if you have a production company or a youtube channel you probably want to
have an intro so this week I'm sharing the four things that go in to making a
really good intro.
Hello my name is Simon Cade and this is DSLR guide.
so I think there are far too many intros out there which are pretty much
just simple text on a background, my old intro is a perfect example of this and
they just really don't use the full potential an intro can have
so since then I've come up with the four main principles that I think go into
having a good intro and they are style, concept, audio and effort so let's say
that someone has a production company called "magic studios" or maybe its a
youtube channel which is teaching how to do magic tricks
well if you use this as your intro, which is very action packed
I think this falls into the trap that a lot of people seem to find which is that
this intro has the style of a bad action movie instead of a magician's channel
I think it'd be much better to have the camera following some dice in slow
motion and then they come to rest on the table next to the title.
So that way the style is relevant and actually tells us something more about the channel rather
than giving people the wro ng impression about it being an action film and also you
can use even the smallest details like the font and the color scheme and the
music is quite a big one and all these factors will go towards the style and
they can help you to give the right kind of vibe
depending on what your video or channel is like so the concept that come up with
for my other channel cade visuals is to have the logo being carved out of wood
and to show some kind of carpenter kind of scratching away at the word until it
makes the right shape and this is because if we look at my channel then
it's got the occasional short film many documentaries and also music videos so i
wanted to show that my stuff is handmade and to give the impression that it's
kind of well-crafted and it takes a skilled craftsmen to make those videos and my
new intro on this channel also has a meaning behind it that the important
thing in filmmaking is not to focus on equipment but to move the equipment out
of the way and focus on the ideas behind it which in this case is represented by
a light bulb and also wanted to have lots of hands moving the gear out of the way
because that shows that filmmaking is a collaborative process
so I think it's really important to have a concept for your intro it could be as simple
as you like but it really helps to add some purpose to everything
now one thing you 'll notice in almost all good in intros is they use sound
because audio is such a powerful film making tool and it's just sitting there
waiting to be used
so I really think that just having music is not enough in terms of your sound
design
so on the blog post of linked to my favorite intros from big production
companies like lions gate and Marvel and I really think that you can see from
those how important sound is because all of those have sound as a prominent
feature
so when thinking about your concept I think it's worth just choosing something
that will actually make sound so for example in the magician one we have the
sound of the dice bouncing off the table or in my dslr guide intro there's
sound of the equipment being moved out of the way and of course the cade visuals one
has all the sounds of smoothing the wood and sawing the word and all the other
ones that come with carpentry
now it makes sense that if you want to have a good intro
you'll have to put an effort in, but there is a little bit more to it than that
so on the low end of effort you've got just doing a very simple text on a
simple background and that will just take not very long to do but will it really be
that good?
on the other end of the scale you have a really intricate photo realistic 3d
design which takes months and months of really skilled work now a key thing
about effort is that you could spend weeks and weeks making an intro but if
the concept doesn't make any sense or if the style doesn't fit your channel then
it probably won't be a very good intro despite how much effort you put into it
so I think it's best to start with something simple and try to make it
simple but good rather than trying to be really overly ambitious and trying to do
something that really would
a whole team of skilled 3d artists and speaking of 3d artists why not just film your intro
rather than making it in the computer and I think this gives it a
really nice kind of organic feel and you can often get much better results from
actually making something and filming it rather than spending hours and hours
trying to get it to look photo realistic in a computer so in the blog post i'll
embed a video which i think has a really cool
live action title sequence and do check that out if you want some ideas and the
tip I've saved for the end is the absolute most important but also
simplest idea and that is to keep it short
I cannot stress enough how important is that if your intro is longer than five
seconds you're already getting into dangerous territory because firstly if
you go on youtube and you have a 10 second intro and people might just click
away
people have extremely short attention spans and if your subscribers have to
watch a 20 second intro every single time they're just going to skip over it so I
really think that five seconds or maybe just a bit above is a good kind of
margin to go but just please please keep it short
so that's it for this week, i would like to say that on the blog post and said I
i've linked a whole bunch of intros which i think is really good at this
stuff to learn from there and also put some basic 3d tutorials if you do want
to take that route
but that's it for this week and see you next time!