Summary

In this episode, host Matthew interviews Chris Fox, a corporate video production expert with a decade of experience. Chris shares his journey from live event broadcasting to directing video teams and emphasizes the critical role of video in modern marketing. He explains that video should focus on brand building rather than direct product selling, noting that different platforms like LinkedIn and Instagram require different content approaches. Chris also advises businesses to start simple, using accessible tools and focusing on fast-paced, engaging content. He highlights the importance of hiring the right content creator and adapting strategies to stay relevant in the changing video landscape.

Matthew
Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Strategic Expert show. Today we’re going to be diving into the world of corporate video production with our guest who holds a bachelor’s degree in digital media with an emphasis in cinema production from Utah Valley University. Early in his career, he specialized in live events, particularly for Cisco, where he played key roles in broadcasting, college and high school sports, handling camera operations, audio and color correction as needed. He’s also collaborated with Intermountain Healthcare on their nurse Danny series. With nine years of experience in corporate video production, he started as an assistant and an editor and eventually rose the position of director of video. Leading a team for leading a team of five people. His diverse portfolio includes commercials, podcasts, mini documentaries, and event highlight videos. Now, with over a decade of marketing experience, he’s eager to explore new opportunities and shares expertise to help other businesses grow. Please join me in welcoming in Chris Fox. Chris, nice to have you on.

Chris
Yeah, good to be here.

Matthew
Awesome. And I’m super excited. I’m pumped about this. I think video is an area that is still very, very new to most businesses. I know it’s something that is, as a marketing company and somebody working with other companies, trying to get them to do videos, like pulling teeth. Yeah, it’s, it’s really bad. So let’s quickly go over, you know, I gave a brief introduction, but, you know, in your own words, give us a little bit of your background video production, uh, you know, what, what you’ve done and as well as training and, uh, leading new teams.

Chris
Yeah. So, yeah, just a quick. I mean, the bio kind of covered it, but, um, yeah, I was just coming out of, I had gotten my associate’s degree. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I thought, what can I do that I won’t get bored of within like three years? And so I was like, I don’t know if this is going to pan out, but I’ll do like a film degree. And, uh, uv, you had a great program for, um, just kind of like being able to get your hands on a little bit of everything. And so I ended up kind of just running with that out of, out of school and then just, you know, had a lot of opportunities, decided to take as many as I could and, and, uh, yeah.

Matthew
Cool. Well, that makes a lot of sense. So let’s talk about why do you feel video is so crucial in modern marketing strategies? Why do people need to be focused on video more than anything else?

Chris
Yeah, it’s funny because you were talking about video and how it’s new to a lot of companies, I think that’s true. But I think, honestly, the biggest problem that most companies have is they misunderstand video and when to use it and why it works and why it doesn’t work in certain situations. And so just to quickly cover that, it’s like, especially social media, right? Like, everybody wants to be on social media, which is great, but it’s, I mean, different. Like, different platforms have different reasons why you post there, right? So LinkedIn is very different than Facebook, even though they look and function relatively similarly. Right. Like, they’re both just a place where people just post statuses for the most part, and there’s a little bit of math going on and. Which is the same as Facebook. Right. So. But anyway, so for that metaphor, right, it’s like if you have a website and you’re say, like a doctor’s office, you can post a video of, like, about you so that people can meet you as the doctor before they even walk in for their first visit and see, like, is this a good fit for me? Is this someone that it seems like I would get along with? Right. And a lot of doctors are really personable people. So I think that’s a big advantage for you if you were going to do that, because most doctors don’t do that. Right, right. And then I think the biggest misunderstanding comes from, like, social media and, like, Instagram and TikTok. And, you know, it’s different even than YouTube, because when you’re looking at social, like, everyone wants to do, like, a product video on their Instagram. It’s like, it’s not really for that. Social media is for entertainment. And so you have to understand that, like, you are not posting on social to get more. Like, you’re not posting there to sell more product. Does that make sense? You’re doing it to build a brand that people can connect with.

Matthew
Yeah, that does make a lot of sense. And I’ve seen, I’ve been through your portfolio. We’re definitely going to link to it for anybody who wants to go look at. But I’ve seen it as well, that you tend to. Some of the commercials were very entertaining from that point. They’re trying to build a brand and build, like, a connection with the person much more than, hey, here’s our product, here’s what we sell, here’s how this works. It’s not an infomercial, it’s much more of an entertainment.

Chris
Yeah. And the company I was working for, their demo was 30 to 40. Right? So it’s like, if your demo is 65 up, maybe info is where you go. Right. Like, a lot of that generation, they just want the facts, and then they’ll make a decision. And so, yeah. Have to kind of, like, cater it to your audience. Right.

Matthew
I think you’re also, like, if you pay attention to the big brands that are doing video, uh, like, go look at Red Bull and all the video they produce. Not a single thing on there is, hey, drink Red Bull. It makes you feel better. It’s stunts and airplanes and people jumping out of spaceships. And it has nothing other than the Red Bull logos there. It has nothing to do with their drink.

Chris
No. Yeah, and they don’t have. Yeah. I’ve never seen a single Red Bull commercial or piece of material, the video material that ever mentions a single, like, ingredient in a Red bull. Right. Like, they are not selling the product, they’re selling the brand. Right.

Matthew
Which is. Which is a huge difference. And that’s something I think. I think you’re right. I think companies don’t think that way a lot of the time. And I’ve seen. I’ve seen so many people do this, they just want to talk about that. I’m like, no, you need to tell. You either need to tell your story or you need to create some type of engagement that shows you understand your customer.

Chris
Yeah.

Matthew
Which is very different than you understand your product.

Chris
Right. And, like, for example, I did a contract work, uh, just like, two weeks ago for a company that wanted a bunch of videos for this new stuff they were launching. And they were like, yeah, we want them to be like two minutes each. And I’m like, okay. And I’m, like, reading through, I’m like, the thing is that most people, when they’re watching something on social or something, someone sent them a video or whatever, like, after about a minute, like, they’ve kind of made their decision of whether or not they’re interested.

