Vlad Alexander

Banner blindness is real, so as a brand, you need to plan on keeping the content fresh for your audience. 1 piece of content won't do the heavy lifting for 6 months. People's attention span shortens and as the volume of content grows, there's a real battle for audience's time and attention. One doable strategy is creating a pillar content piece, perhaps writing a script for a video, then turn it into a blog. You'd use the longer form video on YouTube, shorter video edits and text snippets as posts throughout your brand's social. Do it weekly or bi-weekly, at least.

While it is true that you can start with a smartphone, ultimately it makes many key artistic decisions for you. Once you're ready to advance and dive deeper into videography you'd need equipment that allows for more manual controls and creativity. Before purchasing gear, however, consider your primary niche: commercials, narrative films, sports, weddings, real estate. Every niche has its own gear requirements and needs. With narrative films you may need to invest in fast prime lenses, while with sports - long zoom lenses, yet with real estate you'd want ultra wide angles. Since professional gear is expensive, consider what you film most of. Even better, rent the gear you're interested in and take it for a spin.

Nothing beats practice. Watch and analyze other people's work in the genre you're interested in and notate the techniques you liked and perceived as successful. Go and actually try to recreate these techniques. Watch and analyze the original and your work side by side and notate the differences. Observe what you've done better and the areas for improvement. Do it again. With video, you have to put your practice in to get good.

One of really important processes in content audit is an analysis of audience’s interactions with the content. A treasure trove of organic real-life feedback can be harvested, ranging from people expressing what they like and don’t like to questions about learning a new skill. It is crucial to not only look at numbers, but also read what people are actually saying about you and your brand. Tweak your content accordingly, rinse and repeat. If there’s not enough feedback, don’t be afraid to just ask your audience. Authenticity rules.

Videography is just like law or medicine in a sense that there are many branches and you have to know which path you want to choose: be it weddings, professional sports, commercials, real estate, films, etc. Each of these fields is different, requires different skills and equipment. So trying a few niches may be a good way to determine, which way to go for a career. Before diving into the world of commercial cinematography, I tried sports, weddings, and narrative films. Pay attention to work flow, environment and pay - see what you like best and really master that niche.

In my experience, AI is already built into most softwares for creators, such as generative AI in Photoshop or magic mask in Davinci Resolve. The attention right now goes to fully generated art pieces by AI, or deep fake - because in a way it’s a new shiny object. In reality the built in AI tools help creators to speed through mundane tasks, like switching a background with 1 click or generate subtitles in 10 seconds - something that used to take half an hour. Using AI as a helpful assistant will greatly speed up the boring and allow more time for truly creative.