How to Make Short Form Video Productions: Step-by-Step Guide
You can make short form video productions by creating short form video content, re-purposing long form video content, or re-packaging other multimedia content into short form videos.
Short form video productions are a great addition to any content marketing strategy because it's an easy way to increase views and web traffic to your brand, business, or platform. Today, short form video productions are growing in popularity.
There are sources that claim short form video productions will make up 90% of all internet traffic in the coming years. But do you know how to make them?
If you're an in-house content marketer or an entrepreneur, empowering yourself with the skills necessary to create short form video productions will unlock massive organic growth for you and your business.
Because you won't need to rely on video production agencies, additional headcount, or freelancers to create your short form video content. You'll be able to do it yourself.
And to be honest - it's never been easier to create short form video content.
This post will cover how to make short form video productions using Adobe Premiere Pro, our recommended video production software, in five easy steps:
Setting up your project sequence
Uploading and/or creating your content
Generating your closed captions
Mixing and mastering your video
Exporting and uploading best practices
By the end of this post, you'll know exactly what you need to do to make your own short form video productions.
Where can you use short form video productions
Short form video content is super flexible. You can use it practically across any marketing channel or social media platform that your target audience uses and that supports video content.
Typically, short form video productions are most widely used as:
TikToks
Instagram Reels
YouTube Shorts
That's because these social media platforms support (and promote) short form video content, making them some of the most popular channels for this type of content.
But you're not limited to these channels or platforms, you can publish short-form content on any other platform that supports video like Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook, too.
That's why short-form content is so popular and pervasive; shorter videos and content in general can be used across many platforms.
What to consider when making a short form video production
At this point, you shouldn't need convincing that short form video production content is important for your business. And as a content marketer, it's all the more important for you to learn how to make them.
But prior to starting your short form video production process, you should consider the following questions:
Are you going to create long form videos and then re-purpose them into short form video productions?
Are you going to only focus on creating short form video productions from scratch?
Are you going to create short form video productions for TikTok, Instagram Reels, and/or YouTube Shorts?
These questions will ultimately support how you approach making your short form video productions. But they will not drastically alter the basic video production fundamentals we'll cover in the next sections.
Additionally, this step-by-step guide is intended specifically for content marketing beginners - there are many other video production softwares, workflows, and processes available.
This is just one way to make short form video productions (admittedly we believe it's the easiest way). But we'll let you decide.
Let's get started.
How to make short form video productions (Adobe Premiere Pro)
Once you outline what your short form video production will be about, you can begin following these steps to produce your content.
Disclaimer: This example is assuming you're creating a short form video production from scratch, but the same principles will help you re-purpose long form content, too.
Step 1: Set up your project sequence
When creating short form video productions, you must work off a project sequence with an aspect ratio of 1080x1920 pixels (9:16) which is a standard vertical size.
Once you have a new sequence open on Adobe Premiere Pro, you must click Sequence > Sequence Settings and then change the Video Frame Size to 1080x1920 px.
Step 2: Upload and/or create content
Now you can upload and/or create your multimedia content.
Every great short form video production includes a voiceover, music, closed captions, and video.
It's up to you to decide whether you're going to use in-app features to add music and effects, or if you're going to record your own video content or use stock footage.
Once it's all uploaded and/or created, go ahead and put the clips together.
Step 3: Generate your closed captions
Creating closed captions for your short form video production is easy.
You simply need to click Text > Transcribe > Create captions and then you can copy edit and customize the captions to your liking.
Step 4: Mix and master your content
This is an integral step in making short form video productions: mixing and mastering.
This not only includes ensuring your audio is following best practices like:
Main Voiceover: No greater than -6db
Background Music: No greater than -24db
But also ensuring the visual content flows well with your voiceover, and that the captions are visible.
Step 5: Export and upload your new video
Now for the fun part: exporting!
You've put in a lot of work to make this short form video production, so let it shine.
Once you're done exporting, upload your content to whatever short form video platform you're using and monitor results.
In closing
Whether you're leveraging trendy videos, explainer videos, user-generated content, or funny videos as part of your marketing strategy matters little.
What matters is that you not only leverage short form video productions, but that you also know how to make them yourself.
Adding short form video into your marketing mix across social platforms will ultimately help you reach wider audiences.
And with wider audiences comes additional at-bats to convert that traffic into paying customers.
So what are you waiting for? Go get started.
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