Making project videos: some thoughts

So, my Mare Internum Kickstarter is doing well so far (thanks to readers and the powers that be (ie readers)), and a lot of that is due to the massive amounts of planning I do before launching any sort of project. One of the things that took the greatest amount of time to plan was the Kickstarter video

I consider the video one of the most important parts of any sort of "major" campaign (ie anything you're asking more than say 10k for, or a Patreon that you want to have long-term profits). A good video engages and makes you want to buy the product, and a bad video might make you close the window in a fit of annoyance. So it's important to make a good video. I had some thoughts on how to do that:

• What emotion are you selling?
  This to me is the most important part of the video. Usually a person or a work can be described as an emotion that the reader feels in response to viewing it. For example, in my Patreon video, I am selling the emotion of familiarity and imperfection. My video is intentionally sketchy and silly because that's literally me, haha. I'm not always very polished, I have a sense of humor, and I like to think of my relationship with you guys as being very friendly and personal, like we can just chat casually now and then and I'll use the embarrassing old-people emojis and you won't judge me for it XD
  
  For The Meek video, I wanted to go for dramatic, tension, cinematic feel. The person watching should feel like there's a big story there that they want to know more about even if the images are a little whackadoo. I find this video a bit cringey now but I think it got the job done.
  
  And for Mare, the emotion I'm selling is mystery and the sense that there is an interesting thing to explore.
  
  Overall, the goal is to make your viewer feel like they are the missing piece of a larger puzzle, and that the work being sold to them would be incomplete without their participation. And honestly for my work, that is also the truth! So it all works out lol
  
• What product are you selling?
  The product sometimes takes second fiddle in my video to the emotional impact, which I think is way more vital. For that reason it's also really important to make it clear that this isn't a game, or an animation, but a comic. I usually include a picture or several pictures of comic pages to make it very clear that you will be receiving rectangles of art and not something else. With a product-first approach this would be obvious, but with a connection-first approach you had better make sure to check this box.
  
• music
  I use the Youtube Audio Library to find Royalty Free tracks, but there's a lot of places you could go for that. It's very tempting to type in "space" "mars" "ocean" etc for a project about a spacey mars ocean but I find that the most emotionally resonant music is in the Cinematic section, which is where I found the one I used for the MI vid. Had nothing to do with space either, but required a week and a half of browsing until I stumbled upon it. My other option was way too "bleep bloop im in space" and it was making me annoyed, so I'm glad I found a great replacement.
  
  I also used an ocean wave track and stitched the two audio tracks together in Audacity, a free music-editing software. I'm a goddamn idiot and even I could use this program out of the box, and do stuff like stitching and fading and stretching, so if you're a novice don't be afraid to play around with it.
  
• technical bits
  I don't think you need to be a wizard at videography to make a good video. The Mare video was made in photoshop (not free) with Windows Movie Maker (free) to stitch it together, and the largest piece of animation is the gif above. I'm not an animator so I literally redrew/ rotoscoped a gif I found by hand to make it an "original" work although it is derivative. But the rest of the animation I do is very minimal, usually basic stuff like wiggles or blinking or something that doesn't take a lot of effort, because I don't know what I'm doing. But sometimes animation is a good way to reinforce the eye towards the important part of the screen (usually the face), especially when other things are panning or zooming around.
  

I also want to point out some terrible, terrible video mistakes I see in other project videos. I lurk a ton of projects and judge them mercilessly so here are some hates:

• talking heads: "HI DER-SHING HERE, TODAY I'LL BE TALKING ABOUT" jumping into a volcano because I can't stand these videos. I know it's really really tempting to sit in front of your desk and talk to the audience but most people don't want to see that, they've seen it a billion times and it's boring. Not to mention, if your equipment is bad the entire thing can look like a bad selfie except moving around. I know this because the first Patreon video I made (which is in a file I saved to make myself feel bad) looks like that, haha. I HAVE seen a few good talking head videos but they usually incorporate props, or great clean environments, high production quality or just a lot of screen charisma. If you don't have like, 3/4 of these things, I'd say don't try it, there are a lot of other options other than "guy at desk"
• glacial videos: you ever start a video and realize its like 5 minutes. Nobody has time for that. I go 1:30 maximum nowadays. Anything over 2 minutes makes my weak millennial attention-span crumble to dust
• too polished: ironically I get mad at videos that are like full of after effects and sparkles and crazy tricks, I'm not sure why. You might not agree but I personally like things that feel like a person made it, even if it's not perfect. When a webcomic kickstarter looks like a Honda commercial I mentally check out
• no video: don't do it. I know it's really really tempting, but don't do it. My current stats on the MI kickstarter are 702 backers, and 829 video plays. Videos are free, so you might expect the number to have a much wider gap than you're seeing. But there's only a 15% difference there. Either ~120 people weren't interested after watching the video, or several people watched it multiple times. Either way you can see that there's a high correlation between watching videos and backing, possibly because most of the people backing are already fans, but potentially because the video was able to make that emotional connection. WHY TAKE THE RISK just make the vid

Anyways thats a lot of talking, this info probably belongs in a future tutorial (and I will be making a Kickstarter tutorial in the future believe u me), but I thought it would be good to get these ideas out while the process is still fresh in my mind.

Okay back to work, hope you all have a great weekend~ and don't forget to enter the pin giveaway if you want to be in the running for a free Kalla pin
Der