the time, I find myself using keyframes to heal a shot, or to copy an effect that would have been captured in production (snap zooms, rack focus, framing).

 

For the shot above, we used keyframes to animate the scale of the clip and achieve that snap zoom effect. It was a quick way to accomplish an effect we wanted without having to re-shoot this scene.

 

Here’s another example where we did a rack focus at the end of the video using a blur effect. We ramped up the intensity of the blur with keyframes to create a lens blur you could create in production. ### 2. Animate split-screen shots This technique is probably the most popular use case for us. The best example that comes to mind is the intro to Parks and Recreation. There are a ton of split screens that are animating in and out of the frame to create an interesting high-energy sequence for the show’s intro video. This technique takes a little time, but can be done without heading into a graphics-heavy program like After Effects. Basic video editors are super capable of this. We’ve applied a basic version of this technique in our own library of videos, most recently in our Help Center.

 

We wanted the video thumbnail to display the editing software with a logo, but we knew we wanted to show a human in the video. Using keyframes, we were able slide my face onto the scene after showing the logo and the software for the first couple of frames. This created a smooth transition between the thumbnail and the first line of the script. ### 3. Give more energy to photos in video If you have to use photos in your video sequence, keyframing motion, scale, and rotation can create interesting effects. Read: it makes photos appear way less boring. So why not just use the Ken Burns effect? While this does a similar thing, you can’t achieve more custom effects like animating opacity or rotation.

 

We recently used this technique in our 2015 rap-up video with a few photos of our team. Bet you didn’t even notice, did you? ;) ### 4. Create custom animations You can use keyframes to animate anything you want. Maybe you want to animate the perspective of a shot in a screencast. Or maybe you want to create an old-timey vignette at the end of your video as a sign off.

 

Or, maybe you just want to create a simple motion graphic in Premiere, like this:

 

Either way, you don’t need an effects program to achieve this result. Editing programs like Premiere and Final Cut allow you to do this fairly quickly and simply. ### Want to learn more about other editing techniques? We recently released a guide on “Editing Basics for Business Video” that includes a video tutorial on keyframes, L-Cuts, and working with stabilization in post. There’s a bunch of other tips in the guide, so be sure to check it out!

LIBRARY » PRODUCTION

Editing Basics for Business Video

A guide to some basic editing theories that you can apply in any software

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Improve Your Screencast Videos with This After Effects Template

At Wistia, we’re used to shooting videos about software. We’ve tackled issues like glare on screens and editing screencasts, and we’ve tried our best to make otherwise boring videos more visually engaging. After we published our guide to Shooting Your Laptop Screen to share what we’ve learned, Jeremy Wick, Head of Video at Sticker Mule, reached out with some exciting news: “Recently, my team came up with a pretty neat method for making screencast videos,” he said. “We created an After Effects template that cuts out the ‘shooting your screen’ step. We don’t even need the camera any more.” “Holy casserole,” we said. “Tell us more.”

 

Want to try for yourself? Download the After Effects template:

We chatted a bit with Jeremy about the motivation behind the template and how it’s improved his production workflow. ###### WISTIA: What are the largest challenges of shooting product videos for software? ###### JEREMY WICK: One of the biggest challenges of shooting a product video is filming the computer. This Wistia guide definitely helps a ton, but there is still a lot of time, effort, and equipment that goes into shooting a screen and making it look professional. And then once that’s finished, you still have to edit everything. This gets really labor-intensive if you need to produce a bunch of videos.

“There is still a lot of time, effort, and equipment that goes into shooting a screen and making it look professional.”

###### WISTIA: What prompted you to build this template? ###### JEREMY WICK: We used to have a really time-consuming process for making screencast videos. Basically, we would recreate the web page in Photoshop, and then animate all the mouse moving, button clicking, and UI animation in After Effects. This let us get really close up on things without losing resolution, and we could add some cool blurs and 3D motion. This video Wick Videomade for RealScout demonstrates the effects you can achieve using this method:

 

The result was really good, but it took a lot of time, and it wasn’t scalable. The Shooting Your Laptop Screen guide sparked the idea of creating a template that would allow us to use actual screencast footage, but still look pro. ###### WISTIA: In what ways does the template improve your production process? ###### JEREMY WICK: The template allows us to skip the entire process of filming the screencast on the computer. All we need is a still image of a laptop and the screen capture footage, and we’re good to go.

“The template allows us to skip the entire process of filming the screencast on the computer.”

###### WISTIA: How does the template improve your videos? ###### JEREMY WICK: The template lets us change “camera” framing with the click of a button. This means we will always be able to show the exact part of the screen that we need to show, like a close-up of a button click in the upper-right hand corner. Editing the screencast lets us simulate anything that might ordinarily take time. For example, if we’re showing the Sticker Mule proofing process, we can show the “order” button being clicked, and then immediately cut to a different angle to show the proof arriving. ###### WISTIA: What do you need to shoot before using the template? ###### JEREMY WICK: We recommend scripting, narrating, and screen recording beforehand (just like in the Shooting Your Laptop Screen guide). We use QuickTime and a MacBook Pro with Retina to record our screencast footage. This lets us do the close up shots without sacrificing resolution. You’ll want to edit the screencast before bringing it into the template. This means cutting out all the loading screens, and matching it up perfectly with the voiceover. Export the edited screencast footage at the highest resolution possible. You can drop the footage into After Effects, then cut to the different angles you want, all with a single control. Secret: We used the template to record the video (about the template) at the top of this page!

LIBRARY » PRODUCTION

Shooting Your Laptop Screen

Our technique for making your screencasts more exciting by putting them in context.

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Produce Effective Video Testimonials with These Storytelling Principles