Write as you speak.
This is perhaps so obvious it may seem patronising! I think my writing is better for never having been a “writer.” We speak very differently from the way we write. We use simple plain English and our grammar is very different. We don’t use words like “whilst” (a particular pet hate of mine) we write it, if you must, but we never say it. There are many instances of this type of word. If you read out loud what you have written you should hear any words you wouldn’t normally use.

Find a Voice.
When you write a script hear your voice as you write, if you are writing for someone else hear their voice, it will help you with point one.

Personality.
When we write personal email or text we are chatty. A script has to be chatty, you need to add words like “Right” at the beginning of sentences, even the odd “OK” don’t forget this script needs personality, don’t fill it with your normal ticks – mine is the old “Yes, No” prefix in answer to a question. But do give the script the personality of the person delivering. Even if the script is a technical demonstration or educational, the temptation is to write perfect English. It will sound written and really boring.

Be Authentic.
This is probably the single most important thing when writing. Particularly when writing for someone else. You must use their voice, and their thougts. If you are selling you company and employ a presenter to make the video, remember they are “a presenter” not an employee. Don’t write it as if they were working at the company, you have to write in the third and not first person to maintain authenticity.

Simple is good.
Don’t try to be cleaver, use words you know, it you have to look up words for their meaning don’t use them, don’t use a thesaurus unless it is to jog you memory.

Repetition
If you listen to people talk they often repeat themselves, don’t in your script, sure set out an outcome, deliver the content and summarise. But if you are talking about a company, a product or a concept don’t keep repeating their names. Even is you are describing how to use a TV remote don’t keep saying “remote”.

Editing
If you give your script to someone to proof read, you are often say, can you check over this? Often the people who proof read for me are good at English, I am not so I am really saying, can you check my spelling. What I am not asking is for them to remove all my personality, take out all my carefully placed redundant words of personality. SO if you are asked to edit or proof read a script, you too must use a voice, the voice of the person who is going to deliver the words on screen.

Conclusion
Writing a script is very rewarding, it can be great fun and it is certainly very creative. I am sorry if any of the above seems so simply as to be patronising. In mitigation I would say that I have seen enough bad scripts and heard enough bad video to justify this post. And remember professional script writer make a living because written for the screen in any context is not as easy as it sounds, partly because if you stick to my guidelines you will hear the most natural and effortless words when your script is delivered.

We kept costs to a minimum on these shoots, mainly by actually going to their warehouse to shoot the footage. We set up our portable studio in a quiet back room. The main advantage for the client is the reduction in transport costs. Shipping the product to our studio is expensive. It is much more cost effective for us to go to them. There is another saving in time too, it can take us a fair time to assemble the chairs and repacking them afterwards is a nightmare. By going to the warehouse the items can be assembled by experts and either repacked or taken directly to the factory outlet to be sold as ex-demonstration models. This reduces the amount of time we take to shoot. All these savings are passed onto our clients, they get a cost effective video and we have fewer back problems and broken nails.

It is also a good time to look at the playlist player. At first glance it doesn’t look any different. Yet it contains as many videos as you can fit to a playlist in the same space as a single player. And you can update the play list at anytime without having to re-embed the player on your web site or blog. Simply delete or add videos to your playlist.

Now to get to the playlist features on the player. Simply hover over the video to reveal the control bar, then click on the icon I have highlighted below. NOw you will get access, through a nice tabbed set of thumbnails, to any video in your play list. You can scroll and click on any in the window and they will play on the large player, neat!

We like playlist player but would love even more customisation. Particularly the ability to default to having all the thumbnails revealed in the initial state. We’d also like more control over all the players. I know you can get third party solutions to make up players using the google youtube API, or you can design your own players using the API straight. But its not that easy for the regular web user, it needs a knowledge of actionscript etc. Still you can easily set up what we have here as an example. Together with some great new pepper Rafferty videos delivered at a great price!

Look forward to doing this shoot! Big fan of your videos!

Milan Direct

Milan Direct is Australia’s LARGEST Designer Furniture Retailer with over 100,000 highly satisfied customers served and over 400,000 pieces of designer furniture placed! Milan Direct is the #1 Online Store for Office Chairs, Office Furniture and Designer Furniture.

Milan Direct was recognised as a BRW Fast Starter in 2010 and 2011, as one of the 100 fastest growing start-up companies in Australia. Milan Direct also trade in the UK at Milan Direct UK