Why You Need a Video Portfolio or YouTube Channel Trailer

Learn how to promote your portfolio and build a community with Juan Bermúdez Romero, aka Kaos

With over 700,000 users subscribed to his channel, Kaos (@estudiokatastrofico) knows that using YouTube can be the ideal strategy to promote your career as an artist. A writer and illustrator based in Spain, Juan Bermúdez Romero, better known as Kaos, decided to use his YouTube channel as a personal portfolio and has collaborated with major brands like Disney, Wacom, Fiverr, and many others.

In his Domestika course, he teaches you to create your own YouTube channel and share your portfolio with the world. One of the most crucial steps in this process is creating a video portfolio that will be the channel trailer. First, you’ll need to define your goals and values. Then, you can set out to create your channel’s trailer to showcase your portfolio. You must follow three pre-production processes: the idea, the script, and the storyboard.

Having an idea

Your idea will stem from your goals and values. Rather than a simple display of all the work you have done, your video should exploit your values, and these can help you plan your video. For example, in Juan’s case, his video trailer showcases his work by outlining his values of storytelling and drawing.

His advice is to brainstorm and develop some concepts to play with, based on your goals and values. Choose the best idea from this list, one that best translates and conforms with your goals and values. Once you’ve decided what will be the idea to develop, you will write a script.

Developing a script

There are several ways to approach a script for YouTube. One can be to write down the key points you want to talk about and improvise. The other is to write down a full script. Whether you are used to being in front of the camera or not, the choice will depend on what will best fit the script and the message.

When writing the script, remember that it is for a YouTube video. On this platform, people will watch 15 seconds of a video, on average, before deciding whether to continue watching it or move on. “To attract the viewer’s attention within 15 seconds, start with an almost lapidary phrase, and if you have a powerful image from the beginning, that’s even better. A trick that I use a lot in my stories—says Kaos—is that I usually finish the way I start to provide a conclusion to a circular story.”

You’ll want to show your work to a potential client, so your video needs to be less than a minute long. Your message should be, as Kaos puts it, “This is what I can do, you can see it instantly, I’m the channel host, hire me.“ Spending a bit of time deciding how you want to present your work in the video will help you structure the script. “Have someone else look at your script for some feedback, says Juan. Others’ opinions can help you improve yours.”

Storyboarding

The final step is to prepare a storyboard or an animatic. A storyboard is a sequence of images to visualize what the movie will look like before shooting. You do not need to know how to draw. If you are not a draughtsman, simply indicate the subjects, types of shot—if it is a general shot, a close-up, overhead, or frontal shot—and what elements will appear in the shot. Also, include the transitions between each scene. This work method has been popular in movie-making since the 1940s and is still saving a lot of work when doing film production.

As mentioned, you need attention for the first 15 seconds, so start with a general frontal shot. Use your resources and props. A white background will allow you to include other relevant elements that can appear in different ways behind you and add to the story.

Kaos starts and ends with the same shot. At this stage, the story is still open to changes. The storyboard is there to give you direction. When you’re recording or editing, there will be things you decide to change to make your piece more effective.

Creating an animatic

There is an extra step that Kaos also feels is important in this process: the animatic, which means animating your existing storyboard and seeing it in video format. This stage lets you see if anything is missing or if the sequence needs to be more dynamic before moving on to your trailer’s production.

If you want to know more about developing a strategy, produce, and edit your first video presentation, sign up for Kaos’s course, YouTube: Creating a Channel from Scratch, and learn about what the platform offers for growing and optimizing your channel.

You may be interested in:

- Brainstorming for Developing Audio Visual Script Writing Projects
- Giacomo Prestinari: “It’s possible to tell a powerful story in under 30 seconds”
- What Is a Pilot and How to Develop One for Your Audiovisual Projects