The next time you are watching a horror movie and feel scared, mute the sound. It’s amazing how quickly your fear goes away. There’s no doubt that it’s the sound that affects us more than images.
When the talkies came out in the 1920s, audiences and motion picture studios were skeptical, but by the early 1930s, the talkies had taken the world by storm and were here to stay.
Statistics show that 85% of videos played on Facebook are played with the sound off.
It’s ironic that almost a century later, silent pictures are back. Statistics show that 85% of videos played on Facebook are played with the sound off. Only 15% of viewers are engaged enough to turn on the sound. For people who post a lot of video, this means that most of their viewers will not connect through the sound.
Thankfully, Facebook also understands this and has recently developed a new feature to add closed captions to video, which also helps reach a multilingual audience!
When producing video to be played specifically on social media, you must take into account that most people will have their phone on silent and scrolling quickly through their feeds. Keep it short, sweet and add text so your audience can engage immediately.
We recently produced a short video for Andorra Life for their Advanced Liver Detox supplement. The original video below runs just over a minute and includes professional voiceover.
Andorra Life also want to share the video on social media so we removed the voiceover, cut the video down to 30 seconds and make sure to keep text throughout.
All web video should be shared on social media. Make sure to conceptualize your social media edit, along with your regular web video when probing before production.
Sources
- Cnet – Facebook kills silent video: Here’s how to mute ’em again
- Digiday – 85 percent of Facebook video is watched without sound
- 3Play Media.com – Captions and subtitles with facebook video
- Benbrausen.com – Why Successful Social Video Must Be Designed Like Silent Film
- Wikipedia – Sound film