By Holly Vuong
Imagine a world without online videos. Kind of hard to these days. Online videos are an integral part of learning, entertainment, and wasting time.
Matthew Wright is a science writer for the University of Maryland who has been busy creating sharp, content based, and short videos. In this Hands-on Workshop, he asked the audience for feedback on how they would edit his video of Project Sidewalk from five minutes to one. Many hands went up from audience members interested in offering suggestions. In a world of video production, feedback from colleagues can be crucial to making sharp, catchy content, Wright said.
Live video is the latest thing. Although most people recognize Facebook Live even though it was only rolled out a year ago, most people were unaware of Periscope 360, which is about two years old. Julia Majors, physics writer from the American Institute of Physics, gave us the nitty gritty of using the app. First, you’ll need a 360-degree camera which attaches to your phone. When making live videos, it is crucial that you interact with your audience by answering questions as they arise to build trust in your followers and generate a community with Periscope. Use Periscope when you want to highlight the surrounding space, not just a demonstration or talk, so that users can pan the video to get the 360 view of the room and ask you questions.
To be effective, have regular videos (i.e. same day and time each week) and use push notifications to let your audience know when you will be on to get a large viewership. Periscope can be used internationally in many countries and being camera shy will not work well with live video! Live videos only stay up for 24 hours, but there are work arounds to save your video.
Facebook Live is an alternative for Periscope. Aries Keck, social media team lead for NASA Goddard, uses FB Live for tours and Q&A sessions. Because of the large following for NASA, their video production takes a whole team effort. The host holds an iPad to take questions that are funneled to the iPad from other team members who are reading through the thousands of comments/questions on their live feed. The host can then ask the speaker the questions while on live video. This builds the trust and relationship that is key for generating a group of followers, Keck said. She suggests that if you do go live, practice, practice, practice the intro and outro. This will result in a smoother video for the audience.
Lastly, snapchat allows you to take short videos consisting of seven snaps to make a story. Like Periscope, these short videos stay online for 24 hours only. Snapchat is “brutally chronological” in that you cannot reorder your snaps for the post. Snapchat is great for shy individuals because they can do lots of takes before the actual post. And, Snapchat provides the user hard numbers for their analytics.
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