12 Dec Behind The Stream: Transforming Zoom Testimonials
People want to see videos that feel authentic and real—it’s part of a trend called UGC (User-Generated Content). UGC refers to content created by everyday people, not production teams, and it’s become popular because of its relatability and unpolished charm. The good news? This trend makes it easier to create DIY content, and in some cases, it even performs better.
But here’s the thing: while UGC-style videos are effective, creating them still takes time and effort. That’s where we come in. A production partner can take your raw footage—like a Zoom testimonial—and turn it into a polished video that looks professional without feeling overproduced. You save time, stay on trend, and get better results.
In this week’s #BehindTheStream, we’re showing how we transformed a client’s Zoom testimonial footage into a great-looking video.
Beth: Welcome back to Mainstream Video Behind the Stream, we’re talking about case studies from our favorite clients, some of our favorite video projects, what we learned; and today we’re talking about gallantry coaching and consulting. Last week we did part one on the purpose of the video and what the video set out to do for her marketing strategy, and today we’re talking about how we actually got it produced.
Beth: What makes me so happy about this video is the idea– something I teach in video production and how everyone should think about video and life is the path of least resistance. What is going to get you into action to get something done? Stephanie was going to be presenting at an event. You know, she had several clients that were ready to give a testimonial, told her like, “I’m happy to talk about you as a coach and your business.” And she thought this is a perfect opportunity to, to have my business explained for me through the eyes of my clients. So we didn’t have much time and we were gonna do the whole thing on Zoom, which for this kind of thing was no problem.
Jennifer’s Testimonial: “It’s really having someone who is in your corner and is your cheerleader and can just push you to, you know, constantly grow yourself and grow your business.”
Beth: So you guys obviously produced the video. Tell us about this kind of look and feel and what clients that are thinking about creating something similar need to know.
Steph: Well, I mean, this is kind of an obvious point, but interviewing someone over Zoom is much less of a lift for the person you’re asking to be on camera. You can still accomplish the same thing, but it’s 15 minutes of their time rather than we’re driving all over the state of Colorado to mic up and professionally light and we’re in the office bare minimum two hours, right?
So this is a 15 minute– hop on, I’m gonna interview you, I’m gonna record you. It’s easy to get a lot done in a day. And then of course we bring in the other elements that we have from Stephanie, which was her pictures and her graphics and her branding and the points that she really wanted to make that we had sound to back up. So it was a really nice way to get this video done fairly quickly, but still very powerful when it was being used to introduce her.
Beth: And still look and sound really, really professional
Steph: Exactly.
Erica: And you’ll notice that, um, for the pictures, they all have a little bit of motion on it. So it’s not just a slideshow. So it does kind of give it that elevated feel a little bit. And then yeah, doing kind of a basic, um, color correction on everything and audio pass to just make sure that everything kind of sounds like in the same world. Um, then we have some graphics that pop in that are all of her branding to kind of help again, kind of elevate this video when we you don’t have professional footage to use. How, how else can we kind of elevate it? It’s with a little motion. It’s with some graphics, it’s with some nice supers.
Beth: One of the, the things I always say with video is whatever the story is, what can we visually see to tell that story? And that all comes with storyboarding and thinking through what the video’s gonna be, where it’s gonna go. Um, lot of different ways to do it. We’re big fans of Path of Least Resistance.