Video Shooting Tips Archives

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 laid out here should improve the quality of your home made videos enormously. Better Home Videos Have a Plan The first point to cover in any of this is the fact that no matter what the video project is that you are engaged in, you are telling a story. Every time someone watches your video they will follow along... or not, from the point of view that they are watching a story unfold. This concept applies to the ads you see on T.V., Hollywood blockbusters, soaps, sitcoms or home movies of the family vacation. The simple fact here is that whether you like it or not the viewer, when presented with moving pictures, enters the mindset that they are following a story. Their attention will either hold or go astray based almost exclusively on your ability to present a story. The reality is that most people making home movies don't have this "story-telling" mindset when they make a video for others to watch. Usually, in shooting the video they are taking random shots over the course of an event or attempting to capture the entire event as it unfolds. This is all in the desperate hope that they will have enough footage at the end to make an interesting video. The result of this approach is that they find themselves extremely restricted in the range of shots they have available for editing to present that event. Avoiding this problem doesn't require any great technical skill or even any technical application! It simply requires a change in your approach to what you are shooting and how. In other words, regardless of the event you are shooting the first step in making better videos is to at least mentally imagine that event as a story. And like any good story it has a beginning, a middle bit and an ending! Part One - Shooting Better Home Videos Part Two - Finding the Story in Your Videos Part Three - Shooting Your Video for Editing Part Four - Keeping it Steady Part Five - Basic Video Shots Part Six - The Rules of Video Composition

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