Matthew
Right, right.

Chris
Like, it’s not really going to benefit you that much to just keep talking about the benefits of your product past a minute when you’re talking about those short form type of videos. And even a lot of my old work is probably too long, maybe even twice as long as it needs to be. But it’s also kind of evolved over the past. You know, you learn ten to 1520 years. Right. Like, people’s attention spans have gotten shorter.

Matthew
Yeah.

Chris
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s just content has gotten a lot more competitive as well. Like, good stuff doesn’t take as long to watch for a lot of times. And so I mean, obviously, sometimes it’s not a great thing, but it is interesting.

Matthew
They’re switching some of the companies that have been focused on the very short content. In particular, TikTok is now actually trying out longer form content.

Chris
Mm hmm.

Matthew
Like, they’re starting to go, okay, we’re too much in the 15 2nd. Like, let’s try. Let’s see what happens if we let people do a 60 minutes video.

Chris
Right.

Matthew
Which is kind of crazy.

Chris
It’s funny how things tend to, like, YouTube wanted to copy TikTok originally because they’re like, oh, TikTok’s blowing up. Like, we got to do shorts. And then they were just advertising the crap out of shorts. Anyone who started doing YouTube shorts when it first came out, they were just, like, pushing that so much, and they would get tons of views and it was really lucrative. But then, now it’s kind of like, you see that TikTok is kind of maxed out on their demographic of people that want to watch 15 2nd videos, and now they’re, yeah, they’re, like, shifting to kind of become each other. How we see in a lot of industries. Right. Like, we see success on two ends, and then they just kind of, like, morph into each other and meet in the middle.

Matthew
Well, I think it’s good to create both types of content. I think short content is great, but you also need the long, long form.

Chris
Yep.

Matthew
For, for specific uses. Um, let’s kind of go into that, you know, and into creating content, obviously, you know, you do a lot of video work, which is very important. If, if somebody’s just looking out our business, like, hey, I just want to get started. Like, what do they really need to be able to get started? Like, what kind of a strategy should they approach? Like, how do we go from a concept to actually having some videos that are going out?

Chris
Yeah, just, I think as a business owner, like, you need to realize that you aren’t the expert, even though, like, you do have final set. Like, obviously you need final sign off on everything, but, right. If you hire a social media expert and then they give you feedback that, like, what you want is maybe not going to resonate. Yeah, you should probably listen to them. I see this a lot between companies and their, and their kind of media departments is that they’ll get advice and then they’ll just ignore it, and then they’re like, why isn’t this stuff viral? Which just kind of a tangent there. There is no such thing as viral company content.

Matthew
Yeah, it doesn’t exist.

Chris
All funded. It’s all marketing. It’s not organic. So if you have this idea that, like, if I just make a really fun video about my company, it will just take off. If it’s good enough, it won’t work. People don’t watch commercials for fun. It doesn’t happen. So if you got the budget, you can make it go viral. Viral by getting views. Right. Like paying for a bunch of people to see it. But that’s just one of the biggest things that I’ve seen with companies that are just like, we just need to make something viral.

Matthew
It’s a secret.

Chris
No, we can make almost anything go viral. But yeah, just going back to the other thing is just working with new companies who maybe haven’t gone into video yet, find somebody and also know that depending what you want, if you’re a company that maybe wants to do podcasts or something, there’s a lot of people that can maybe do both. But if you want more social media, just hire, like, a social media person. And if you want maybe like, commercials and longer form stuff and interviews and things like that, like those, those aren’t always the same person, if that makes sense.

Matthew
They’re very different skill sets.

Chris
Yes, they’re. They’re different skill sets. And if you have someone that has both those skill sets, it’s unlikely that you’re going to be able to pay them a salary of one of those skill sets. Correct. Then be happy with that, and then in the long term. So that’s just kind of, I think, a good starting point to be at all.

Matthew
Right. Yeah, I would agree with that. So let’s say, you know, an entrepreneur starting out, you know, they’re going to start doing this video on their own. What kind of technology can they get away with versus what’s, like, absolutely essential for them to have?

Chris
I mean, that’s the thing, right. I think one of the things people always want to see, like a big camera, and they’re like that this is. Oh, it’s expensive. So that means my video will be good. Um, obviously, the idea is, number one, like, if you have a good idea that is actually going to resonate with people, and then from there, it’s like audio, right? Like, if you have a fun song and you can understand, like, and it sounds good, that’s going to be the biggest thing.

Matthew
Yeah. I’ve heard audio can turn people off. If you do not have good quality audio, like, the video can be bad, but the, the sound will turn people off quicker.

Chris
Exactly. So it’s not that expensive. I mean, it is kind of expensive, but it’s like, you know, spend $150 on a little wireless mic that you can connect to your phone, and that’s. That’s nice. I know they sell, like a ton.

Matthew
Of, like, I would say definitely spend $150 because the little cheapo ones, it’s.

Chris
Like, I have a couple. I made that mistake. I was like, well, I don’t want to invest that much into a mic for my phone. And then I get them and I’m like, I can literally, like, hear the capsule inside the plastic casing. Yeah, just spend a little bit extra and you’ll never, you. I’m not going to say you’ll never have to buy another mic. Right. But you won’t have to buy one for years if you buy a decent one right off the bat.

Matthew
Absolutely. I 100% agree with that. And I think if you’re, if you’re looking for a microphone, it’s very tempting to look at one that, you know, oh, that has the connector for my phone. I tend, me personally, I tend to like having an adapter for the audio just because if I do want to pull out a DSLR or something else, I have the flexibility that I can use the same microphone, you know, like a good road microphone. Little nice road will be universal where I can use it on my cell phone, or I can just as easily use it with my GoPro or my DSLR or a couple different things.

Chris
Right. And that’s the thing, too, right. And I think that’s the benefit, too, of hiring somebody that knows. And that was one of the biggest things for me is I always keep up with the technology, what’s popular, what’s going on, and is something overrated, right. Because, yeah, if you want to start a podcast for your company, that’s great. Do it. You don’t have to spend, you don’t have to buy the Joe Rogan podcast setup, right? Like, those are expensive microphones. You can still get great sound from a microphone.

