6 Best Video Special Effects To Elevate Your Visual Content

It’s the question every video marketer has had at some point: what actually makes a marketing video engaging? Take a moment and think about some of your favorite commercials and ask yourself, what aspect of their creative concept made the greatest lasting impression on you? You might find yourself considering ads with stunning visual effects. 

If you want to hook your audience’s attention and keep them engaged, special visual effects can elevate your video marketing ads. They don’t need to be as advanced as the techniques used in big-budget brand commercials; simple visual effects can still help your audience retain information through a memorable viewing experience. 

There are myriad visual effects that can elevate your marketing videos. Here, we’ll break down a few of the best special effects for videos you can start utilizing to drive action, make a lasting impression, and grow your brand!

Learn more: Social Media Video Ad Specs & Placements Guide

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1) Cinemagraphs

Cinemagraphs — sometimes referred to as motion stills — are short videos that animate a single part of a photo. They’re a great option to draw audiences in with a video that looks like an optical illusion, adding texture and personality to a still image through simple animation. Cinemagraphs can also help brands stand out, especially on social platforms like Instagram. 

This visual effect is particularly successful for product marketing and ecommerce, since cinemagraphs can dynamically showcase an entire line of products or even highlight unique benefits with a thumb-stopping style. In the video example above, only the sky is animated, creating an eye-catching asset. 

This visual effect is perfect for:

• Product spotlights
• Social commerce
• Other ecommerce spots, including websites and product pages 

2) Motion Graphics

Motion graphics add animation to existing still photography to transform your assets into new video content. This technique can animate any number of photos and often uses on-screen text or voiceover to drive messages home. 

Related: 4 Ways To Repurpose Assets for Video Marketing

Motion graphics videos are fully customizable and easy to iterate, which allows brands to test various styles and messaging for different audience segments. These videos can help establish brand identity by leaning into your organization’s unique style through branded colors, fonts, and logos. This is also a great opportunity to creatively call out value propositions, product features, or anything else that you know will resonate with viewers. 

The Macallan example above employs a standard video production technique to draw attention to the product, followed by additional motion graphics to create more effects that further highlight the bottle.

Adding animation to a specific element of the image is also an option. This example, also from a video QuickFrame produced for The Macallan, uses motion graphics to communicate brand values and seasonal messaging. This is an excellent demonstration (if we do say so ourselves) of how you can get a lot of mileage out of a single photo — post-production motion graphics can be employed time and again to this same asset to customize messaging for specific audiences.

This visual effect is perfect for:

• Product spotlights
• Social media 
• Social commerce

3) Stop-Motion Animation

Stop-motion is an animation technique that creates a video from a series of still photos edited together in post-production. It’s an excellent option to consider if you want to bring an element of surprise, quirk, or fun to your video ad. 

To achieve fluid motion, stop-motion artists use 24 individual shots per second, which parallels the standard frame rate for live-action videos. The longer your concept is, the more still photographs you’ll need to take. For example, a 30-second commercial with 24 frames per second means you’ll need to take 720 shots. (Stop motion films can take hundreds of thousands of shots to create!) No matter the size of your production, stay mindful of your schedule so you can get all the content you need in a single shoot. 

While stop-motion is technically achieved through video post-production editing, it’s different from the other video techniques here as it requires a specific shoot, so you can’t simply repurpose existing still photography with stop-motion. 

One study found that stop-motion videos drove 58% higher sales, so brands can use this visual effect in ecommerce experiences to showcase a product line or individual product features. QuickFrame created the unboxing-style stop-motion video above for Jaanuu that works well as a brand commercial. 

This visual effect is perfect for:

• Unboxing ecommerce product videos
• Brand commercials on any channel, including linear or CTV/OTT
• Explainer videos
• Product spotlights for ecommerce
• How-to videos

4) Transition Effects

A simple way to give your videos a flashy style is with dynamic transitions. Being able to seamlessly and cleverly transition from one shot to the next can keep your audience engaged as you move them through a narrative journey.

There are a number of different transition effects for videos you can employ. Cuts are the most common type for quick transitions between shots, as well as crossfades that seamlessly blend one shot into the next so you can’t tell when one shot ends and the next begins. An even more dynamic transition uses wipes, where one shot travels across the frame to replace another. 

Think outside of the box when it comes to transitions to land memorably. Can you layer in motion graphic techniques to add an extra layer of gloss to the way your videos move from scene to scene? Consider all of the eye-catching design elements that personify your brand and how they might be applied to your video ad transitions.

This visual effect is perfect for:

• Sizzles
• Brand commercials
• Educational videos
• Mini-docs
• Explainer videos

Need help making videos? See how our video production platform can help your business.

5) Text Effects

In today’s content landscape, it’s difficult to know whether or not social media videos will be played with or without sound. On TikTok, for example, sound is often a critical element, but viewers might choose a silent experience on other platforms. So what does this mean? You need to plan for both sound-on and sound-off experiences. One way you can prepare for videos without sound is to use text effects to get your message across. 

When ideating text effects, especially for trending social media videos, keep the native video experience in mind. Look at popular videos on each platform and take note of how they are using text effects to draw you into their message. You want to make sure that your visual effects feel appropriate for every channel. Text effects can also be a great way to give kinetic motion to subtitles, making your ads accessible to a wider audience. Every user within your target audience has unique needs, so be sure that you are catering your content to your diverse demographics. 

This visual effect is perfect for:

• Social media
• How-to videos
• Sizzle reels
• Educational videos
• Explainer videos 
• Customer testimonials

6) Augmented Reality Effects

This face filter QuickFrame created for McDonald’s demonstrates the unique ways augmented reality can inspire creative interaction.

Augmented reality (AR) filters, like those found on Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram, are a visual effect that allows your audience to play and interact with brand creative directly on their mobile device. They turn an interactive effect into an immersive experience, blurring the lines between native content and sponsored advertisements. 

Learn more about Snapchat Filters in our Ultimate Guide to Snapchat Marketing.

Augmented reality filters can be applied to both a user’s face and the world around them. Face filters recognize a user’s eyes, mouth, and head, transforming them into creative characters like puppies or aliens. It’s an interactive way for your target audience to test out products virtually, like trying on new jewelry from a fashion line or a pair of glasses from an eyewear eComm store. 

World effects transform the real-time environment in a regular camera lens. By using their rear-facing camera to superimpose AR on their video, audiences can place your brand or product into their everyday surroundings, like this clever new gamification campaign from Pizza Hut.

This visual effect is perfect for:

• Product spotlights
• UGC-style
• Brand awareness
• Ecommerce and social commerce
• Immersive and experiential content

Video Special Effects: The Takeaway

To stay competitive in the highly saturated content landscape of our video-dominated world, your brand needs to continue to produce, iterate, and test a constant stream of marketing video ads using multivariate tests on every platform. With the battle for attention more fierce than ever before, you need to leverage every tool to stand out with your creatives.

As you strategize your video content, experiment with visually creative ways to break through the noise and make a lasting impression on your audience. You can achieve this by leaning on engaging visual effects techniques for videos that elevate your concepts so the mesmerizing content that’s in your head can be translated to the screen.

By connecting with the right content makers, you can easily begin generating stunning marketing videos with unique visual effects that can engage new consumers and convert them into loyal customers. QuickFrame’s video production marketplace has Makers who are experts in video ads for every objective, platform, and style.

Learn more: The Ultimate Guide to Video for Performance Marketing