I was just thinking the other day… well I know that’s probably not my strong point but I was giving it a shot anyway. Anyhoo… there I was thinking about… whatever, when an old video editing saying came to mind – “garbage in, garbage out.”
Years ago when I ran notorious nightclubs with loud rock bands, the sound guys had a similar but less genteel saying – “Ya can’t polish a turd!” I kinda liked the rock version better but the message is the same.
It doesn’t really matter if you have the latest and greatest video camera, the most powerful computer and the best video editing software. If the shots you are taking are garbage (or unpolished turds) then your final result can really only come up to being slightly better organized garbage (or a turd with a smooth surface).
My expertise lies in the area of video editing software and mostly consumer to prosumer software at that. I have however been fortunate enough to rub shoulders with some movie type folks in my day and managed to extract some of the basics from them.
In this series I am going to cover at a very basic level some of the fundamentals of videography to (hopefully) help you improve your own projects and perhaps help you to also avoid trying to perform miracles in post production because the shots don’t quite seem to be working out!
First of all it is important to understand that as a videographer your real job is to tell a story. Take a look at the footage from a news story, a music video, a feature movie or even an advertisement. You will see that what the pros are doing each in their own way, is telling a story of some kind.
The difference between a writer and a videographer is that as a videographer you are using pictures to tell the story. What those pictures are of and how they are composed and arranged is how you tell your story… or not!
The mistake many home movie makers make is that they attempt to record everything that happens in the sequence that it happens in real time. So the two week vacation on a tropical island turns into a set of 16 DVDs! What you really should be doing is taking a lot of shots that you can later edit together that tells the story of the vacation, it represents the vacation, it does not document the vacation.
By all means take lots of shots, that is a hard and fast rule. But, when you are taking those shots always keep in mind that you will at some time be putting all this together in the form of a story that someone else can watch and follow.
Don’t think that this does not apply to home movies. This is probably one of the key points as to why most home movies make plunging a fork into the flesh of your leg preferable to watching the movie!
So how do you tell the story?
Any video project can be broken down into the overall story, scenes within that story and shots within those scenes. Shots can be further broken down into establishment shots, long shots, medium shots and close ups. It is the way that you put these together that will determine whether you are telling a coherent story… or not.
The Overall Story
This is the broad description of… the story! “Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets the girl.” “Our Summer Vacation” etc.
There are many types of video projects that lend themselves to to you creating a storyboard before you begin. This is just a list of the shots that will be taken and the order in which they will appear in the final project. It is always a great idea to do that if it is at all possible. A story board will simply lay out the sequence of the scenes and shots from start to finish.
The problem is that most of us don’t do that kind of project where the shots can be prearranged, individually set up and shot. However if you at least keep the concept of a storyboard in your head while you are out shooting the family outing or whatever, the shots that you do take will be more likely to be useful when it comes to editing.
As an example let’s take the family vacation. Think of it as you are shooting your footage in terms of the overall story (Our Vacation) then in terms of scenes ( early morning on the day of departure at home) then in terms of shots that will show what happens in the scene. That way you can break the whole thing up into to bite sized chunks and concentrate on the shots you need.
So getting up at some ungodly hour of the morning and getting yourself and the tribe out the door could be your first scene. From home to the airport could be your next scene, on the plane the next scene and on and on. This way each event becomes a tiny part of the whole and becomes far more manageable.
Now obviously a Hollywood movie breaks this down far, far more than I have described here into tiny intricacies and details but let’s keep this real!
Over the next few posts we will cover some basics on what shots you can use when, and how to use those shots to keep the story moving and the viewer following.
What I would hope you can take away from this first post in this “video shooting tips” series is the concept of telling a story with your videos.
Don’t just randomly shoot everything that unfolds before you in any situation you are videoing. Try keep in mind or at least try to imagine what the overall story will be and what each scene and shots within that scene will do to forward the story for the viewer. This way when it comes to editing, you will be pleasantly surprised at how easily it can all fall together.
You should also find that your percentage of usable footage increases dramatically and as an added bonus, you may actually get to enjoy your own vacation instead of endlessly videoing your family or companion’s vacation for fear of missing “that great shot.”
Good luck! See you in the next post.
