John Yaworsky: Video Production for Today’s Lawyers

In this episode, Steve Fretzin and John Yaworsky discuss:

  • Lessons John has learned from big budget projects and has been able to apply to small budget projects.
  • The evolution of video marketing and production.
  • Getting more content out of your videos and three tips for the DIY attorney.
  • Understanding when to DIY your videos and when to work with a production expert.

Key Takeaways:

  • Media literacy now includes being able to produce a video.
  • Blogs aren’t getting as much attention as they used to, but video and audio are becoming more common and more efficient for many individuals.
  • It is better to do three one-minute videos, than one six-minute video.
  • An audience will forgive bad lighting and bad camera angles, but they will not forgive bad audio.

“For business, it makes sense to get the point across quickly or mention you’re going to get the point across quickly. It’s better to do three, one-minute videos than one, six-minute video. Keep it short, keep it concise, keep them wanting more.” —  John Yaworsky

Connect with John Yaworsky:  

Website: http://nimbledigitalmedia.com/

Email: john@nimbledigitalmedia.com

Connect with Steve Fretzin:

LinkedIn: Steve Fretzin

Twitter: @stevefretzin

Facebook: Fretzin, Inc.

Website: Fretzin.com

Email: Steve@Fretzin.com

Book: The Ambitious Attorney: Your Guide to Doubling or Even Tripling Your Book of Business and more!

YouTube: Steve Fretzin

Call Steve directly at 847-602-6911

Show notes by Podcastologist Chelsea Taylor-Sturkie

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, video, production, talking, sound, zoom, long, diy, big, listening, lawyer, minute, working, steve, little bit, quality, light, editors, walking, learned

SPEAKERS

John Yaworsky, Narrator, Steve Fretzin

 

John Yaworsky  [00:00]

So I think there’s just phenomenal opportunities for organizations of all sizes to do material do their own video versions of FAQs, to do introductions to the team, that sort of thing. There’s so many opportunities to be cost effective and cost justified Media Solutions DIY.

 

Narrator  [00:22]

You’re listening to be that lawyer, life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Each episode, your host, author and lawyer coach, Steve Fretzin, will take a deeper dive helping you grow your law practice in less time with greater results. Now, here’s your host, Steve Fretzin.

 

Steve Fretzin  [00:45]

Hey, everybody, welcome to be that lawyer. I am Steve Fretzin, as the announcer mentioned, and I hope you’re having a wonderful day, I certainly am caught it’s just around 1030 In the morning, I’m recording this and I’m already exhausted. I’ve been up since 530, hustling, working, talking, working with clients and getting stuff done. I’d like to think I get more done before, you know eight o’clock that most people may do in a day. But that’s just me being a wacko. Anyway, I have a tremendous guest today. This is a gentleman I’ve known for a while and just no better expert in the industry than my guest. John, you’re waterski. He is the owner of nimble digital media. And he’s going to talk to us all about video today and how to really utilize it properly. How’s it going, John?

 

John Yaworsky  [01:27]

It’s going great, Steve, thanks for having me. I look forward to our conversation.

 

Steve Fretzin  [01:31]

Yeah, me too. And lots of cover. And I mean, just such an impressive background. I’d love for you to share it with everybody. And you know, kind of either where you started and where you are now and all the cool things you’ve done in between, if you wouldn’t mind doing a Little Reader’s Digest version of that, that’d be great.

 

John Yaworsky  [01:46]

Sure. So I have a fine arts background, I started as a photographer and a filmmaker and the fine art side of things. And coming back from California to Chicago, I ended up working in corporate documentaries feature films pretty much the gamut. For probably 20 years, everyone I worked with thought of me as something else. I was a director of photography at one place, I was a producer at another place. And that was an amazing that was five times more educational than my film school experience. Because I learned how are people doing things on a million dollar commercial, then I’d bring it to a nonprofit for 50,000 or 5000. Plus, I also learned the important lesson that everybody wants to be doing something else. So I would get someone that was used to working on a feature film for like 60 days, and say like, yeah, I can use you for two days. And that for them. It was like a vacation. So I’d get a lot out of them for a decent price, that sort of thing. So Film Video photography forever for more decades. And I’m willing to admit

 

Steve Fretzin  [02:48]

in who are some of the more interesting people that you’ve been involved in projects on because I know you’ve done some interesting stuff globally.

