Video production tips
These are just a few tips for
producing better looking videos for yourself. Most are fairly obvious
once you're aware of them, but they don't seem to occur to many people (see the
complementary “filming gripes” page for a quick synopis of
common problems and solutions). If you want something to corroborate
them, watch something on television but pay more attention to what's being
recorded, and how, than whatever it is that they're portraying. You'll
only need to study a few minutes worth to understand what I've outlined below,
and you'll pick up a few more ideas as well. If you're really keen on
producing interesting-to-watch footage, then I'd suggest studying some of the more well-known Alfred Hitchcock films,
or some of Stanley Kubrick's films (just to mention
a couple of directors famous for interesting photography in their work).
You can see some simple, but very effective, techniques that can be done with
virtually any camera (i.e. most of what they've done is production
technique, not special effects).
Get
physically close to your subject
Although you can zoom into a shot,
to appear to get closer, it's not the same thing. The visual perspective
is different, and so is the sound. You get nicer looking shots when you
get closer to a person that you're filming, and the sound will be much better.
A telephoto shot is more susceptible
to jerky pictures than a wide angle shot, and focussing is harder to do, as
everything is magnified. You also lose depth of field with telephoto
shots (only things in a narrow range remain in focus, e.g. the background
may go out of focus), although this may be an effect that you deliberately
want.
The microphone will pick up sounds
from all directions, though usually mostly from the front. Anything
that's closer to the microphone will be heard the most (the noises of the
camera, the breathing of the cameraman, wind noise, road noise, etc.), and the
further a sound source is from the microphone, the quieter it becomes in
comparison (the ambient noises become louder than the sound that you actually
want to record). It's another of those “inverse square” laws—when you
double the distance, you get a quarter of the sound, and so on.
Manually
control your lens
Turn off auto-focus and auto-exposure,
and manually control them. They're not magic, they can't tell what part
of your picture is the focal point, nor what is the correct exposure for the
entireity of the picture (they'll just average the picture to mid-level
exposure, which doesn't work for very contrasty shots, or anything that
shouldn't actually look mid-level exposed).
Focus is a distance-related thing—it
needs to be set to suit the distance between what you're filming, and the
camera. On a real film camera, you'd measure the distance and set the
focus to the same mark on the lens. For less precise lenses, you set
focus by adjusting for a sharp looking picture. Do so to see a sharply
defined image on the actual point of interest in the shot. e.g. If
you're filming a person speaking, then focus on their mouth or their eyes,
that's what the viewer will be looking at. Do not focus the camera on the
wall behind them.
Likewise, set the exposure to suit
the point of interest in the shot. Again, if you were filming a person
doing something, then set the exposure so you can see them properly, with the
right amount of illumination for the shot (whether they're supposed to be in a
bright room, or skulking around in the dark), ignore the exposure of the rest
of the scenery around them unless that is actually important to the shot.
If there's a lighting problem between them and the room around them, then
adjust your lighting (how bright it is; the height, spread, and angle of
lighting; and use separate lighting for foreground and background).
Film
scenes using more than just one shot
It's usually best to film a scene
using multiple shots, giving different perspectives to what's being viewed
(different angles, different magnifications, etc), but don't overdo it.
There are times when lots of quick cuts make a scene good, and there are times
when a really lengthy shot make something more natural to watch. You can
see some examples of the latter by watching some children's television (they
often seem to be done in a very simple style), and some of the cheaper, older,
made on film, television shows (it costs less to do a prolonged two-shot of
some actors talking, than it does to film lots of individual close-ups, and
it's quicker to film).
Decide on the style of shots that
you will use, and be consistent unless there's a reason to change. For
example, most productions tend to use static shots, and will change camera
angles (when needed) by cutting to a new shot. Generally, you'll only
have a motion shot if there's a need for it, such as to follow someone who
walks around in a fairly tight shot. Whereas action scenes might use
nothing but motion shots, usually to make things look more frantic than they
really were. Some directors will start using motion shots during boring
scenes, but they really should have changed the scene to make it less boring.
Film
more than just your subject
Filming something else gives you
shots to break up what you're filming, to hide where you place your edits
(cutting away to something else, for a moment, allows you to edit out parts
that you don't want, without it being glaringly obvious that you've taken
something out), and so it's not boring to watch. But make sure that what
you use as “cut-aways” are appropriate to what you're interrupting
(e.g. show what they're talking about, the whole scene around them, or the
reactions to what they're doing, etc.), and aren't confusing (e.g. don't
switch views so that something that was going from right to left is suddenly
moving in the opposite direction, nor do everything all in close-up so that
viewers can't comprehend a scene).
Film
at the same height as your subject
Unless you're trying to achieve a
dramatic effect, then adjust the height of where you place the camera to match
the height of what you're filming. This gives a much more natural look
for your subject (picture yourself talking to people—if they stand, you
generally stand with them; and if they sit, you sit down with them; so you're
all on the same eye level, as if you were both the same height).
To remember the usual reasons for
dramatically filming someone from different heights, think of the phrases,
“looking up to someone,” and, “looking down at someone.” The effects (in
filming) are the same.
Use
an external microphone
If you can't get close enough to
what you're taping, or you're in a noisy environment, then using a microphone
that's remote from the camera really helps get a much better sound (you record
more of the scene's sound, rather than the camera noises, this way). You
can get wireless mikes quite cheaply, so you're not tethered together; or you
can get a very long cable so you avoid radio interference with the sound, but
still be able to record distant sources.
You can also get mikes with
different pickup patterns: Omnidirectional mikes pick
up sound from all directions, unidirectional mikes are optimised to pick up
sound from one direction, superdirectional mikes are heavily optimised to pick
up sound from just one direction, and noise-cancelling mikes will only pick up
sound directed at them in a specific way (general ambient noise will be
cancelled out).
Be mindful of what you want to
record. If it's just one thing, then get the microphone as close
to that as possible. But if you want to also capture some of the ambient
sound, then you want to pull the microphone back a bit, use certain types of
mikes, or use more than one microphone through a sound mixer.
Use headphones with your camera at
the same time. Then you can hear what you're actually recording, and
you'll be able to tell if something goes wrong (the mike becoming unplugged,
being switched off, batteries going flat, noises interferring with the sound,
really loud sounds distorting, etc.). You can waste a lot of filming if
you only find out later on that the sound was unusable.
Use a shockmount to hold your microphone, it'll help
prevent handling noises getting into the sound. Likewise, use wind filters to reduce wind noise pickup.
I'd recommend against taking sound
feeds from someone else's mixing desk, unless you've got your own mixer and
microphones to record ambient sound with it, have audio transformers to avoid
hum loops, and you're somewhere where you can properly monitor your sound
without interference from ambient noise. Typically, you'll find that
they've not miked everything, and some things will not be covered (leaving you
with poor, or no sound, for that portion). And that the mixing levels for
amplification purposes are usually not suitable for recording.
Control
your lighting
Use lighting as best you can, or
adjust what you're filming when you can't. You want most of your light to
be lighting up the front of what you're filming, and usually to one side and
above, rather than head on (think of how the Sun lights things when it's not
midday). If the light's behind what you're filming, such as filming
someone with a window behind them, or a light source in front of them
(e.g. candles or table lamps at their own height), they'll be too
dark. Lighting used in the wrong places can cause shadows in nasty places
(e.g. lighting that's front on, directly above, directly beside, etc.).
There are times where it's nearly
impossible to adjust the lighting (e.g. filming outdoors). Then,
you're best to rearrange what you're filming into different positions, or use
reflector boards to bounce more light into where you need it (you can use
ordinary white cardboard, cloth, or specialist devices to do this).
Mixing together different light
sources is usually a bad idea. Daylight is much bluer than most artificial
light sources. Studio lighting is generally reddish–orange compared to
daylight. And flourescent lighting usually used to be quite greenish,
although they do come in a variety of colour temperatures. It's well to
remember that it's common enough for a room to have a mixture of different
types of flouros being used in it, and their age also affects their colour.
Use
a tripod
If you're filming something that
needs a steady shot, then use something like a tripod (or place the camera on a
stable object), so that you get a steady shot. It's very distracting to
watch something like someone speaking at a presentation, if the camera is
wobbling all over the place as if it were being filmed during an earthquake.
You can get quite small tripods that
are easy to carry around, even tiny ones designed so that you can place a
camera on a table to get a steady shot, but still be able to adjust the angle
of the camera.
It's usually best not to lock the
tripod head in position, so that you can easily follow moving subjects
(including standing or seated people, that are still most of the time, but
might move). But for long telephoto shots, you might get a bit of
wobble. A partial solution is to increase the friction without actually
locking the head into place. Also, don't grip the panning arm like grim
death, try to hold it in a relaxed manner.
Use a tripod that's designed to
carry the weight of your camera. It shouldn't wobble while you use the
camera, the locks should be strong enough to hold the camera in any position,
by themselves. Video camera tripods should let you do smooth pans and
tilts, many still camera tripods aren't suitable for supporting a camera with
movement.
Edit,
and be ruthless while editing
Editing means putting together just
the shots that you need. You should remove anything that doesn't belong
(mistakes, lots of waiting around for something to happen, boring pauses
between things, etc.), and remove things that are just pointless.
NB: You can't fix
filming errors with editing, you're stuck with them. Bad sound is bad
sound, out of focus shots are out of focus, etc. If you make a mistake
while filming, re-do the shot straight away. I've seen plenty of people
waste lots of time trying to fix the unfixable, after the event, and either
dumping a lot of material that they wanted to use (after wasting a lot of
time), or including really awful material that should have been completely
dumped.
Experiment,
and read the manual
Practice using your equipment on
something that's not important, ahead of time, so that you're not trying to
figure out how to use it at the crucial moment. Try out some of its
special features, and learn how to turn some of them off (having a date over
everything you record looks awful, even more so if it's wrong, and it makes
wobbly camerawork even more noticeable; auto-focus can keep changing the focus,
and end up focussing on the wrong thing in a shot; auto-iris can keep
incorrectly set the exposure of a shot if there are conflicting conditions,
such as a person with a window behind them, or when you're following someone
who's walking around).
