Create

Cook Up a Great Video

Creating Great Videos
by Carlile Crutcher


This article is not for those who want to shoot video commercially. Most people (by a huge factor) simply want to create good videos for fun and family just as many of us who aspire to be great chefs have absolutely no intention of ever darkening to door of the kitchen in a commercial restaurant. Unlike great or bad meals, however, a video will likely be around for many years and in some cases will be viewed by generations of unborn grandchildren who may judge you unfairly if your video-making skills are inferior. On this subject I can be of help.

The learning curve for shooting video is similar to learning how to cook -- rarely does a beginner produce a gourmet meal, but we all know what tastes dreadful and what is truly gourmet. This makes learning how to "cook up" great videos intellectually exciting.

Fortunately for the rebellious souls among us, the rules for shooting great videos are not cast in stone -- you can do rude things and your audience may love it, just as a great chef may burn and over-pepper a fish and sell it as "blackened" to an appreciative audience. But you really should know the rules of the game before you start breaking them -- you need to know how to use your tools and what happens when you push things to the limit.

If you were making a Hollywood movie, you would need a script, professional actors, and a support team of dozens or hundreds of people to manage everything from lighting and staging to snacks and insurance for the crew. If you were shooting a documentary, you'd need a story line, a point of view, an argument that you'd want to show and prove. Much the same can be said for videos that sell, train or record for posterity a defined event or staged production. But here you are, you have a camera, want to shoot video, but don't have any of this working for you. What are you to do, leave it in the closet? Where do you start? Here are some things to think about that may help.

Be selfish: assume that you will be the ultimate audience -- that you are trapped in a nursing home with hard floors and hard walls surrounded by strangers, lonely, and no longer interested in a world that is spinning away without you. What would you want to relive and enjoy?

Create an imaginary pen-pal on the other side of the world: imagine you are exchanging "this is my world" videos with that person -- someone you want to impress but whom you feel has no idea what everyday life in your world is like. Perhaps instead of a pen-pal on the other side of the world, you need to imagine that grandchildren 50 years from now will be watching and enjoying your footage -- they need to see more than this year's Christmas tree or a collage of unidentified faces all wedged together at the end of a table.

If traveling and touring about, consider being rebellious -- don't shoot a video that the travel industry would want to buy, don't try to outdo the shots on the picture postcards, don't come back with hours of footage of old churches and great overlooks. Instead, shoot the little things that are different: the tacky, the elegant, the ugly, the glamorous. Get kids at play, beggars on the sidewalk, strange trucks, painted front doors, signs that tell you that you are "going to hell . . ."

In other words, take great care in capturing what the trade calls "establishing shots" of a time and place. Get a picture of the neighborhood, the house, the rooms you know and live in. Capture shots of things that wear out and become obsolete: cars, telephones, stoves, TVs, clothes, shopping areas, airplanes, you name it.

Break away from your friends and family and get shots that put them in a time and place. I remember one morning looking at a home movie shot in the hills of Kentucky at a family funeral, probably 60 years ago. There were white frame houses, the family all dressed in black, old square cars, a white frame church and spectacular shots of a cemetery on the side of a hill on a green and golden fall day. I didn't know are care about the family faces but the cameraman had so captured a time and place that I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It was a glimpse into an era that no longer exists, and it was caught very simply by a novice family member with movie camera in hand.

In the end, you and most of your audience will care most about the family faces in your video, and this is where you really have to go to work. Some of the best shots occur when you behave like a fly on the wall -- the actors in your video no longer care or know that you are there. It's actually a lot of work. You need to shoot, or look like you are shooting so much that everyone starts to ignore you. You aren't asking them to smile or say cheese. You aren't interviewing them. You are simply making a fool of yourself standing on a chair in the corner, crawling on the floor chasing the cat, pushing in on the stove while someone tries to stir a pot, eavesdropping in on every conversation. You tell everyone to not worry, that you'll probably throw 90% of what you shoot away, and you well might.

If your subjects get busy and decide to do something interesting, grab the camera. Maybe the guys will tear into a car or motorcycle, maybe everyone will play a rousing game of Monopoly, perhaps the women will go shopping, how about a pickup football or basketball game, and certainly get shots in the kitchen. Get dad in his tool room, get mom picking flowers, film washing a favorite pet, capture a stroll through the park.

Work to get those faces! Don't settle for backs. Don't settle for shots of key people sitting half-way across the room. It's a fair amount of work but the results will make it all worthwhile.

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Let's examine other areas that separate the pros from the beginners.The first sign that there is a rank amateur running the camera comes when you realize it is being hand-held because the picture bounces around (and may actually make some viewers seasick, watch out!). The standard answer to this is to lug a tripod around with you. This is great if you are going to be positioned in the same place for more than three minutes filming a game or stage performance, but if you are zipping around like a fly on the wall you have to take other measures. Here are some:

* Lean on things while filming to stabilize yourself. Find a tree, a wall, a table, a friend . . . Take a deep breath and hold it. Dig your elbows into your inflated rib cage creating a triangular bracing system between the camcorder and your stable chest. Do not answer any questions thrown at you and stop filming before your whole body starts convulsing trying to purge the stale air.

* Zoom out and move closer to the subject. Wide angle shots are much easier to hold steady. Zoomed in telephoto shots really need a good tripod.

* While rolling tape, pick a stationary object near the corner of the viewfinder, lock in on it, and don't let it move around in the viewfinder. This turns your whole nervous and muscular system into a self-correcting stabilization machine. It becomes second nature if you work at it enough just as a waitress can carry a tray of drinks without spilling any.

* Stop rolling tape when you realize you are about to lose stability. You'd be surprised how many shots run until the cameraman bumps into something, loses concentration or literally falls off a step.

* Be sure the camera's built-in motion stabilization feature is turned on.

Consider is how long your shots should be. Watch TV and count how long their shots run. You'll notice that the average 30-second commercial may have 20 different shots. Pretty much the same with MTV. Now watch situation comedies and cops and robber stories -- maybe shots stay on 3 to 5 seconds. Follow up with slow running talk shows on PBS. Decide which style you like.

Back when the home cameras used movie film from Kodak, they gave advice to count to 7 and shut the shot down. While that may have been a slower and more graceful time, it's still a rule to seriously consider. Tightly edited sales pitches, action packed movie clips and music videos may demand one to three second clips, but this is too fast for general family footage. We find that when people put photographs together in a video presentation, six seconds for each photo is about the right time.

Avoid "hunting" with the camcorder. We've all seen shots where the camera is panning to the left surveying the scene only to change direction and pan back to the right again, then no, maybe what it is looking for is down, let's zoom in for a second, and so on.

* Paint your scenes with shots that move in one direction, then quit. Don't backtrack in the same shot. This applies to all three movements you control: panning, tilting, and zooming. This seems so simple and yet this indecisiveness shows up all over the place in the work of amateurs. You "hunt" before you "roll." A few seconds of planning pays big dividends.

* Vary your shots. Some shots should be from a distance to establish where we are. Then others should be very tight so we can really see the subjects. Some shots should be long and some short.

* Let the motion come to you. Don't create motion by moving the camera around and zooming in and out.

Best advice: zoom slowly and zoom less than every third shot. Use the zoom feature to frame in a shot correctly before you push the red "take" button, and keep your fingers off of it while rolling.

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All these steps assume the camera's automatic features are keeping you out of trouble when it comes to focus, light and color balance. Most will. There will be times when you can tell the camera is confused. You have two choices: 1) read the manual and understand how to turn off the automatic feature that isn't working for you, or 2) move around with the camera to a better position so it isn't messing up your shot. Here are troubles to look for:

* Out of focus: the camera is locking in on the wrong thing. Move or zoom out and the problem may go away.

* Facial colors are blown out or are too dark: Be aware that a bright background around your subject may dominate and cause the camera to "put on dark glasses" making faces look gray. You have to move things around. Spotlighted subjects are at the other end of the problem. You really have to read the manual to fix this, locking exposure down on face colors that you like.

* The shot's color is too orange or too blue: This is a "white balance" problem that will usually go away on its own in ten or so seconds as you move inside or go outside. A quick fix: turn the camera off, count to three, and turn it back on. It will balance to its new environment right away.

Just get to know what you are seeing in the view finder. As you gain experience, you will learn ways to quickly work around situations that are going to give you footage you don't want.

A final word of advice: don't be afraid to ask the people you are filming to cooperate with you and move around so you can really see them. This doesn't mean telling them to wave or say cheese. It doesn't mean they have to come up with words of wisdom for the camera's microphone. You'll be happiest if you can get those clear shots of them doing what comes naturally.

Good luck and good shooting! Don't forget, you really should plan to edit what you shoot, cutting out bad and redundant footage, adding titles describing time and place, and possibly even adding some music to parts. Video Kitchen can help you with all this.