How to Use Your Art-Making Skills to Create a Compelling Video

Youtube and other video sharing websites are a great way to market your art, make art or craft demonstrations and share your artistic knowledge. Creative marketing advisor, Stacey Cornelius helps take the mystery out of video making by explaining how you can use your art-making skills!

How to use your art-making skills to create a compelling video
Guest artist/author: Stacey Cornelius
Online video like Youtube and Vimeo are gaining tremendous popularity among both art lovers and search engines. The art marketing potential is huge, but you might think you don’t have the skills to make a good video.
And you might be surprised to learn how much you already know, the beauty of transferable skills. “Transferable skills” is a term usually used by human resource professionals, but the concept applies across disciplines. As a visual artist, you have plenty.
Let’s think about what you need to make a compelling video: Obviously you need an idea;

• You can talk about a new piece you’re working on
• Make a video of your portfolio
• Do an art or craft demonstration
• Or give a snippet of an artist’s talk you’d deliver at a gallery.
• The idea is the easy part.

The part that might intimidate you is wondering how you can make a video without looking like an amateur.
That’s where your art-making skills come into play.
Lighting:

• One of the most important elements of a good quality video is lighting.
• You want it to be free of harsh shadows, and you don’t want your subject to be washed out.
• It’s not too difficult to figure out how to light your video properly.
• You know how light falls on objects.
• You understand shadow.
• You know about daylight and indoor lighting and how different kinds of light affect color.
• You’re simply lighting a subject to record in real time rather than a single moment.

Composition

• You have the know-how to create an attractive and balanced scene.
• You know what happens when place your subject in the middle, and you can put the rule of thirds into practice.
• These same concepts apply to video as painting, printmaking, drawing and photography.
• If you’d like to have movement in your video, that gets a little more complicated, but you have a skill to bring to that challenge, too.

Observation:

• As an artist, you’re a master of observation.
• Turn your practiced eye toward existing videos and short films made by the professionals.
• Study and learn from them.
• YouTube has interviews of famous (and lesser known) artists as well as short films about their work.
• Search for your favorites and watch how the videos are set up. Take notes.
• Make quick sketches and think about how you’d like to set up your own video.

Those are the basic concepts: content (your idea), lighting, and composition.

Technical details:

• There are logistical details, of course, but artists have a tremendous capacity to learn.
• It’s what you do.
• You’re exploring a new medium, and every new medium has technical requirements.
• The great thing about digital video is how easy it is to make one with a minimum of cost and equipment.
• Most digital cameras and new-ish cellphones have video capability.
• As long as you shoot in a quiet place, your built-in microphone will work just fine.
• If you’re shooting a short piece, you might not even need to edit.
• If you do, there are easy-to-follow tutorials on YouTube.

When in doubt, play:

• It’s so tempting to try to get it right the first time.
• You know that’s impossible, but human nature is what it is, so here’s your reminder: play with your tools until you’re familiar with them, the same way you did when you learned to make your art.
• Experiment. Play is more fun than practice, and experimenting is way less pressure than rehearsing.
• If you feel self-conscious, giving yourself that time will help you feel more comfortable in front of the camera.

Learning how to make a digital video is well worth the effort. When you’re done, you’ll have a terrific promotional piece you can be proud of.

*****

Stacey Cornelius writes about marketing for creatives at thestudiosource.com. She’s on a mission to help make your marketing part of your creative practice.
One of my favorite things about Twitter is all the amazing people I get to meet, like Stacey. Thanks for sharing your video tips with us. I hope it helps boost everyone’s confidence…take it from me, video making is a lot of fun! There is a bit of a learning curve, but it is another way to express yourself artistically and basic video making is easier than painting! Here is one of my painting demonstrations…

You might want to checkout some more of my little videos: Lori’s videos
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