The Big Video Shoot

An excellent product demonstration video is critically important not just for a Kickstarter campaign but for selling anything these days. That’s especially true when your product challenges conventional wisdom or requires some scientific explanation, as My Brush Betty does.

A lot of planning goes into shooting a video, no matter how short, and it’s difficult to appreciate all the tiny, niggling little logistical details until you do one …

I had settled on a video production company in the little suburb of Detroit where I live, M-1 Studios of Ferndale, MI.

I had already memorized my script, since I had been writing and rewriting and rehearsing it almost every day for months — usually while driving back and forth from work every day. The drive is about 20-25 minutes, which was the perfect time to do it at least once each way and make changes.

For this project, there were tons of props, primarily brushes. Lots and lots of brushes. Some had to be clean and some had to be dirty. And because my brushes are almost always clean now — ever since I invented My Brush Betty — getting brushes very dirty and using dirty brushes for a few weeks before the shoot actually took some effort. (And I kid you not, this caused me to get a big zit on my chin right before the shoot …)

Once you get used to clean brushes, you see, it’s very difficult to go back …

I also had glass pitchers, glass bowls, towels, makeup products … you name it. And, of course, backups of everything in case anything broke.

A few days before the shoot, I also realized I didn’t have the perfect thing to wear, which had me furiously shopping for the right solid-color outfit that had no green in it, since this would be shot in front of a green screen for editing and effects.

I also decided to do my own hair and makeup, which added to the stress of the day. But I had decided that it would still be less stressful than trusting somebody else do to do it and having it not come out right. In the end, it looked a little too dark on video, but–heck–not everything can come out perfectly, and you just have to move on …

For those who will inevitably ask about my makeup choices, here is what I used:

One of the biggest things I did the day of the shoot to relax was bring my husband, Benny, who is just a good luck charm. He’s just so chill and fun that having him around brings me down a few notches.

The shoot went about as well as could be expected, given all the other daily life activities my husband and I were juggling at that time … including a flood at our home the week before …

All in all, I was pleased. After it was done, I stressed out about how I did, since I wouldn’t see the video for a few weeks. I worried we hadn’t shot enough of some things here and there, because you honestly need a lot of variety of video to pull something like this off successfully.

But after the shoot, the video was largely out of my hands. And that gave me time to finish my website, write some more blog items, like this one, and prepare my Kickstarter page.

I was getting very, very close to the end of this massive project, and feeling a bit uneasy about it all.

At every turn, I asked myself: What more could I do to pump up the volume on this project, given my limited time and financial resources? I felt like I was getting very low on both as we got to the end …

By Sarah A. Webster
Founder
My Brush Betty