We can’t count how many corporate videos we write here at Copel Communications. That’s because video is simply a killer medium, however you look at it: 

• It’s dense, combining visuals and narration faster and more succinctly than any other medium. 

 

• It’s low-hurdle consumption, since it’s way easier for your prospect to watch your video than, say, read your white paper. 

 

• Extra bonus: The hosting platforms out there really love it and favor it, aiding and abetting your SEO efforts. 

 
But video can be a killer in other ways, too. Like production budget. Turnaround time. And keeping the project on track as it goes. 
 
In this article, we’re going to explain a way to keep your next corporate video on-track, using a technique we’ve developed, honed, and proven over the years. 
 
Note that we say “corporate video.” The technique we’re about to describe doesn’t work for narrative films, home movies, or Hollywood blockbusters. But it’s great for videos you need to make quickly and cost-effectively—and which, more than anything, sell.
 
The old-school approach
 
A video script is formatted in two columns: one for audio, and one for video. Very straightforward. (And wholly different from, for example, the WGA format for screenplays, which is structured to support dialogue being delivered by actors within a given scene.)
 
But if you ever looked at a video script, you’ll know, without even reading it, that it’s hard to read. It’s like looking at the blueprint of a jetliner and trying to figure out what makes it fly. 
 
There’s stuff all over the place: Indications for on-screen titles, transitions, sound effects, music cues, suggestions for stock footage, directions for layering of motion graphics, et cetera, et cetera. 
 
It’s a very useful tool for a video editor. Or a voice-over artist. But for you (or for your client), it’s pretty indigestible. 
 
The old-school approach is straightforward: Start with that script.
 
And that’s the rule we’re about to break. 
 
Going rogue
 
There actually is somewhat of an analogy for the work-around we’re about to describe. And it’s based not in corporate video, but in feature films. 
 
In Hollywood, it’s known as the “treatment.” For our corporate purposes, we’ll call it “the spine.” 
 
It goes something like this: 
 
A Hollywood screenplay is typically just over 100 pages long (with the rule of thumb being one page for each minute of on-screen time). The treatment is a short narrative description of what happens in the finished movie. Like a synopsis. It could be a page; it could be five pages. Regardless, it’s quicker and easier to read than a 100-page screenplay. And it can be useful in getting people with limited time to wrap their heads around the movie-to-be. 
 
The treatment, as we’d noted, is a narrative, third-person account of the story and its characters. But a good creative treatment should be fun to read, and typically will include some choice snippets of dialogue, to help convey the mood and “sell” the piece. 
 
The ”spine,” for your corporate video, is similar. But it’s even simpler. The original name we’d given it was the “audio spine,” and that should tell you a ton. 
 
Think about it. Your corporate video doesn’t feature, say, two characters toughing it out in an argument or bar-room brawl. It shows stuff that you do, and a voice-over narrator is your guide. 
 
Ta-dah. That’s where the “audio spine” comes from. 
 
If you can write that announcer track, you’ve cleared a huge hurdle. 
 
Plus, you have something that, unlike a two-column video script, is incredibly easy to digest, regardless of the reader/audience. 
 
Hence, the “spine.” 
 
On your way
 
So the trick is to write that “spine” first. Iterate and improve it via review and revision. Then get sign-off on it.
 
From there, you can paste the approved “spine” into the “Audio” column of your to-be video script. At that point, it becomes straightforward—although of course, not simple—to populate the rest of the script with visuals, sound effects, and all the other elements we’d mentioned above. 
 
The nice thing about starting with a “spine” is that it’s fast and easy. It locks the most important element of your video script early. Which keeps all the subsequent steps on-track, and thus faster and better cost-contained. 
 
We use this approach a lot. So should you. 
 
Need help with video scripting? We’d love to come to your rescue. Contact us today to get started. 

Special news! Sure, we’ve got a good blog article here, and we’ll get to it in just a second. But first, a little announcement, which segues to this article quite nicely: 
 
We’re proud to announce that this article, these very words you are reading right now, are officially our tenth anniversary blog post. That’s right: We started publishing these in January 2015, and at that time, committed to publishing them twice a month. 
 
If you’re unaware—or simply curious—our cadence goes like this: At the top of the month, we publish articles focused primarily for our consulting/business-owner audience. At mid-month, we publish blogs focused a little more toward our “creative” audience, which includes ad agencies and other creative people we enjoy working with. 
 
Ten years! And we never missed a post. That’s 240 articles, if we’ve done our math right. 
 
And we’re not stopping now. Thanks so much for joining us for this great, long ride! Let’s dive into our latest topic. 
 
Why blogging shouldn’t be a New Year’s resolution
 
If you watched any TV during New Year’s, you were surely inundated with ads for gym memberships. It’s as predictable as sunrise. 
 
Why? Because people invariably make a New Year’s resolution to “get in shape,” and those gyms are all too happy to cash in. 
 
Be honest. How many people have you known (you may be one of them) who made one of these resolutions, joined a gym, bragged to all their friends for the first month or two… and then kind of quietly quit thereafter? 
 
Getting in shape takes commitment. In that regard, it’s exactly like blogging. Or doing social posts. Pretty much anything that has to do with your marketing outreach. 
 
Not everyone is an Olympian or an NFL star. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t whip your marketing into shape. The good news: It’s much easier than doing squats or lifting weights. 
 
You might be surprised at the trick to all this. 
 
Ready? 
 
Aim low.
 
What??? 
 
What????
 
You read right. This is counterintuitive advice if ever we’d dispensed any. 
 
Aim low.
 
Allow us to explain. 
 
The attainable cadence
 
The reason that so many people burn out on those January gym memberships is that they aim unrealistically high. So they over-do it. They can’t sustain that level of exertion. And so they just drop out. By aiming so high, they turn it into an all-or-nothing proposition. 
 
Which is exactly what you don’t want to do. 
 
So ask yourself this: How many blogs could I reasonably push out, every single month?
 
Factor into your answer disruptions like client emergencies and vacation time. 
 
Now take your answer, and cut it in half. 
 
Really? Really. 
 
The resulting number should be laughably easy to attain. And that’s the number you want.
 
For us, here at Copel Communications, we could probably turn these out every single week. But that’s pushing it. So we do it every two weeks, i.e., twice a month. And, as we’d noted above, we’ve never missed a beat. 
 
The calendar trick
 
Surely, we’ve had our share of client emergencies, vacation time, and what-not. But the trick is to create what’s called an editorial blog post calendar in which you pre-select the topics you want to blog about. 
 
Once you have that in place (we do ours in the fourth quarter each year for the subsequent year), you can then use it to write your blogs in advance so that you always have a cushion for when those client emergencies and/or vacation dates arise. 
 
Think of it. You now have two cushions: 
 
1) You cut your originally-intended cadence in half. 
 
2) You have extra blogs, already written, in the pipeline, which you can publish with a single click. 
 
When you look at it—and do it—that way, there’s zero stress. And you hit the mark every time. 
 
Again, blogging is just one type of output. You can apply this exact same approach to all kinds of marketing and business-development outreach, including emails, webinars, videos, you name it. 
 
Who’da thought it would all start by aiming low? 
 
Need help with this or similar challenges? Contact us. We’d be delighted to pitch in.