Video isn’t a trend, it’s become a key way we choose to consume information. But not all video is good video. Here are five ways to make the most of your video budget.

Over six billion hours of video is watched online each month. In 2013, YouTube accounted for a little under 20% of downstream data traffic in the US. That’s a lot of people watching video. Not only watching, but absorbing: research tells us engagement is 400% greater with video than static content.

And, no, it’s not all cat videos. In the past year we’ve done customer reference videos in the Netherlands, South Africa, Switzerland and the UAE. We’ve spoken to airports, printers, banks and hotels, and used video to tell their stories. Here’s some tips we’ve picked up over the past 12 months:

  1. Film the interviewee against a green screen. You can then add images to the background. Just make sure the subject doesn’t wear green
  2. Choose distinctive music. Have a poke around Pond5
  3. Drones. Not the Star Wars type, the ones that fly. Attach a GoPro and you’ll have some amazing b-roll
  4. Most interviews look just off-camera. Have your interviewer sit as close as possible to the camera and ask your interviewee to look directly at the lens
  5. Walk. If the subject is comfortable – and the corridors are clear, have them walk and talk. Movement is great, it suggests energy

Click here to visit the inEvidence YouTube channel and view recent examples of our work.

– Mike Wood is inEvidence’s Director of Photography. Before joining inEvidence, Mike worked as a freelance director of photography for the BBC and independent TV production companies. His filming career includes stints in the jungles of Honduras, on the streets of San Francisco, and among customs officers at Tel Aviv airport. The world of customer referencing should be a cinch, shouldn’t it?