Preparation
Allow at least a day for filming and around 8 hours for editing. You may also need to allow a couple of extra hours for encoding.
Ingredients
| 1 Digital video camera 1 wireless microphone |
3 Lights (optional) 1 computer (Mac or PC) |
Directions
- Always check your equipment before you set out on location.
- Work to a storyboard wherever possible it will save you time.
- Consider the environment you are working in not just the light but the sound as well. People actually have a greater tolerance of bad pictures than bad sound.
- Always use a tripod and if you are looking to stream the video keep movement to a minimum. Fast moving shots require higher levels of compression which in turn means bigger file sizes.
- Always try to shoot more than one take of each shot. You may think you ‘have it’ but you could be surprised by the results.
- Don’t forget to shoot plenty of cutaway shots (the interviewer and or the environment.) There will always be shots to ‘cover’ and or areas that will benefit from more variety.
- Shoot a variety of different focal lengths of the subject. This will help to maintain interest on the part of the viewer.
- Don’t be afraid to experiment – an office chair with castors can make for an excellent dolly track.
Preparation
Allow around 15 minutes – a little longer if you want to include a logo.
Ingredients
| 1 computer (Mac or PC) 1 email account |
1 logo (optional) |
Directions (PC Outlook)
- Open Outlook and Select Tools > Options from the menu bar. Select the ‘Mail Format’ Tab and press the ‘Signatures’ button in the ‘Signatures’ sub-section.
- Click the ‘New’ button and a new window will open; enter a name to identify this signature. Then click ‘OK’.
- Enter the desired text for your email signature it is best to have no more than 6 lines of text. Then click ‘ok’ and ‘ok’ again. You can now send an email to all your friends showing off your new email signature.
- If you wish to insert a logo right click on the text window and select 'insert image'. You can then navigate to the appropriate image file from your computer (be careful to keep file sizes to a minimum.)
Click Here to view the Mac Mail instructions
Preparation
Allow around 15 minutes – a little longer if you want to include a logo.
Ingredients
| 1 computer (Mac or PC) 1 email account |
1 logo (optional) |
Directions (Mac Mail)
- Open Mac Mailer and go to the Mail Application menu and select Preferences. Select the Signatures tab from the tabs bar.
- Click the (+) symbol to create a new signature then add a signature name to identify it. Add your desired signature in the next box to the right.
- If you wish to add this signature to every email select the signature’s name from the Signature pop-up menu. Or if you would rather chose a signature when you compose your message you can do this by selecting it in the 'From' drop down box.
- Remember you can drag and drop signature files between email accounts as well.
- If you wish to insert a logo simply drag it into the text box (watch the file size though!)
Click Here to view the Outlook instructions
Preparation
Take as much time as you need. The most important thing here is key word and description relevance. Work out which words most accurately sum up the product or service you are offering. Remember too many words can reduce your 'relevance'.
Ingredients
| 1 or more websites 1 internet connection |
1 text or HTML editing program 1 google account (optional) |
Directions
- Make sure your website includes meta tagging for easy listing. This 'tagging' will consist of a basic site description and keywords.
- Search engines find your site from the textual content within it. The more text you have the higher the possibility a search engine will list your site. Use as much text as possible and try not to use images for text, as search engines cannot read this.
- Search engines also asses how popular your site is, the more people click through to your site the better. If a very popular site links to you this will also increase your popularity and therefore your search index.
- The more websites that link to your website the higher your search index will be. Try to get other websites to link to you and link to other websites* the higher their index the better. This is often referred to as reciprocal linking.
- Monitor your site regularly to see how it is performing. A good (and completely free tool) is Google Analytics (*see what we did there?)