 

John Yaworsky  [02:55]

Yes. So it sounds like I’m name dropping, it’s I’ve been in the business long enough that I’ve done projects with all sorts of people. I mean, I’ve worked with Tom Hanks, Harold Ramis, Barney hunt, I interviewed the Dalai Lama for German television, which was kind of a career highlight. I use that as a lead in a lot of situations because it just gets people’s attention. And then very recently, I did something with the Vatican. So it’s just like, we interviewed Muhammad Ali over in Berrien, springs for Whirlpool. So it’s like I have, you know, this crazy cross section, I couldn’t have scripted it. But I’ve had the opportunity. I’ve learned how not to be awestruck by celebrities, I’ve worked with a lot of them. It’s been very educational. It’s been fun. And it’s just really interesting to meet some of these people and realize that most of them, almost without exception, are just real people. So that’s on the celebrity side, on the business side, I like to say I’ve worked for like Abbott, Boeing, CD W, and that’s just a BNC.

 

Steve Fretzin  [03:54]

There, right, and then we start getting into the smaller groups. And that’s been pretty full as well.

 

John Yaworsky  [03:59]

Exactly. So I like to also say that I learned things working with an abbot of Boeing, a CW, just like the feature films or the documentaries, I can bring things learned on those projects that golf and have a little bit more of a budget, and then bring it to a nonprofit or public interest project. So I like to have a balance. I realized fairly early on that if I did public interest and nonprofit work exclusively, then I basically became a nonprofit.

 

Steve Fretzin  [04:26]

It being in video for as long as you’ve been doing it and with the range of projects that you’ve handled. How have you seen video change in the last, you know, even maybe 10 or 15 years for individuals and small firms, individuals, where it used to just be something right for the bigger organizations and for TV and stuff now it’s becoming something that individuals are doing a lot of?

 

John Yaworsky  [04:48]

Exactly. So I’ve been around long enough. I’ve seen various epochs of video production. Back in the early days we used to shoot on 35 millimeter film, not that I go back to the silence era. But yes, so.

 

Steve Fretzin  [05:04]

So how was Charlie Chaplin when you have to say exactly

 

John Yaworsky  [05:06]

Charlie has a great. But we have such an opportunity now for on different fronts. I mean, you know, when just DIY what is possible now, when it wasn’t even slightly possible in the past, I mean, not too long ago, 1015 years ago and edit suite would be a quarter of a million dollars, a broadcast quality edit suite. Well, now there’s apps for $20, you can edit on your phone, which is amazing to me. cameras, lights, microphones, everything, there’s such a wide range, it’s an understatement to say it’s a cottage industry. But the whole DIY, being able to produce quality video content, you know, 10 HD, or 4k quality video, high resolution on one’s phone or laptop tablet is just amazing to me, I still kind of pinch myself. I liked the collaboration. I like working with crews, you know, but at the same time, I do things I just did a whole big series of globe for a pharmaceutical company. We were I was directing them on on Zoom, but they were shooting it on their iPhone. So we weren’t restricted by the bandwidth. So I like to think that there’s people have the ability, a media literacy now includes being able to produce video, it used to be how to discern and how to understand media and video. But now media literacy skills includes being able to produce. So I think there’s just phenomenal opportunities for organizations of all sizes to do material, do their own video versions of FAQs, to do introductions to the team, that sort of thing. There’s so many opportunities to be cost effective and cost justified. Media Solutions, DIY.

 

Steve Fretzin  [06:50]

Yeah, I mean, I’ve got a couple of videos, a couple of speaking events coming up. And I wrote some scripts, and I started doing them on Zoom. And I’m, I watched them back. And I’m like, they were horrible. Because you could see, I wasn’t looking at the camera, I was looking below the camera at where the words were. And then I was clear that my eyes were moving. And I was actually, you know, you could tell that I was reading and I’m not very good at reading and making it or memorization or making it more honest. And the way it’s gonna play out on a video. So I ended up just scrapping it, and looking dead into the camera and just saying, you know, here’s the event coming up, here’s why you should go blah, blah, blah, and it came out a lot better. And then I give it over to my editors and let them figure out what to do with it. But it’s just yeah, the do it yourself and all that it’s come a long way. But it’s still not easy. And I want to talk about that later in our interview. But I also want to hit on something, you know, video, we mentioned how it’s changed. But how does video also maybe differ? Or is maybe better than other media or other messaging? Because we have all these options on social media, we have all these options on email. I mean, where does video come in? And why is that a great way to expand your message and get your branding.