Matthew
I think that’s all this one was. The boom arm was a little bit of an extra buy, but I didn’t initially come with that. Initially. I just had a little stand. I eventually broke it stand up.

Chris
Exactly. And so just be willing to grow. And I know a lot of people, they see what they want in the end, and they feel like they need to get that right away. But it’s kind of like the same thing with people who do video. It’s a lot of times you can get into paralysis. Right. Of like, well, unless it’s going to be perfect, I don’t want to do it? Yeah, it’s like, well, just start doing it and you will inevitably probably be bad at it at first. Right.

Matthew
Of course. Who isn’t?

Chris
If you don’t start now, you’re just putting yourself further and further back the longer you wait, because you’re not going to grow and you’re not going to learn in that amount of time. Yeah. I would just say, like, any companies who want to start doing it, you don’t have to hire someone necessarily. Right. But if you’re interested in having professional video and audio and everything like that, like, hire them, get their opinions and kind of just implement that into what you’re doing.

Matthew
Absolutely. And I think there’s use cases for different types of video. The high production video, the commercials, the, like, the stuff that’s really, really polished is used very, very differently.

Chris
Yeah.

Matthew
And, you know, kind of going back to your talking about where everybody’s assuming that’s what you need on social, I’ve heard this and I want your opinion on it, is that the high production stuff actually does less well on social media.

Chris
I would, I would say usually, yes. Right. If something’s low production, it feels like, more real. And that’s, I think, what people usually want and especially, like, the TikTok and Instagram areas, like, yeah. They want to feel like they’re watching something that somebody made and not like a team of people made, even if that’s the case.

Matthew
Yeah. And it’s very different, you know, like, I’m always a big grant cardone fan, and there’s very different levels of production. He puts videos out where he’s walking down the street and he’s literally holding his camera shooting a video. Hey, I’m Grant Cardone, blah, blah, blah. But he also has very high end productions where he has a podcast studio, and I’m sure he’s got at least three cameras running simultaneously. Microphones, like the whole big setup, like a Joe Rogan would have. Um. And they’re used in very different setups and very different situations.

Chris
Right. Yeah, I think that’s a great point. It’s just, it doesn’t. Yeah, you don’t have to have a high end production, but, and you can kind of split it up depending on the content that you’re making. But I wouldn’t let, like, the fact that all you have is an iPhone hold you back from starting to make something, you know?

Matthew
Yeah. And I’d argue iPhones are getting to the point now where their cameras are really, really quite good.

Chris
Yeah.

Matthew
Yeah. A lot of times I’m like, do I really want to haul my DSLR around, or do I want to use my iPhone that I already know is waterproof? I can drop it and not freak out and.

Chris
Exactly.

Matthew
So it definitely has its uses. Let’s talk about some key elements of what you think are some basic elements that make a good video.

Chris
Yeah. So I guess starting any video is I’m going to look at what do I want the people to get out of it by the end of. I think that’s the best place to start when you’re creating something, right?

Matthew
Yeah.

Chris
And so by the end, it’s like, because you can start with, like, well, we want it to be funny. It’s like, well, that doesn’t really matter unless you already know what you want people to get by the end of it. Right. Like, that will kind of evolve whether or not it’s funny or dramatic or serious or whatever it is. And so I think creating video, you start with, what do I want to get across by the end? And then. Cause you can get a lot of information across with just 20 seconds, honestly. And so, um, if you do want it to be an educational thing. Right. Like, if you want. If you want, by the end of the video, if you want it to be more of a training thing. I think sometimes, a lot of times, corporations end up kind of making that. I don’t know if it’s by accident, but, like, maybe they just don’t understand that that’s what they did, was that they started with knowing that they just wanted it to educate people into knowing all the things about their product.

Matthew
Yeah.

Chris
So then that’s what it ends up becoming, even though it’s not necessarily what they said they wanted originally. Right. So if you wanted people to get hyped up for a convention that you’re throwing soon, right. You want it to be high energy. You want it to be. And so then just deciding on music, what’s my demographic of people? What kind of music would they probably like? And then just editing it in a way that’s really fast paced and be able to get people thinking like, oh, yeah, this looks like it’s gonna be a great time.

Matthew
So when you say editing it, so it’s fast paced, what does that mean? Break that down for me.

Chris
So editing, right. Like, if you watch something like Breaking Bad or, like, a lot of, some of these longer form tv shows or movies or documentaries especially often are, like, really slow paced. Right. Like, it lets you think about things while you’re watching it. That’s a lot different than when you’re watching some YouTube video where they’re like Mister Beast or something. Right. Like, they’re very different feelings. And so editing fast paced just means a lot of times you’re editing to like, the beats of a song, right. Where we’re only seeing a clip for a second or two before we’re on the next thing, we have transitions that are maybe flipping around or zooming in or whatever it is. Right. So it’s just creating a lot of change very quickly visually is. Is what I was kind of like implying with the.

Matthew
Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Uh, any other elements that you would recommend people need to look at?

Chris
Um, I’m trying to think of a common mistakes people maybe make.

Matthew
Yeah.

Chris
Yeah. I think that people maybe I want to get too attached because one of the hardest things, right, is, especially if you’re making your own stuff, you get really attached to what you were doing and you don’t want to cut anything.

Matthew
Yeah.

Chris
So you’re like, well, this is good stuff. This is good stuff. It’s like. But it’s probably too much of the good stuff. And so that’s one of the things that’s probably going to be the hardest to learn. And you’ll figure it out over time, but it’s, don’t be afraid to cut things that are extra, even if they’re good, because people only have so much time. And so if you want that, if you want that bit of attention, I think that’s important to do.

Matthew
Yeah, I really like that. I think that’s really key. Um, you know, there’s, within sales itself, there’s the elevator pitch. That’s 60 seconds. You got a two minute pitch, a ten minute pitch, an hour, just depending on the situation you have. And videos should really not be any different.

