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		<title>How to create an Awesome Demo Video, with Jason and Chris (Simplifilm)</title>
		<link>https://supersummit.co/video-archive/how-to-create-an-awesome-demo-video-with-jason-and-chris-simplifilm/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=how-to-create-an-awesome-demo-video-with-jason-and-chris-simplifilm</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Nov 2012 09:47:28 +0000</pubDate>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.techalchemist.com/?p=76</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How many cartoonish demo videos have you seen around? Tons. But do they work? Or is there a better way to create a killer demo video for your startup/product/project? Let&#8217;s discover all the secrets of demo videos with Chris Johnson and Jason Moore founders of Simplifilm. Enjoy! About Simplifilm Founders: The co-founders of Simplifilm are Chris]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/zAJ7JG0v2Gw" height="360" width="480" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>How many cartoonish demo videos have you seen around?</p>
<p>Tons. But do they work?</p>
<p>Or is there a better way to create a killer demo video for your startup/product/project?</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s discover all the secrets of demo videos with Chris Johnson and Jason Moore founders of <a href="http://simplifilm.com/">Simplifilm</a>.</p>
<p>Enjoy!</p>
<p><strong>About Simplifilm Founders:<br />
</strong>The co-founders of Simplifilm are Chris Johnson and Jason Moore.</p>
<p>Both are experienced internet business veterans, with years of experience in selling, marketing and helping small business owners go live on the web.</p>
<p><strong>Chris Johnson: Co-Founder:  </strong></p>
<p><strong></strong>Chris has been at the vanguard of internet video sales, working to sell real estate online since 2001.  He manages the business and runs the day-to-day operations.</p>
<p>Chris handles writing duties, picking which clients get to work with us, managing the calendar and pricing our work.  In just a short time, Simplifilm has become the field leader in motion graphics product demos.</p>
<p>His past experience includes real estate and mortgage.  He continues to live in Gresham, Oregon with his wife Heather and their two children.  He can be reached at chris@simplifilm.com, or on <a href="http://linkedin.com/in/genuinechris">LinkedIn</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/genuinechris">Twitter</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Jason Moore, Co-Founder:<br />
</strong></p>
<p>Jason Moore is the award-winning designer behind Simplifilm&#8217;s creative vision and work.</p>
<p>He began his career at the School of Advertising Art and went on to become one of the most sought after speakers, thinkers, and creators in the field of animation.<br />
Today, he is the author of nine popular books on digital design, art and communication and his work has been honored with Hermes, UMAC and Telly Awards for innovation and creativity.<br />
Most recently, his captivating approach book trailers have set new industry standards for excellence within the publishing business.</p>
<p>Jason is also a co-founder of Midnight Oil Productions<strong>, </strong>the first – and best – church media production house in the country.<br />
He lives in Tipp City, OH with his wife, Michele and their two children.</p>
<p>You can contact Jason at jason@simplifilm.com or on Facebook or Twitter</p>
<p><strong>Raw Transcription:<span id="more-1393"></span></strong></p>
<p><em>MM: Hello, everyone. Marco Montemagno here, the Tech Alchemist. And today</em><br />
<em>with me, we are three. It&#8217;s the first time we are three. And I&#8217;m here with</em><br />
<em>Chris Johnson and Jason Moore from Simplifilm. Hi, guys, how are you?</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: Good, thanks.</em></p>
<p><em>JM: Hey, good to be with you.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: Normally the Tech Alchemist interviews are split-screen interviews so</em><br />
<em>it&#8217;s very easy. I talk or the guests talk but, in three, I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;ll</em><br />
<em>create big chaos but we&#8217;ll try our best. The topic is so interesting. And</em><br />
<em>so many people are asking about help tips and advice to create better demo</em><br />
<em>videos.</em></p>
<p><em>As the Tech Alchemist community knows, I love to talk about a product or</em><br />
<em>services or a company that I&#8217;m testing or will be using or that I&#8217;ve used</em><br />
<em>in the past. Simplifilm, I&#8217;m working with you guys and I&#8217;m very happy about</em><br />
<em>it until this moment. We tried to create a demo video for Tech Alchemist so</em><br />
<em>it&#8217;s also very interesting for me to see behind the scenes, how it works,</em><br />
<em>what is required to create a demo video.</em></p>
<p><em>I thought it was very good to share this kind of knowledge with the Tech</em><br />
<em>Alchemist community because there&#8217;s a lot of good stuff here.</em></p>
<p><em>First of all, the main question is, demo videos are everywhere, can we</em><br />
<em>explain in 30 seconds what a demo video is and why are we starting to see</em><br />
