Chapter 9 Project Development 165
Copyright Goodheart-Willcox Co., Inc.
Program Length
The next step is to determine your video’s
length. Program running time may be governed
by one or more of several factors:
• Standard time units: In broadcast and
cable TV, for example, programs and
commercials alike are always produced in
standardized lengths, Figure 9-6. Video
websites often impose maximum running
times on programs they accept.
• Resources: As a rule, the longer a video
runs, the more it costs to produce. So, your
program’s length may be affected by the
size of your budget.
• Audience tolerance: The length of the
audience’s attention span depends on the
type of program you are making. Viewers
might enjoy a movie for two hours or more.
A TV infomercial about a line of products
might hold them for 30 minutes at most.
(Infomercials are covered in the following
chapter.) Training videos are hard to
sustain for longer than 10 or 15 minutes,
and commercials are too intense to hold up
much longer than 60 seconds.
• Subject matter: Within the program types
that are not standardized in length, the
actual duration of a video may depend on
the extensiveness of its content.
Dawid Konopka/Shutterstock.com; Pakhnyushchy/Shutterstock.com
Figure 9-6. TV commercials are made in standard
lengths. g
At first, subject matter might seem to be
the first determiner of length, rather than the
last. It would appear logical to let a video
run as long as it takes to cover the chosen
content fully. This is often how publishers
set the lengths of nonfiction books, such
as this one. A book may have 300 pages,
or 600, or 1,200 depending on the extent of
its subject. But, a book is a random access
document. You can dip into it anywhere you
please, read it at your own pace, pick it up
and put it down when you feel like it. The
length of a book is not critically important,
because the reader controls how much of it
to absorb at any one time.
The video viewer, by contrast, cannot
control the speed at which information is
delivered, and most programs are designed
to be watched continuously, at a single
sitting. For these reasons, the lengths of
video programs are influenced less by their
subject matter than by the other factors
discussed above.
Videos on YouTube and similar sites can be paused,
but skipping backward or forward to a specific place
can be difficult.
Considering how these factors influencefl
your Acme Sidewinder video, you realize
that impatient net surfers are unlikely to
watch a promotional video for even five fi
minutes. On the other hand, you cannot
demonstrate the major benefits of the new fi
drill in a 30-second commercial. With this
in mind, you set a program length of about
three minutes.
Budget
Finally, you need to consider budget: the
amount of money available to produce your
program. Budget constraints will determine
both what you can do and how you can do it.
What You Can Do
For the Sidewinder Drill program, the
original concept was to use fast motion
techniques to show several women building
a new home using Sidewinder drills.