🎥 How to Make a Video Essay

Long-form explanation videos are hard to execute successfully, but if done right it can skyrocket your YouTube presence. 

Many YouTube channels have found huge success in lengthy, detailed video essays.

Aaron has an archive of over 500 interviews with entrepreneurs, owns a company, and is genuinely the biggest business nerd I know. So, we saw the perfect opportunity to make business & entrepreneur-centric video essays for the Aaron Watson Channel.

We just published our first one about Steve Jobs Stealing Business Practices from the Founder of Polaroid. Throughout the process, we made note of a few things that worked, and a few things we’re definitely going to change for next time.

The process unfolded as follows:

1. Come up with the hook for the video. Ask ourselves?

• Why would someone watch?

• What story needs to be told?

• What perspective can we offer?

2. Summarize the Topic

• Cite sources

3. Send the summary & corresponding research to script writer

4. Brainstorm compelling titles

• Thank you Jake Thomas

• Learn more about how to create clickable video titles in this week’s EVM episode

5. Design and iterate on multiple thumbnails

6. Revise script with the writer

• Make every point as clear and simple as possible

7. Retrieve b-roll and appropriate stock footage & images

8. Shoot A-roll

• Prepare to shoot multiple takes for each section

9. Edit V1

• This is what Piper does for clients too

10. Review V1, provide feedback

• Here’s how to give good feedback on videos

11. Incorporate feedback, edit V2

12. Three more editing cycles

13. Audio Mastering

• Our new audio specialist reduced the reverb and balanced the sound

14. Upload & schedule

Lessons We Learned

We had our fair share of hiccups, but ultimately the team learned things throughout the process to make the next video essay even better:

1. Use Artificial Light

We made the mistake of shooting in the afternoon and relied on primarily natural light. The shoot took about 2 hours and over that time, the light changed drastically.

In preparation for our next video essay, we are organizing a set that is lit entirely artificially with a clean, professional background.

2. Keep the Intro Concise

We hired a script writer for our video essay, and when we shot, edited, and delivered the first cut of the essay to him for feedback, he pointed out one if his own mistakes:

The intro was too long.

When people click on a long video on YouTube, they don’t want you to spend too much time in the beginning hyping up the premise. The intro should set up the rest of the video for success, not drag along and make people click away.

3. Be Excessive When Compiling B-Roll

Great video essays have great pacing, and one of the core reasons for that is the b-roll included throughout. B-roll assists in telling the story and you can never really have too much of it.

Spend double the time you think is necessary collecting b-roll, images, motion graphics, etc., because the last thing you want to happen is wind up halfway through the edit and realize you’ve run out of b-roll.

We’re excited to continue to produce these videos throughout the rest of 2023, and I’m sure we will learn more and iterate on the process again and again.

If you’ve published a video essay yourself, send it to me! I’d love to watch it.

In the meantime, have and ELITE Week,

Hannah

Elite Video of the Week:

In this video, Hannah talks about the best way to craft your YouTube title to optimize for clicks.