GIFs are known in the social media world for two reasons: they are great for grabbing an audience’s attention, and they spark a huge debate on their pronunciation. Regardless of how you say it, we can all agree GIFs are a great way to break up the still photography in a feed and keep your audience engaged with your brand. Discover how to make a GIF in three easy steps below!

1. Have a Vision

Before starting the GIF process, it is important to know what the content will be. Creating a well put-together GIF can take 30 minutes to an hour depending on how meticulous your idea is, so it is important to know exactly what you’re doing before you end up wasting time.

A great way to spark ideas is having a creative meeting with your team. We have one every Thursday morning. This allows for our work to be collaborative and fun through every step of our content creation process!

2. Gather Your Materials  

Once you decide what your GIF will be, it’s time to choose the materials you will need to make it happen. Though GIFs can be difficult to make, it is important to make it look as simple as possible, so use as little items as possible to make your GIF catch eyes. We would suggest using no more than 3-5 separate items in a GIF. Otherwise the shot becomes crowded and there’s too much movement.

3. Get Moving!

This is where true creativity comes in! If you’re looking to having an object move, there is more than one way to accomplish the task. It is just a matter of how much time you have and how much effort is needed.  

A very common way to move objects between shots is to have the Account Coordinator, or whoever is assisting move each object by hand. Though this is the most time consuming, it provides the most authentic looking content.

If the object is changing to show movement, but the background is staying the same, we suggest using a marker on the background so the GIF does not move. This prevents a sloppy GIF from being created. We suggest using a tripod to prevent this.

Though it takes so much time to create a few seconds of content, we love using GIFs in our feed as well as client’s! If you’re interested in GIF or other visual content creation, please email The Burnette Agency at info@theburnetteagency.com or give us a call at 404-850-2081.