How we make our support videos

We've been using videos to help support our users for a number of months now and we've seen how great an effect they've had. We want you to be able to use our dental software for the best We've gotten a few questions on how we produce such high quality videos so I thought I would give you an insight into what it takes!

Gear

You don't have to be a huge photography gear nerd but it certainly helps! Luckily a few of us here at Dentally are into our photography so we had lots of the equipment lying around.

Our gear list looks something like:
1. Lights
2. Tripod
3. Screen
4. Teleprompter
5. Screen
6. Camera
7. Mic

This might seem like a pretty big list but don't worry, if producing videos for your business is something you're interested in then you don't need to invest in the best equipment right away. You can build your collection bit by bit.

When we initially started doing video we didn't have have the equipment we have now, as you can see...

but in my opinion it still came out fine when you consider our limited gear.

When we moved into our new office we finally had the space to build a dedicated studio so we took our chance and our videos dramatically improved...

How we do it

To produce a video we first develop a script. You can do this in your preferred word processor but we use Google Docs. We are normally doing a screencapture so we do put two columns in our scripts, one to show what we will be doing on the screen and the other to narrate what is happening.

After the script is written we do a read through to make sure it reads naturally and to iron out any mistakes.

Once it's signed off we get to the video. Our talent (normally me...) makes themselves beautiful and gets in front of the camera for initial checks with the lighting, camera and a quick test with the teleprompter to make sure it's at a readable speed. After that, we record.

After recording the video and the voiceover we go into edit mode. There are a host of options out there but we use the Adobe suite of applications to put together the project.

Once the video is finished we are ready to release it to the world. You can use youtube or another video hosting site but we use Wistia as we can capture a greater amount of information that is relevant to Dentally.

And voila, we pop it onto our website ready for our customers to use when they run into an issue.

Photo credit: Don Perucho