{"id":10,"date":"2015-05-21T16:03:12","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T16:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/?p=10"},"modified":"2015-05-21T18:44:13","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T18:44:13","slug":"ravi-jain-mining-the-power-of-immersive-short-form-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/ravi-jain-mining-the-power-of-immersive-short-form-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Ravi Jain: Mining the Power of Immersive, Short-Form Video"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ravidjain\" target=\"_blank\">Ravi Jain<\/a>\u00a0, Senior Associate Director of Digital Media &amp; Web Development at Boston College, gives the skinny on\u00a0short-form video <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/skinnyinminny?src=hash\" target=\"_blank\">#skinnyinminny<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Kicking Things Off<\/h2>\n<p>Boston College (BC) Minute: Final Call<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fresh content from spring commencement Monday, May 18<\/li>\n<li>BC Minute archive: <a href=\"http:\/\/at.bc.edu\/category\/bcminute\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/at.bc.edu\/category\/bcminute\/<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Defining Short-Form Video<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Extreme short form: 6-second vines, 15-second Instagrams<\/li>\n<li>Short form video: 30 seconds to 3 minutes<\/li>\n<li>Coffee break length: 5-8 minutes<\/li>\n<li>Extended online clip: 10-20 minutes<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;I wish I was on TV&#8221; clip: 30+ minutes<\/li>\n<li>Live-streaming? (Tune in, tune out): Periscope, Meerkat<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Short-Form Video, Before YouTube<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Music videos<\/li>\n<li>Experimental shorts (film school)<\/li>\n<li>Early online video<\/li>\n<li>Mini-docs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Key question: How to foster audience engagement before social media?<\/p>\n<h2>Case Study: BC Minute<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Concept\n<ul>\n<li>Episodic\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 1.6471;\">Individual threads weaving together a tapestry\u00a0<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li>Get a better sense of the bigger picture as more and more episodes come together<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t try to do too much\n<ul>\n<li>Capture &#8220;the spirit&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Not trying to cram in tons of messages or sound bites<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Did a pilot for proof of concept\n<ul>\n<li>Faced a lot of skepticism &#8211; what can you really do in 60 seconds?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>DNA of the BC Minute\n<ul>\n<li>No set pieces &#8211; not a staged &#8220;let&#8217;s get students together to do XYZ because we want to show ABC&#8221; &#8211; fly on the wall observations<\/li>\n<li>No talking to the camera, no lower thirds, no text on screen\/captions (&#8220;You&#8217;re here at the Psychology Lab&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>You are in the story, experiencing it<\/li>\n<li>Cinema verit\u00e9<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Short-Form Video\u00a0101<\/h2>\n<h3>Basics<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>The more you can plan ahead\/research, the better the end result<\/li>\n<li>What is the story or message? How does this align with your content strategy?<\/li>\n<li>Where will this take place? Who are the players?<\/li>\n<li>What equipment will you need?<\/li>\n<li>How many people do you need on your team?<\/li>\n<li>Can you scout the location ahead of time?\n<ul>\n<li>Environmental conditions (e.g., noise from trains, lighting, etc.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Pre-Pro<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Storyboard &#8211; do it even if it looks like a 4 year old did it<\/li>\n<li>Shot list\u00a0&#8211; may not match storyboard sequence<\/li>\n<li>Talk to the team<\/li>\n<li>Check (and double check and triple check) supplies<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Production<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Think quickly but don&#8217;t shoot quickly<\/li>\n<li>Follow plan but don&#8217;t be tied to it &#8211; be nimble<\/li>\n<li>Take advantage of repeated actions<\/li>\n<li>If scripted activity, find a way to make it seem unscripted<\/li>\n<li>Achieve level of comfort with players<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Post<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Log, log, log\n<ul>\n<li>Log your footage &#8211; see what&#8217;s there &#8211; document it!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Get to your rough cuts as quickly as possible<\/li>\n<li>Work with what you have &#8211; don&#8217;t get caught up in &#8220;I didn&#8217;t get this shot!&#8221; &#8211; figure out a way to make it effective\n<ul>\n<li>Channel your inner Tim Gunn and make it work<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Length isn&#8217;t everything\n<ul>\n<li>The story will dictate the length<\/li>\n<li>A crappy short video can be long and painful to watch<\/li>\n<li>A well crafted longer piece can fly by<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Why Short-Form?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It forces you to cut out the crap and get to the point<\/li>\n<li>Hook your audience with immediate storytelling<\/li>\n<li>Enables structuring stories in the aggregate<\/li>\n<li>Episodic storytelling begets audience engagement<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Extreme Short-Form Video Formats<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Instagram, Vine, animated GIFs<\/li>\n<li>Immediacy of production and distro<\/li>\n<li>Can be near instantaneous<\/li>\n<li>Opportunities for &#8220;moment sharing&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>We Made a Vine<\/h3>\n<p>For real. We just made a Vine: <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ravidjain\/status\/601418920067788800\" target=\"_blank\">Doing It for the Vine<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Spontaneity embraced<\/li>\n<li>Quick, clear video direction<\/li>\n<li>Make decisions, call action<\/li>\n<li>Post it<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Takeaways<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>You&#8217;re always a click away from losing a viewer<\/li>\n<li>SFV = a more immediate form of storytelling<\/li>\n<li>Break down a bigger message into bite-sized chunks<\/li>\n<li>Hook an audience with an aggregate model<\/li>\n<li>On the whole, a more expedited production schedule<\/li>\n<li>ESFV even more immediate: hard-wired social media forms<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ravi Jain\u00a0, Senior Associate Director of Digital Media &amp; Web Development at Boston College, gives the skinny on\u00a0short-form video #skinnyinminny<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-confabmn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions\/20"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}