Commitly Intro Video – the “Making of”

We have our own, first video! Fantastic!

While we were constantly thinking about how to convey the features and the benefits of Commitly, it quickly became clear to us that we would need a video. We are not that keen on the classic explainer videos, but we do not have the budget for a professional video. Anyone interested in how it came about after all is welcome to read on.

Market analysis & product focus

Right from the launch of Commitly we invested a lot of time in observing the market. Which players are on the market? How do they communicate? What works well and what does not? What do we like? Who are the best? Over time this gave us a pretty good overview. We note down all the information relevant to us in a Google Sheet. On a separate sheet we recorded all the videos we came across and rated them using the school grading system.

Zendesk turned out to be the clear winner. Here, features are presented in a nicely understandable way, visually reduced and with plenty of humour. Every point on the website is picked up in the video and vice versa. The challenge for us was that although we knew what we were developing with Commitly, at that point we had not yet given any thought to the marketing. It was also clear to us that a video à la Zendesk would come with considerable costs. So we put the subject of a video on the back burner.

Beta test and website v1.0

Our beta test started on 23 November 2018. To have a kind of landing page for the testers to go with it, we prepared the launch of our homepage in September/October. In the product road map we had recorded all the topics that seemed important to us based on our past experience. Our ambition was high: with Commitly we were going to revolutionise financial management! And then the beta testers came along and asked their questions. We quickly realised that the term financial management was far too unspecific and raised expectations that were too high, or rather too broad. Questions also came up immediately about how we differ from other fintech companies such as Fastbill and candis.io. And we do not cover online accounting features in the classic sense.

Soft launch & market focus

In February 2018 we then started the soft launch. At last we could flip the switch and move from a product focus to a market focus! In workshops we discussed the target groups as well as the features and benefits of Commitly. The website was revised and the social media channels were set up. And suddenly there it was again: the wish for a video.

Script

So we took the marketing messages developed in the workshops and wrote a script. In doing so, we borrowed from Zendesk.

But how and where should we get the animations and video sequences? We began to sketch our ideas in Apple Keynote. The first slides quickly turned into animated slides and we already had an idea of the direction it could take. That left the subject of the filmed footage. We found what we needed at Shutterstock.

Film production

Ok, we had all the ingredients ready, so off to Final Cut Pro X land. Or so we thought. Although I had done a lot with Final Cut as an amateur in the past, creating animated graphics is something else entirely. Within no time at all I had reached the limits of my FCPX knowledge. So there it was, the cruel reality. No money, no music – or in our case, no video? Now improvisation was called for – and a reach into Apple’s bag of tricks. Apple Keynote has a great option for exporting a presentation as a QuickTime movie. So we took the stock videos and imported them into Keynote. And suddenly our sketching turned into the actual film … unfortunately without sound.

Sound – the easy part

With a film in Final Cut, work was already much easier. We searched YouTube for royalty-free music and found what we were looking for. To make the animations livelier, we added sound effects straight from FCPX for the messages and for Tim’s typing on the keyboard.

Narration

That was, and is, the difficult part. In our vision, a narrator explains Commitly’s features. Alternatively we could have worked with intertitles and music only, but then we would lose a lot of our original idea. A professional narrator costs money again, and by now we had come so far on a small budget. If we recorded it ourselves, that would at the same time increase the authenticity. We were so close to completion. So I dared to try the experiment and took on the role of narrator. Since we do not have a professional microphone, my AirPods had to do the job. And with that the video was finished.

Now just a quick round of feedback. Gregor, a friend of mine, is a partner in a production company. I mailed him the video via WeTransfer. His post-production man was quite taken with it and had only one point of criticism:

“I would replace the narrator. Doesn’t sound professional and has too little punch/presence – the microphone work isn’t good either – and in combination with the music it is rather soporific. Suggestion: a different narrator – a better voice recording should sound fuller/closer/livelier/cleaner.”

The final product

In the end we decided that authenticity and a small budget take priority. Should too many complaints about the narrator come in, we may reconsider the suggestion of a professional speaker. But until then, here is our Commitly intro video.

Edit:

The winner was the professional narrator after all : ))

(proud)

Credits: Photo by Jürgen Faè