“Gone are the days when you have to spend $10,000+ on a video by acquiring a crew, hiring a director, booking a studio, etc. Creating online video doesn’t have to be hard, nor does it have to look amateurish. If you follow these few basic steps, you can — quickly and easily — create a video yourself that shines…”

If you follow that line of thinking — it should be no problem using your own snapshots of the company executives in your next annual report, right? I mean, look at the great digital cameras that are available today. And iPhoto makes retouching so easy!

Here was my response to their blog:

Don’t ever forget that your brand is judged everyday by the quality of the messages and images you put in front of your audiences.

It may not be fair, but if your web site, printed materials or video look amateurish — that’s EXACTLLY the impression your prospects will now have about your organization. Amateurish. Unsophisticated. Unprofessional. Small. Not a major player.

You know you’ve thought the same thing about other companies’ sites when you’ve been online.

So, it’s true — the low cost of HD video cameras and laptop or even web based editing software is making video production much more accessible to everyone.

And, for video testimonials and simple short messages from executives — most companies can and should be able to create good video on their own.

But before you take on a video project with no outside professional help, remember some of the tough lessons companies had to learn back in the 90s when Desktop Publishing was all the rage.

I actually worked with a company that purchased Corel Draw and a color printer and told the RECEPTIONIST to learn how to use both so that they could “spice up” their proposals. Care to guess how that all worked out?

OK, so the point is this: just because you CAN layout a brochure — or point a video camera in the general direction of your CEO — doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

It sounds trite, but it’s true — you only get one chance to make a first impression.

All I can say is hallelujah!  A projector the size of an iPod could soon be projecting near-HD quality video. With a price tag of around $200, this could be the beginning of a whole new era for business presentations.

I can’t tell you how many times the following has happened. We’re invited to present our video work to a prospective client. We ask if they have a good system for playing back video, either from a DVD or a computer. ”Oh, no problem,” we’re told.  We show video in our conference room all the time .”  When we arrive to make our presentation, we usually discover one of two scenarios.

In Scenario A, we connect our computer to their projector and — voila — a washed-out, weak-looking excuse for video appears on the screen pretending to be our gorgeous HD footage. Or, in Scenario B, the twelve clients crammed in the conference room make small talk until someone from IT shows up 15 minutes late with an ancient 13″ combination TV/DVD player on a cart that no one but the closest four people can see anyway.

Actually, there’s a Scenario C, which is the absolute worst. We arrive at the client’s conference room and, alas, the projector or DVD player isn’t working, so now 12 people are huddled around my laptop craning to see and hear.

The thing is, you don’t have to be a video and web site production company to run into this exact problem. Anyone who has ever had to use a PowerPoint or video as part of a presentation knows what I’m talking about. Disappointing doesn’t begin to describe the feeling of seeing your hard work reduced to mush — especially in front of an important audience.

Time will tell if this latest projection technology is all its cracked up to be, but I for one am very excited about the possibilities of having control of my own projected images!