 

John Yaworsky  [08:00]

That was that’s the other half of the equation. Really, it’s certainly become easier to create video and be content creators and produce video and create quality content. But the other side of the coin is that we’re used to getting our information through video, whether it’s the news or memes or Tik Tok, or Facebook or whatever. So people are used to you know, I’m hoping people are still reading. But people don’t read as much as they used to. I have friends that do blogs and tell me that their blogs get, you know, a 10th of what they used to get just a couple of years ago. But if you do a video blog or you know podcasts have an extremely strong following clubhouse is an app, you know, just audio only that has that’s just emerging. There’s all sorts of industries now that support clubhouse. So I think the way we’re used to digesting information, video is just so much more efficient. As a matter of fact, I used to be able to keep up with some of the Forrester Gartner research on the percentages. And every year for the probably the past five years. I said, I hear myself saying forget what I said last year, this is the year of video. Yeah. Every year

 

Steve Fretzin  [09:10]

yeah. And it just keeps evolving and changing. And you know, people doing full length movies with iPhones and that thing that I am just having a hard time convincing myself that I want to do or that I should do is like the one where you’re you walk outside your house, you’re walking your dog, you put flip on your phone, and you just talk for a minute or two about what’s going on or your day or bringing up some you know, topic that people might find interesting or whatever. And it’s I just can’t I don’t know, maybe that’s just not for me or it’s not for other people. But is it that simple to just like open up your phone and just start recording whatever’s on your mind and to people care.

 

John Yaworsky  [09:46]

That’s the million dollar question to me. I am a little tired of that, to be honest. And I see my LinkedIn feed is filled with those. I mean, I see at least five or 10 of those a day. It’s useful. I guess it can help establish a brand or get people to get to know somebody. If you look at the idea, it’s certainly better than, you know, a mail, like mass direct mail or something. But to me, it’s almost the video equivalent of bulk mail. It’s just like, okay, it gets you to a certain point. But then we need a little more, you know, it’s, that’s why I always recommend to have a little more production value, if possible, when it makes sense. It doesn’t maybe make sense right away. But the selfie videos, you know, I think there’s selfie fatigue, I think there’s a little bit of zoom fatigue going on. That’s why I’m being asked all the time. I don’t know how I became the Zoom guy. But a lot of people are calling me having me do fundraising videos for a nonprofit, that sort of thing on Zoom. And it’s just like, I’ve come up with a couple of solutions that prevent it from looking like zoom. And there are solutions out there, the third party solutions, but to your point about just walking and talking, I guess it’s good for tick tock, I guess it’s good at some level. But then when you know, it’s like is that the brand is that the key messaging and the sort of brand strategy for your organization, that you’re walking the dog? I mean, it can be warm and fuzzy, but it only goes so far,

 

Steve Fretzin  [11:14]

right. And I think, you know, we’re living in this world of YouTubers making millions of dollars for putting out silly content that, you know, teenagers like, and I know, my son, like watches a lot of YouTube, he’s 14. And unfortunately, he’s also watching a lot of educational stuff, because he’s a fisherman, he likes to fish and he’s watching, you know, hours and hours of fishing videos. But you know, there’s these, you know, people just playing Minecraft and just, you know, videotaping it and then putting it on YouTube and getting millions of dollars for that type of junk, but junk to someone else, it might be gold, it’s entertainment, I guess. So the walking talking may not be for everybody. I want to get into this, do it yourself stuff in a few minutes. One other question I had, though, is if people do quality videos with you, or they just decided they want the production value, they want it to stand out, they want it to be valuable. What are some keys to that, then how do they best utilize that content? For more? Like how do you get more out of your content more out of your videos than may be used to in the past?

