News, Tips and Tricks

Bounce rate gives you the percentage of visitors to your website that don’t go beyond the first page, or leave your first page very quickly. Checking bounce rate is a great way to see if your website is doing it’s part in selling your product or service. If your bounce rate is 50% or above, it’s a good idea to look into ways of improving it.

A high bounce rate may well mean that your website entry page, to put it simply, is a bit boring. It might be full of text and pictures that aren’t grabbing the attention of customers or getting them interested in your product.

This is where a web video comes in. Put a video on the first page of your website to instantly grab the attention of your customers. It’s the job of your web video to keep people on your website for longer and encourage them to check out the next page, thus improving your bounce rate.

A better bounce rate will improve your google ranking because if people spend more time on your website, google see it as more relevant. The more relevant your website is, the higher up in the google search results it will be, and everyone knows that’s a good thing.

Get a web video on your website and see your bounce rate improve.

A talking head/interview shot might seem simple, but people often get it wrong. One of the main things to get right is your lighting.

After much experimentation, I have found the following method provides the best look…

One 800w Arri Redhead lamp, with suitable soft-box, positioned at the same level and in front of your subject. This will be the key light. Place it to the left and back a bit from the camera. Point it towards the right hand side of the subject’s face (their right) so that it casts a gentle shadow on the left side of their face. Use a large reflector on the subject’s left to reflect this light, angling it to bring up the light on the left of the face. You’re not looking to eradicate the shadow, just to make it more subtle – it’s this shadow that will give the face definition. If you shone the light front on, apart from blinding your subject, they would look very flat.

If you’re still finding that the shadow is too harsh, you could put a 650w Arri Redhead (with barn doors at suitable angles) high up on a stand and bounce more light off the reflector onto the left of the face.

Now you’re probably thinking “great, this looks fine” but there is still more to do. Although it might be hard to see, there will be a small area on the back of the head and shoulders that the light isn’t quite getting to. To sort this out, rig up a Birdie light directly opposite the camera, behind and above the subjects head and angle it so that light spills onto the back of the head and shoulders. You may want to turn all the other lights off to check the direction of the birdie.

After you’ve done a white balance on your camera, things should be looking pretty good. Depending on your situation, you may think about lighting the background with another Arri lamp, but apart from that, the lighting for your corporate video, web video or documentary is sorted. (For the talking head part anyway).