Getting to know you

An explainer video is an important component of your professional brand portfolio. This allows the customer and viewer to know just what it is that you offer and the value you can provide. The explainer video is a great place to share your values, your purpose, and showcase your past work and experience. Whether it be a live-action video of you talking to the camera or a "whiteboard" video you create containing just text and graphics, an explainer video offers a more personal component of your website, so site visitors feel like they know you on a more personal level.

When brainstorming your approach to an explainer video, a helpful tool to conceptualize your ideas is to storyboard. A storyboard contains various drawings and sketches to plan out how you want your video to flow, it's like an outline but with sketches. Storyboarding can be as vague or as detailed as you want but as always, the more descriptive the better. Mapping out exactly what you want to say, how you want to say it, and when through storyboarding is a great place to start with trying to create your explainer video.

Here is an example of a storyboard from a movie I'm sure you can guess, Finding Nemo.
 

Another great resource for conceptualizing your creative thoughts is through a log line. A log line allows you to display your idea and the concept of your campaign in a condensed sentence or two. The basic structure of a log line consists of the main concept of the movie, the protagonist, the antagonist, the goal, and what's at stake.
 

Determining a log line for you and your brand helps you put your purpose into perspective and understand how you got to the point you are at now. Log lines are typically seen in the movie industry, and they should be detailed yet concise, a reader should be able to determine the movie without any characters having to be named. Here is an example, can you guess the movie?
 

That's right, it's Star Wars. How about this one? A financial adviser drags his family from Chicago to the Missouri Ozarks, where he must launder $500 million in 5 years to appease a drug boss. Did you guess the TV series Ozark? How about this one?

On the way to the biggest race of his life, a hotshot rookie race car gets stranded in the lost town of radiator springs and learns from new friends that there's more to life than just winning.

You guessed it, Cars!

Creating your own logline is a great way to reflect on how you want to portray to others through your professional brand.

When it comes to the actual creation of your video, I have found that Apple's iMovie is a great resource although it has its quirks. iMovie does have a storyboard component within the app that is very helpful for digital storyboarding. If you prefer physically drawing or writing it out, sticky notes are perfect for drawing on the front and writing more details on the back making it easy to rearrange however you please. I personally used Canva to create my explainer video since they recently added a video component to their platform. I found it really user friendly with lots of creative freedom. I soon discovered components of my video I hadn't even thought of before while exploring the different features Canva provides. Canva also allowed for seamless exporting of my video making it easy to include in my website.

I hope you found this helpful whether you are on your journey to create your professional brand portfolio or just looking for great resources to make video content!