What goes into a gif
A number of my clients are now searching for the next thing that catches customer’s eyes on social feeds.
Images are great, and will always be the bread and butter of social, but what else can you do? Video content sounds perfect in theory, but how often do you scroll through your feed, only to find a video and… you keep on going. Who has time for long form video content? Especially on Instagram.
If only there was something in the middle. Something that grabbed attention, and promoted clicks & taps.
Enter the .Gif
Essentially a series of images, animated together to create a stop motion effect video.
There’s a couple of key points to remember when you’re building a gif for marketing.
Keep it short and sweet. You’re not telling a long story, just getting across an idea. Liquid pours, cutting into food and zooming are all good starts.
You’re going to be shooting real quick, so you’ll need a lot of light. That can be either through external means, or increasing your ISO or opening your aperture, often some combination of the 3.
Your camera shouldn’t move. The action needs to happen in front of you, any movement to the camera itself is off-putting and distracting to the viewer. A tripod, a single focal point and a remote release is a must.
Shoot like hell.
From here its fairly easy. There’s loads of tutorials that will walk you though creating a .gif and exporting for social media.
I offer animations to all my clients as an added paid service. Its a time consuming process, but can often spear tip a marketing promotion or menu perfectly.