The return of retro

© Pixabay.

You are not alone. Statistics show that as much as 85% of social video content is consumed silently, creating a rapid return to the very origins of film. In 1895, the film L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat (The Arrival of the Train) created astonishment and wonder in audiences just starting to get used to the idea of a photograph.

The moving picture showed a train entering a station in a French coastal town and left audiences gasping and scrambling to avoid it leaving the screen – all in silence. Directors of yesteryear made film that captured audiences, tapped into emotions and created lasting impressions, all without uttering a word or playing a note. Modern social media video is faced with the same challenge – capture the attention of notoriously fickle viewers purely through imagery.

Revisiting the techniques of yesteryear

The key to thriving in this new era is to revisit the techniques used by the doyennes of the silent film to understand their storytelling mechanisms and adapt these into the social media age. Firstly, strong copy is needed to create a hook to grab viewers’ attention.

By posing a provocative question, offering advice or piquing curiosity in the opening frames, viewers are likely to pause long enough to watch the preview played by the social network. If the video introduction is not made via strong copy, then an attention-grabbing visual opening is required. Imagery that is surprising, quirky or promises a greater story are all ways of creating that all crucial scroll-pause moment.

A successful hook gets the user to pause scrolling and watch, but this needs to be followed up rapidly by subtitles that guide the viewer through the narrative by both providing meaningful exposition at key moments and letting strong visuals speak for themselves.

Limited attention span

Another essential factor to bear in mind when creating silent social video is that of limited attention span. It is an often-quoted fact that social user’s attention span is less than that of a goldfish coming in at around 7 seconds.

The use of a single sense when watching content in silence further decreases attention, leaving video marketers only about half as long to grab users’ eyes. What this means is that beyond a compelling hook, social video needs to move quickly and always remain in motion. Charlie Chaplin was well versed in creating micro-moments in his films where an entire plot bit was shown in under seven seconds, and these mini action scenes were filled with on-screen motion.

Footage used on social platforms should share relevant information and hint at the resolution quickly, using imagery that is full of movement and interest. If the footage is more informational than dramatic, incorporating fluid movement within subtitle text is a useful technique to trick the eye into sensing motion within a video.

Break through online video clutter

Finally, and perhaps the hardest silent film lesson to learn, is that of telling humanised, simple stories powerfully. Creating content for content's sake will not break through the online video clutter. Innovation was probably the greatest tool in the silent film director’s arsenal.

Could a simple phrase on screen replace seconds of video or conversely, could well-chosen imagery speak silently to the hearts of viewers in a way copy could never? Would a montage of high impact visuals create an impact, or would a person in an empty room speaking directly to the camera be more powerful?

With more than 500,000 hours of video content uploaded daily onto the internet, it takes care and thought to make any one piece of content stand out. In a world where users are overwhelmed by stimuli from all types of media, silent video poses an exciting challenge in its removal of almost all sensory input, other than visuals.

As video production comes full circle, taking the time to understand what created success in the early days of film will go a long way to making a brands proverbial train leave the screen and take audiences along for the ride.