So you have graduated from college. You have written a great resume, because you possess some excellent writing skills, among others, and it helped you to secure your dream job. Your management has recognized your talent for writing and decided to put it to good use. So you find yourself tasked with writing an explainer video script for your company’s new product.
Tips on How to Write an Explainer Video Script
You know how to write an A+ argumentative essay, you know how to write a thesis statement, but chances are that your professors never taught you how to write a proper explainer video script.
Given all the responsibility of having the company’s new product’s fate in your hands, it is going to be confusing. But you know that being confused doesn’t help, so you are not the one to get confused that easily.
A little bit of brainstorming gives you the idea that the main point here – pretty much the same as with your college writing – is to mind your audience, the ones for whom you are writing this.
Once you know this, all it takes is a few good how-to articles which you can easily find on the Net, like this one.
So, here are your things to keep in mind to write a spectacular explainer video script for your product:
1 – Decide On The Tone
When you know which people your video addresses, you can visualize to whom exactly your video is talking. Once you have pictured your audience, it is best not to just keep it mind, but summarize it into one or two short sentences that you can refer to throughout your work on the explainer video script.
Depending on your target audience, you can pick a classroom-style presentation or a home-video-style quasi-documentary, you can go with something like a public service announcement or a casual talk by the water tank at the office, etc.
Moreover, this will make it easy to define the characters that will be talking to the audience in the video. They will be more like real people, and thus, the narration will be more credible.
2 – Don’t Scatter Your Message Allover The Place
Remember that mental training is not the purpose of a product explainer video. They make these videos to inform the audience about the product. So, rather than hinting on your message throughout the video, you should say it up front.
Your audience is not here to figure out what the point of the video was, – not unless your goal is to bore them and distract them from your video.
So, it is best to formulate the message as directly as you can, put it into a single sentence, and put the sentence anywhere between the 10th and 30th second of your video.
This way, they can know exactly what they should focus on throughout the rest of the video.
3 – Speak To Your Audience As Equals
One thing that no audience will appreciate is being talked down upon. Hence, your video needs to talk to them directly. The characters need to be equal to the people in the audience, with similar issues, with similar ways to tackle them, and – so – open to similar solutions.
Speaking of being direct, it is also better to avoid the general terms like “most housewives” or “any school kid,” but instead stick to the simple “you.”
Also, don’t treat them like dummies who (for instance) don’t know what energy drinks are for. Rather focus on the new information that they need to know about your product to make their decisions in its favor.
4 – Be Laconic
While this one may seem like a no brainer, it is often overlooked. Obviously, the video script writer is very well-informed about the product, so we are easily tempted to squeeze everything there is to know about it into a short video.
We try to “expand” our potential audience’s attention span, which might work in our mind, but it will hardly work on the real audience that will be watching your video.
The normal attention span for product explainer videos is 2-4 minutes. The number will surely double for more specialized and/or sophisticated audiences.
Always remind yourself to stick exclusively to the information valuable to the audience.
5 – Entertain Your Audience With A Story
A plain piece of information will hardly be effective. Such narration is only ok for a classroom where students – let’s face it – are held pretty much against their will. For better or worse, you cannot do that to your audience.
While your audience may be well informed by such a piece, it will hardly stick in their heads for a long time.
The solution is a no brainer. Everybody likes stories. They entertain us. So, tell a story about your product, but keep it nice and simple. For example, you advertise perfume.
The story can go like this: Jenny begins to suspect that her life partner gradually loses interest in her (problem), Jenny puts on Bonerscent – some perfume with pheromones (solution), Jenny regains the attention from her life partner because this is how pheromones work (explanation), and you can you can order it at our online store (instruction).
6 – Mind Your Pacing
The ultimate speed of speech in a good product explainer video script is between 125 and 150 words per minute (for the English language).
You can speed it up a tiny bit if the information is more general, But if the information is more technical, the pacing should be somewhat slower.
Although many people speak faster, this is the ultimate speed of speech both for the perception of the audience and for the ultimate performance of the voice over. Anything faster than that will sound literally like a machine gun, making it impossible to focus on the information.
As a bonus tip, do not to rush your work. Take some time to lay it aside and give it a fresh look in some time. Also, you can ask some colleagues for feedback but choose wisely, because your explainer video script is still your intellectual property.
About the Author:
Sophia Clark graduated from the University in the City of New York with B.A. in Journalism, 2011. She is a creative writer who loves to share her thoughts with readers, now she writes for Eliteessaywriters. In her free time, she enjoys writing fiction as well as reading it. Connect with her on Twitter and Google +.