The 2 Most Effective Things to Make Your Videos Better

Photo: Jakob Owens, Unsplash

Over the years there has been an ongoing debate among ministry leaders wanting to take the look of video to the next level. They want to find the thing that can set their content apart from the competition so they look for the next big thing in camera technology. They see the latest camera release and are lured by things like 12K resolution, or 16 bit raw footage, or whatever the next sexy sounding spec upgrade is. While those certainly can help, it’s not necessarily going to be the thing that makes your video content stand out, it certainly isn’t the best bang for your buck.

For the vast majority of users, camera resolutions are usually either a marketing ploy to try to get people to buy a camera with features they don’t need. Sure, there’s the odd legitimate case where you would need 12K resolution, but I promise you, almost all of the ministry content we do isn’t one of those cases. Investing in high resolutions is great sounding. But investing in the two following strategies first will net a much higher return on investment.

The two best things you can do that will immediately upgrade the quality of your video without costing a fortune is…better lighting and better sound. 

It may seem counterintuitive that better sound will make your video content look better, but it’s true. If you watch a video from a top of the line camera but it has bad sound, you will immediately think it’s a low quality video no matter how good the image looks. However, there is a lot more forgiveness for a video that doesn’t look as good but sounds great. Now obviously there is diminishing returns on this. If your video looks like it was shot on a Motorola Razor but has good audio, it will be viewed as better than it is but it will still be suboptimal. Nailing the audio automatically (and usually much more cheaply) improves the quality of your video.

Improving lighting seems like a pretty obvious thing to make video look better to those people who have experience in film or video work, but it may not be as obvious to others. Have you ever wondered why the smartphone pictures turn out amazing in the latest company demo but never quite look the same for you? It’s because lighting is the key. Despite what the advertisements will tell you, most camera phones are not as good as a standalone camera in most uses (though it is getting closer). But you absolutely can use a smartphone to make really good looking videos if you can set the lighting to what they are best for, and get great sounding audio. Controlling the lighting for the device is the key.

With those two relatively simple and lower cost adjustments, you can immediately upgrade the quality of your video without spending a ton of money. Get good sound and lighting nailed before you get better cameras because bad lighting will still produce a bad image in a sweet new camera, and bad sound will still be perceived as unprofessional no matter how pretty the image is. So even if you spend a ton of money on a camera, you will still be spending money on lighting and sound to make the video great. Get them first, then see if you still really need the latest outrageously priced camera.