Everyone wants to be a content creator. Specifically short form video. They see all these “influencers” showing off their “PR haul” or living lifestyles that seem to only be that of dreams and want that for themselves. While starting is as easy as hitting record, everything beyond that is probably the hardest thing most people will do in life. What do you talk about? How do you make your content interesting? There is no easy answer, no guide you can purchase that will answer that question so save your money. One piece of advice I can give is, stop overthinking and make things harder than they have to be.
Anyone remember the acronym “K.I.S.S.”? Keep it simple stupid. At least that was what it meant when I was growing up. Younger content creators probably have a similar acronym or saying. The point is, simplicity works.
It works in life, it works in your job, it works in content creation.
So why are you making your life as a content creator harder than it needs to be?
Whenever someone goes, viral people will try to break down what was the reason. They analyze and usually go for the easiest thing to duplicate – was it because the person was wearing a gray shirt? Yellow hat? They winked, smiled, something that is super easy to duplicate. People naturally go for this element.
It is not necessarily laziness though for many, it is.
You do not need 100 camera cuts in a three-minute video. You do not need sweeping camera angles, panning/zooming, etc. just because.
Sound.
For most content creators, sound is the last thing they focus on. Time is wasted on trying to get the lighting perfect, setting up the scene behind them, etc. Then edits after filming are done.
Lighting can be adjusted after recording. Sound is MUCH harder to edit if it is crap in the first place.
If you are doing short form video you can get away with lesser quality sound. Long form video, several minutes or longer, it is much more annoying for the viewer and more likely to push them away.
Just grab some Bluetooth earbuds (affiliate link) and connect to your recording device, done. Easy peasy No need to spend hundreds of dollars on a microphone, stand, or sound systems and all that jazz.
In your editing software, click the “reduce noise” or similar button on your audio and you are done. Most situations you won’t even need to do that.
You are done with audio. Simple.
The actual content of your video is the next concern to focus on. Bringing up again the fact that you do not need to have 100 cuts in a three-minute video, stop doing that. If it adds nothing to your content such as changing locations or for punctuation then it is pointless additional work and it is, quite frankly, annoying to viewers.
I am not saying make floating head content here, just stop with the unnecessary bullshit that just distracts from your content.
I assure you, that person you saw went viral and they had jump cuts every half second in their 7 second video did not go viral for those jump cuts.
Take someone like Sam Sulek for example. His content is simple. There are jump cuts, but they matter to the content, they are not “just because” camera angle changes. A lot of his popular content is just him talking to the camera, or someone off camera, discussing a specific topic. He does not waste time with how his day started or other nonsense. To the point and done.
There are many other content creators that follow this style of less is more and they are growing in support every day.
The point is, stop overthinking and complicating content creation. Keep things simple, get to the point of the video and be done.
▶️ 3Speak
