Overview
Video continues to be one of the most engaging and influential mediums for storytelling and sharing content with our audiences. Video templates are meant to elevate your communications with brand consistency and simplified video graphics tools. Video templates also provide an easy way to include animated brand elements in your video projects.
Visit the Penn State Brand Book for downloadable templates to use when creating videos for your units.
Video Best Practices
Video Opening
The opening of your video should be compelling and interesting to the audience. The Penn State Liberal Arts mark is not required to be visible in the opening scene of any video.
Video Closing
The Penn State Liberal Arts mark should be used at the end of any video production. In addition, you may want to include the following contact information:
- Department/Unit name
- Physical address
- Phone number
- Email address
- Web address
Video Tips
Vertical vs. horizontal: Avoid shooting video while holding your phone or mobile device vertically. Once imported into an editing program it will have black bars down the sides and cannot be fixed through cropping.
Audio quality: Be aware of background noise that will end up in your recording. Background noise you do not want can not be fixed during the editing process. Audio quality is far more important than most would think since without good audio it will be difficult understand your video. Additionally, when editing, adjust audio levels throughout so the volume is consistent.
Tripod: Whenever possible video always looks better if its steady; your hand isn’t as steady as you think.
Rule of thirds: The Rule of Thirds is the basic composition principle to follow for well balanced and interesting shots. The concept of the Rule of Thirds is to imagine breaking an image down into thirds horizontally and vertically. You will then want to frame your shot so that your elements are along the lines and preferably at one of the four points where the lines intersect to make your shot more interesting.
Transitions: The most commonly used transitions are fade to black and/or cross dissolve. Most of the other transitions can be more distracting than useful. Stick with fades unless you have a really good reason to use the others.
Hold shots: Make sure to hold shots long enough that they will look good once edited. For still shots, hold for 5-10 seconds. For moving (panning or tilting) shots hold for 5 seconds before and after the move. This is important for using transitions which cut into the length of your clips.
Using cutaways and b-roll: B-roll is the term for video footage that establishes the scene, shows detail or just makes the video more interesting. One example of B-roll use is for an interview. You can show what your subject is talking about instead of just showing them talking on camera the whole time. These clips can also be used to cover any jump cuts.
Using text: Make sure text is on screen long enough to be read by the viewer. Rule of thumb is that its on screen long enough for you to read it twice when played back in real time.
For examples of each of the tips mentioned above, please visit https://mediacommons.psu.edu/students/video-production-tips/.
Accessibility
Information about accessibility can be found here: http://accessibility.psu.edu/video/.