 

John Yaworsky  [12:13]

Exactly. So that’s another million dollar question. And I value that I mean, I appreciate that question. I used to go into meetings and say like, we’re going to do this recruitment video. And you know, with a slightly different edit, we can do an onboarding video. Well, now I go into meetings, and they say we need this video to do three things. It takes my one of my go to strategies right out the window, and they say this video has to maybe not even three, it might have to do five things. To go on social media, it has to sit on a website, we’re going to use it as video emails, that sort of thing. So the thing I like to do really upfront is just to find out what is the key messaging? What are the pain points? And what is the target market, the audience and address that one of the biggest things is duration. I mean, again, I’ve been doing this for a long time. I joke that like five minutes is the new hour. We used to do videos, when I think back that we used to do 3040 minute videos all the time. Now if you do a two or three minute video, the first thought is that feels a little long. Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [13:17]

I think we have while our attention spans just keep getting shorter and shorter. And I find myself to like, even reading a book or watching a movie. And there’s so much content on TV right now with all the different, you know, the Hulu’s and the Netflix is but if it doesn’t pull me in and like five or 10 minutes, I’m done, like my wife and I like then we’ll hear from someone else how wonderful it is. And we’re like, oh, yeah, we gave it like 10 minutes, and we stopped there like, oh, but it’s so much better. Like, oh, crap, now I gotta go back. And listen, I gotta try it again. Because I was a quitter, you know, too early in the episode or whatever.

 

John Yaworsky  [13:48]

And that’s somebody that’s Hollywood that are putting hundreds of $1,000 in per finished minute. You know, the, the joke is like a Michael Bay film, you know, it’s like, if something doesn’t blow up, every 30 seconds, people are going to click away. It’s like, to be honest, I like so you know, I’m old school I kind of liked the slower ongoing character development, story development, real life things. But if for business, it makes sense to get the point across quickly or mentioned that you’re going to get the point across quickly. And it’s better to do three, one minute videos than one, six minute video or five, four minute video, that sort of thing. It’s like keep it short, keep it concise, keep on wanting more, you know, video can operate is can be used for marketing can be used for thought leadership, used in kind of a content marketing plan. So I think just create something to find those pain points to do some message mapping or key messaging, find out what needs to be communicated as a differentiator or just meet the team for example, that sort of thing. They’re all very good uses and they all can be multipurpose one really quick case study a scenario We were doing a recruitment video for a higher education client. And on a whim, we decided we’re going to have this person who was from out of town who was there as very sharp, articulate guy. We interviewed him thanking the donors. It was just completely shot from the hip sort of decision. Well, he thanked the donors, and while we were videotaping them, I thought, well, this is never going to be used because he’s talking so slowly. It’s thoughtful. It’s nice. It looks and sounds fantastic. But there’s no way Well, this one minute video was ended up being sent out with a video email blast. It got within 15 minutes, I got an email saying we got an $800,000 bequeath meant from that one video. Wow. So all of a sudden, I was like, Well, I didn’t charge enough for that. undercharged charge that is like, maybe I could have gotten a little percentage of that, but they’re getting, but that’s an example of repurposing, you know, it’s like we had him there. We’re talking about recruitment. It’s like, well, thank the donors, it was just completely off the you know, winging it a little bit. So that’s a great, that’s a case study that I use all the time.

 

Steve Fretzin  [16:09]

I let me I’m gonna put something to you, because they’re lawyers listening that are considering video. And here’s the question, how do you know when the video that you want to produce needs an expert set of of hands and expert production team and act like you’re coming in bringing in John, you’re skied up to help me with a project? Okay? And how do you know it’s something that I should probably just do on my own? Or that I could figure out how to do on my own?

 

John Yaworsky  [16:34]

Well, I think there’s two real big deciding factors. One, do you really have the time, energy and desire to become an internal video communications department, it’s time consuming to have it come across. I know people that have bought video cameras, and lightings and mic and started to try to learn Guilty as charged. Yes, exactly. Trying to learn Final Cut or Premiere and realize this isn’t my forte, and it’s not the best use of my time. So that’s one of the deciding factors that help is like does, it really makes sense for you timewise, from a billable standpoint, to be spending that amount. Now, if it’s something that you’re doing as a hobby, so you can also do edit your son, your daughter’s soccer game videos, and whatever, maybe it makes sense to you want to learn Final Cut, or Premiere or some other software for editing. The other thing, and I like to say this is like, I always encourage people to use video to do DIY, maybe not necessarily the dog walking video outside, so I am getting a little tired of it. But I think as far as getting people user generated content, people, you know, on a team introducing themselves for the organization as a whole. And then after a while, they can see what sort of metrics what sort of response they got from that, if they got a good response, maybe make doing more makes a little bit of sense. So I never like the like, I’m twisting arms. But I feel like it’ll probably come organically, when you realize we’ve gotten some great responses to these videos. And they’re minimal. They’re extremely, they’re short, simple, easy. Hopefully, they’re branded a certain amount of branding involved. But at some point, it usually becomes organic, they’re like, Well, you know, we have this big conference coming up, or we have we just merged with another law firm. And maybe let’s talk about the cultures combining and why that’s a differentiator, that sort of thing. So it’s going to make a little bit of sense, when it’s time to step up the production value list.

