GIFs 101

Shout & Co Blog - GIFs 101

We love a good GIF here at the Shout & Co. studios!

They’re fun, easy to produce and can tell a brand story in an engaging way that cuts through the digital clutter.

So if you’re looking to produce GIFs for your business, here are a couple of tips:
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GIF Shot, Styled & Created by Shout & Co. for Eat Real Snacks

GIF Shot, Styled & Created by Shout & Co. for Eat Real Snacks

  • Plan out your GIF before hand: know what actions you want to create right from the beginning of the process

  • Do a trial run before you start shooting. This also allows you to get a feel for the full movement of the objects, allowing you to adjust where needed before shooting

  • Put your camera on a tripod: this helps to keep your camera static despite the movement going on around it

  • Start at the end: after loads of trial and error, we’ve found that sometimes (depending on the set up and overall creative) that shooting the GIF from the final frame backwards gets us better results. We can see the final layout in camera, making sure the end scene is as impactful and effective as we envisaged. We then work our way back, capturing the first frame at the end of the process

  • More frames and micro-movements make for a more engaging and compelling story

  • When editing your GIF in post, create a preset and apply the same edits to all of the images in your GIF stack

  • Use programs like Canva, Giphy or GIFS to pull your GIF together

  • GIFs don’t always have to be a series of images, you could also make a GIF out of 1 static image with text changing out and icons or arrows creating a bit of movement

  • If you’d like to use your GIFs on your website or EDMs, export them as both .mp4 / .mov and .gif so that you can upload the GIF to each platform in the relevant file format required

If that sounds like a lot of hard work, we’ll do your GIFs for you! We do this day in and day out for our clients: from conceptualisation right through to production, execution and publication.

Find out more about our GIF services here - you can even fill out our GIF brief and we’ll quote that up for you!

Want to know more about our GIF services?