<em>demo videos everywhere on the web? Who gets the question?</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: I&#8217;ll go for it here. A demo video is a way to get a user to understand</em><br />
<em>what you&#8217;re product does really, really fast. It makes them, hopefully it</em><br />
<em>makes them feel like they are actually using the product. The goal of a</em><br />
<em>demo video is to convey the specifics, the honest truth of what your</em><br />
<em>product does in a light that makes it easy to understand.</em></p>
<p><em>Why we&#8217;re seeing so many on the web is because it&#8217;s a very succinct,</em><br />
<em>effective way to get a message across and you don&#8217;t have to read a whole</em><br />
<em>ton of copy. You can figure out what a website or an app or a service or</em><br />
<em>whatever it is does, fast.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: Right. I&#8217;ll go straight to the point and I&#8217;ll tell you why I decided to</em><br />
<em>go with Simplifilm, so you have a real customer feedback with a real reason</em><br />
<em>why a person or a company decided to go with a company like you.</em></p>
<p><em>I was going around, for the last 15 years I&#8217;ve been watching tons of demo</em><br />
<em>videos of all kinds of companies. When I decided to create a Tech Alchemist</em><br />
<em>video, I was sick and tired of the cartoonish demo videos with animation of</em><br />
<em>a kind of a sing-song style of cartoon.</em></p>
<p><em>I thought, &#8220;Gosh, I don&#8217;t know if it works. I have no idea but I&#8217;m tired</em><br />
<em>and I think it&#8217;s boring.&#8221; I don&#8217;t know. I was really not convinced. When I</em><br />
<em>arrived on Simplifilm, I read some reasons why this is not the way to go</em><br />
<em>and I would like to talk about that a little because I think it&#8217;s very</em><br />
<em>interesting.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: Well, I&#8217;ll let Jason talk about metaphors in just a second but we call</em><br />
<em>them the &#8216;This is Doug&#8217; videos. You know, &#8220;This is Doug, Doug has a</em><br />
<em>problem, now there&#8217;s an app that solves Doug&#8217;s problem&#8221;. They don&#8217;t work.</em><br />
<em>They&#8217;re condescending. I mean, we want to make sure that we indicate that</em><br />
<em>the company that we&#8217;re working with is high quality.</em></p>
<p><em>That&#8217;s why Jason builds a metaphor as opposed to just those blobby, stupid</em><br />
<em>cartoon characters that don&#8217;t work on what he does. So we would never make</em><br />
<em>the same video, well, Jason can talk about that, we would never make the</em><br />
<em>same video over and over again.</em></p>
<p><em>JM: Well, I think I&#8217;ll first just start by saying that, while cartoon</em><br />
<em>characters have sort of had a history of being spokespeople for products or</em><br />
<em>whatever, in the advertising industry, we&#8217;ve largely moved away from things</em><br />
<em>like the Jolly Green Giant and those sorts of, the Pillsbury Dough Boy,</em><br />
<em>although I guess he&#8217;s still around.</em></p>
<p><em>I think that people may not take your product seriously if there&#8217;s a</em><br />
<em>cartoon pitching it in just the creative economy that we&#8217;re in now. So</em><br />
<em>we&#8217;re really big fans of using a metaphor which is sort of a tangible way</em><br />
<em>of expressing abstract ideas or thoughts or to take something that&#8217;s a</em><br />
<em>little bit hard, taking your software that you know very well and you&#8217;ve</em><br />
<em>spent a lot of time in, that&#8217;s a lot to bite off.</em></p>
<p><em>Through some sort of a visual image or metaphor, we&#8217;re able to convey a</em><br />
<em>whole lot of information in not very much time in a way that sticks. The</em><br />
<em>thing I love about metaphor is, when you use a metaphor, and you encounter</em><br />
<em>that metaphor again, later on, away from the website, it creates recall so</em><br />
<em>you think about the video that you saw when you re-encounter that metaphor</em><br />
<em>for a second time.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: Right. Also, because my feelings about cartoons is that, or I mean,</em><br />
<em>your brand, I&#8217;m thinking about Mail Chimp for instance or a brand that has</em><br />
<em>a cartoon inside their logo as part of their image, their brand, then maybe</em><br />
<em>it makes sense.</em></p>
<p><em>Otherwise, you see a brand and then you see a cartoon that has nothing to</em><br />
<em>do with the brand, the dog that Chris was talking about, then you think,</em><br />
<em>&#8220;Well, what the Hell is this? I&#8217;m not a 3-year-old child.&#8221; I don&#8217;t know.</em><br />
<em>What do you guys think about that?</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: It works for Mail Chimp. They have a character that&#8217;s an asset that</em><br />
<em>they&#8217;re reusing again. We think, these one-off generic cartoon characters</em><br />
<em>that are just totally interchangeable don&#8217;t work because, it&#8217;s just saying,</em><br />
<em>hey, we&#8217;re a tech company too. There&#8217;s absolutely no creativity behind</em><br />
<em>those creations.</em></p>
<p><em>JM: Right. I think the difference with a company like Mail Chimp is that,</em><br />
