A Nose for Film

It’s pretty well accepted that if you want to be a successful filmmaker, you’ve got to have a nose for business. But how important is it to have a nose for film as a business-person? In this inaugural post on the Comet Tale Productions blog, I’ll talk for a bit about the importance of video from a business perspective.

Today’s society, the most visually oriented society to date, consumes an incredible amount of images. We are absolutely inundated with visual stimulus from billboards, to print advertisements, to instagram, to television and YouTube. Netflix members watch more than 1 billion hours of television shows and movies through the service per month. Instagram users post more than 45 million photographs per day (that’s a whopping 1,350,000,000 photos in a 30-day month). The importance and prevalence of visual media today is quite clear, and it can be used for far more than merely posting a picture of your breakfast with a nostalgic filter.

While it’s not necessary that every business-person have a keen understanding of video (sorry accountants), marketers should definitely take some time to familiarize themselves with the power and uses of video. Time for a rapid-fire statistics break: 

• videos can increase business calls by 18%, the number of business profile clicks by 30%, and website visits by 55%
• the average social video campaign generates a 30% ROI just by being shared and passed around
• video in e-mail marketing increases click-through rates by over 96% 

What is it about video that makes it such an effective tool? For this, I’m going to give my own personal, “soft” answer to this. I haven’t performed controlled experiments to deduce these findings; they’re merely my own personal musings on the power of video. Aside from an in-person encounter, video is the most human form of communication—text sits passively on the page, radio broadcasts disembodies voices, still images freeze life artificially in time. Viewers connect on a deep level with video (I’m sure mirror neurons have a thing or to do with that as well). And it is this emotional connection, resonating within the psyche of the viewer, that makes video such a powerful tool.

Looking to increase your brand recognition, announce a new product, attract a new class of recruits? There’s no better way to do all that than with a succinct and heartfelt video.

Stay tuned for a post on the process behind the final product—a post on what goes into producing a video.

-- by Joseph Baron