 

Steve Fretzin  [18:29]

Yeah, like something that’s gonna go on your homepage of your website, or you’re talking about, I mean, again, you can do it yourself. And there’s a lot of lawyers that do, you know, recordings of themselves to talk about, but they’re not all good. And that could actually be a negative, it could actually show not that you’re not an expert, but it could show kind of like an amateurish quality that doesn’t really live up to your professionalism or to your level of expertise in your area. But it’s always hard. There’s may be some differences between when you really need to have that production quality and when a do it yourself is going to make more sense.

 

John Yaworsky  [19:05]

Absolutely. And I feel like it’s like being late to a meeting or it just respecting the audience a little bit. If you know even on Zoom sessions, I see this all the time with very professional or sharp people. I see you know, most of the conversation on Zoom, I’m, I’m getting the watch their ceiling fan, because they don’t you know, it’s like maybe a little bit of care and a little bit of respect for the audience would help maybe actually light it. Consider having the lens eye level. So you’re not looking down, you’re not looking up. It doesn’t take a lot. I mean, again, one of the biggest things that’s changed in the world as far as I’m concerned in production, one of the biggest is lighting. I mean, in the past used to have to have a light that was you know, LED lighting that is dimmable and that goes from tungsten, the daylight is the biggest change in production gear. In my experience. It’s unbelievable. We used to have to put to three or four 2000 Watt lights on someone to get a good video, look, that’s why you had to have a makeup artist because you’d have to do pancake makeup, you know, the person would be sweating because the room would be so hot, or you’d be blowing fuses. Well, now for a person to get a ring light for 50 bucks or 100 bucks, that you can dial, you can match the rest, you know, dial in the color, temperature, and the brightness. So simple. So I think a few of those things, you know, as long as the messaging is on brand, and the production value, at least is the shows of respect to the audience enough that you can hear it.

 

Steve Fretzin  [20:38]

So yeah, sound sound is key, like you have a mic, I have a mic. And I can definitely you know, I try to get my guests to always have a mic or have something because if the sound I’m a sound snob at this point, like I if the sound isn’t good, I’m not gonna listen to a podcast, if it’s muffled. If there’s a ton of background noise, it’s just too irritating. I need a clean sound.

 

John Yaworsky  [20:58]

There are a lot of studies that people will forgive strange lighting, like on an indie feature or something like that, even normal videos, they’ll forgive some questionable lighting or camera work or whatever. But they never forgive bad audio. If there’s cackle or it sounds Off mic or low levels or whatever, people stand up and walk out. Yeah,

 

Steve Fretzin  [21:20]

I’m on board with that 100%. And I don’t mean to be a snob about it, but I just can’t tolerate listening to crackles or listening to, you know, just background noise or weak audio or one person’s one volume, the other person’s a completely different volume. So Alright, so let’s wrap up with three tips. For the do it yourself attorney who says look, I don’t need to have a full blown production team. And if I did, John, you’re the guy. But for what I need to do to get social media up to get some stuff maybe up on my website to you know, have regular content. I want to do it myself very limited production. What are three tips that you’d say right away? You could do?

 

John Yaworsky  [22:01]

Sure. So my first question or my first comment always is keep it as short and concise as possible. Do a video per thought don’t try to do cram too much in. Just as you’re explaining, it’s hard to just wing it. Sometimes if you start creating a laundry list, you start getting the deer in the headlights or look as you’re trying to remember the next bullet point. So I like to say keep it as short and concise as possible. That also serves multiple purposes and makes the Edit faster and quicker and easier. If you have three or four main pain points or points messages that you want to get across, you have three or four videos instead of one. So I always say short and concise one thought per video, or one main thought I mean, okay, it can be a compound thought. But don’t try to do too much.

