Social Media Video

The Swiss Facebook team, based in Geneva, got in touch asking us to help conceive and edit social media videos based on TV ads produced for Nestlé. The goal was to show the Swiss food giant that it could get far more mileage out of its expensive advertizing than it was currently getting.

As we all know, ROI is key. Facebook sent a producer to the SmartCuts studio. Together, we worked on recasting 3 of Nestlé’s top performing ads as social media videos. Video for the web and television is, nowadays, almost exclusively made in 16:9 aspect ratio, but this is not ideal for social media platforms, which people often visit on their smartphones, held vertically, and in circumstances where listening to the audio may not be an option.

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With the Facebook producer, SmartCuts video editors worked on converting these ads to 9:16 ratio and adding text bubbles in animation to drive the message in a simple way, replacing the need for audio to understand. We also cut the videos much shorter. Even though the original ads were already fairly compact, for social media video, we needed something even tighter.

Facebook and SmartCuts worked together to make intelligent cuts so that the best and most important parts of the full ads were retained. Anything extraneous was dropped. This project was a perfect opportunity to put the spirit behind our company name into action: making smart cuts to content so that only the best remained – the best being determined by the goals and the circumstances.

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Busy as they are, the WHO task forces typically send us their key messages in bullet points, which we then work into a draft script. The script is always the backbone of any social media video project, unless, of course, there is no voice over. During this part of the pre-production, we submit shortlists to WHO of both voice over artists we feel will fit the bill, as well a music tracks. Once these are selected, and once the script is finalized, we create an online storyboard. We use a tool called Boords for this, which is a third-party professional solution to drafting storyboards. 

These are particularly important for social media animation projects, not only because graphics are, for obvious reasons, harder to envisage in exact form than real actors and sets for video shoots, but also because graphics take time to create and animate, so we really want to make sure that everyone is on the same page before we start to make all that happen.

Depending on the complexity of the project, we may start off with hand sketches. Once these are vetted and approved by the customer, we then turn them into CGs (computer graphics). Again, these get a round of review and modifications before we move on to actual animation.

WHO, like many of our clients, particularly appreciate the tool we use for feedback on social media video drafts. Once the graphics have been animated, we send what we call VRPs – Video Review Pages, which allow the viewer to click anytime, anywhere on the video to insert a comment. This comment gets automatically time-coded and appears both as a dot on the video, but also in full form in the margin on the right. Take a look at how this works.

It makes providing feedback on animation and social media video so much easier than using email, pdf’s or other text-based documents that are not kept current in real time. Once all is ship-shape and as you want it, we deliver the final animation via Dropbox or any file transfer protocol of your choice.

We produced a series of these for CNN which focused on the canton Jura. The region’s tourism office wanted to showcase attractions and economic heavy-weights, and those very same – famous watchmakers all – wanted the publicity on a channel that reaches hundreds of millions of viewers. To produce this social media video series we worked closely with all stakeholders to draft detailed storyboards so that each sortie to the Jura would be as efficient and effective as possible, thereby providing an optimal return on investment.

Unfortunately, the season, autumn, was not ideal and it was impossible to align CEO availability with moments of sunshine, so a lot of the exterior shots are a bit grey. The drone videographer was particularly frustrated as these were great opportunities to bring back quality footage.

Nevertheless, the social media video series was a big success and well received by Zenith, Longines, Swatch and Omega, as well as CNN and Jura’s tourism office.

We shot the interview at the new sports stadium in Lausanne, where we have contacts for easy access. It’s a perfect venue for many shoots, including a good corporate setting for this type of video production. We also shot broll of Doreen there, and mixed that with still shots of her at work, provided by the US Mission. A good sound mix and some crafty editing later, we had a solid social media video to present. 
The video was so well received that even the US Secretary of State deigned Tweet it in support of the campaign. It’s a tight, impactful piece of work that constituted the pillar of the campaign’s communications drive on social media. We’re thankful to the US Mission to the UN for their fidelity over the years and look forward to many more lively productions together.

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