Video Production 101 - Getting the Most Out of Every Shot

Whether you are content to make filmmaking a part time hobby or you aim to make it your career someday, it is important to make the most of your craft. That means taking the time to set up each scene carefully, staging your subjects properly and paying attention to lighting, set design and other elements.

In order to reduce your costs and increase your overall satisfaction it is important to make the most of every shot. No one likes to shoot the same scene over and over again, so it is important to learn the techniques you will need to make reshoots a relative rarity.

Getting Close to Your Subject

One mistake many beginning filmmakers make it putting their subjects at a distance. In most cases you will have more success if you place yourself, and your camera, closer to your subject rather than farther away. Many people think they can remain at a distance and simply zoom in on the action, but the human eye can tell the difference between a zoomed scene and a scene that was filmed close to the subject. By remaining close to your subject throughout the shoot you will get crisper, clearer pictures, and that quality will show when you edit your work.

Telephoto lenses are great for zooming in on the action, but they have their limitations as well. With a telephoto lens you are more likely to get a jerky result, whereas a regular wide angle picture will be much smoother. It is also hard to focus properly using the telephoto lens, since the magnification factor can leave everything looking slightly off.

Experiment with Different Angles

Many of the most successful and most studied directors did things that are not considered technically correct. And yet in those skillful hands those non-standard angles and creative worked quite well. While you may not be able to achieve the same results as your film legend heroes, you can help yourself learn by experimenting with different angles and different types of shots. At worst you will learn what not to do – at best you will learn some great techniques you can use to make your films come alive.

Filming scenes with a series of quick shots and cutaways instead of a single long shot is an excellent way to keep the interest of the audience. Be careful not to overdo this technique, however. Too many quick cuts and subject changes can leave the audience frustrated.

Get on the Right Level

For the most part it is a good idea to film at the same height as your subject. While there are some valid artistic reasons for shooting from above or below, it is best to limit those shots. Filming at the same height as your subject will give the finished product a much more natural and polished look.

It is important to adjust the height of your camera as needed to stay on the right level with the subjects you are filming. Always keep an eye on your filming to make sure it looks natural. You can fix some minor technical errors in editing, but major errors and problems with perspective will probably require a re-shoot.

What Editing Can – and Cannot – Do For You

Many new filmmakers assume that they can just fix their mistakes during the editing process, but this is rarely the case. Editing allows you to put your shots together in the order you want, but the editing process rarely if ever affords you the opportunity to fix errors you made while filming.

You can, however, use video editing to remove elements that do not belong in a particular scene. You can edit out the time you spent waiting for your subject to be ready, for instance. What you cannot do is edit out a problem with sun glare or a dark subject caused by the wrong type of foreground lighting. It is better to address these problems during the filming process, rather than waiting for the editing process to begin.

Source : http://www.clipcanvas.com/blog/video-production-101-getting-the-most-out-of-every-shot/

Video Production Techniques: Where to Start?

No matter what type of video you’re making, the first step is ALWAYS to consider your audience. WHO is the video intended for and WHAT do you want them to get out of it? The answers to those two questions will determine most everything else.

If you’re producing a home movie of your two-year-old’s birthday party for relatives, chances are you’ll need to do things much differently than if you’re producing a demonstration video for investors of your multimillion dollar experimental hybrid car.

All videos should be planned and created with the audience in mind. Ask yourself these questions:

• What does the audience want to see?
• What do they expect to see?
• What information do you want them to learn?
• What information are they likely to already have?
• What emotions do you want them to feel?
• What style appeals to your audience?

When you’re producing a video, you are largely in control of what your audience will get out of it, both intellectually and emotionally. Granted, you can’t control any individual’s reaction, but as the video’s creator, you have the ability to tell them what you want them to know and present it in such a way that they are likely to feel the way you want them to feel. Powerful stuff!

How do you actually do that?

By telling a story.

All videos tell a story, even if it’s nothing more complex than the story of how to knit a blanket. (Some stories are inherently more exciting than others.) Even the most hum-drum topics can be made interesting by adding appropriate story-telling elements and playing on the audience’s emotions.

There is a saying in television production that there are no boring stories, only boring story-tellers. This is true.