<em>the chimp is built into the name of their company. I mean, in a sense,</em><br />
<em>they&#8217;re using that as almost a visual metaphor. Where a lot of companies</em><br />
<em>use cartoon characters in videos, it&#8217;s sort of just tacked on at the end,</em><br />
<em>it really has nothing to do with their product.</em></p>
<p><em>As Chris said earlier, we don&#8217;t like to make the same video over and over.</em><br />
<em>Aa lot of those cartoon-style videos, it&#8217;s the same character over and</em><br />
<em>over, you slap a different logo on the end of it but it&#8217;s really not about</em><br />
<em>the company, it&#8217;s about the video that you&#8217;re buying.</em></p>
<p><em>If we do our job right at Simplifilm, we want to be invisible. We want to</em><br />
<em>inherit the properties of your company, take on your look. We want to be</em><br />
<em>kind of invisible in it. A lot of the companies out there that are using</em><br />
<em>kind of the cartoon approach really are, the style that they created, is</em><br />
<em>more about them than their customers. At least, that&#8217;s, sort of, our</em><br />
<em>feeling.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: Yeah. we want to inherit and enhance the properties and the design</em><br />
<em>assets that are already built. If you&#8217;ve got a book, a bestselling book or</em><br />
<em>a set of creative works, we want to take what you&#8217;ve already built and take</em><br />
<em>that further into motion graphics.</em></p>
<p><em>That&#8217;s the difference between us and some of our competitors. We don&#8217;t, you</em><br />
<em>know, we&#8217;re not the same companies as they are. They have different</em><br />
<em>philosophies. Our philosophy is just to take what you&#8217;ve done and translate</em><br />
<em>it and enhance it.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: OK. I understand the general vision about videos. Do you think demo</em><br />
<em>videos, so videos that explain products, services or a book or something,</em><br />
<em>are good for any kind of industry? Or there are industries where you say,</em><br />
<em>&#8220;No guys, you&#8217;d better stop and videos are probably not the right way to</em><br />
<em>explain?&#8221; What is your feedback about that?</em></p>
<p><em>JM: I would say when Chris and I first started working together, I would</em><br />
<em>regularly say to him, I don&#8217;t care what story it is, I&#8217;ll tell any story. I</em><br />
<em>think that it matters how you approach a video. I think you have to create</em><br />
<em>stories.</em></p>
<p><em>I think that&#8217;s what draws people in and, I&#8217;ll just say it, I&#8217;ve not</em><br />
<em>encountered an industry yet that you can&#8217;t find a way to tell a story. If</em><br />
<em>you&#8217;re only trying to present the product and the facts of the product and</em><br />
<em>the features, that&#8217;s why we love metaphors.</em></p>
<p><em>Metaphors sort of incorporate a story into the overall video. The idea is</em><br />
<em>that there&#8217;s a beginning, middle and end and over the course of that</em><br />
<em>there&#8217;s sort of a narrative. It&#8217;s not like creating a little mini-movie</em><br />
<em>with the cartoon characters.</em></p>
<p><em>There is sort of a visual narrative that happens and I feel like that can</em><br />
<em>apply to really any industry out there. Now Chris may have a different take</em><br />
<em>on that but that&#8217;s, I think, where I would land on that.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: Yeah. I&#8217;ll say that there are certainly industries and businesses that</em><br />
<em>it&#8217;s not cost effective to get a Simplifilm or a premium explainer video-</em><br />
<em>type of treatment. There are some things that you should just do slides.</em><br />
<em>There are sometimes when you should just do a screen cast.</em></p>
<p><em>I&#8217;m not going to tell you that everybody who gets a video is going to make</em><br />
<em>money. It&#8217;s a case-by-case basis. If you have a product that has a scale,</em><br />
<em>if you have a following, you&#8217;re trying to either activate your followers or</em><br />
<em>build awareness, then, it makes sense. If you&#8217;re not at the right size,</em><br />
<em>then it&#8217;s a forced fit. It doesn&#8217;t make sense.</em></p>
<p><em>JM: One other thing I would just add to that is, we have, on occasion,</em><br />
<em>begun to work with a client and realized that we can&#8217;t tell the story they</em><br />
<em>want to tell. Or they want to tell a story that&#8217;s sort of outside of our</em><br />
<em>wheelhouse. Or they want sort of a glorified Power Point file and really we</em><br />
<em>want to work with clients that want to tell stories and want to tell</em><br />
<em>stories well.</em></p>
<p><em>I wouldn&#8217;t say that I&#8217;ve encountered an industry that it doesn&#8217;t work for</em><br />
<em>but we have encountered clients, on a few occasions, that don&#8217;t see the</em><br />
<em>vision for where we want to help take them.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: And that&#8217;s OK. There&#8217;s room for many companies out there. There&#8217;s a lot</em><br />
<em>of stuff. We consider ourselves to be more artists rather than technicians</em><br />
