How To... Make Vertical Videos with Verve

With Instagram adding 200 million daily users a year after launching its vertical-format ‘Stories’ feature, and first-mover Snapchat still reaching an impressive 187 million users daily (over 70% under 34 years old), vertical video has become mainstream.  For producers, publishers and brands now is the time to embrace this new format, but you’ll need a whole new toolkit to do it… 

It’s been two years since Snapchat’s “Discover” tab kick-started the professionalisation of vertical video format creation.  TV networks like E! Networks and A&E in the US created Snapchat exclusive ‘shows’ like The Rundown and Second Chance.

Snapchat Discover spawned a number of production entities like ghd Elizabeth Murdoch-backed Vertical Networks and B17 Entertainment, and content producers like our company, The Connected Set, started winning commissions to produce vertical formats for clients keen to enter this new market and capture the coveted 16-34 audience. 

E! Networks' Snapchat series, The Rundown 

In the last year alone brands and broadcasters’ desire to experiment with vertical ‘shows’ has seen us producing formats for the likes of BBC Worldwide and BBC Three, as well as new players such as the Snapchat exclusive channel Brother, and for Snapchat itself.  

Producing successful vertical shows (for Snap and recently Instagram Stories) is about more than camera orientation. It has its own storytelling conventions built around existing audience behaviour, and to create a successful vertical show format this storytelling grammar has to be embraced. 

"Audience behaviour of shooting and consuming in the vertical format is firmly entrenched."

My biggest tip? Think in chapters.  You need to break your show into short self-contained bites (‘chapters’) with each chapter no more than 20 seconds long and ideally less.  Each chapter needs to be self-contained.

The harsh truth is any time Snapchat and Instagram users find a chapter boring, they can tap their screen to move to the next bit, so you need make your content coherent assuming they will skip.   

On Snapchat and Instagram you’re fighting for attention, but you have some tools that help.

• Graphics – just as Snapchatters and Instragrammers themselves apply badges and stickers you could do the same.  

• Music: make it punchy and change it up constantly.

• Subtitles: remember some of your audience may not have audio switched on, so back up what’s being shown or said with text at key moments: and use large standout typefaces.

• Dialogue: remove any breaths and start speech on the first frame of your chapter.

• Finally don’t be scared of jump-cuts – embrace them.  You could even incorporate fan-generated content into your show.  

 

MTV's Snapchat show Girl Code 

MTV’s coverage of the 2015 Video Music Awards is a great example of this last point – mixing in snaps from celebrities and spectators into a live show – generating 12 million views (versus 10 million who watched on TV). In this case MTV published its show through its own profile ‘Story’.  Pushing shows through a profile story is a way any brand can access the Snapchat audience if it has a big enough following.  

Brands that have created successful show-like stories include Burberry’s coverage of its London Fashion Week catwalk show, and smaller brands like Chubbies clothing in the US who post regular ‘behind the scenes’ content which feels more like an episode of The Office than a corporate video.

How to start your show?  Put your single best moment right at the top as the first chapter, even if that moment is the thing the rest of the episode will build up to because your audience will want to know what led to that moment.  This should be the most shocking, funny or sharable moment – whatever justifies the audience giving your show attention.  MTV’s shows Cribs and Girl Code on Snapchat are worth a watch as a case study.

It’s still early days for producers working in this new form, and there's plenty of trial and error, but audience behaviour of shooting and consuming in the vertical format is firmly entrenched and producers, broadcasters and brands who embrace this stand to benefit as audiences seek out more of this content.