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Part Four – Practical Tips for Shooting your Video:

Operating the camera

With a rapid increase in the popularity of online video, how can you get your message heard above all others?

With the advances in mobile phones and digital cameras, video making has become widely accessible. Anyone can pick up a camera, shoot some footage, string it together using a basic video editing software, but the finished result (more likely than not) will not utilise the professionalism needed to make a marketing video stand out.

Part four of this blog series offers practical tips for shooting your video so that you can be more creative yet remain professional. When it comes to practical tips, practice is what makes tips useful. Have a read of the four points below, get out your camera and experiment – it’s the best way to learn.

Practical Tips for Shooting your Video:

Rule of thirds

• Composition: The most fundamental rule of composition is the ‘Rule of Thirds’ based on the classical interpretation of balance in a picture. If you have a background in still photography, you have probably already come across this concept and therefore you are at an advantage. The ‘Rule of Thirds’, when looking at a visual image, is set up with one horizontal line and three vertical lines (see diagram). The most obvious example of balance in a video picture is the tracking shot. If the camera follows a person walking across a scene with their nose up against the edge of the screen, this shot will be unbalanced. Track them so they always have two thirds of space in front of them.

• Pan, tilt and zoom:
  • The PAN shot is where the camera is moved from side to side or up and down (this is the TILT shot, aka Vertical Pan). In order for it to work in a creative way, it must be planned from start to finish and have a justification for its use. Let the action in the frame make the movement and only pan where necessary. 
  • There are two main rules to using the ZOOM; the purpose of zooming into an object is to draw the audience’s attention to something. If you are zooming out, zoom out to reveal something to the audience.

• Depth of field: What we mean by depth of field is when the camera lens is focused accurately on a particular subject to make it the only point of focus is the frame. Objects in front and behind the subject will be blurred to the eye. This is another technique to draw the audience’s attention to something. Depth of field can be also used creatively by experimenting with the Pull Focus shot. This is where the camera moves its focus from one subject to another. Three things to consider when establishing depth of field:
  • Focal distance of the lens: if you focus on an object near to you, you will have less depth of field than you would have when focused on a distant object.
  • Focal length: Moving the zoom control to the furthest telephoto range will reduce depth of field. Move it to the furthest wide angle and the depth of field will increase.
  • Aperture setting: Bright lighting conditions will give you a greater depth of field where the aperture lens is stopped down. The smaller the aperture the greater the depth of field.

Part Three – Setting up your video shoot:

With a rapid increase in the popularity of online video, how can you get your message heard above all others?

Part three of this blog series, offers useful tips on how to shoot your video so that it looks and sounds more professional. There is an extensive amount of production tips and advice out there. I am highlighting just some of the main ‘tips and tricks’ to give you an overview of the broad spectrum.

With the advances in mobile phones and digital cameras, video making has become widely accessible. Anyone can pick up a camera, shoot some footage, string it together using a basic video editing software, but the finished result (more likely than not) will not utilise the professionalism needed to make a marketing video stand out.

Setting up your shoot:

• Steadiness Techniques: Get as close to your subject as you can without causing them distress. This will enable you to work at the wider angle end of your lens thus avoiding the instability caused when working on full zoom. However, avoid full wide angle as this is likely to distort your subject.

• Shot Sizes and Angles: When setting up your shot, keep in mind which shots will be edited together; two images shot from the same angle with the same sized subject, will cause a problem with visual continuity.

• Lighting: Video recording systems tend to have a weakness in their inability to cope with contrast and backlighting. A good test to apply for all shooting situations is the “squint test”. Screw your eyes up until they are just slits and you can just about see the subject. Look into the shadow areas. If you can still see detail in the shadow areas then all is OK. If not, you can use reflectors to reflect light back into the shadow areas.

• Sound: Get the microphone as close to the subject as possible. This could entail moving the camera closer to the subject. If this becomes a problem, look to using external microphones that can plug into your camera mic socket and monitor the sound with headphones.

• White balance: To get a more accurate white balance, best way to do this is to set your camera’s white balance to a manual setting. You can then place a white card/board in front of the camera, zoom in so it fills the viewfinder and press the white balance button to adjust the colour cast of the light.

Part Two – Storyboarding:

Example of a visual storyboard

With a rapid increase in the popularity of online video, how can you get your message heard above all others?

Part two of this blog series, offers useful tips on how to create effective storyboards during the pre-production process of making your video.

So Why Use a Storyboard?

Alfred Hitchcock was ‘notorious’ for having used storyboards, so much so, he considered this phase of production to be the actual process of making the film. For him, shooting the film was a necessary evil; the making of the storyboards was where most of the creative work took place. (Steensland 1995:1)

Storyboards are essential tools that visually and/or audibly explain a scene in good detail. They also help to visualise how a scene should be shot and act as an excellent asset to get approval from sponsors or clients.

There are four main types of storyboard you can use:

• Basic storyboard – This storyboard is principle when your creative ideas start to flow and you need to get them down on paper.  It enables you to sketch out visual representations of your video when words alone become difficult.
• Audio storyboard – The first thing you should think about when you come to producing a storyboard is whether your video is going to be visually or audibly led. Audio storyboards are helpful if you plan to use a detailed script, use text on screen to tell the story or use a voice over. You can also add in music and any other audio elements i.e. sound effects.
• Visual storyboard – Visual storyboards can be used if your video is going to be visually led. This gives you the opportunity to paint a picture of each scene and add in other visual elements that will drive the narrative.
• Editing storyboard – These storyboards can be used to plan any video effects and transitions you may use during post production. If your video is going to include a lot of effects or animation, these storyboards will help make planning easier.

If you would like to receive any of the above templates, please email me (Tiffany Clowes) at: tclowes@changeworkscom.co.uk

Work sited

Steensland, M., ‘How to Create a Storyboard’, Video Maker, http://www.videomaker.com/article/2313/ (Oct 1995)