 

Steve Fretzin  [22:51]

Don’t give a top 10 list in one video that just drags out right? break that into 10 videos, or maybe per video, something that keeps it what about a minute,

 

John Yaworsky  [23:00]

about a minute, minute to two is the sweet spot, okay, and I find it going even a little less than one I just did a whole series of social media videos that we extracted from a big zoom session with the Vatican and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Unilever, all these big organizations, and we ended up making all the carve outs of the social media pieces one minute. Okay. And that includes a little bit of branding at the beginning, like posing the question, maybe graphically, and then a little bit of a graphic at the end. So that’s it ends up being 40 seconds of actual content.

 

Steve Fretzin  [23:35]

Okay, but is that important to have that little opener, the video then the closer like that, just to kind of put it all together?

 

John Yaworsky  [23:41]

I think it really is okay, honest. I think that’s the thing that really makes it and it’s not difficult. There’s free software out there. There’s so many solutions. There’s third party solutions. It’s gotten to be so much easier, or do what I did in the IT department, have ones kid do it for you. Because the kids are doing it. They’re being required to do not just PowerPoint presentations, but you know, 10 year old kids are great editors, they’re used to it. I discovered years ago, my son had a bunch of videos on YouTube. He was doing shooting and editing skateboard videos I didn’t even know about and they were quite good. Okay, so don’t underestimate you know, don’t be afraid to ask maybe that’s a half a tip. Fresh tip.

 

Steve Fretzin  [24:26]

I gotta find my son did something on Instagram and it was him sitting there holding a fishing pole waiting for the fish and not even talking and there was a drip of sweat on his nose because it was hot. And I was like, maybe you know, of course he raised my comment right away and I was like, you know, maybe you want to just take the video of when you catch a fish and like what happened? Like that might be more interesting to the audience a little bit

 

John Yaworsky  [24:48]

of a time lapse, but yes, yeah, fishing might have invented time lapse. Yeah, we’re

 

Steve Fretzin  [24:52]

gonna we’re gonna have to get them on on the video editing software side. Alright, so we’ve got short videos we’ve got you know, break them up. Good sound on what’s another having that that beginning and end with each little video, a little bit

 

John Yaworsky  [25:04]

of branding, simple branding. But I think that whole notion of if you’re really trying to communicate something, not necessarily if it’s complicated or not or what you’re trying to communicate, you kind of have to reiterate it a couple times. So a lot of people say it takes three times to hear something,

 

Steve Fretzin  [25:21]

tell them what they’re gonna hear, then they tell them what you’re saying, and then tell them what they just heard. Exactly. It’s at the same. And there’s

 

John Yaworsky  [25:26]

something to that. Yeah. So you can do that a little bit of graphically by posing the question. So then it’s kind of a setup. And it serves exactly the way you describe it. Just them then you say it. And then you say, this has been that, you know, our company XYZ, company, minute or something, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We call it the minute, the Fretzin minute.

 

Steve Fretzin  [25:47]

All right, we got to work on that. Fretzin minute. I don’t take a minute. Yeah, I mean, everything seems to go longer when I start talking but but again, it’s we’ve got some great tips here on the do it yourself anything from the like using an iPhone or using an Android visually that you would say people need to do is that they need to get a stand for it versus handheld. Is it one more tip and then we’ll we’ll wrap up?

 

John Yaworsky  [26:09]

Sure. So I think it’s very important to get a stand. And again, they’re so inexpensive, you don’t have to go out and the nice thing about for an iPhone or an Android, I think I got a great one for $19 put on. And there’s something called a gorilla pod. It’s a very small, flexible little tripod that you can attach to things. I recommend that to almost everybody and sort of put a an iPad mount or iPhone mount on a gorilla pod. I’m not being sponsored by Gorilla Pod, I promise. Well, I mean, maybe it’s extremely useful. It’s extremely you can tie it to any you can wrap it around anything to get the goal is to have your eyeline in the lens in your eye at the same level.

