MAKING CITY VIDEOS
Making City Videos takes a large amount of planning. To start, there is a vast amount of info that needs to be told in a short video. To condense this much info takes a good video editor. They need to be able to shorten all of the video clips into a dense compact story that keeps the viewer watching.
Planning the video outline
The way we start planning almost any video we produce, is to make a bullet list of the things we want to highlight in the story.This can include a wide scope of the main subjects, and the key points we want to share within the video.
The Start of the video
A good video is organized, the same way a book is, the outline is really like a book’s chapters. First of all, we have the start, this needs to be good. It needs to get the viewers attention. It can also tell the viewer what the video is about. In the case of making videos for cities, it can be both.
Main content of the video
Next comes the body of the video, this is the main info being conveyed to tell the story. You can think of the main body of the video as all of the chapters in a book except the first and the last. Most times, in making city videos have a few guests who talk about a single subject in the video.
For example, in the video we produced for the city of Cottonwood Heights, one of the guests, David Neeleman
spoke about the vast amount of class “A” office space in the city. Why he chose Cottonwood Heights as the base for his new airline company Breeze Airways.
In the video we produced for the City of Murray. One of the guests was 
Gail Miller, Gail spoke about doing business in Murray for over 40 years, she spoke about how great all of the Mayor’s were to work with. How happy they were to have started out in Murray and how they grew to have 6 auto dealerships in Murray. Eventually growing to 64 dealerships and buying the Utah Jazz Professional Basketball Team. Now reformed to the Larry H Miller Group.
These segments are normally 30-90 seconds depending on the content. A guest speaker adds credibility to the video, they are not from the city, they add an interesting view of the city.
The funny thing is, these guests may have 10-15 minutes of interview material that we then have to condense into a 30-90 second clip. This is why a good editor is so important! It is also very important to have an ample amount of b-roll for editing.
B-roll is the video footage used to show what the guest speaker is talking about. B-roll is vital for a few reasons, first it is used as a way to keep the viewer interested in what the guest is talking about. Second it is used to cover the cuts made in editing. In editing video you may cut out some of the video to condense the content. This is known as a jump cut, if done with 2 cameras it will usually look okay. If you use the b-roll over the jump cut, it looks much better! Ample b-roll allows the video editor to deliver a succinct message that looks good and is interesting!
ending the video
The last thing is of course the ending. The last chapter of the book, the last chapter of the video. In the case of making city videos, this is a short summary to support the video’s message. Making city videos differs from marketing videos. A marketing video has a call to action at the end. In making city videos, what we do is recap the video, it may include their logo and website URL but it does not have a call to action.
Here at Levitate, we love making city videos! It is a challenge we are up to! We have the knowledge, the team, and the tools necessary to share your city’s story! If you are looking to create a city video feel free to get in touch!
