Shooting Tips

In this series of articles on shooting better home videos I wanted to address a few of the basic concepts you may find valuable. For the average video editor learning and applying these tips will not only give you better footage but also footage that will make the editing process much easier. Keeping these points in mind and sticking generally to the rules and advice I have … [Read more...] about Shooting Better Home Videos

So rather than endlessly theorizing on all of this "finding the story" in your video stuff, let's take a look at a simple example: Let's say you are attending a children's birthday party that your child has been invited to. You want to get some video of the event and perhaps provide a copy to your child's grandparents. When you are there of course the "story" of the day is … [Read more...] about Finding the Story in Your Videos

The ability to edit what you shoot and have it come out making sense requires you to think about how your shots will be combined together before you take them. That doesn't mean that every single edit needs to be meticulously planned in advance, but it does require that you have a sense of what shots you'll need later when you sit down at the computer. In the spirit of shooting … [Read more...] about Shooting Video for Editing

There is a style (if you can call it that) of shooting video that closely resembles a three year old watering the garden with a hose.I don't know if this "style" has a name or not but if you can imagine a three year old watering the garden with a hose... I think you would get the picture!One could argue that at the end of the exercise all (or most) parts of the garden … [Read more...] about Shooting Better Videos by Keeping it Steady

Camera shots are defined and named by the degree of closeness there is in the shot to the subject of that shot, the degree to which the subject "fills" the shot or the angle from which the shot is taken. It can also be defined by the movement of the camera as the shot is being taken. Rather than getting too crazy technical here let's just confine ourselves to the three basic … [Read more...] about Basic Range of Video Shots