Creating a Membership Program Update Video for Recruitment & Retention – Part 2

So, back in early May, I wrote the first part of this topic here. I’m embarrassed to report that it’s now late July and I’m still trying to finalize the video. Some of the delay was completely not my fault. We had to purchase the software and, uh, yeah okay so I’m grasping at straws. Let’s just soldier on, shall we?

I decided to create a voice over (audio) track and align it with what are effectively slides of information to drive home certain points. For instance, I didn’t want to verbalize all the numbers I was using to report the decline in our profession so I put the numbers on the screen while in the voice over I say that the number of laboratories, technicians, and schools is declining. 

This was very useful when covering our public service campaign. I spoke about the purpose of the campaign in the voice over while showing images of the website and other promotional pieces we have used to get the word out about the campaign.

Using a voice over approach was not without problems, however. I spent entirely too long trying to figure out why the software I was using wouldn’t play the voice clips in the preview mode. Long story short, the sound in the .WAV file I recorded had to be upped and the track had to be placed in the “voice over” channel on the timeline as it wouldn’t play anywhere else. Odd that the program would allow me to drop the file in other audio channels when it had no intention of letting me play the sound from those channels. Irritating.

As I finish this project I can tell you that I’m not happy with it. I severely misjudged the amount of time the project would take as well as my ability to stare at the video editing software program for hours on end and not lose focus. The good news is that this video can be released on multiple channels and we will be able to monitor the success of each. The other good news is that this is just the beginning. We’re trying different platforms for video manipulation such as Adobe Voice and fully mobile applications.

All in all, not one of my shining moments. Please learn from my mistake and ensure you allow enough time in your project timeline if you plan to produce a video update in-house.