Concept, script, and direction are the three “pillars” of our video process.
Your script is very important. It’s the “audio channel,” or the verbatim words that the voice actor is saying. A good script will help your video convert people into customers. A poor script will leave people confused and abandoning your video.
Too many demo videos are aimless screencasts, treated more as training material than promotional material meant to sell the client on the benefits of a product. Rather than ad-libbing your way through your demo, be precise and intentional about what you’re communicating.
This works hand-in-hand: often, a client wants us to use a particular voice actor (hi, September), so we would make a script that plays to his or her strengths, and create a concept that makes the script even better.
This article will help you write a great script for your video that goes beyond the amateurish approach we so often encounter on the web. A great script frees up the director to communicate. A poor script can rarely be overcome.
Step One: Know Your Lengths
People ask all the time, how many words fit into a set timing. It’s not cut in stone, and your voice talent may be able to help cover for you, but there are limits to how much can be said in any given time. It’s also generally better to go too slow than it is to go too fast with the script. Remember, the voice-over artist has to leave some room to “breathe” sometimes, animations have to finish themselves, and the visuals need to develop. Having a script that’s too “packed in” makes that tougher.
So, we use the following guidelines:
- 30 seconds: 70-80 words
- 60 seconds: 140-165 words
- 90 seconds: 200-220 words
Step Two: Inform, Don’t Pitch
People know that they are watching a commercial. They aren’t dumb. They are curious about what your program or service does. A lot of times, they will watch our 60 to 90 second overview, and if they like what they see, they may stick around to watch your tutorial videos for more information.
But, before they can figure out if it’s a great creation, they first need to see what your software actually does. And the job of the overview video is to inform what it does—as specifically as can be done in the time allotted.
A 60 second commercial is unlikely to convince a non-buyer to buy. However, it can inform someone that’s in the market that this software is the right stuff. That’s the job of the video—to be sort of a last mile in the journey of making a final decision. Communicating what it does in a creative way is the most sensible way to get people to order.
Informing is showing. Pitching (or begging) is telling. You have to show people what your software will do for them. A great script lays the framework for a great visual direction.
When we’re working on a video here at Simplifilm, we know that some tools don’t lend themselves to a visual demonstration. We’ll have to work around that obstacle and use a metaphor to convey the message intended. Sometimes, that’s the only way to make it work—and when it is we try very hard to make metaphors as specific as possible.
Step Three: Use bullet Points & Brief Lists
The goal of a demo video is ultimately to get people to remember and retain what a product does. So, in the middle, you should give people things to retain.
Either, what the customer experience is (generally) or what the software does (again, generally).
With our Headway video, we showed the 4 steps that it took to build a custom website with Headway Themes.
People will retain things that are grouped in lists or bullets. They might retain 1-2 things that we’re saying, and people are more likely to do so with a brief set of bullets or a list of things that happen.
Step Four: Close Naturally
The next step in the script should be to invite the viewer to take an action. The action could be to “view our tutorial videos” or it could be to “order the product for a risk-free trial.” In either case, you don’t want the close to be a surprise (or a pander). You want them to feel like doing something is logical and contextual and a natural extension of the experience they’ve just taken part in.
If the product is a complex B-to-B sale like Savo Group was, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to close with an order. Savo Group requires a little bit of customization in each contract, including haggling some intellectual property issues. Telling someone to “buy now” is always less effective (for Savo) than inviting them to take a private tour.
The same can be said with not closing strongly enough: Scribe SEO offers us to order a risk-free trial. If they told us to watch another video, our attention would be sapped and spent.
Step Five: Count Your words
A recent—and terrible—Motorola Xoom commercial showed a guy folding a laptop down to a tablet. This commercial is a 30 second ad. However, at 25 seconds, the selling ends and it displays partner logos and legal info, so it’s essentially a 24 second ad. Of those 24 seconds, 9.5 seconds—almost 40%—has a Shia Lebouf-looking dude folding this tablet.
We get it. It’s an iPad. But what’s different about it? The Xoom had some things that the iPad couldn’t do thanks to the power of Droid. Why not tell us what those are, instead of having the core feature be “Angry Birds Rio?”
You need to know which sections have how many words.
We generally allocate things like:
Opener/Headline: 10-20% of the words (in a 30 second ad 12 words is 20%)
Bullets/Body: 50-70% of the words
Close/Call-to-Action: 10-20% of the words
We pay attention to this as we write the script by putting stuff in a table and having word count to the right. The formula isn’t strictly adhered to, but we do the best we can to be aware of the rules that we may be breaking.
Remember: At most, we have 225 words to play with in a 90 second script. If it’s taking 30 words to explain one feature that appeals to 3% of the existing users, is that a good investment of time?
Counting words keeps you from making mistakes that the Xoom commercial made.
In summary:
Writing a script that’s effective is an important part of the video creation process. It takes time. When you follow these five steps, you will have a great demo video regardless if you’re using one of our motion graphics videos, a screencast, or anything else. Inform people of what your service does, how they benefit from it, and you will go a long way towards getting people to take your next action.
Do you have any questions or thoughts on scripts? Let us know in your comments!
