Mar '18 | A Video Script That Makes You Feel

At Patina, we start every creative process by defining three things.

What do you want your viewers to think, to feel, and to do? Thinking comes from the narrative, and in a two minute video we typically hone our informational takeaways down to three major bullet points. Feelings are inspired by imagery. And To Do– well, that’s your call to action.

Once those three items are discussed, it becomes pretty apparent which element should lead. And in the case of SF tech campus and accelerator program RocketSpace’s brand story, it was all about emotion. They wanted their audience to feel inspired, to feel motivated, and to feel like, (with the help of RocketSpace), they were about to embark on a journey that would make history.

Evoking Emotion Through Performance

It’s not just about what you say, it’s about how you say it. Performance plays such a critical part in evoking the right emotion that in the case of RocketSpace’s brand story, we decided to A/B test two different voice over artists– one male, one female.

Whenever possible we do A/B testing throughout the creation process, because sometimes you need to see what doesn’t work, before going after what does. Or, in this case, hear it. And because of highly affordable services like Voices.com you can try out several choices before casting the right performer.

Evoking Emotion Through Imagery

For RocketSpace’s brand video, the biggest challenge we faced was finding the perfect stock images, at an affordable video production cost. We explored many free stock options such as Videvo and Pexels as well as options like Pixabay, StockSnap, UnSplash. But here’s a discovery we learned along the way: everything owned by NASA is in the public domain. This was perfect for our space-themed video! But the downside was most NASA shots weren’t available in HD or 4k, so we had to develop a stylistic approach in post to compensate for this. We also chose to animate a few of the still photos just to give them a more dramatic dimension.

Evoking Emotion Through Music

On occasion we have a song composed, but primarily we use services such as AudioJungle.com. But when it comes to evoking emotion, it’s not just about the song choice, it’s about how you cut to the music. With RocketSpace, we varied the tempo of our cuts to match the rhythm of the music– lingering on some shots, while speeding through a series of others. Then, once the voice over track was laid in, we got the entire video mixed by a sound professional. Which is why the final crescendo vibrates through your entire body at the end. Now that’s what we call leading with emotion!