Should You get a Video Intro & Where Do You get an Intro | Ep 06 | Prime Branding

Should You get a Video Intro & Where Do You get an Intro | Ep 06 | Prime Branding

Audio Version

Transcribed from https://youtu.be/ZVw0819rZRg

What’s going on, guys? It’s Mark from Prime Branding back here. We are on video number six. I don’t know how long I’m gonna keep counting the video numbers, but anyway, it’s early, and we are gonna talk about intros.

So when do you start looking for an intro? Does it make you more professional? When does it hurt your videos? First off, there’s nothing wrong with having one, right? It’s a little extra branding. It’s a little extra recognition for people. Maybe you just wanna show your logo. Maybe it’s got a little tagline, but it should always, always, always be short.

We’re not half-hour shows most of the time. Some of you might be, but most of us aren’t producing network television or movies with long lists of credits and different legal obligations that we have to fulfill. It’s literally a spot just to go, “Hey, look, it’s my video.” “Isn’t my logo cool?” “You know it’s coming from me now. “Let’s get into the content.”

Breaks up the little generic intro where I tease you what I’m gonna talk about, and the actual meat of the content, and a rule that I like to abide by is never, ever, ever let that intro be longer than 10 seconds.

You ever go to watch a video? It’s a five-minute video, and the intro is two minutes, and it’s the freaking Marvel Cinematic Universe movie opening. It’s flipping, and all the different colors and things, and it’s really cool the first time you see that. Well, if I’m watching video after video of yours, and every video’s got a two-minute-long intro that I guess I could sit there, and scroll over, and try to skip it, and hurry through, but now you’re annoying me. I don’t need that long of an intro. I already know what your video is because I went from your channel to your channel to your channel. Make sure that you’re keeping that in mind for the viewers. Keep it short, keep it simple, get it on, get it off the screen so the viewers can get to the content.

Now, where do you get that, right? ‘Cause not every one of us is a professional video editor that knows how to use After Effects and can tweak and make all kinds of crazy graphics. Well, I use a site called Envato Elements. There’ll be an affiliate link in the description. Whether you use that or Google search, I don’t really care. They’re who I use. I like them. I spend about $200 a year. Gives me access to video assets, music, stock photos. There’s a variety of different services, but we’re gonna go through some of their video bumpers that are pre-made that then you just have to have some basic editing skills to manipulate it to work for you, and if you’re looking for software, there’s a lot of free stuff, but I’m a fan of the Adobe software. Otherwise, there’s DaVinci Resolve, and Sony something, and there’s a bunch of other free ones out there. You can look and go find those, but I use the Adobe stuff.

Envato Elements, like I said, link: https://elements.envato.com/. I can either click Video Templates or All Items. I’m gonna select Video Template, and I’m gonna do bumper, so now I’m gonna get a bunch of different concepts, right? So I can go through the site here, and go through the categories, or I can pick certain programs that I’m using or not using. Now, I use Premiere Pro even more than I use After Effects, so I’ll select that. It narrows it down, but just as a quick search here, it gives me a bunch of thumbnails that if I keep my mouse over, I can get a preview of what it’s gonna look like, so I can sit and think, “Ah, this one running, “okay, it’s an athletic style, “but I’m gonna change all that.”

They don’t give you, necessarily, all the assets, and you were gonna use this. You’d have to put your own footage in there, or you can download the footage from them, ’cause I’m sure it’s in their stock library as well, which is why I like Envato Elements, again. Everything’s under one roof, so it makes it real easy, and a lot of these guys that are offering this, like I’ve got the sound off on the computer ’cause I don’t wanna get flagged by YouTube just yet. The video probably has music in it, and a lot of times these guys will tell you, “Hey, I used this song. “I used these video clips,” so you could go and download specific ones as well. Otherwise, it’s usually just a generic template, but I watch these.

I go through the thumbnails, and I see this one here with the popcorn. This might be good for a video channel that reviews movies, and music videos or something, something where that would be relevant. Easter Egg Opener, ‘kay, something more seasonal where you can change out, food ones. I mean, they’ve got all kinds here, but you can kinda watch and see, even on this, it gives you the timer, right? So it’s gonna show you how long this intro’s gonna be, and if I’m getting bored watching it in the little preview, then I’m probably not gonna wanna watch it on somebody’s video.

We’ll go into editing these and whatnot, but they’re usually pretty cut and dry. You click on it. You’ll do download, or you can pick the project that you wanna associate it with, and that’s for copyright issues, so that later on you can show, “No, I have the license to use this,” and you can send that to YouTube or whoever’s filing it. You do Add & Download, and then it’ll send me a zip file. I can watch it bigger here. I can go full screen if I want. Just play one, so that’s kinda cool. Having the logo flow in. Whole thing is about eight seconds. The one that you saw for my video’s opening is where I got this, was on Envato, so lots of options.

Like I said, you can go through, click, check out the music. On the music side, something I watch. When you click on the song, you’ll see here No YouTube Content ID registration, so what that means right here is that whoever recorded this didn’t register this through a music royalties company or a, you’ll see AdRev. There’s CD Baby. There’s a handful that usually, if you get flagged for using music you’re not supposed to on YouTube, it’s coming from one of those companies, and some of these on Envato Elements are already registered. Doesn’t mean you can’t use them, but what happens is you’re gonna upload it. It’s gonna get flagged, and then you’re gonna have to submit that you have the approval, so it can add a little bit of a delay in terms of you eventually collecting any ad revenue off that video. I try to skip that off the get-go by picking songs that haven’t been registered. Just takes one step out. Doesn’t mean they won’t get registered later on. I’ve had that happen too, two years down the road. All of a sudden, I get a notification that I’m not making any ad revenue off this video anymore because the artist decided to license through one of these different royalty companies that double-checks to see who’s got rights to it, and then I’ve gotta go through all the paperwork, and in the grand scheme of things, for most of us, it’s not even worth fighting ’cause what’d that video get? A couple thousand views, so they’re gonna take the future $5 that I might get from the video?

Other things to consider with doing the intro is make it, again, keep it relevant to your channel. If I’ve got some crazy extreme sports video intro, and now you’re looking at me, and I’m just sitting behind a desk, doesn’t really make sense, or if I’ve got cakes, and pies, and food items, and I’m talking to you about tech and gear, it doesn’t really make sense. Go check out Envato Elements. Find yourself an intro. Keep it short. Keep it relevant.

We’ll go through actual editing, and working on that in a future video. This is probably way longer than it should be. If you wanna see more content, make sure you hit that Like button, subscribe, follow, wherever you’re seeing this. If you’re watching or reading, thanks for that too. I’m hopefully putting this in many, many places for you to find it, and we’ll see you next time. See you.