HOW LONG IS TOO LONG? | Anthony Coppedge

With more churches producing their own in-house videos for services, the question often arises: “How long is too long for a video?” The answer is that the appropriateness for the length of the video is tied directly to the quality of the story being told.

The hard part of making "the quality of the story being told" is not necessarily tied up in gear, though better tools can greatly help keep the focus on the content rather than the delivery. Instead, it's the timeless practice of storytelling. What most churches fail to consider when making a video is how to tell the story.

A great movie can last 2 hours and no one will feel like it was a long time. But a poorly planned, edited and slopped together 2 minute video can be unbearable.

With a decent (under $2,000) video camera shot on MiniDV with good lighting, good mic techniques and a solid tripod can do wonders for eliminating distractions to the story.

But more important still is the planning necessary.

Asking the "Who, What, When, Where, Why and How", taking the time to set up shots, storyboarding (rough sketch pictorially) the video beforehand and working with the talent to ease them into a conversational mode.

I use to shoot "testimony videos" on a weekly basis for one of the churches where I was on staff. Invariably, the more planning we did up front, the better (exponentially) the story was told.

Now I'm still going to give you a direct rule-of-thumb answer to the question: 3 1/2 minutes is a good maximum length for most videos run in church.

There are two reasons for that:

1) It is pretty easy to keep people focused for up to 3 1/2 minutes.

2) Editing 3 1/2 minutes usually takes 1/2 to 1/4th the time of editing a 5 minute video. The longer the story, the more "b-roll", extra audio, title and other editing functions will be necessary. And, as we say in video, "it's not finished - I just ran out of editing time."

© 2005. Anthony Coppedge- AnthonyCoppedge.com.