How to create an intro video for your product or service

4 | published by Danny Halarewich on Friday, November 12, 2010

We finally have an intro video briefly covering the platform in exactly 3 minutes.

The back story

When I originally designed our website, I included a spot for an intro video. Except, once we hit Alpha, all of us got very busy and I just couldn't find the time to focus on this.

So I left the "Play Video" link in place, and slapped a "Coming Soon" message in the lightbox. For a while, I forgot about it. I was too busy working on business development, marketing, product direction, sales and expanding other aspects of our website and community. It seemed there was always something of higher priority such as the My Account area or our Buy page.

But that video was always nagging me. I would sometimes think about it before I fell asleep. Other times it would give me a feeling of anxiety out of nowhere.

So, I decided I would figure out whether it was something I should spend any time on at all, or if I should remove it. I set up some event tracking in Google Analytics to track data about how often and who was clicking "Play Video". I also set up Reinvigorate because they have a sexy heat map feature. I waited a couple weeks, and checked back.

The data kicked my butt

It was clear that people were clicking on it. A lot. Something had to be done, and quick.

I got Screenflow and began experimenting. Within a few hours, I was at the point where I was able to make a couple videos demonstrating some features in LemonStand.

I was now ready to slay the dragon that was the intro video. Here is how I lead the attack:

Wrote a script for the voiceover. I tried to chunk the information into logical sections, and arrange those chunks into a flow that made sense.
Recorded each chunk of voiceover separately using GarageBand on my Macbook using a "Snowball" microphone that I got the same day. I cleaned up the audio slightly by trimming the endings and other junk. If I made I mistake, I deleted that segment and re-recorded it. I was then left with a track that had separate segments for each chunk of the script.
I went to Audio Jungle and found a looping song that I felt fit with our branding. I brought this into GarageBand and adjusted its volume until it sounded right.
I then exported the GarageBand project as high quality MP3.
I started a new Screenflow project and brought in my audio track right away. I would listen to the chunks and then decide what things I could record that would fit best.
I then just started recording lots of clips. I used Safari, and hid the address and status bar for cleanliness. I also used Camouflage to hide my desktop icons easily, and turned on "auto hide" for my Dock.
Once I had a bunch of clips to the voiceover sections, I put them on the timeline and started trimming the fat. I made some clips faster or slower and adjusted transitions until everything fit pretty well.
I went over everything a few times and made some final adjustments until I was happy with the result.
I then exported the video as a high quality H.264 in 720P resolution.
Uploaded the video to our YouTube channel, added a description and some tags. Done!

All of this took me about 1 day. Although I spent more time planning, researching and doing some practice, the actual recording and editing time didn't take long.

End result

For my first time creating a video, I think it turned out pretty well. And I plan to update it sometime after the new year with some improvements. And I'm already recording other LemonStand tutorials and demonstrations.

This could have been easily done on Windows (or Linux) too. For screen recording, I hear Camtasia is great, and for audio recording, Audacity is great (and free).

And here is the video: