Anatomy of audience-winning videos

While many brands have good content, insights and expertise to share in their videos, few brands captivate audiences and earn their attention. If good content is a necessary but not sufficient condition to win audiences, what's the secret behind videos that dazzle? What do they have beyond good content?

We've analyzed the anatomy of thousands of videos to come up with this list of building blocks that the best videos use to make their good content shine.

Start with an informative video - a recording where you are showcasing your brand's unique insights and perspectives. Record these as a Zoom/Teams call, a webinar, an interview, a presentation, or a virtual event.

Note: this article does not focus on short explainer or demo videos though same building blocks apply.

#1 Attractive background

1. Speakers should have a nice background while recording themselves. Meeting and webinar recording tools make it very easy to use a custom background or blur a distracting background. 
2. Speakers (and screenshares) are laid out on a video canvas. The video canvas background is more important than a speaker's background.

Do:

• Use your brand colors and style to create reusable backgrounds. 
• Switch up the backgrounds for novelty. 
• Create event or theme-specific backgrounds (e.g. for a seasonal series).

Don't: Use cookie-cutter, overly-used generics from the Internet.

#2 Beautiful Intro/Outro Bumpers

Bumpers serve as powerful branding elements and imbibe a quality of sophistication to your videos. Bumpers with music are more pleasing and impactful.

Don't make intro bumpers longer than a few seconds. We suggest 3-5 seconds at most and definitely not longer than 10 seconds. Bumpers with music make videos feel more polished.

Outro bumpers can be longer to include CTAs. It's ok to have a long outro as you've already delivered your content.

#3 Overlays

An overlay is an element (usually text) overlaid on the video to emphasize a point. You have likely seen them on TV (especially news, sports, and documentaries). 

Overlays add aesthetical value and help you focus the viewer's attention. You can use overlays to introduce speakers, pop-up key phrases or call-to-actions. You can also use them to add new information or promote something that was not in the original video (think about advertising a new product launch or event).

#4 Topic (or Segment) Markers

Add visual markers (like a slide or card) in videos to display the next topic or point a speaker is addressing. Unlike overlays, these markers are full-screen. You can pause the audio while displaying these or keep the audio running while the card eclipses the video footage for a few seconds.

This is a valuable tactic to add dynamism to conversation-heavy or monologue-based videos where the scene is not changing fast enough to retain viewer attention.

Note: advanced video editors can skillfully use full-screen overlays which blur the boundary between overlays and segment markers.

#5 Logo

Add your logo to the video to give it a high-production-quality touch. If your logo is too wide, consider using your lettermark, mascot or icon as a video logo.

It's important that your logo looks sharp - avoid pixelated files. 

It's best to have a light and a dark logo so that you can switch between the two based on video colors to present a harmonious look.

Static logos are good, animated logos are the next level and can elevate your videos even more.

#6 Speaker close-ups (zoom in/out)

The key to retaining attention in videos where a person is elaborating on something is to zoom in/out of the speaker to simulate different shots (without taking different shots). The change happening on the screen keeps viewers glued.

#7 Active speaker mode

In multi-speaker videos, swap out the speaker not currently speaking and give the entire canvas to the active speaker. When the interviewer is asking a question, you can display all speakers and then transition to the expert answering the question.

#8 Subtitles

Subtitles are hugely popular with younger audiences as well as non-native speakers. Take them to the next level by using custom fonts and styles that match your video (and brand personality).

#9 Transitions

If you are creating a highlight reel or adding a hook to a video, add a transition from one scene to another. The transition should be subtle - avoid gaudy transitions that might remind audiences of PowerPoint 2007. 

Influencer videos are full of jump cuts (primarily because they are automated with software) so don't be afraid to use jump cuts. 

Your videos must have these two characteristics -

 HD quality (or higher)

Videos that are 720p or 1080p look sharp on computers and phones, and on websites. While you don't need 4k unless you plan on streaming your video on a huge screen in a conference center, anything less than HD is no longer considered sharp.

Clear (and synchronized) audio

The built-in mics in high-quality laptops are pretty good. If someone has a low-quality laptop, an external mic can do wonders. Audio can also be amplified in post-production.

The biggest issue with audio is when the video and audio are out of sync. It's almost impossible to fix that even in post-production. This usually happens due to deficiencies in the webinar hosting software, but it may also happen if a speaker had a very low-bandwidth connection.

Note: If the audio and video are not synced, consider transforming your video into an audiogram.

Notable mentions

Custom animations

Adding unique custom animations can help you convey information in a manner that makes it easy for the human brain. Custom animations are one of the most-potent arrows in the video editing toolkit. The biggest challenge with custom animations is the amount of effort it takes to create these. You often need multiple people with varied skill sets to match the quality of a popular channel like Wall Street Journal or Vox.

Custom animations are not the same as transitions or overlays. Imagine a video featuring a financial analyst discussing data around macro-economic trends. A custom animation will show an animated graph of the data while the speaker is elaborating on it. 

Stock images and videos

Stock images and videos are a popular choice to add variety and scene-change to videos. While it's easy to add stock images/videos, it's hard to find the right stock images/videos that convey the meaning correctly and match your brand style.

As of the publish date of this post (September 2024), Generative AI tools like Dall-E or Sora are still in early, experimental stages and not ready for day-to-day use by businesses.

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Parmonic makes it easy for non-video pros to create audience-winning videos by turning long videos (webinars, interviews, presentations) into multi-format content. We've made it extremely easy to do things like adding overlays. When you need advanced help beyond what you can do in the tool yourself, you can use our Augmented AI option.