<em>and a lot of people just want us to do their paint-by-numbers animation and</em><br />
<em>that&#8217;s just not something that we&#8217;re into.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: Yeah. Also after you&#8217;ve been working on the Tech Alchemist, the</em><br />
<em>benchmark is so high and it&#8217;s so beautiful to work with me that it&#8217;s</em><br />
<em>difficult to work with any other company. I understand this. But, OK, I</em><br />
<em>hope you try.</em></p>
<p><em>JM: Hey, we&#8217;re going to put you in our mission statement from here on out.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: That&#8217;s right. We&#8217;re done. I mean, we&#8217;re not even going to bother going</em><br />
<em>after Apple. We&#8217;ve got you. You know, what do we need?</em></p>
<p><em>MM: Let&#8217;s stay on this side. I was curious, I was always thinking that a</em><br />
<em>great video, by the way, this is what I am totally convinced of, that a</em><br />
<em>great video, in 2012 and in the next years will be unbelievably powerful</em><br />
<em>online. If I see someone writing a post and I create a video, I have a</em><br />
<em>totally different impact on the audience. That is so important.</em></p>
<p><em>On the other side, just a few days ago, I saw these stats about Facebook</em><br />
<em>sharing and a simple static image looks like it&#8217;s been shared much more</em><br />
<em>than a video. I was not really convinced about it. Also, you know you have</em><br />
<em>tons of stats about this.</em></p>
<p><em>Iin your opinion, I mean, the viral video is what people are talking about,</em><br />
<em>but on social media, do you see that videos the most effective form or do</em><br />
<em>you have evidence that maybe, I don&#8217;t know, images already from [inaudible</em><br />
<em>12:27] can work better?</em></p>
<p><em>JM: Well, one thing I would say is that people tend to want to say way too</em><br />
<em>much. The thing about sharing images is that&#8217;s very easy, it doesn&#8217;t take</em><br />
<em>very, it&#8217;s not much of a time investment. You look at an image and you get</em><br />
<em>your laugh out of it and you share that or whatever. We wrestle a little</em><br />
<em>bit sometimes with our clients because they want to make a 5-minute video</em><br />
<em>or something like that.</em></p>
<p><em>People just won&#8217;t invest the time in it. Again, I think story is important</em><br />
<em>if you have a great story to tell. If it&#8217;s visually interesting, there&#8217;s a</em><br />
<em>sense of mystery or intrigue. Like where&#8217;s this going to go. You keep it</em><br />
<em>short, I feel like those are the kind of videos that get passed around a</em><br />
<em>whole lot more than watching some sort of a long diatribe kind of trailer,</em><br />
<em>you know?</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: Yeah. You want to make sure when you make a video you want to make sure</em><br />
<em>that you don&#8217;t give people enough information to say, &#8220;No, I don&#8217;t want</em><br />
<em>it.&#8221; You want to try to get under their skin. Are images going to share</em><br />
<em>faster, spread faster than videos? Yeah, probably.</em></p>
<p><em>A video can get under your skin, you know? You have to see this movie. You</em><br />
<em>have to buy this app. You have a hole in your soul that you have to fill.</em><br />
<em>If we do the video right, it creates a need and it creates an ache for this</em><br />
<em>product. They miss this product. They wish they had a product like</em><br />
<em>[Headway] themes or whatever we&#8217;ve repped before. That&#8217;s the desire that a</em><br />
<em>video is hoping to create.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: Another thing that was really intriguing to me about Simplifilm the</em><br />
<em>first time that I came on the website, I probably arrived to you guys</em><br />
<em>because I saw this trailer from Ryan Holiday, &#8216;The Confessions of a Media</em><br />
<em>Manipulator.&#8217; I thought, gosh this is an amazing video, you know? Kind of</em><br />
<em>Hollywood, &#8216;Sin City&#8217; style, and I thought, amazing, it will cost, I don&#8217;t</em><br />
<em>know, $50,000. I don&#8217;t know. It looks like a Hollywood production.</em></p>
<p><em>I think this is also another point. Probably if you can keep the cost that</em><br />
<em>isn&#8217;t like a Hollywood production and you can bring quality videos to</em><br />
<em>companies for demo videos, then probably the company will start to embrace</em><br />
<em>it. I think you started this trend and I think it&#8217;s very interesting. What</em><br />
<em>do you think?</em></p>
<p><em>JM: I think I wish you would&#8217;ve been the one signing the check if you</em><br />
<em>thought it was worth $50,000.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: There&#8217;s kind of price-ceilings for stuff. Even a bestselling book, I</em><br />
<em>don&#8217;t think it makes much sense to spend more than $10,000 or $15,000 on a</em><br />
<em>video. I don&#8217;t think the ROI works above that too well. I think that it&#8217;s</em><br />
<em>you want to send a strong signal that you&#8217;re quality but if you&#8217;re spending</em><br />
<em>$25,000-$30,000, it&#8217;s not going to pay back even if the video gets a</em><br />
