What started as a simple question (“do we have any plans for Valentine’s Day?”), turned into the first ever Blue Billywig Valentine’s video.

What we wanted to achieve with our Valentine video, was to get people’s attention, but still keeping it very tongue-in-cheek. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, we were both short on time and budget.

The idea to create a personalized video was born. Now it was time to get to work. How did we create this video on limited time and budget? Here are our tips and tricks to make it happen:

A neutral background

Our office is surrounded by woods and forest, which is nice. However, a crowded and busy background for video is not ideal. That is why we bought a cheap, neutral background in black as well as white.

The upside of buying your own backdrop, is that you can reuse it for other video projects in the future. And you can always decide to decorate neutral backgrounds and give them a finishing touch.

creating a video

Use professional equipment

For this Valentine campaign we just rented some video equipment for a day. If you already know you are going to produce more video, you should invest in getting your own professional equipment, so it’s always on standby in the office.

For some projects there might be zero budget. Not to worry. An iPhone will do just fine. Easiest would be to have two iPhones at your disposal: one for image and one for sound.

Location, location, location

Our backdrop was quite large in size, so we needed a spot where it would fit and make sure it could stay there for a while, without being in the way.

When you are shooting a video, you want some peace and quiet place. So, make sure there are no distractions and little to no background noises. In our case, we just had to bat our eyelashes to one of our colleagues, so we could turn her living room in a video set.

Gathering of creative minds

The video needed a concept, so we gathered a small group in our office. They came up with the best ideas: painful pick-up lines (need some inspiration? Here you go), poor love rhymes and love letters. We got the script for our video down in no-time. It goes to show: you already have all the creative minds you need, if you just know where to look.

After finishing the script, we needed a Dr. Love to star in the video. There was no need to audition; we already had our eyes on the perfect Dr. Love.

Some (background)music

What is a video full of love without a romantic soundtrack to set the mood? To make sure we could safely put the video on the World Wide Web, we needed to stay clear from copyright infringement.

If you are looking for some background music for your next video project, there are multiple websites with databases filled with unlicensed music. Then it’s simply a matter of download and play.

Get to work

Take these tips and tricks and start working on your own video production. Also, keep an eye on your inbox. The next Blue Billywig production might be right around the corner.