Ah, Youtube. Where more than 1 billion unique users visit each month and over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that’s almost an hour for every person on Earth.
Chances are you have an account but since they upgraded all channels to Youtube One back in June of 2013, I bet you $10 you haven’t gotten around to uploading a killer promo trailer to drive in subscriptions to your channel. Did I just get a free lunch?
So, why is it important to have a YouTube trailer?
A YouTube trailer is your moment to create a new fan. And with booking agents and festivals looking at social media numbers, you want to be able to grow your following whenever you can. Plus, you could probably use this trailer to promote yourself - a video EPK if you will - which can make you stand out from the other applicants.
I am all about musician’s finding support in their careers, sharing the importance of having an assistant as a musician and how they can create time in the day for you.
Having a virtual assistant could make creating a Youtube trailer practicallypainless, quick and effective. While you are writing a new song or practicing a new riff, your VA could be taking care of this with minimal direction.
Today, I’m going to show you the best way to work with a VA to get you a great video promotional trailer in now time. With free and low cost tools like iMovie and Final Cut Pro, even if your assistant isn’t quite a pro, they are very user friendly.
Here are some tips to make the process go smoothly for you and your VA:
1. Make sure they are comfortable with a video editing program.
They don’t need to know how to create flashy effects, but make sure they can fade in / fade out, add text, and trim clips. These are the very basics and what you’ll need to make a great video. How do you make sure? ASK! If they say yes, ask to see examples. If they say no, ask them if they are willing to learn. You can ‘test them out’ by asking to clip a video you have to make it shorter, or ask to combine two videos fading in and out of each other.
2. Select what videos you want to feature.
One client I work with has over 180 videos on his channel. Another has 8. With either situation, you can create a fantastic video. What to focus on is quality, energy and what best reflects you as an artist! With my client with nearly 200 videos uploaded, we focused on the top 10 viewed videos of all time. I’m going to assume you don’t have nearly that many and we’ll go into what you need to include from the videos you do have.
3. Find the following in your videos.
4. Give exact clip markers of what you want to use to your assistant.
Give exact time markers, for example:
“In my music video, “Seven Stars”, pull 1:29 to 1:56.”
This will guarantee you will see exactly what you want.
5. Order up the clips
If you know the order you’d like to go in with the clips you’ve chosen, give your assistant those directions. If not, let them be creative and put something together first. Sometimes it is easier to know what you want going that route and after you’ve seen something, you can arrange it to exactly what you’d like.
6. Add any text
Once you get the flow of the video down, now is the time to add any intro or outro text, press quotes within the video and/or links to your sites. You don’t want a ton of this, but if you’ve got an awesome quote from New York Times saying you’re the best show in town, you’ll want to tell that!
7. Keep an eye on the clock.
My final piece of advice is on the length of the Youtube Trailer. There’s no exact length limit, but the shorter the better. I would recommend nothing over 2 to 2.5 minutes and with that you should be able to fit only the best clips within that time frame.
Put your assistant to work and create a fabulous and unique video that you can share to get noticed!
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This article is written by Fiona Z, a professional virtual assistant to musicians. To get more tips sent to your inbox, sign up for her email list HERE. Learn more at her blog at fionazwieb.tumblr.com.