<em>million views and it does as well as, like, the Ryan Holiday video does.</em></p>
<p><em>You&#8217;ve got to just realize and be respectful to the industries and the</em><br />
<em>people that you&#8217;re working with. We want to make the nicest video we can</em><br />
<em>for the lowest price possible. That&#8217;s always a constant battle because</em><br />
<em>time, you know, costs money and if we had more time, we&#8217;d be able to do</em><br />
<em>more stuff. But we have to get stuff done and keep it moving on a regular</em><br />
<em>basis.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: Right. You anticipated a question that I always have in my mind. The</em><br />
<em>right cost today, 2012, for a good quality demo video is, if you have to</em><br />
<em>give a range of price for a business who wants to have a demo video, the</em><br />
<em>industry I&#8217;m saying, I&#8217;m not talking specifically about Simplifilm.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: Well, there&#8217;s kind of two ways to go about it. Between $0.00 and</em><br />
<em>$1,000, that&#8217;s a pretty safe and low risk way to get a video done. And</em><br />
<em>that&#8217;s a good decision for a lot of people. You know, get a $500.00 video</em><br />
<em>or you know, get somebody to help you with some styles for a low-end video.</em></p>
<p><em>There&#8217;s just kind a really big no-man&#8217;s-land between like $1.00 and $10,000</em><br />
<em>where you&#8217;re going to get a lot different kinds of quality. And a lot of</em><br />
<em>the same videos are going to get made. You&#8217;re not going to be original.</em><br />
<em>You&#8217;re not going to stand out. Then, if you spend too much, it doesn&#8217;t make</em><br />
<em>sense.</em></p>
<p><em>I would say that a good quality demo video would be between $10,000 and,</em><br />
<em>say, $25,000 for a 90-secondish piece, give or take a few seconds. If</em><br />
<em>you&#8217;ve got some assets already built or designed or already done, that may</em><br />
<em>change the price or influence it that way.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: Right. On the creative side of creating a video, producing a video, I</em><br />
<em>was curious to understand, in your experience, you&#8217;re doing only animation,</em><br />
<em>suspended graphics and so on? Or do you think it also makes sense when you</em><br />
<em>are storytelling a video, to introduce real people, interviews, real faces?</em></p>
<p><em>Or you just choose animation because you think it&#8217;s the most effective way</em><br />
<em>to go? What&#8217;s the reason behind it?</em></p>
<p><em>JM: That&#8217;s a great question. We at Simplifilm, haven&#8217;t done anything with</em><br />
<em>live, on-camera talent. I think that can work. Part of it for us is that, I</em><br />
<em>think, it&#8217;s our niche. We know that we can do that very well. It&#8217;s also</em><br />
<em>pretty exciting. It&#8217;s something that not everyone can do. It just has that</em><br />
<em>additional edge, I think, animation does that sets you apart a little bit</em><br />
<em>from video.</em></p>
<p><em>Even a novice can pick up a camera and you know. There is certainly an art</em><br />
<em>to cinematography and lighting and that sort of thing but not everyone can</em><br />
<em>animate and that sort of thing. I feel like animation creates that kind of</em><br />
<em>sticking power that people want.</em></p>
<p><em>I mean the Ryan Holiday trailer you were talking about, I saw a lot of</em><br />
<em>reactions to that, like &#8220;Wow, I didn&#8217;t see that coming&#8221;. Or doing a giant</em><br />
<em>media octopus or whatever it is. There&#8217;s something more visually intriguing</em><br />
<em>about that than simply hearing the author saying a few words about his book</em><br />
<em>or her book. I don&#8217;t know, it just gives that sort of extra something that</em><br />
<em>keeps people plugged in.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: The other thing about animation from a business perspective, which is,</em><br />
<em>if you change your product, if you change something, you don&#8217;t have to</em><br />
<em>recreate the whole set, recreate everything. If you get some insight that</em><br />
<em>says customers want this instead of that, it&#8217;s possible to do a drop-in and</em><br />
<em>to recreate a scene. You don&#8217;t have to throw away your whole animation.</em></p>
<p><em>If you get rid of a feature or add a feature or, add an integration, you</em><br />
<em>can just add it to the animation later. It&#8217;s a lot more flexible than a</em><br />
<em>live-action dollar-for-dollar. Now, I&#8217;m going to say that Simplifilm</em><br />
<em>probably will eventually get into some live-action stuff.</em></p>
<p><em>We&#8217;ll probably do that when we can be as good as we are at it, as we are at</em><br />
<em>animation. We want to be the best in the world, no exceptions. And we&#8217;re</em><br />
<em>getting there in animation. We want to get there, you know, in the live-</em><br />
<em>action side when we can really compete, when we have something to say. And</em><br />
<em>when it&#8217;s time for us to do that, we&#8217;ll go and tell stories in whatever</em><br />
<em>medium we need to tell stories in.</em></p>
<p><em>JM: If I could just add one other thought. Especially with our book</em><br />
