How long does a review takes?
A review can range anywhere 8-80 hours depending on how many products are featured in the video. This doesn’t even take into account the review period where we use the products on our OWN devices. If the product says its “tough”, I’ll drop an iPhone in it. Scratch resistant? I’m going to slide it across rocks and a sidewalk. Waterproof? Well, we’ll find out. During this period, I’ll shoot the occasional b-roll shot of the product in use.
What happens after we’ve used it for several weeks?
SCORING
Once I'm satisfied with my understanding of how well the product works, I'll score the product against my rating system. My rating systems ensures that my reviews stay consistent and it also allows me to find comparable products to use in my reviews.
SCRIPTING
Once I've established where the product sits within my scoring system, I'll start the script. This process will take a few hours as I have to remind myself of all the things that happened to the product during my review period. I do this to ensure my review is relevant and provides more value than other reviews that just regurgitate whatever is on the products website.
MAKING THE VIDEO
Once I'm happy with the script, I'll start the filming process. Depending on the # of products that I'm reviewing, this can occur in multiple takes. I first capture the audio for the entire script, edit it down in Final Cut Pro X, add the b-roll footage, then the product closeups. Once I'm happy with all the shots, I'll re-shoot the parts of the video where I need to face the camera. After all that, I add the music and edit the clips accordingly. How large is the working file for each review? It can range between 40-150GB.
EVERYTHING ELSE
After the video is made, I load to YouTube and create the blog entry on the site. If I'm efficient, I will have captured the photos for the website while filming the product closeups. If not, I'll pull screenshots from the video. For YouTube, the piece I dread the most is taking the 10000 word script in trimming it down to 5000 characters. There's a good chance that even though the video has been loaded, I'm still struggling with what I think the actual title should actually be. So that's the high-level approach that I use for all the reviews.
