Over the weekend I recorded a quick and dirty video for my other website. I was asked by someone who knows what I do for a living why I didn’t add a ton of production value to it like new graphics, sound effects, titling, etc. My response… sometimes done is better than perfect.

If you’ve read some of my other posts you may have seen this recurring of theme of “just finish the job.” Sometimes you don’t have to spend hours (days, weeks or months) crafting the highest-quality video you can create and still get the same desired result. It’s pretty simple. Let me explain…

Know your audience’s expectations

In the beer world and on YouTube, where the video I created lives, my viewers just want the information. A bit of entertainment won’t hurt either. They don’t necessarily care about how I look, mixed color temperatures or jump cuts. Does X help them do Y? For my video, does this beer (X) help them enjoy an evening better (Y)?

Knowing this I can get away with less than ideal lighting and average sound so I can knock out videos in no time (which I should do more). I didn’t have to stage any lights, hide my dog upstairs or, most importantly, shave. Post becomes simpler because I can get away with just minor tweaks to the color and audio and then use a couple simple lower third templates I’ve already built. My audience will only complain if the information I gave them is wrong. This is where you can spend some extra time on the content. It took about an hour from concept to posting this video online and the majority of the time I was able to spend on figuring out the content.

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