<em>trailers, the idea is that we want to make that cover of that book or that</em><br />
<em>world sort of come to life. That&#8217;s hard to do with just someone sitting in</em><br />
<em>front of a camera.</em></p>
<p><em>Again, we try to inherit the properties of whatever software we&#8217;re doing or</em><br />
<em>whatever company&#8217;s story we&#8217;re telling or whatever book we&#8217;re telling the</em><br />
<em>story for. We want everything in that trailer, from the time it begins</em><br />
<em>until the time it ends, to sort of feel like you&#8217;ve lived in the world for</em><br />
<em>a minute.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: Let&#8217;s talk now about the process. I&#8217;m living, I&#8217;m processing, I have</em><br />
<em>your stuff in my head every day about all the steps to follow. Marco, you</em><br />
<em>already did this. You have to give feedback on the script and the voice and</em><br />
<em>everything. When I started, I didn&#8217;t think it was so well structured; the</em><br />
<em>process to arrive to create the video.</em></p>
<p><em>I was used to someone who just gave me a, I don&#8217;t know, prototype and say,</em><br />
<em>&#8220;Hey do you like this? No, let&#8217;s change maybe the color&#8221;. You follow a much</em><br />
<em>more structured and more effective way.</em></p>
<p><em>Can you maybe, Chris or Jason, can you explain a little bit better, what</em><br />
<em>are the most important steps in the process of creating a demo video?</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: Well, setting expectations, from my end, is the most important part.</em><br />
<em>You know what to expect. You know what&#8217;s going to happen now. You know</em><br />
<em>what&#8217;s going to happen next. That&#8217;s kind of my end because I run that part</em><br />
<em>of the front-end experience along with Dennis, our director of details.</em></p>
<p><em>We want to make sure that you understand exactly what&#8217;s happened, what&#8217;s</em><br />
<em>about to happen and what you need to do, if anything, from our perspective.</em><br />
<em>Jason?</em></p>
<p><em>JM: From my perspective, I usually come in after the script has been</em><br />
<em>completed. Our scripts normally don&#8217;t have a lot of visual cues in it.</em><br />
<em>Occasionally we&#8217;ll have some stuff that we&#8217;ll do. My job is to somehow take</em><br />
<em>that script and interpret it visually.</em></p>
<p><em>One of the things, I think, is the worst thing you can do as a video</em><br />
<em>storyteller is to start at the computer. I feel like you end up with</em><br />
<em>something that is really neat eye-candy but it doesn&#8217;t really tell a story.</em><br />
<em>You&#8217;ve got pretty colors or neat effects or whatever but you&#8217;re not really</em><br />
<em>focused on the creative aspects of storytelling and how you keep the viewer</em><br />
<em>engaged.</em></p>
<p><em>I will step away from the computer sometimes and I will spend a day, maybe</em><br />
<em>I should say I step away from the computer but I step away from my</em><br />
<em>animation tools, I&#8217;ll go out and look at what inspires me.</em></p>
<p><em>I&#8217;ll try and look for references; just what looks hot, what doesn&#8217;t. And</em><br />
<em>sometimes it will be 2 days of just trying to get my head around what this</em><br />
<em>thing is before I ever begin animating. That approach is very different</em><br />
<em>than an approach where the background is always the same, or the</em><br />
<em>character&#8217;s, are always the same or whatever.</em></p>
<p><em>Again, at Simplifilm, we really try to make our videos seamless. So from</em><br />
<em>the moment it begins to the moment it ends, the camera is sort of tracking</em><br />
<em>along and we&#8217;re telling the story without breaks. We want to keep the</em><br />
<em>viewer engaged all the way.</em></p>
<p><em>Again, the use of metaphor is pretty consistent. We&#8217;re always trying to</em><br />
<em>find visual ways, like the mountains that start off in the beginning of</em><br />
<em>your video that sort of look like a chart but it&#8217;s also a mountain, is just</em><br />
<em>an interesting visual to kind of keep people engaged in the story.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: Right. By the way, my surname is Montemagno, and &#8216;monte&#8217; means</em><br />
<em>&#8216;mountain&#8217; so this is an additional take that you didn&#8217;t know but I&#8217;m</em><br />
<em>telling you. So it&#8217;s very interesting. Cool.</em></p>
<p><em>JM: Now, we researched that for a long time. We researched that.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: It&#8217;s on purpose. Everything&#8217;s on purpose.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: I saw Simplifilm spies around my house.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: Yeah, that&#8217;s right.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: Right. Can we sum up some of the most important steps when creating a</em><br />
<em>good demo video? Collecting all the data about the product, services, is</em><br />
<em>one step. Setting the right expectations. Writing a script, so writing a</em><br />
<em>story that makes sense. Then starting to create the animation.</em></p>
<p><em>Choosing the voice, this is another point. I will ask a very stupid</em><br />
