Is 1 Minute of Video Really Worth 1.8 million Words?
What's happening in this image?
There are various attributions for the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words”, going back to the early 1900s. In March 1911, the Syracuse Advertising Men's Club held a banquet to discuss journalism and publicity. The newspaper The Post-Standard published an article about the event, in which they quoted one of the event’s speakers, newspaper editor, Arthur Brisbane. He is reported to have said “Use a picture. It’s worth a thousand words”.
A newspaper advertisement from the period, for a car parts supplier used a similar phrase:
Ironically, the ad does not include an image of the product.
Most people agree that Fred R. Barnard was the one who popularised the phrase in its current form. Barnard advocated the employment of visuals in advertising on the sides of streetcars by publishing this sentence in the advertising industry journal Printers' Ink.
A modern-day equivalent of Bernard’s words, being used a lot online to promote the effectiveness of online video is “A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words”. This phrase was written in a Forrester Research report by Dr, James McQuivey, titled “How Video will Take Over the World”.
But how was 1.8 million words calculated?
If we assume that a picture is in fact worth a thousand words (We can’t find any scientific studies that support this claim), then one minute of video, which consists of 30 frames, or pictures per second (the American standard) will consist of 1,800,000 images.
The rather complex calculation looks something like this:
1000 x 30 x 60 = 1,800,000
But if we’re seeing one image every 1/30th of a second, does that mean that the first image communicates 1000 words and the second image another 1000 words? – Of course not!
Just like Bernard’s original statement, the 1.8 million words quote is meant to be taken figuratively rather than literally, in fact Dr McQuivey states 1.8 million, is almost certainly impossible to quantify. It is a playful statement about the persistence of vision.
But the essence of the statement is that the moving image is more powerful than the still image, and well-crafted video content with a combination of graphics, audio, and text overlays allows for much more information to be conveyed in a shorter length of time than could be achieved through writing alone.
The importance of hiring a professional video production company.
The amount of information we absorb, and in fact how much emotion we feel from the moving image depends on how the scene is composed, how each shot is edited together and how well the director tells the story.
Quality video production requires many elements to come together to engage the viewer, and it starts with two key principles:
1. Know the target audience
2. Understand the key messages that need to be conveyed in the video
From there, it’s about working with the right people to ensure your story is told appropriately, using the right methodology, including scriptwriting, planning, shooting, directing, editing and design.
At ThinkFrame Media, we have a variety of pre-scoped video content types that will kickstart your video project. We then take the time to understand your unique needs and deliver a finished video that works for you.
So, what is happening in the cover image of this article? Well, effective videos need to convey emotion or some kind of feeling. How do you convey a real-world sensory experience on video? See how we approached the challenge.