As we head into the holiday season, it’s only natural to want to incorporate some good old holiday cheer into your videos. Regardless of your industry or offering, getting into the holiday spirit is a nice way to loosen up a little in terms of your communication with your audience.
You can warm up your tone, take on holiday-related themes, or use seasonal visual and audio elements. Basically, it’s an excuse to change things up!
To help make it easy, we’ve come up with five easy ways you can tap into the general merriment of the holiday season in your videos.
1. Take on holiday topics
As you’re brainstorming ways of framing your offering this month, think about introducing topics that relate to the holiday staples: family, friendships, charity and giving, shopping and gifts, holiday music, and of course, food!
Even if none of these topics sit comfortably with what you offer, the holiday season is the perfect excuse to do something neighborly, like producing a quick clip sharing your favorite holiday recipe as a gift to your audience, or creating and highlighting a promotional holiday offer.
Getting employees in on this can also be fun, and expand your options. For instance, using video to share a cheery message from your company is a great option, and easy to do.
2. Holiday-specific problem-solving
Video is a fantastic medium for a quick chat about holiday-specific challenges that your audience might be facing. Stick to your general area, and try to address things you can help them solve.
Can your product or service be positioned as a gift? Can you offer a primer on dealing with awkward family situations, budgeting during the holidays, what to do with your pets while you’re away visiting family…?
There are a thousand unique challenges people face during the holiday season. Think of one that relates to your area of expertise, and use video to outline some useful solutions. This is a great chance to be lighthearted and humorous too.
3. Add some holiday elements
Whether you go traditional or non-traditional in your own celebrations, there are plenty of classic and iconic holiday elements that will make your videos strike that nostalgic chord for viewers. By integrating these into the filming—they don’t even need to be featured prominently—you can create a holiday mood without ever mentioning the holidays!
Just to name a few: decorations in the background; champagne; scarves, gloves and wool socks; warm fireplaces and candles; cheesy holiday sweaters; hot cocoa; a Christmas hat; and let’s not forget snow!
You don’t even need to use stock footage to capture these elements. You can use an HD videocamera (possibly the phone in your pocket) to record “b-roll” footage throughout the holiday season.
Think slow-panning shots of holiday lights, beautiful Thanksgiving spreads, and any scenes that evoke holiday cheer. These types of clips can be endlessly repurposed for future videos. As a bonus, they are easy to capture because you don’t have to worry about recording the audio since it is likely to be edited out.
4. Post-production: Filters
Another way to visually suggest the holiday mood is to use filters in post-production to either warm up the ambience, or give it that nostalgic feel (or both).
It’s not too difficult to add filters after filming. We’ve gathered some tutorials for After Effects, Final Cut Pro and iMovie for your convenience. If you’re using a different editing suite, have no fear: you can do a quick search online to find tutorials for any reputable software.
5. Post-production: Music
Let’s not forget the key ingredient of any seasonal movie: the music!
It’s absolutely worth adding a bit of holiday music to your videos (even just a few jingles) to keep things merry and bright. Luckily there are plenty of royalty-free holiday tracks around, like here, here and here.
Have something to ask us, add, or suggest? We’d love to hear your ideas! How are you incorporating the holiday spirit into your videos?