<em>question but I was always thinking about that. Does a male voice or a</em><br />
<em>female voice perform better or does it depend on the project? Do you have</em><br />
<em>any stats or your experience about that? Does it take you in one direction</em><br />
<em>or another?</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: Well, it depends on the product for sure. That&#8217;s something that&#8217;s</em><br />
<em>fairly easy and fairly inexpensive and straightforward to test out.</em><br />
<em>Sometimes it doesn&#8217;t make any difference at all. That&#8217;s probably, in 50% of</em><br />
<em>cases, it doesn&#8217;t make a lot of difference whether it&#8217;s a male voice or a</em><br />
<em>female voice.</em></p>
<p><em>It&#8217;s a matter of taste and preference in how you want to support the brand.</em><br />
<em>Sometimes a male voice will outperform a female voice even when it seems to</em><br />
<em>be behind. So if a video, I think it was YesWare, that the female voice,</em><br />
<em>people watched the video until the end more than the male.</em></p>
<p><em>People bought the product more from the male even though they only watched</em><br />
<em>half the video. That&#8217;s a success, right? That&#8217;s a win if you get people to</em><br />
<em>convert because of the video that you have.</em></p>
<p><em>That&#8217;s something that&#8217;s, Wistia, and there&#8217;s a number of other tools that</em><br />
<em>make it fairly straightforward to test different video objects and you want</em><br />
<em>to do a fair amount of that. You don&#8217;t want to obsess or it because you</em><br />
<em>don&#8217;t want to create another job for yourself.</em></p>
<p><em>You want to take a look at it and see, and if you have a strong feeling and</em><br />
<em>you want to represent your brand a certain way, that&#8217;s the way to go.</em><br />
<em>Right? I mean, if you don&#8217;t have a preference, then testing may be</em><br />
<em>something you try to do.</em></p>
<p><em>JM: Yeah. We&#8217;re pretty careful about the voices we choose too. We try to</em><br />
<em>make sure that if we have a more corporate client, we get someone who</em><br />
<em>sounds a little more straightforward, corporate. We&#8217;ve got a go-to guy for</em><br />
<em>young and hip. We&#8217;ve got our go-to people for different styles and there&#8217;s</em><br />
<em>a time or two that we&#8217;ve cast a voice that wasn&#8217;t quite the right fit and</em><br />
<em>have even gone back and re-recorded voices after realizing that maybe we</em><br />
<em>didn&#8217;t have the right one in there. Voice-over work makes a huge</em><br />
<em>difference.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: I&#8217;ve been given several voices to choose and one was very sexy like</em><br />
<em>Angelina Jolie and I immediately said, &#8220;Yeah, I want this one&#8221;. Then Dennis</em><br />
<em>said, &#8220;No way, this is not good for the Tech Alchemist. You gave me guys, I</em><br />
<em>don&#8217;t know, a man like Sean Connery. I don&#8217;t know but OK. Good. No, that&#8217;s</em><br />
<em>excellent.</em></p>
<p><em>About converting, this is another interesting point. A video that converts,</em><br />
<em>this, in the end, is the goal, I think, to have a video that brings a</em><br />
<em>result. Not only that people say, &#8220;Oh this is a nice video&#8221;. What are the</em><br />
<em>metrics that you try to look at to understand if a video converts or not?</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: I think it&#8217;s important to show the actual product or a facsimile of the</em><br />
<em>product. Showing people that they really have something here rather than</em><br />
<em>showing a phone with things bursting out of it. Showing the screens of the</em><br />
<em>product. That it&#8217;s an engineered and built and intentional product, is</em><br />
<em>going to go a long way to make people more comfortable.</em></p>
<p><em>Then they&#8217;re going to say, &#8220;Oh, this is a real thing, this isn&#8217;t just</em><br />
<em>somebody&#8217;s fantasy and I can see this right here. Boy, I can use that</em><br />
<em>because all I have to do is type this stuff in these fields and I get this</em><br />
<em>thing&#8221;. So that&#8217;s the, that&#8217;s my gut feeling. When we&#8217;ve done more and more</em><br />
<em>showing of the product, the customer feedback has been very good for us.</em></p>
<p><em>JM: We also sometimes hear from our clients that their sales increased. One</em><br />
<em>of our clients said that their sales tripled after we put our video out.</em><br />
<em>Also I feel like we have a lot of repeat clients. While we don&#8217;t hear</em><br />
<em>specific numbers, we&#8217;re pretty certain that they&#8217;re converting their video</em><br />
<em>to customers or they wouldn&#8217;t be coming back to us.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: Well, we&#8217;re not cheap and they can pay us a couple of times, so I guess</em><br />
<em>that&#8217;s something to say, right?</em></p>
<p><em>MM: Right. Just a couple of questions. How long does it take to create a</em><br />
<em>good demo video, to give a business listening to us an idea of the right</em><br />
<em>timing to create a good demo video? What&#8217;s the best length for a demo</em><br />
<em>video?</em></p>
<p><em>JM: Good question. For us it takes about 150 hours of animation, 100 to 150</em><br />
<em>hours of animation. We&#8217;re big fans of the minute to a minute and half</em><br />
<em>timeline. We think there are diminishing returns the more you go past a</em><br />
<em>minute and a half. Viewers just don&#8217;t hang that long. Chris can probably</em><br />
<em>talk more about the process pre-video but we&#8217;ve got about 150 hours of</em><br />
<em>animation.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: Yeah. As far as like time that it takes, as far as the business person,</em><br />
<em>they don&#8217;t care how many hours we spend but generally from you send your</em><br />
<em>contract and deposit to us, to delivery, it&#8217;s anywhere between 6-weeks,</em><br />
<em>when we&#8217;re fast and everything works right and there&#8217;s not a lot of</em><br />
<em>revisions, 12 to 15 if it takes awhile to get there.</em></p>
<p><em>Why that&#8217;s happening is that we don&#8217;t get feedback back from clients and we</em><br />
<em>kind of get stuck. If a client doesn&#8217;t, you know, we need some feedback</em><br />
<em>back or we don&#8217;t have an approval on this particular section then we&#8217;re</em><br />
<em>stuck and we can&#8217;t move forward. If we don&#8217;t want to lose three days, we</em><br />
<em>shift to another project or whatever we have to do to keep our stuff</em><br />
<em>moving.</em></p>
<p><em>Our animators, Jason and his team, aren&#8217;t cheap either and we want to make</em><br />
<em>sure that they&#8217;re working. The client can really influence it by making it</em><br />
<em>easy, by getting assets to us, their logos, their animations, all of their</em><br />
<em>stock from assets and getting us also the approvals in a timely fashion.</em></p>
<p><em>JM: That&#8217;s why we keep harassing you.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: The best length, I&#8217;m going to go with like 70 or 75 seconds because</em><br />
<em>we&#8217;ve seen the numbers and it seriously erodes fast after 70 or so seconds.</em><br />
<em>People abandon it, even if they&#8217;re well-intentioned. The longer you stay</em><br />
<em>doing one thing, the more risk there is of doing something else, right?</em></p>
<p><em>Does that make sense? You&#8217;re up doing one thing and your phone could ring,</em><br />
<em>your boss could come in, your dog could want to go outside and you&#8217;re</em><br />
<em>watching the video, you get pulled away from it. We want to get the message</em><br />
<em>out there in under a minute and a half for sure.</em></p>
<p><em>JM: The other thing is, I feel like the video is really just meant to be an</em><br />
<em>invitation into the door. We&#8217;re not trying to say everything there is to</em><br />
<em>say about the video. There are still things that could be communicated on</em><br />
<em>the website, could be things that are communicated in print, could be</em><br />
<em>things that a salesman might share with you.</em></p>
<p><em>The video is really meant to sort of create a level of comfort, you know,</em><br />
<em>welcome into our world, come in and have a seat and we&#8217;ll share the rest of</em><br />
<em>it with you in a different format.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: Final question guys and then I&#8217;ll let you go. What is the best tip that</em><br />
<em>you can give to a company that wants to have a demo video, if you just had</em><br />
<em>one tip, what would you recommend?</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: Hire us for next year.</em></p>
<p><em>JM: I would say that my one tip would be less is more. Don&#8217;t try to say</em><br />
<em>everything. Pick 1,2 or 3 things and go with those. You&#8217;re in love with</em><br />
<em>your software or your product or your book or whatever, but the people that</em><br />
<em>you&#8217;re talking to, that you&#8217;re trying to reach, are not yet in love with</em><br />
<em>it. They don&#8217;t care about everything. So, 1, 2 or 3 things are going to do</em><br />
<em>a whole lot more for you than trying to say more than that.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: I would say that you probably want to try to make a script that gets</em><br />
<em>under their skin and take some chances. Don&#8217;t try to say everything. Don&#8217;t</em><br />
<em>play it safe. Be bold and try to be daring with what you&#8217;re doing.</em></p>
<p><em>If you&#8217;re in a marketplace that&#8217;s competitive, you want to stand out and</em><br />
<em>beat your competition by beating their angle, by being specific and not</em><br />
<em>being we&#8217;re just another app like everybody else. This is Doug. Doug has an</em><br />
<em>app for his iPhone. That doesn&#8217;t work. Be daring.</em></p>
<p><em>MM: Excellent guys. I have to stop here. I stole so much of your time but</em><br />
<em>great tips. A lot of interesting stuff.</em></p>
<p><em>Thank you so much. Chris Johnson. Jason Moore. Simplifilm. Go check out</em><br />
<em>these guys. Good luck in everything. I hope the Tech Alchemist video will</em><br />
<em>be amazing. I&#8217;m sure it will be amazing.</em></p>
<p><em>CJ: Us too. Thanks so much.</em></p>
<p><em>JM: Thank you. Thanks a lot.</em></p>
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