Chris
Yeah, I think it’s a great template. Like, yeah, just figure out, like, hey, I want to say this thing. How do I say in 20 seconds? How do I say it in two minutes? And how do I say it in five minutes? Right. And. And just kind of do it that way.

Matthew
And I love what you said earlier when you said that you can say a lot in 20 seconds. I didn’t really realize this until I started doing the podcasting. And it’s because I’ve been using a program to help me cut and do clips for social, for shorts, for reels, things like that. And I haven’t picked these segments in 32nd segments, 15 2nd segments. And I’m shocked by how much information actually went back and forth between me and whoever the guest was. Within that 15 to 20 seconds, and it makes a full short, normally, like, oh, 20 seconds. That’s not long. You can stick a lot of data in that 20 seconds.

Chris
Like, I’m sure I’ve answered a question that was, like, two minutes, but really, the main meat of what my answer was is probably only, like, 20 seconds long. Right. Like, and then I just kept going even though the answer was already given, you know?

Matthew
Absolutely no, I 100% agree on that. Um, so let’s talk. You. You’ve managed some teams and you’ve, you’ve trained people how to do this. You’ve worked through it. What’s that experience, like, actually training and working with somebody to learn how to do what you do?

Chris
Yeah. So when I started out, I was assistant editor. There was a guy above me. The company kind of, like, went over through a full, like, change up. The CEO got fired. Everything was going crazy. Uh, the guy who was above me left, so I kind of, like, automatically became the head of department, even though it’s just me.

Matthew
Instant promotion.

Chris
Yeah, instant promotion. I honestly thought we were going under. And so I was just kind of waiting. I was like, I’ll collect an employment when I’m looking for something new. They hired a consultant guy who just kind of flipped the whole company around. Things started taking off, and then eventually, after a couple of years, it was like, hey, we need to grow our marketing. And so that’s the other thing. As a business owner, as your company grows, like, your marketing team should grow too, right? To match that so that you can keep growing and growing. So that’s kind of what happened was, it was like, hey, you can hire another person. We can only pay them this much. I was like, we’re never going to get anyone with actual training at that level. Right? So we just kind of asked internally, like, is there anybody who’s interested in learning? And I trained them from scratch. He hadn’t, hadn’t done it before. And so I was like, hey, man, if you, if you’re actually interested, and that’s a big thing with, I think, any job, right? It’s like, if someone has the, the will, then the, like, they can figure it out, right? If you give them time, they’ll do it. And so the guy was awesome. He, he learned it really well. He started out, um, just kind of, like, doing the basic and basic things. And then at this point now he works for Blade HQ. He does all their video stuff.

Matthew
Oh, nice.

Chris
And does, yeah, he’s got a pretty good job there. So, yeah, I mean, that was a big point of pride for me. It was like after the company I was working for went out of business, all of my team found work very quickly and paid well. So, yeah, as far as training somebody new, it’s kind of difficult. But when it comes to video stuff, there’s aspects of a camera. There’s really only three big things, which is your ISO, your f stop, and your shutter speed. So just getting exposure, that’s a huge thing. And then just figuring out how to run audio on a camera, making sure that you’re not missing stuff.

Matthew
I’ve done that before.

Chris
Yeah. That’s pretty much the most terrifying thing is when you don’t realize that you have missed an entire answer or clip of something. And so, yeah, just having somebody that is willing to do it has been the biggest thing for, the success in my career has honestly been hiring really good people.

Matthew
Yeah.

Chris
So, yeah, the two, the first two guys that I hired, they didn’t have any experience. They just had the will. They did awesome. The third person that I ended up hiring for my team, he, I had more money to hire him. So he did already have experience. He came out of college, he was working for a realty company, looking for something else, and then he could hit the ground running. Right. And there’s the advantage there. Right. He doesn’t have the experience necessarily of working in a corporate situation, but as far as technical expertise, he can run all the things. I don’t have to teach or train him anything. And so that’s the advantage right there of just like the speed of adding that person was like way, way, way faster. The other ones that took around like six months before, I would, like, trust them to do something just completely on their own.

Matthew
I think that’s a good, a good point to bring up, actually the, you know, because I see so many jobs out there for videographers, for content creators, for social media, and they’re paying like minimum wage, $12, $10, $15. And I’m sitting there going, do you know the quality of people? So when you say it takes six months for them to get good, like, I think that’s key and critical. Like CEO’s should understand that if you get this person at this level, understand it’ll take them six months before they figure this out.

Chris
Right. And when they do, you need to pay them more. Like, you can’t just keep them at 14. They’ll just go somewhere else and they’ll make decent money.

Matthew
Yeah. They’ll leverage their skills. They learn from you to go do it better.

Chris
Right. You will have trained them just for someone else because you were too cheap to just give them a raise after they were compact job.

Matthew
And I think that happens, unfortunately, quite a bit. Um, I know, you know, working within these worlds, it’s trying. It’s always a negotiation of money versus time and talent, and very, very difficult. Um, yeah, there’s one element, actually, of your bio that really interested me, that I wanted to kind of get into a little bit, and that’s mini documentaries. Uh, the reason for that is there’s a project I’ve got that I want to do, but the other part of it is, Alex Formosi always says this, that you shouldn’t create content, you should document. So he encourages, like, a lot of what he does is talking about what he’s doing, where he’s at, what’s going on. He’s more documenting the process of what he’s going through as a business owner, as an entrepreneur. And that’s what he’s been encouraging businesses to do. And I’m a big fan of documentaries. The one I binge watch more than anything is undercover billionaire off Discovery plus, either that or alone. And alone, it’s all self shot. They all. I know most of the staff, most of the people who’ve been in the first seasons, and so if you were to encourage a company that, hey, you need to be documenting or kind of creating a documentary about your company for content purposes, like, how do you even set up a mini documentary? How does that. I know very little about this other than trying to observe what’s on the screen and figure out how did they shoot that? How did they. How did they do this? How do you start a documentary?

