Video for the Mobile Screen- Best Practices

I'm hoping to narrow this five page document of tips on how to produce great video for the mobile screen (gathered from online sources) down to a one page document and I'd really appreciate your input as to which tips you feel are most important.  Thanks for that as well as any other pointers you might want to give.

General Mobile Media Issues

1.  Don’t forget the low-tech. The video is going to a bunch of devices of different capabilities. It has to work on the lowest of low-tech that can handle it as well as the best of the best.

2.  Mobile videos should typically be five minutes or less.  This is due to:
     a) Users’ “mobile” context (moving, interruptions, other tasks, etc.)

     b) The extra concentration required in viewing materials on a small screen video

     c) The need to keep file sizes small for Bluetooth phone-to-phone transfer and over the air download

FYI, Wistia, an online video hosting service, has stats for YouTube video viewership that show that only 52% of viewers make it all the way through a 4-5 minute length video as opposed to 77% for a one minute or less video- and that on a full size computer screen!

3.  Make content interruptable.  If the story or event is so complex that a glance up will lose the thread of the show, then it is too much. Loud noises, jostling and distraction should not be feared.

4.  Remember interactivity. The mobile medium is inherently interactive. Take advanage of that fact to reach the viewer in decidedly unique ways.  New features available on video-enabled cell phones (and particularly smartphones) will mean new ways for viewers to interact with the shows they are watching. Be aware of these changes, and use them to your advantage whenever possible.  Video content should propel viewers to further interaction with your ministry/the Church (perhaps via a website which has further episodes and is advertized at the end of the video, perhaps registered viewers get to help decide what will happen in a future episode or get text messages from a character in the video).

5.  Think distribution from the get-go.  How will your target audience discover your mobile media?  How will your target audience obtain the videos?  Can they afford to download them via their phone or will they need another source like an internet café or interaction with another person who can Bluetooth transmit it to them?  Bluetooth phone-to-phone transmission is a slow process and people’s phones internal memory, where the video may initially need to be sent, is notoriously low so try to keep total video file size (once compressed and formatted to 3GP) down to somewhere in the range of 4 MB.

Videography Issues- Video

1.  Clutter Kills. Nothing can kill a good show on the micro screen like a cluttered frame. The mobile screen too small to clutter it with non-priority items. Details are good, but too many on the small screen will distract and hinder the story.

2.  Actors on-screen should not take up less than three quarters of the screen. Once they are smaller than that on screen, they begin to get lost in the frame and can no longer be distinguished from the rest of the action.

3.  Use slower camera movement. Elements of a scene are harder to discern on the micro screen. Keeping camera movement slow avoids confusion by allowing viewers to understand more information by viewing scenes longer.  “You try to not put too much effort into camera movement,” he says. “If there was a big camera move from left to right, it would pixelate. And it blurs when the image gets compressed down that small.”

4.  Don’t get too far away. Distance conveys a lack of importance. Instead of looking for the special details and the beauty of a panoramic shot, the viewer sees a low-res picture of something and loses interest. Keeping it close shows the viewer that every shot is important. Start close and base your shot progression around that starting point.  If you must use long shots use high contrast to identify and separate your characters.  Long shots only work with very high color contrast, such as an orange fox running through white snow.

5.  Make sure it’s really well lit so each character looks good and doesn’t have a lot of shadow where it gets blurred out. Lighting is very important to the whole process, so that everything looks good and you have confidence you can separate out each object with your eye.”

6.  Bold san-serif fonts work best for text. Because there is a downgrade in resolution fonts can become difficult to read, keeping them large, bold, and avoiding flourishes ensures the most legible text.

7.  Be careful of using thin lines in an animation. When thin lines are downgraded for the mobile screen they can become pixilated and decrease the overall quality of the image.

8.  Be less subtle with animating movement. When viewed on a micro screen the characters will appear much smaller and subtle animated movements will be hard to identify.

