Dan Willis shows entrepreneurs how to make professional videos cheaply using Canva for graphics, Pexels for free stock footage, Animoto for editing, and OBS Studio for screen recording. All four tools are free or low-cost and need no design experience.
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Afternoon guys, we are back with episode 12. Today we're gonna go over 3 tools that you guys gotta have if you are an entrepreneur who wants to create some great-looking video. Here we go. Okay guys, first tool, first tool that you've got to get your hands on is Canva. For some of you, you're familiar with it already. For some of you guys, you're not too familiar with it. Canva makes graphic editing Easier. I'm not going to say super simple, but definitely a lot easier. So for those of you that are like me who hear everybody tout Photoshop or any of the free Photoshop alternatives, the reality is, for the most part, as an entrepreneur, that's not your strong suit, that's not your focus. And a lot of people that are entrepreneurs that can afford the teams have a graphic designer on the team that can use those tools. The reality is, for a self-preneur, entrepreneur, small business, Having a graphic designer on staff can prove extremely difficult. So how do you save that money? How do you create great graphics on your time, your skill level, and your cost? It's got to be Canva. Go check it out, guys. Uh, I'll, I'll try to put the link here somewhere in the video. This is good. This is going to be our first link in a video, so I'll put a bubble up here somewhere and you'll be able to click it. Uh, but that'll take you to Canva. You can check it out. It's a great tool, makes it super simple. You can create and edit and layer your graphics, your photos. It's great for creating Instagram posts, all of your customized channel stuff. All the sizes are already in there for you, so if you want to jazz up your Facebook or your YouTube or your Instagram or Twitter channels with the proper size graphics, some branded graphics, it's a great tool for that, guys. The cost is, well, you can use it as a free tool. I personally don't mind dishing out the extra You know, I think it's $30 a month or something, and you get access to a ton more stuff. Huge, huge tool for those of you that are not graphically inclined like myself. It's got all the bits and pieces there, huge toolbox, super simple as far as layouts, how you make it work, how you resize it, really easy user interface. Any issues that you have, the support has been phenomenal. We're talking almost an hour turnaround on, and that's it, an hour, when you send and say, okay, well, I've got a problem, can you help me fix it? Uh, highly recommend the tool, guys. So for graphic editing, and this is important for your videos, you gotta have it. Uh, those, those little slides you put at the start or the thumbnails that you're putting up in front of your videos, uh, those come from Canva. So make sure, guys, if you're having a problem with your Photoshop skills or you're not Photoshop savvy, Canva may be the way to go. Okay guys, next up, you've got Canva, you've got your ability to edit photos everywhere, put them where you want. Um, the next step is where do you source great photo content or video content for, for that filler stuff that you don't have? If you don't have video created or photos created, oftentimes you don't want to be that sleazy guy that goes out there and, and, and snags other people's work without their permission. Uh, nobody likes it. You can end up in deep trouble down the road if it goes viral where that content didn't belong to you, you didn't have the rights to use it. So how do you get around that? All right, here we go. Let's try over here. Okay, right here. Pexels is the way to go. So Pexels has a video and a photo depository of high-quality professional photos put up there that are common use, which means for commercial or personal use, you can use them. You don't have to say where you got them from, who the artist is, none of it. All you have to do is grab the photo and run with it. It's a massive, massive tool. Tons of great photos, great stuff if you're looking for motivational Instagram posts or if you're looking to just have some solid background images that you can overlay your face onto, your meetings onto, whatever, however you wanna choose to use it graphically, but it's a huge storehouse, guys, for all kinds of great small video content. We're talking couple-second clips here or there, so transition clips. Also, it's got thousands and thousands of high-quality professional photos. So if you haven't seen it before, you're looking for a great photo database, video database, Pexels is the way to go. Last but not least, so we've talked about graphic editing, we've talked about where you get your photo content. Clearly somewhere in this video marketing video, we're gonna talk about video. Animoto. Animoto is the way to go, guys. Animoto is an amazing tool. It's similar to Canva, but it's specific for video. It has preloaded storyboards, thousands of songs that you can put in the background, anything that you can imagine. It's got preloaded databases for Instagram video, YouTube video. It's perfectly created to help you take all of your little bits and pieces, your graphic design, your photos, your video snippets, your music clips, put them all together into one beautiful package. Without a doubt, if you are not using Animoto, Animoto, make sure that you do it today. Go check it out. Free trials are there for you. It's an amazing tool. Simplifies the video creation process in a huge way. Definitely worth checking out. Did I say 3? Maybe I meant 4. Well, we'll call this a bonus. 3 plus a bonus. Guys, there are a lot of people out there that talk about different ways of recording, whether it's, you know, your cell phone with a tripod, or you're rocking, you know, an actual video camera. For me personally, I use my desktop video recorder. But that's, that's the hint that I want to give you is I really enjoy— and this is just a personal preference, but I'll give it to you guys to use, take it or leave it— the OBS Studio is a phenomenal piece of software that makes it super simple for you to download, use for free, free use tool. So free is always in the budget, and it allows you to record quality video at whatever resolution you want directly from your desktop. Um, it gives all kinds of plugins and overlays and cool things that you can do, and you'll see some of those in the upcoming videos that we're doing. Um, but definitely check out OBS if you're looking for a tool to record your video snippets directly from your desktop. I highly recommend it. That's it for today though, guys. Let me know what tools you use in the comments below. Maybe I missed one, maybe I hit the ones that you absolutely love, maybe I gave you some new ones that you didn't know about. Let me know in the comments down below. Go ahead and hit that Subscribe button for me. Share this out with your friends and family. Anybody you know that needs to get their video game cranked up, boosted, heated up, whatever term you want. Revved up, ready to go. Catch you tomorrow, episode 13.