Take the how-to-knit-a-blanket example.

BORING: Take an extreme wide-shot of a blanket. The camera is so far away that the viewer has to hunt for the blanket amid all the other stuff unrelated to the blanket that’s showing on the screen. The shot is shaky, grainy and poorly-lit. there's narration that’s full of static. The person reading the narration mumbles inaudibly and every now and then sniffs deeply. The script is long, rambling, and uses lots of ten-dollar words. The narrator drones on in excruciating detail, describing how to make the zillions of tiny stitches. However, the audience never actually sees the tiny stitches the narrator is talking about because the video remains on the one wide-shot of the finished blanket for the entire thirty minutes.

NOT BORING: Begin with a fast-paced montage of brightly lit shots of an adorable baby snoozing peacefully while snuggled in a blanket. Include lots of close-ups of the blanket’s details, plus close-ups of the baby, which are guaranteed to make the audience say, “Awwwwwww.” (Any time you can make an audience say, go for it!)

Upbeat, cheerful music accompanies the articulate narrator who speaks clearly, with enthusiasm. The script is conversational, using common, everyday language. The details of how to make the stitches are shown visually, with close-ups, repeated in slow motion. The entire video lasts only ten minutes.

See the difference?

Even though the first video actually contains more information, no one will ever absorb that information because who would sit through such torture?

Not even the producer’s mother!

Simple story-telling techniques make the difference between a video that people will tune out and one they’ll watch and absorb. Never assume that you can’t tell a story because your subject matter is too dry. In fact, the more tedious your subject the more you need to tell story and there's always a way.

Telling a story doesn’t necessarily mean you need complex characters and a compelling plot. (However, you'd be amazed by how detailed a story you can pack into a 30-second spot.) Characters, plot and action always enhance a video, but sometimes it's best to be more straight forward with your information and character will just get in the way. If that's the case, story-telling is still essential, but it can mean nothing more than adding some emotional elements like mood music and close-ups of smiling people that the viewer can relate to.

In the blanket story example, the script doesn't even mention the baby, merely having the cute video does the trick. People relate to other people and smiling faces increase your videos watch-ability exponentially. Cute visuals tell a story merely by being cute.

It’s been proven repeatedly in market research, the most memorable and compelling experiences for viewers are ones that affect their emotions. Telling a good story is the key to touching a viewer’s emotions which makes it more likely they will remember and respond to your message. Anytime you can hit an emotional button, you greatly increase the chances of your video’s success. The easiest way to do this is with compelling visuals. Babies, people crying, people laughing, explosions, it sound cheesy but it’s guaranteed to work every time. Music is an essential mood enhancer and is also extremely easy to add. There's lots of other ways too enhance your story.

The level of emotionalism you want in your video depends on your audience's needs and your subject matter. One of the criticisms leveled at the television news industry is that too many news stories are told with emotions and not facts. I believe this is a valid criticism; TV news is the one area of video production where emotionalism should be kept in check. However, newscasters do this in order to keep their newscast from being deadly dull. How many news directors did I hear lecture, “If your story is so boring no one watches it, than what good is it?” So every story we did HAD to be done based on people, not just facts and figures. If the story was about tax increases, we weren’t allowed to just give a laundry list of the numbers, we had to go find a family that was going to be affected by the increases and ask them how they felt about it. No doubt the news director hoped emotionalism would run high due to the family we chose being an extreme case. Then, the facts were woven into the story of this family.

Doing a story on colon cancer? Find someone who suffered with it and tell their story. Trying to educate your audience about an amazing product you're selling? Find someone who benefited from it and tell their story. The reasons why they liked it will probably be fairly universal. Want to educate the masses on flower gardening? Videotape people who love gardening and tell their stories.

We can argue all day long about the ethical aspects of doing meant to squeeze the emotional jugular, but in the end, the reality is that few people care about information, they care about people. So regardless of your subject matter, you need to inject emotions into your video and traditionally this is done by telling stories about people and their experiences. It's guaranteed that your audience will relate to the subject of your story more than they would just a recitation of the facts.

Source : http://videoproductiontips.com/video-production-techniques-where-to-start