Video is the way of the future, with a report outlined in Forbes stating that by 2019 online content will consist of 80 per cent videos.
These statistics should hardly be alarming after the introduction of popular media channel YouTube in 2005. It’s introduction created a plethora of celebrities and a new way to market our content. As it stands, 90 per cent of consumers indicate videos directly inform purchase decisions.
Many businesses have jumped on board the video bandwagon, and that’s where you come in. This booming interest in video content means there is more and more demand for specialists to create this format. If you are skilled in creating video content, your future looks bright.
1. Filming major events
After all the effort of organising a large scale event, whether it be a festival, a marathon or an expo, many organisers are opting to capture the excitement via a video. As these events are large-scale, the accompanying work often means long hours during the day followed by even longer hours of editing. This type of footage is often cut into shorter clips to be used as promotional videos on social media. If you’re skilled in editing, it can mean plenty of work simply creating different short clips for the organisers to use.
2. Making promotional or product videos
All types of businesses ranging from small online businesses through to multi-national franchises are looking at utilising video content to sell their wares. As mentioned earlier, an extremely high percentage of users relate purchase decisions back to video content.
Depending on the scale of the business and the expectations that come along with them, these videos can start out relatively simple. Videos for a small business may be something as easy as filming a barista making a coffee and the latte art on top. For a fashion business it could be a model wearing the clothes and gallivanting around the city in various outfits having fun. Essentially the videos will be short for optimal use on social media and showcase the business, service or product. The world is essentially your oyster when it comes to these types of clips.
3. Creating educational clips
With many creatives pursuing contract and freelance work as a service-based business, there is the need to keep their audience on social media engaged with “educational content”. These clips often discuss a specific theme or topic and showcase the skills of the business owner or freelancer. For instance, a stylist may guide you through styling a certain body-shape for a night out or a publicist may talk about the best way to contact the media.
As audience expectations for video quality increases, these videos, which were previously filmed on mobile phones, are now expected to have clear sound, high definition and clever editing. That’s where you come in. These are often low-effort jobs, with minimal scene changes and lens changes. It may be as simple as filming someone at a desk talking to camera.
4. The music industry
With musicians realising the power of videos, it’s now more common for bands and singers to engage in creating video-imagery to compliment a single release. What’s more, musicians will look at capturing more gigs live to use as promotional footage or in a future music video.
The music industry is unique in that it does offer several avenues for jobs as a videographer. Many musicians will have a resident photographer that accompanies them on tour, but it’s not uncommon these days to have a videographer do the same thing. This can mean everything from capturing live gigs as mentioned earlier, through to behind the scenes antics at recording studios and at festivals. The best part is, this kind of work is incredibly fun and almost no two days are the same.
5. Sentimental videos
The wedding industry is one of the biggest industries for photographers and the same goes for videographers. With video technology improving every year, newlyweds no longer just want their day captured via still imagery, they want it to last a lifetime in crisp, executively filmed video. The same goes for other major milestones like engagements, 21st birthdays, baby showers and debutantes.
The only catch with this industry, is often once you enter it you get branded with the niche of only working with weddings and it becomes hard to break out – though it can be done.