Patient testimonials are a great way to add more custom content to your HNN screen. They provide your patients with familiar faces and increase transparency of your clinic. Testimonials are rewarding and motivate staff to continue to provide a quality service. And most importantly, testimonials empower patients. However, they are not always the easiest projects to film.

Here are some tips for filming your own patient testimonials:

Camera

While you can certainly go the route of purchasing a high-end, professional camera, it isn’t essential to create great-looking, professionally-shot videos for your practice. Most modern smartphones have cameras sufficient for many types of videos. If you or a team member owns a smartphone, you can easily capture a video.

Tips:

• Always hold your phone horizontally when filming. This will give you the widescreen shot that will look best on your HNN screen.
• Use a tripod—Holding a phone with your hands can result in grainy, wobbly footage. There are attachments for camera tripods that will hold your phone.
• Don’t zoom. Move closer instead. Zooming can result in a pixelated shot. Physically move the camera closer to your patients until you have found the ideal framing.

Setting

Generally, your office can serve as a great background as it’s a great idea to familiarize prospective patients with your office surroundings.

Tips:

• Find a spot in the reception area or in the consultation room to capture that office feel and decor.
• Taking your photo shoot outdoors is also an option. But be sure to test the audio and video quality of your outdoor settings first to avoid muffled wind noises or glares.

Lighting

Proper lighting is essential for a high quality video. Overhead, fluorescent lighting is not always the most flattering light. Most phones or cameras do not have idea lights built in, but there are alternatives:

• Purchase studio lights
• Positions your subject so they are facing an uncovered window and use the sunlight.

Sound

Many smart phones have adequate microphones that will catch your patients’ voices. However, if you feel the sound quality is too low, add a microphone. Simply purchase a clip-on microphone from an electronics store, and then get a microphone adaptor that enables you to plug it right into your phone or camera.

Duration

Keep your videos short! Since most HNN videos range from 30 seconds to 2 minutes, you want to keep your patient testimonials short.

Permission

Whenever you’re featuring patients in photos or video—whether through before-and-after photos, an HNN video, or a Facebook post—you should always get written permission from the patient or their legal guardian beforehand.

Send

The final step is to send your footage to our content and design staff. You can send the video clips via email. However, many of the videos may be too large of a file to send. In that case, contact Abigail Tichler at abigial.tichler@cleardigitalmedia.net to set up a shared Dropbox folder where you can deposit all your videos.

If you have a specific design idea in mind, please give us detailed instructions on how you would like the testimonial video to look.

*NOTE: Some clinics prefer to take photos of their patients holding a whiteboard containing the patient’s testimonial rather than filing their own videos. This is a fine alternative, however many of these tips still apply to photographs.

If you have further questions of concerns about filming your own patient testimonials, please contact our Content Architect, Abigail Tichler, at abigail.tichler@cleardigitalmedia.net for more information.