Storytelling for a 60 sec social media clip?

Over the last 12 months, I am being asked to produced more and more 60 sec clips for clients to be used on social media outlets.

Is there any modern rules about length of clips we can use?

Example:- current client wants 60 second clip capturing 17 different activities at a shopping centre

achievable or should I steer the client to just 4 or 5?

gaddster wrote: .... current client wants 60 second clip capturing 17 different activities at a shopping centre...

<math> 3secs per shop/activity
=> the 'story' HAS to be some sort of chase thru the mall, and no zombies allowed, too slow. :silly:


My times in adverstising business are long gone, but this reminds me of many 'Mission Impossibles'… to mention one: making an ad for lawn mower by absence of the color green, 'cause the marketing managers wife (!) didn't like green (true story!).

3 seconds is actually a long time in our world, a lot can happen in 3 seconds. I'd have fun with this - maybe get a drone or two, maybe two ladies are chasing eachother buying things on sale around the mall, or a bunch of kids bugging their parents to take them to certain stores, or tie in social media elements like a twitter message saying there's a sale at x, and a facebook group announcing a grand opening at x, etc. 60 seconds seems like a short time to pack everything in but on the flip side it will be easier to keep ppl's attention as you keep the timeline active and engaging.

I recently did a music video that combined 4 cameras and a drone, the video is 5minutes but the chops are so frequent that it's hard to look away and most ppl watch the whole thing - go for it bro make it bang!

There are no hard and fast rules about clip lengths for these types of videos. This usually falls into the creative side of your project and is often tied to the branding of the advertisement. We often do 15 second spots for online client ads using clips sometimes as short as 4 to 8 frames timed appropriately to fast paced music. We generally never use clips of all the same length in these types of short videos. Mixing the lengths has been a common request from many of our clients for videos that either focus on a single topic or for general topics with a common promotional theme.

One suggestion for creating this type of short video is to put a gap clip of the required length into the timeline (either 15, 30 or 60 seconds long) and zoom the timeline to fit the screen. This keeps your project length in perspective as you connect clips. You can add music first and connect clips to support the style and flow of the desired video and they are easy to move around while keeping the soundtrack in place.

Practice cutting 10 second videos and you'll find producing 15, 30 and 60 second spots will become easier. Very short videos take a different approach than long form projects, especially if you need to include a lot of content. Too much content doesn't work well, and not enough content doesn't convey the message. Experiment, and you'll know when you get it right.

Thanks gents for your input, much appreciated, some good tips to digest.

gaddster wrote: ...Is there any modern rules about length of clips we can use?

Example:- current client wants 60 second clip capturing 17 different activities at a shopping centre

achievable or should I steer the client to just 4 or 5?

You can also use multiscreen to compress more activities into a shorter running time. Here is an example edited in FCPX which was previously posted here: