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THIS WORLD NEEDS TO BE SAVED FROM MEDIOCRE VIDEO
One of the first things that struck me when I joined Videobolt several months ago was how passionate the team was about high quality video and how determined they were to share this passion with the world. Even a skeptic like myself easily got onboard with this mission when I met the team and realized that businesses and consumers from almost every country of the world have used Videobolt to create more than 7M videos.
Rather than having a generic celebratory social media post to mark this big milestone, soon after joining I sat down with Videobolt’s co-founders Momčilo, Igor and Uglješa and asked them to share why they feel the web is dominated by video, where they think this is heading and how the platform they built can stir the transition video production is going through. And here is how that conversation went.
Miloš
CMO
What do you guys think, how has the world of video changed since you started the Videobolt story back in 2017?
Igor
Co-Founder & CPO
The biggest change in the past six years is probably that video became a dominant mode of communication not just between people — video calls, social media, etc. — but also between brands and their users.
Uglješa
Co-Founder & CTO
There's an ever-growing number of people that need video, even on a daily basis. The great thing is that we can absolutely match such hyperproduction and it's one of the foremost reasons why we fit this change.
Momčilo
Co-Founder & CEO
A huge change also happened in terms of video formats. We're way past the time when widescreen video was the default. Vertical formats are now dominant and they also came with a slew of challenges for anyone working in motion graphics.
Igor
Co-Founder & CPO
So many distribution platforms are giving more and more space to video as well. Just look at the growth of Facebook Video, Instagram Reels, TikTok.
Momčilo
Co-Founder & CEO
Absolutely, which drastically changed the way videos are viewed. Many people now watch videos on smaller screens, in transit and often with no sound. A big challenge ahead of us is to find ways to project the outstanding quality of the design even when viewed in such an unflattering environment.
Uglješa
Co-Founder & CTO
It's also worth mentioning the rise of new filmmaking tools and techniques developed for huge, multimillion-dollar productions. Epic's Unreal Engine and Nvidia have changed the video production landscape. There's also widespread use of AI techniques like deep fakes and speech synthesis.
Igor
Co-Founder & CPO
And a lion's share of those advances can fit within our own tech and we'll be incorporating them over time.
Momčilo
Co-Founder & CEO
As exciting as these new technologies are — personally — I get the feeling they sometimes only serve to produce visually underwhelming videos. Generic content. At Videobolt we recognize this is happening and are doing our very best to put creativity back in the visuals, to offer unique designs founded on cinematographic knowledge like composition, lighting, color theory, etc.
Miloš
CMO
Can you remember the moment you realized that Videobolt would be a success story?
Igor
Co-Founder & CPO
The first time we started a render and got the resulting video in the browser. I still remember that moment clear as day.
Momčilo
Co-Founder & CEO
Everything was held together by sticks and bubblegum, but it worked. It felt so good and creative.
Igor
Co-Founder & CPO
That video playing in my browser was a clear sign to me that this team can accomplish great things.
Uglješa
Co-Founder & CTO
I kind of felt good about it from the very start and thought we would definitely find our place in the vast field of video production. We had a clear idea of the technology we wanted to develop and understood it could be put to a wide range of uses. And so it was, we have found and still are discovering novel ways to use it.
Momčilo
Co-Founder & CEO
I agree — and adding to that — a really important moment for me was when we first released music visualizers. It was something that looked great from a design point of view, would render faster and no one else could do it like we did. It just wasn't something anyone was doing online at the time. They’re still not.
Miloš
CMO
And how has the typical usage of the platform changed over the years?
Uglješa
Co-Founder & CTO
If we take a closer look at who our users are — a lot has changed. At first we were used exclusively by consumers, hobbyists. People who would make one video — an intro or similar — and leave. Now we're helping create anything and everything to market entire brands with video.
Igor
Co-Founder & CPO
Our template library also grew by leaps and bounds which I think enabled such frequent and long-term usage.
Igor
Co-Founder & CPO
I feel the core usage of Videobolt hasn't changed. We're still here to help people easily create videos they're proud of, using whatever assets they have. Just like we did from the very start.
Momčilo
Co-Founder & CEO
Often they'll also surprise themselves by what they're able to achieve with Videobolt. On average, our users also became much more apt at using the platform and keep finding more creative ways to use it.
Miloš
CMO
Videobolt is not alone in the video production game. What do you personally think makes our platform stand out in this highly competitive market?
Uglješa
Co-Founder & CTO
Above all, the quality of the video designs. Since our beginning the videos we delivered were informed by Momčilo's knowledge and experience in the film and VFX industry, having worked on titles like “Pirates of the Caribbean” or “X-Men: Apocalypse”. And we aimed for the same high production standards. Our design is truly world-class and that's our core pillar.
Momčilo
Co-Founder & CEO
We never made any compromises when it comes to the designs. There are at least 500 templates that give our users access to absolutely top-notch animation. And that's what makes us different. We have a large number of highly gifted authors contributing their designs and it's thanks to them that we can make such amazing things.
Uglješa
Co-Founder & CTO
It's truly our competitive edge. We source these designs from hundreds of people like Momčilo. They're all around the world and professionals in their field. None of our competitors deal with videos of that level.
Momčilo
Co-Founder & CEO
People who want quality find it on Videobolt. We often see our videos are compared to Hollywood quality and it's a point of great pride.
Uglješa
Co-Founder & CTO
We also support this professional community with bespoke tools and technology that helps them to deliver videos of such quality to all of our users.
Igor
Co-Founder & CPO
We're one of the few that work on top of After Effects — the most widely used motion graphics software — which is a huge advantage in terms of what we can achieve with our videos. The animations we deliver are of a quality that is far beyond what our competitors can produce. We spare our user the usual dilemma of video productions — quality or efficiency.
Momčilo
Co-Founder & CEO
Another thing that sets us apart is our fight to avoid the put upon standards that lead users into mediocrity. We're always breaking new ground and setting our own standards, so that our users stand above the norm.
Miloš
CMO
I'm sure I'm not the only one who noticed how much pride you take in Videobolt. What about it makes you proud the most?
Uglješa
Co-Founder & CTO
If I have to pick a single thing, it's the fact that we built this global product (with users in 174 countries!) with limited resources and right here in Serbia — a country that many have never even heard of and without an established foothold in this industry.
Igor
Co-Founder & CPO
The three of us often mention our greatest success is the team we built. On many levels. It's not just that we have extremely talented people that came into their own in Videobolt, but to come to a point where two of our colleagues are expecting babies! Six years ago I couldn't fathom we would build a company that provides for the families of our employees. That fact makes me feel profoundly happy.
Momčilo
Co-Founder & CEO
I also find pride in our users. When someone is truly delighted with their experience on the platform. When they put together a lovely color palette with a nice logo and utilize the full potential of our templates to make a truly great video — I know we're doing a good thing.
Miloš
CMO
One thing that is rather obvious is that the three of you bring quite different perspectives to Videobolt. In your view, what is the most important contribution the other two make?
Uglješa
Co-Founder & CTO
Definitely creativity. I'm very goal-oriented, kind of a numbers guy. The two of them are much more in tune with our people and make us a company not just in the legal sense, but also a company of people you like to be around.
Momčilo
Co-Founder & CEO
Both of them are highly intelligent people that accomplish what they put their minds to. What we achieve together is always greater than what I could have done alone.
Igor
Co-Founder & CPO
I think it's the contrasts between them that create a very successful dynamic. Momčilo is instinctual and Uglješa is shrewd. Momčilo is creative and Uglješa is logical. When these differences meet, the results are stunning. On our own, I don't think any one of us would lead Videobolt in the right direction. This way we're always there to course-correct each other.
Miloš
CMO
Looking ahead, what do you think is the biggest challenge before Videobolt?
Uglješa
Co-Founder & CTO
To grow and scale into our full potential. To put a number on it, I'd say at least 10x from here.
Igor
Co-Founder & CPO
And not to rush headfirst into any standard approach. I don't want us to enroll more people than we can handle — I want us to manage our growth thoughtfully.
Momčilo
Co-Founder & CEO
Yeah, I don't want us to become yet another company making the same boring videos. I can't wait to see us grow, but I also want us to keep fighting for our vision of what video can and should be.
Miloš
CMO
How do you see the future of video production? How does Videobolt fit into that picture?
Igor
Co-Founder & CPO
One thing is certain, changes in the world of video production are becoming faster and faster. With the knowledge we have and the product we've built we're ready to embrace what the future brings — whether it's VR or any other technology.
Momčilo
Co-Founder and CEO
Personalized video is quickly growing in significance. And the kind of personalization we want to deliver goes far beyond displaying a different name at the start of a video. We could create videos that reconstruct a person's hike on 3D terrain. We could do automatic film montages from drone footage, or highlight reels of a gaming session. Amazing things with motion and face tracking, way beyond what people are used to with Instagram filters. Our tech, creativity and know-how enable us to do all of these things and more.
Igor
Co-Founder and CPO
There's lots of ideas. There's also room for us to improve the way video is produced in general. Over the years we've built quite the set of tools around After Effects and we want to offer these to enterprise partners. We're also looking to employ different production engines, like Unreal Engine.
Uglješa
Co-Founder & CTO
I think the technology is advancing towards a point where the user will give a brief, an AI will make some suggestions and they’ll come to a solution in a few iterations. Much like how it goes when working with people. Emulating a process like that is the general direction of the market and it's something Videobolt is primed to tackle.
Igor
Co-Founder & CPO
We're perfectly positioned to develop an AI like that. We have a large library of high quality designs and we know their constituent elements well. We also have data about how people are currently using them.
Uglješa
Co-Founder & CTO
I have no doubt something like that will provide a great user experience. Instead of experimenting on their own, a user could get say ten designs and then just pick what they like or not. They would be communicating with the tool the way they would with a designer.
Momčilo
Co-Founder & CEO
AI can also be an amazing assistant in video productions. Say you want to cut someone or something out of a video. Before, you'd have to paint over manually, frame by frame. Today you just click what you want removed and an AI does the rest. AIs could solve so many labour intensive tasks, that people will truly be able to focus only on the creative. There's already tools to automatically clean up an audio recording from silences, "umms", etc. Or depth analysis tools that can create depth of field after the footage has already been shot. That just wasn't possible before. It's all going in that direction and Videobolt can do all of these things.
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