Chris
Yeah. So for that, it wasn’t really so much like them filming it. Right. It wasn’t self filmed or anything, but it was kind of the president of the company was like, hey, we think there would be a big advantage to going to our top sales reps and helping them grow their teams by sending you guys out there. You film with them for a couple of days, and I. And then just cut something together. Right. So for me, the first thing.

Matthew
That sounds very generic as a. As a work order.

Chris
Right, exactly. And so the first thing I did was like, how. How can we? I created questions because I was like, well, we want to do an interview with them. Let me create the questions that I feel like will create some kind of story. Right. So it was like, tell me about how you started. Tell me about your struggles. People really bond, I think, with, like, hearing about someone overcoming something. Right. Or think seeing, like, you’re hearing that they went through something that they went through as well. Right. So if I was a salesperson looking to join someone or to grow my own business, like, I would be more likely to reach out to that person because I’m like, I feel like I’ve connected with them in some way.

Matthew
Okay.

Chris
And so we flew out there, had the questions ready, and it was kind of with documentary stuff. That’s part of the hard part is you’re winging it for the most part because you don’t really know what’s going to happen. And if it’s staged, it’s so cringey. Like, I don’t know what other word to use. It’s so bad.

Matthew
Yeah.

Chris
You stage things like, it’s so obvious and it feels weird and I feel so disingenuous.

Matthew
So I’ve always wondered how that worked because, like, you know, you see, oh, there’s a producer who’s trying to step in and do this and do that. I’m like, how does that. That’s not life. How does that.

Chris
No. Yeah. And like, that. I mean, that’s. That’s what reality tv is, right? And that’s why it can be entertaining, but it’s not. No one feels like, oh, wow, I can’t believe that happened because it didn’t happen. It was clearly a setup. But, yeah, just going, sitting with them, asking them kind of like, hey, what do you tell us about yourselves? What do you guys like to do for fun? No one ever thinks that they’re interesting or that they do anything, right. Like, every time anyone asks you what your hobbies are, it’s always like, ah, what do I do? What do I like? Well, that no one will judge me for, right? Like, no one ever wants to see what they actually like or whatever it is.

Matthew
Yeah.

Chris
And so ended up just being really cool, having them just be like, hey, what do you guys like? Do you guys like to eat family dinner together? Do you guys like. And whether it’s church or their kids do dance or whatever, it is, just kind of like filming parts of their life that they’re able to do and then having that kind of as b roll overlap. And all the mini documentaries we did were about three or four minutes long.

Matthew
Okay.

Chris
And you can see those on my YouTube channel. But, yeah, I was pretty proud of them. Kind of a funny story for one of them. They were big skiers. They live in Park City, and they were like, hey, can you film us skiing on the mountain? Do you know how to ski? And I was like, yeah, I know how to ski. I didn’t realize they were going to, like, a double black diamond hill. And so I’ve skied, like, three times. And so I’m like, yeah, I could hold a camera while I go down a mountain slowly, but I was like, I couldn’t even stop going down. I didn’t know how to stop skiing. It was insane. Yeah. It was just kind of like figuring.

Matthew
Out the cameraman never dies. Right?

Chris
Yeah, exactly. They’re easily replaceable. Yeah, it was really cool. Just be able to see the difference, because you would think I asked relatively similar questions to each family. And the videos, in my opinion, are all quite starkly different.

Matthew
Interesting. Yeah. Because everybody has their own life and their own things they’re going through.

Chris
Yeah. They didn’t answer anything, like, even, in my opinion, remotely similar to each other, which was. And I did about six of them, I think.

Matthew
So. So with these, you’re. You’re intermixing, like, an interview along with, like, b roll of what they’re actually doing.

Chris
Right. So a big thing with our company was they had these, um, standards that they were trying to focus on. So it was like, family fitness, um, finance. So I kind of tried to figure out, like, how can we visually film some of that while we’re here? Finance was a little bit tough. Right.

Matthew
Or, like, yeah, it’s an obscure topic.

Chris
That’s right. And it’s like, I don’t want to just, like, film you walking around a church building or something. Right. So it’s like, how do. How do we make that interesting? And, and that was probably one of the questions where it was more interesting after we interviewed them. That’s kind of when the ideas came of, how can we show this in a way that’s not just, like, religious.

Matthew
Yeah, no, that that makes sense. And I think that’s probably one of those abstract topics are really difficult until you talk to them and get the idea right. That’s. That’s really cool. So, so if we’re trying. What types of videos at first, if we’re starting off a strategy, we’re getting going, what are the first types of videos they should put out and which one should they save till later?

Chris
I think, yeah. With running a business. Right. If we’re talking about business owners, I think most business owners know, like, that the business you do is like, it’s. It’s about you. It’s not. It’s not your product. Usually people will do business with a person. They don’t care quite as much about the product. As they do about who they’re doing business with.

Matthew
Yeah.

Chris
And so I would just do, I would start out with maybe doing a video about that just showcases the kind of person that you are so that if there is a business that you’re selling to or customers that you have that they can kind of know who they’re dealing with and have it be as genuine as you can. And then from there, people have different kinds of humor. Some people don’t really have that many great ideas about doing something funny. You don’t have to do something funny, but just have something where it fits your brand and the way you run your business, I think. So if it’s knives. Right. If you’re like, I don’t have funny ideas for a knife video, and I don’t have a bunch of people to help me make something, then just film a video of how you think it would be cool to look at knives. Right.

Matthew
Yeah. Use cases for them.

Chris
Yeah, exactly.

Matthew
Like, I think the creativity will come, too. I think the more you start off and the more you get comfortable with it, the better it gets.

Chris
Exactly.

Matthew
You’ll kind of figure out like, oh, well, I’m making a video doing this with this knife, or I’m, you know, I’m showing how sharp it is. Well, what if you did, you know, some video about it being, you know, like, super sharp and somebody cut themselves or, you know, do something comic with. Yeah, but it takes time to come up with those ideas. Those don’t just fall out of the sky.

