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Marketing with Digital Video: How to Create a Winning Video for Your Small Business or Non-Profit

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Marketing with Digital Video is a comprehensive book, almost like a textbook. It covers everything from scripting and pre-production to shooting and editing. Author, Hal Landen discusses the myriad ways video can be applied for businesses and non-profits. The book focuses on using video for marketing, and it is aimed at readers who either work for an organization that plans to hire a video production company, or entry-level videographers who want to produce video for businesses.

Landen suggests that you study commercials to learn how visuals are carefully crafted to tell a story in 30 seconds. He discusses the elements that make up commercials and business videos such as the types of shots, using graphics and transitions and incorporating narration, music and sound effects.

Using real world examples, Landen covers everything from location scouting to hiring actors to choosing the best clothing and makeup for the camera. He shows examples of such production concepts as composition and continuity, and he discusses different camera angles, lighting techniques and tips for recording clear audio.

Several chapters are devoted to editing and post production, and other chapters cover cable TV distribution, producing infomercials and using the web to market videos. The appendix is a resource unto itself with a glossary of video terms, lists of media associations, stock footage sources and a list of other books and training materials to further your study of video production.

This book does not cover event videography or documentary video production. It also does not get into producing video for the web. The video industry moves so fast that this 2005 publication of this book does not include high-definition video nor does it include Flash video. These are minor flaws in an otherwise concise and well written book that would work well as a college textbook or a reference guide for video producers who want to produce videos for business marketing.

There are many books on videos, many on marketing, this one is written for readers who want to do both - market with video.

It takes you step by step and explains the equipment, techniques - scripting, shooting, editing concepts in a warm and friendly way. If you want to see excerpts, go to the author's web site: www.videouniversity.com, and you can see excerpts from each chapter in the book.

The book has also been completely revised in 2005. I get so frustrated reading video how to books that are still talking about VHS tapes. This one knows about mini-DV recorders and DVDs. Hurray! I definitely recommend this book if you are trying to market your business using a video.

It is beyond the scope of this book, however, if you are trying to market your business using a video, you should get a book as well on how to stream your video on the internet because that's how business marketing videos are being viewed these days.