 

Steve Fretzin  [26:52]

Okay, that’s key. So the lens in your eye at the same level, obviously get that gorilla, you know, or some sort of some kind of a tripod. And that way you’ve got you’ve got the stability, you’ve got the eye level, the sound should be clear. Do you need a mic? Or do you just go right into the microphone of the iPhone, for example,

 

John Yaworsky  [27:10]

I prefer Mike I always recommend it and usually people respond and they understand. Again, I was an old film sound guy for years. So I am a little bit of a sound snob. So I always recommend you can get consumer or I always recommend prosumer equipment. It’s like why spend $40 For something that you’re going to use once and throw away because it was terrible. Spend 60 or $70 and get a nice shore microphone. We’re here in Chicagoland shores right down the street. That’s one of the iconic brands. I always recommend. Sure. Sh cure microphones. They have solutions for iPhones, iPads, for podcasting. They have industry standard podcast mic the seven B. So I always recommend a good mic. A decent light. Don’t have the light in back of you have the light in front of you. That’s that’s a rookie mistake of all time. Sure is. And have a nice steady thing. And don’t be afraid. Don’t think you need you know, be relaxed. Take a cleansing breath in between takes and know that even Hugh Jackman takes multiple takes to get a good take. Nobody does things in one take

 

Steve Fretzin  [28:22]

and is the other saying Don’t let a good be the the enemy of perfect or don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. That’s exactly something good. It doesn’t have to be perfect. And especially today. It used to be when I did a video, I’d have like two cameras shoot all the lighting all that in, we needed it to be pretty much perfect. And now I think people are so comfortable. Even this podcast, like every word I’m saying isn’t perfect. I know it’s not supposed to be you know, I just wanted I wanted to come across like two buddies having a beer, which we are we’re drinking heavily right now. No, we’re not. But you know, even video today, you know, you can see it clipped together and it’s not perfect, but it works and people seem okay with it.

 

John Yaworsky  [29:00]

Yeah, again, just as long as there’s decent lighting and decent sound. The hums in the throat clears or even you know, the cat walking by in the background? Add some term

 

Steve Fretzin  [29:11]

is never makes it authentic. Right? Exactly.

 

John Yaworsky  [29:14]

I’m a big fan of that, to be honest. So I think, you know, you can certainly do a take. If the dog or the cat walks by in the background, you can do another version without it. And then you look at both of them and say, you know which one supports my message more? You know, you’re gonna get the feline the cat lovers, or are you going to alienate the dog lovers? You gotta have

 

Steve Fretzin  [29:34]

a dog and a cat that we are covering? Right then you’re covered. Listen, John, this has been great if people want to get in touch with you to ask questions about video or even more, so to say, hey, look, we need you in our law firm. We need an expert that’s worked with the Dalai Lama and the Vatican and other major companies that can also work in legal. How do they get in touch with you?

 

John Yaworsky  [29:55]

Sure. So my website is nimble Digital media.com. So it’s John On at Nimble digital media.com J. Oh Ha. And I look forward to even early stage or early stage of a process, just brainstorming, I really do like just kind of talking about it. I don’t know if I hopefully I demonstrated that I do like talking about production, for sure, like collaboration. It’s one of my favorite things. I’ve been very lucky. You know, when I’m on a shoot, I always feel like my shoots are always light and fun, unless we’re talking about heavy topics. But for the most part, because we’re lucky to be doing something creative. And it shouldn’t be like a trip to the dentist, it should be fun and creative.

 

Steve Fretzin  [30:37]

Yeah, and I think to have someone like you that has all this experience on Production Direction sound like you have the whole package versus, you know, having to bring, you know, five different people in that have different expertise you can kind of bring in then you can staff it up properly. But for law firms that are really trying to get quality video up, that’s going to affect their brand, their messaging, the way that they’re perceived in the marketplace, you know, I’d say you definitely need to have a pro in your corner. I’ve done a lot of video with some pros and made a big difference. And even the stuff I do now that isn’t professionally done, you know, I still want to have a production team behind me editing and doing some things that again, I don’t want to spend my time on and I don’t claim to be an editor. So, John, thanks again for sharing your wisdom and your expertise. And, you know, and for your friendship and all that you know that stuff we do together with our networking group. And it’s been terrific. So thanks again.

 

John Yaworsky  [31:29]

Thank you, Steve. I appreciate it. Yeah, my pleasure.

 

Steve Fretzin  [31:31]

And listen, everybody, again, yeah, a couple of great takeaways for sure out of this episode and you know, helping you try to be that lawyer someone who’s confident organized a skilled Rainmaker crushing it, go out there and get it. Thanks, everybody for spending some time be safe be well.

 

Narrator  [31:50]

Thanks for listening to be that lawyer. Life changing strategies and resources for growing a successful law practice. Visit Steve’s website fretzin.com. For additional information, and to stay up to date on the latest legal business development and marketing trends. For more information and important links about today’s episode, check out today’s show notes