Chris
Right. And don’t be afraid to pivot. Like, like I said, it’s not going to be something that’s a, probably going to be successful immediately. Give it at least a year. Start just making something at least probably once a week for your business. And then if something’s not successful and you’ve been trying it for a month or two, then try something new. And then if that’s not successful, try something new again. So I did a podcast with a buddy of mine, a couple, I think it was like, five or six years ago, and we had, like, a little bit of disagreements about what it was going to look like. And we did it for a year and it did grow a little bit, but it was like he wasn’t willing to pivot and so it couldn’t go anywhere.

Matthew
Yeah.

Chris
So it’s like, be willing to change what you’re doing to test. So even if you do find success with one thing, like, yes, keep replicating that a little bit. But you can’t only just commit to start only making that video. Right.

Matthew
Well, eventually that stops.

Chris
Yeah, exactly. So you’re going to pigeonhole yourself if you, like, find a little bit of success with one idea. If you don’t, just keep trying different stuff occasionally.

Matthew
Yeah, I 100% agree with that. There’s the japanese concept of Kaizen, which is always improving, always trying to do something better. And I think if you pigeons hole yourself, that’s going to fall apart. It always does. We’ve talked in a couple of other podcasts with other marketers and SEO and stuff that people try, oh, I’m going to do this hack for SEO. And so all of a sudden, their website traffic takes off. It’s going really good. And that lasts a couple months, and then all of a sudden, Google changes the algorithm to accommodate that hack, and now it’s no longer valuable. So it’s kind of the same with video content.

Chris
Mm hmm. Yeah. And trends. Trends fade. Right. That’s the whole point of a trend. It’s like, it’s not going to last. So you don’t necessarily have to follow a trend, but if you don’t have any ideas, it’s not a bad place to start. Everyone on social media is just copying each other, so it’s not like you can’t do it. Yeah, but don’t, don’t feel like, oh, yeah, this will be easy now because I got a lot of views on this one thing with this one trend.

Matthew
Right. And if somebody else got a lot of views on something and you didn’t, don’t take it personally. I think that’s, I know plenty of people who are like, why? I posted this video that was way better than theirs and I didn’t get any views. I’m like, that’s not how it works.

Chris
Yeah, it’s not how it works.

Matthew
So I guess kind of along that lines, I’d be kind of curious, your opinion on evergreen content versus more organic stuff that’s constantly going on, whether that’s vlogging, you know, podcasting, just shooting and documenting videos daily, versus something that’s going to be evergreen and stay there. What’s your opinion on the two of those from a business perspective?

Chris
I don’t think there’s a ton of evergreen content. I think obviously, if you have, like an about my company video or something, that’s something that will stick around for a long time, you can probably get years out of it, but I don’t think it would necessarily get like a ton of. It won’t be shared a lot, probably. Right. So if you have it posted on your website, people will check it out, but they’re probably not going to be like, oh, did you see this? Or oh, this is cool, right? It’s just, it’s just a place to establish and that’s the other thing that video can do, right, is give you some legitimacy. So that’s the benefit of hiring somebody to make a video for you is if it looks professional, it gives you some legitimacy for your business. So yeah, yeah. There’s not, I don’t think, a ton of evergreen content. If you just wanted to make some kind of, I don’t know that I could call them training videos but kind of explainer videos for your product, those are fine too, just to have on your website. But for the most part, you’re going to be wanting to make stuff that is changing constantly. So that’s kind of why people even have a salary job as a content creator at a company is because people, yeah, you can’t just keep sharing the same video over and over. You have to keep making new stuff and trends change. And so as far as organically making stuff and having that be shared, just the interesting thing too is you need to look at your stats and YouTube gives you free analytics and I think most of the companies give you free analytics on whats taking off and whats not doing well. And so a big thing for me was I was surprised at how one of our products, it was like our most viewed YouTube video and it was almost an hour long. And I was like how? Like it was a podcast where a lady was just going over a PowerPoint presentation of the product. And it was because there was a certain group of people in the company that were like very into all the details of the ingredients and everything. And it’s like, even if that’s not necessarily where you want to go, it’s not necessarily a bad thing to give that base of customers what they want. And maybe if you have a group that’s really into the ingredients and all that stuff, you lean into it a little bit and give them some content that will help them with their selling your product or whatever it is.

Matthew
Yeah. So im curious about that. You brought up something that actually kind of made me think back in the event that, lets say you have a former employee whos in the video or theres some reason an event that I could think of was a law firm I was working with. The guy was no longer their client and they wanted to take down the video. I made the argument to leave it cause this video had like 50,000 views. It was three years old, but the guy was semi famous, and they still got comments on it every week. So I was like, I know you’re no longer his attorney, but leave it alone. Like it’s getting you attention.

Chris
Yeah. I had the same issue with the company I worked with. Every time anyone left the company and went somewhere else, they wanted to take him out. And so. And it was, it was all dealing with people that do, were doing sales. So there are, there’s a lot of people switching companies. Right. So.

Matthew
Oh, all the time.

Chris
It was extremely frustrating to try and either, because that’s the thing, either you take the video down or you have to try and re edit them out and re upload it, and then it just gets weird. And so I would, I’m. I’m on your kind of thought process of, like, there’s really no reason to take them out unless they’ve actively been trash talking you or something.

Matthew
Yeah.

Chris
Which most professionals won’t do.

Matthew
Even if they were a spokesperson. You know, I had this a while back. I actually worked at the company that was in the survival space, and I did most of their content creation at the time. And for the most part, most of my videos are still up, and I don’t work for them anymore. And I have no problem with my videos still being up. Right. Because I knew that was good content. I know it’s stuff people liked. I’ve seen a couple of them come down, and I’m like, really? You guys should have just left those alone. I don’t know why you took them down, but.

Chris
Okay, so I agree with you. I don’t think there’s a really. I don’t think it’s really valuable to take videos down, especially if they’re successful, unless there’s some egregious thing that happened with the person that was in it. Yeah, it’s just, yeah, I don’t get the reasoning.

Matthew
I would argue it would have to be publicly egregious, too. Like, you know, if they suddenly have a criminal record or, like, they’re in the news for killing somebody, then you, then you part ways.

