Creating videos, films, or projects can be an expensive process. Between purchasing cameras and lighting rigs and the time it takes to create great footage, it’s easy to go over budget.
One time and money-saving tool available for any creative or small business making a commercial, film, advertisement, website, email newsletter, etc., is stock video. With stock video, someone else already spent time and money creating video clips you can use in your projects.
While you may already know you can use B-roll and lifestyle shots to fill out a sizzle reel, there’s a whole lot more you can do with videos. Below are several interesting ways to use the different types of stock videos in your next campaign:
Create Dynamic Video Backgrounds
One of the best ways to bring your website or landing page to life is to lay a vibrant, mood-setting video in the background. It adds more depth than a still image and makes your site look more dynamic. It’s important to know the limits here, though. A subtle, gentle movement is best and it’s crucial to make sure the video doesn’t take center stage. Simple, abstract subjects are usually best. Anything from blowing flowers in the wind to surreal undulating shapes.
Add Some Zen with Landscape Videos
While loopable abstract footage works well for website backgrounds, a longer natural landscape clip can be great for full-width hero banners or social media ads. Using nature-based videos in placements that have defined end points is key. If you use an ocean scene for Instagram stories or a website’s carousel banners, you don’t need to worry about a loop point, it establishes a nice, natural aesthetic without having to do too much.
Also Read: Generative AI in Creative Management: An Opportunity for Advertisers and AdTech Vendors
Use Video to Support Text
Landscape videos or wider scenes with areas out of focus are great places to put text. You can even have the text interact with the video—perhaps making it look like your tagline is in the scene by partially going behind a mountain or other scenery, for instance. This sort of interaction in a banner ad or hero placement can create a more polished effect for your audience, ultimately drawing more attention to your messaging.
Form a Perspective With Stock Videos
One of the hardest parts about using stock video clips to make a video, is that those clips’ subject matter will all be different. However, if you need to craft a story with your video, choosing videos with similar perspectives can help to tie them together. One simple example is to choose only stock clips with a first-person, POV format. This allows the viewer of your video to go on a cohesive journey.
Tell a Color Story
Another way to tie disparate videos together is to keep them all anchored to a specific color scheme. Having one thread of color shown prominently in all of your clips can really help to tie your video together and tell a story. This scheme can also help convey a certain emotion or attitude that you’re trying to illustrate to your audience.
Follow Your Ears When Choosing Videos
While many stock video clips do feature sound, you’ll often strip the audio track away and use your own sound to tie the video together. The best thing to do is pick a track, or at least a style/tempo ahead of time. That way, you know whether to choose energetic clips, calming videos, clips without any sense of rhythm, or something else entirely. You can even use the beats and rhythms of a track to help you transition those clips in your video so it all ties together in the finished product.
Turn Your Video Into a GIF
Email campaigns or websites with a lot of content on them need the lightest file size to load quickly. In these cases, you can find a video and make it smaller and more digestible for your servers by turning it into a GIF. You’ll want to find a video that doesn’t have a lot of movement. It’s actually best to find a subject that is only moving in one part of the camera view, such as a still natural scene with a small section of branches blowing in the breeze or water moving in a lake. That way the GIF you make won’t be too complicated or long.
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