9.  Graphics that might fill a single shot in another medium may need to be broken down into three.  Rather than put three facts on one shot you should put one fact per shot so it’s easier to read.  Test readability on various size and resolution mobile screens.

Videography Issues- Audio 

1.  At the end of the day a viewer is more likely to stop viewing a mobile video due to poor audio quality than poor video quality!  Be sure that dialog is ultra clear.  Excessive compression can add artifacts to the sound, so it is especially important to make sure all dialog is crystal clear.

2.  Listen to audio using the final compression and via a mobile phone (perhaps even in a setting with a fair bit of background noise such as you might expect your viewers to be experiencing as they view the video).

3.  Ultra low frequency sounds are not useful.  These types of sounds – generally associated with subwoofers – cannot be very accurately reproduced by headphones and are generally felt, not heard, anyway.

4.  Simple can be better. With watching on the go, the viewer may still hear a lot of environmental noises. As a result, too rich a soundtrack may cause confusion.

5.  Make everything obvious. Soft sounds may get lost, so make sure they're not important to understanding the story if they are used at all.

6.  Some content may lend itself to the visuals being less important. In these instances, the audio will have to carry the story. Make sure that it tells a story as effectively as possible.

7.  Audio can add to the picture things that may be difficult to show. With limited screen space, audio can play a key role in making viewers notice actions that may be hard to see.

8.  If you think most of your users will be using iPod type devices with headphones, rather than mobile phones utilizing their speakers, recognize that headphones are less forgiving than speakers.  Because the sound is being piped directly into the viewers’ ears, there is less
room for error.

9.  Mono isn't bad. If it doesn’t take away from the story you are telling, mono will help keep file sizes down for quicker and cheaper transmission.

10.  Pan sounds sparingly. Because the screen is so small, panning sounds too much can get
confusing to the viewer. Think carefully about what the sound means in relation to the picture.

Video Storyline Issues 

1.  “Personal and relevant will be the two kinds of content that will succeed moving forward–and those are the two words that describe the mobile phone itself.”  Other content that is known to work well on the mobile medium includes comedy and music videos

2.  Keep character interactions intimate, with one or two characters. Trying to introduce too many characters in a short time span will lead to the viewer not really knowing any of your characters.

3.  Have dynamic characters. Characters are what drive viewership, not what happens to those characters. If the characters aren’t interesting, the show will not be interesting.

4.  Keep microsodes simple; design around viral videos. Viral videos found on sites such as
YouTube.com and Google Video are becoming increasingly popular. Designing content with the same simple structure is important for providing short, entertaining content.

5.  Gradually introduce more emotionally demanding content. As your mobile series catches on, more emotionally demanding content can be introduced. Once viewers know the
characters, they will be more willing to accept and identify with what is happening to them.

6.  Don’t be afraid to try different genres. Successful content for the mobile screen is by no means limited to the comic genre. Drama, artistic and even action pieces are all possible within the 1-5 minute limitation. Stories with a clear antagonist/protagonist and simple (not stupid) plots will be most successful.

7.  Keep it simple.  This translates across the board. It is sometimes tempting to add too much, especially what this medium does not require.

Video Production Issues

1.  For unicast, or also known as on demand, content, 3-5 minute episodes are perfect length for various reasons: first 3-5 minutes enables you to construct a three act story.  Additionally, technological and monetary limitations requires there to be a 3-5 minute time frame. Adhering to this length keeps the file size low and easily transferable

2.  One to five minute content pieces can be shot in bulk like any other production. This will allow you to… minimize time and money spent on producing the content.

3.  Test your video quality on the mobile screen before you go too far into production. Because of the smaller aspect ratio, sometimes animations (and videos) will not look the same on a mobile device as they do on a computer (or TV) screen.

4.  Many mobile screens have a 1.5:1 aspect ratio, different from TV 4:3 or movie 16:9, so avoid pillarboxed and letterboxed viewing

5.  Improvised skits are an excellent match to the mobile screen. Improvised skits allow for the rapid creation of low-cost content.