Video 101 from The New York Times’ tech critic

David Pogue, The New York Times’ first writer-turned-video-reporter, shares his advice on video production and how to create unique corporate videos

Corporate communicators, you have at least one thing in common with one of the world’s most popular technology critics. Both of you are very busy. “I’m totally and completely swamped all the time,” the critic, David Pogue, told Ragan.com.

Rule No. 1: Keep it short

Anything for the Web—print, audio, video—needs to be shorter in form. Pogue suggests keeping any video between two and 10 minutes. Because all of you aren’t as entertaining as Pogue—no offense—we recommend keeping videos below four minutes in length.

“You see these guys stiffly standing in a corporate-produced videos looking like they’d give anything in the world to be somewhere else,” Pogue commented.

Plus, what these executives say in video is often a waste of everyone’s time.

“If all you’re going to do is stand there and say what’s in the press release it’s pointless and you’re wasting everybody’s time because they can scan a press release—they can’t scan a video.”