Chris
But, and, like, I kind of get it right. Everyone wants to say, oh, yeah, you know, it’s business. It’s not personal, but it’s like, it’s all personal. It literally is all personal. So I I’m sure that behind the scenes, there was some sort of falling out, and that’s why they wanted to take things down, but it’s like you’re just hurting yourself. Do you want to make money or do you want to, you know, be hurt about something, it’s up to you, I guess.

Matthew
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. Let’s talk a little bit like emerging trends in video production right now. Where’s video production going? What new technologies are there out there that. Have you played with anything recently? I know I’ve been playing with AI editing features a lot.

Chris
Yeah. So I think I might release a course pretty soon about just, it’s incredible what AI can do. And I have a lot of things that I don’t think are okay that AI is doing, but as far as stealing people’s work to train their AI’s on it. But yeah, I think AI is huge. There’s certain softwares right now that are coming out that are just massively.

Matthew
Do you have any likes?

Chris
So like, for example, our social media person, she started using canva and she was able to do things that the graphic designer was doing just because it just made it so much easier and streamlined that it’s not necessarily making better stuff. But it was like, this is, it’s not even good enough. It was like good quality to the point where she could do it and it didn’t really matter whether or not it was that much better when the graphic designer did it. Right. So I think canvas gonna, I think.

Matthew
That goes back to that argument we made about, you know, the, the production value doesn’t necessarily that, that little tiny bit that the graphic designer would have gotten it to doesn’t actually. Diminishing returns.

Chris
Exactly. Yeah. Diminishing returns on projects. So, um, yeah, there’s that. I think I’m, I’m curious to see, because I’ve, I’ve heard for years now, like the past two or three years, people have been talking about the fall of Adobe and that we’re going to be switching, people are making videos that they’re switching off of Adobe and whatever. And I think it’ll be interesting because I haven’t seen them make a misstep this big as far as telling people that they’re going to use their content to train their, uh, artificial intelligence stuff. So I think that actually could push people out of using adobe. And so we’ll see if they backpedal on that or not.

Matthew
Um, I feel like Adobe has a steep learning curve.

Chris
Yeah, it’s for people who are like, in it to do it for a job, usually.

Matthew
Yeah, I know for myself, I tend not to use it, um, like premiere and stuff. I, I could, um, I definitely have it, but oftentimes it’s so much faster to use cap cut or canva. Like, I do a lot of video editing in canva sometimes just because it’s easier. Adobe, I typically use after effects if I need to do some type of an effect or something. But that’s, that’s something you’re doing on one clip, not the total editing of the film.

Chris
Yeah. And so, yeah, I think, honestly, Capcut and canva are going to be game changing in the next year or two.

Matthew
Yeah.

Chris
Because first of all, they’re not subscript or I think one of them is canva consumer.

Matthew
Both of them have a subscription level.

Chris
Um, but they’re not nearly what use.

Matthew
Them free, but yeah, yeah.

Chris
And so it’s like, capcut’s fast. You can do it on your phone. And that’s the thing that’s, that was hard for me to grasp for a little while because I was like, why are you doing this on your phone? I would see, you know, the social media person editing on their phone. I’m like, you could edit this so much faster if you were just doing it on your laptop. Right.

Matthew
I still argue that, yeah. I argue that cabcut edits faster on your computer than it does on your phone, and you have a little bit more control.

Chris
Mm hmm. But the point is that, like, you can do it on your phone.

Matthew
Yeah.

Chris
And it’s pretty efficient. And the fact that you can just be on your couch working rather than at your desk, it’s, it makes a big difference and so.

Matthew
Huge difference.

Chris
And the fact that you don’t have to offload your footage from your phone, you can just do it straight on your phone. Right. So I think we’ve already seen a pretty big shift into vertical video, but I think it’s going to get even more and more and more, um, people just don’t want to turn their phone sideways. And I get it. Yeah. I think that the biggest things that are going to be photography and creating graphics and things is going to become so easy with canva and capcut and doing these short, little video clips that have fun, captions that pop up and all these things. We’ve really democratized how quickly and efficiently you can make video, especially short form stuff.

Matthew
Yeah. I think there’s such a use case for AI at this point that’s growing. You can do AI voiceovers now. I’ve tried the AI video makers. They’re not great.

Chris
No, they’re not great.

Matthew
There’s still a long way to go on that.

Chris
I do think eventually they’re going to kill off stock video stuff. So in my opinion, stock photography is probably almost dead. I can’t imagine anyone’s going to be making money off of stock photography in the next three years. Same thing with stock music. I think stock video is just going to be the last one to go. But it will go if you’ve seen some of the stuff recently with, I think its called Sora. Its getting close to where itll make whatever stock crap you want to make. And so I dont think it will get rid of the reasoning to hire a videographer, but itll get rid of all of the opportunities for doing stock stuff.

Matthew
Yeah, if all youre doing is stock stuff, then it definitely will. But I would make an argument that you dont want to do too much of that. It comes across too canned. It’s not personal. There’s still a very big place for a videographer.

Chris
Yeah, it’s boring. A lot of the stuff that’s like, more affordable is like eastern european people. It’s like, there’s not a ton out there anyways. But yeah, when you, when you start seeing like, how diverse and how much you can do with all the photo stuff, it’s just a matter of time till the video stuff gets there with stock.

Matthew
Yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s, it’s getting close. I’ve tried a couple, but I’m like, you missed it here.

Chris
Right now. They’re not doing super great.

Matthew
It depends on your niche, too. I will say that it depends on your niche. I worked at the hunting company a while, and that’s a very small niche for stock footage. So there’s very limited resources even within canva, like, the stock footage they have in there. I’m like, we’ve basically used it all. We have to get to content creation at this point.

Chris
Yeah, but that’s another point, too, that people may, especially if you’re making your own stuff, you might feel like, oh, I already used that. I can’t use it again. It’s like most people aren’t really going to, unless you keep using in every video, they’re probably not going to care that you use it again or even remember because they’ve probably also seen it in five other videos. Right.

Matthew
I’ve heard that. I’ve heard that argument, actually. Even about using, like, reposting the same post or the same video is unless you have millions of followers. And even if you do, 10% of them saw your video.

Chris
Right.

Matthew
So even if you repost it, who cares?

Chris
Yeah. And if it’s been long enough, like, they’re not going to care. Yeah. What? They just don’t watch it again.

Matthew
Who cares? Yeah, no, I think that’s a very good argument for that. And you really can reuse and cut, I know personally that’s something that led to the success and rise of Andrew Tate was, and I’ve seen ads for companies now that are trying to do this in the videography is, you know, his whole model is he does podcasts and puts out kind of long form content and then all his followers cut that up. And so they’re constantly recutting it, remaking videos, short videos, medium long videos, motivational ones. They’re just reusing the same like 1020 podcasts he’s done, right, and just going, oh, we’re going to cut them up and re scramble them and move them around, which I’m like, it’s actually a genius way to do some marketing.

Chris
Yeah, and that’s popular too, with all of the motivational speaker guys too, is there’s, they, yeah, they give one speech and then it’s cut up 50 different.

Matthew
Ways and, yeah, no, I 100% agree with that. And I think, man, the corporate, the corporate world, especially in video, is, is absolutely huge. So if businesses are trying to stay ahead of that curve, if they actually want to compete and want to dominate in their industry, what are they looking to do?

Chris
So if you want to, if you want to be at the top, right? Like it’s all about hiring the right person to do what you want to do, but ideally, right, you’re going to want, I think how do you pick the right person? Picking the right person would be just finding somebody. When you’re interviewing, people don’t just look at their credentials, right? Like, figure out if they have a similar, like, not attitude necessarily, but like, do they like the same kind of things in their content that you do? And so when you’re asking about, like, what do you think of this brand or that brand, right. Like, figure out a brand that’s like maybe similar to what you’re doing and ask whoever you’re interviewing, like, do you, what, how do you feel about this brand? Do you have any ideas how you would have done this? And so that you can kind of get somebody that’s going to be on the same page as you because it’s, it’s difficult, right? Like, everyone has their own ideas. And so if, if you can at least have a starting point of, like, you both are similar on, on the way that you view content, it’s going to help, I think, make you take off a lot quicker making videos. So hiring our person is not only that. But like you also want to hire someone who’s dependable and honest and gets their own time and is willing to learn and not throw fits. And I mean this is common employee stuff. Right. But I’m shocked at the number of employers that will hire someone where I’m like, it was so obvious before you even hired them that they were like a bad fit. And so I think thats a big.

Matthew
Mistake that we need somebody. So were going to pick somebody instead of waiting.

Chris
Yeah, so they hurry and pick someone or they just look at the application, they only spend three minutes on an interview with them and then they just hire. And its like, I mean that, yeah that happened a ton where I was working. So its and maybe some people just have a good feeling for it and some people dont. Im not sure why some people tend.

Matthew
To hire poorly, but I. Yeah I think that’s interesting. It’s probably a combination of budget hurry. You know, like you said before, your typical CEO does not understand video production. So if they are going to try to come at it from, oh, I know everything about this, like it’s, it’s not going to work for you. But what I really think is interesting is, you know, I always, always made the argument that if you understand sales and marketing, you can work in any niche. But from what it sounds like from what you were just saying, when you’re looking for somebody that’s actually content creation video that needs to tell your story, they actually kind of need to understand and be a little bit from your world, more or less.

Chris
Yeah, I mean that’s the thing, right? I’ve had looking for work, I’m like, I’ve had people reach out, they’re like, hey, do you want to do a wedding? And I’m like, I don’t do weddings. Like, you could hire me. I have tons of experience. I’m fully capable of filming a wedding. However, I don’t make wedding videos. So who knows if you’re gonna get what you want. Yeah, like I’ll try my best, but I’m not a wedding videographer, so you gotta hire the right person for what? For what you’re doing.

Matthew
I think that’s interesting. So that, so within the world of videography, there’s very different skill sets based on what you’re trying to achieve.

Chris
For sure. Yeah. So like, and that’s the too, it’s like, oh, I, you hire someone that worked on some movie that you’ve heard of it, it’s like, yeah, but do you make movies? So why are you hiring them not, not that they can’t do it. I don’t know whether or not they could. But it’s like you may be seeing experience where there is none.

Matthew
Yeah.

Chris
If you’re hiring that way, or they’re.

Matthew
Going to try to bring that style into your company, that’s not what you’re looking for.

Chris
Having conflicting. Right. And they’re trying to make long form content and you’re like, I just wanted short videos. And they’re like, well, to tell my story, I need five to seven minutes. It’s like, well, our people want 1 minute video, so you can end up running into problems.

Matthew
Yeah, I can see that for sure. So look, man, I gained a lot out of this. I think our audience definitely will have to. There’s a lot of good info here. We definitely want to get, you know, we’ll have you back and go into some of the more nitty gritty details, you know, how we film, how we, how do we really plan a shoot, session, whatever. Like, I’d love to get into some more details with you in the future on it and have you back. I think there’s so much in the way the world is working right now with video being key. I mean, if you look at any social media, every client I have right now, their videos do better than their static posts every time.

Chris
Yeah.

Matthew
Like, without a doubt. So the algorithms are very clearly preferentially giving treat that, preferential treatment to the videos. They’re trying to get video out more. And I think companies need to understand that it’s, it’s much cheaper to pay for a static post from a social media person. But I think the video, like, it’s actually worth the money because you get much more engagement, much more attention. It’s, it’s definitely much more worth going after.

Chris
Yeah.

Matthew
Awesome. Well, we really appreciate having you on today. We’re going to go ahead and end here. We’re going to link down in the show notes to your profile and to your, your portfolio so that way people can find you. If anybody wants to work on any, you know, commercials, podcasts, training videos, mini documentaries, all that stuff, go ahead and reach out to Chris. He’s a great resource for it. And we’ll see you all next time.