The Friday Roundup – Depth of Field, Lighting Interviews and More

And we’re back! Yes its time for another Friday Roundup of all that’s good and wholesome in the world of video editing for the “do it yourself” kinda guys’n’gals.

Now this week the first three articles/tutorials I found are a little on the technical side but don’t let that worry you too much.

Although the experts quite naturally speak in more technical terms they often reveal very interesting information that anyone can understand and put into use immediately.

Depth of Field

Not being a pro editor myself (but having at least known some!) it would be a bit of a stretch for me to begin offering all sorts of advice on the process of editing here.

I have put together a few ideas on the basic video editing page but that hardly scratches the surface of the subject.

Following is good article explaining the effect that can be created within you work by the use of depth of field.

Depth of field is probably the most important difference between an amateur shot and a professional one.

It is a difficult subject to tackle especially when using consumer level camcorders or still cameras to capture your footage.

On the other hand, time spent getting to know it and use it can make the difference in your footage seem like night and day.

• Depth Of Field: What’s Best For Your Story?

Interview Lighting Techniques

Using the available light to shoot an interview style video and be both an artistic choice or the result of no choice at all!

A lack of lighting equipment  does not need to mean that you have to shoot dark grainy footage that detracts from your video.

The video below gives a good visual guide to how you can take a normal lighting situation in a room and turn it to your advantage.

Also take note of the 1 minute 30 second mark where the presenter introduces color balancing to highlight the person in the frame.

Although this tutorial is not really about coloring it is a great example of the kind of effect you can subtlety achieve of your software is equipped with an effective coloring tool.

How To Film an Interview With No Lighting

PowerDirector Tutorial

Another excellent tutorial for using PowerDirector from PDToots, this week covering advanced manipulation of transitions.

Freeform Transition Effect

Techsmith Video Editing Resources

Over at Techsmith (the makers of Camtasia) they have recently been running a kind of boot camp for screencasters using their software.

A whole bunch of experts were brought in to cover specific aspects of video editing and screencasting.

This week they put most of those video tutorials online for anyone to see and even though they are aimed pretty much at Camtasia users they are still pretty awesome!

You may find that not all of them are relevant to you or what you are doing but they are of excellent quality and full of great ideas.

• Did You Miss ScreenCast Camp?

Other Bits and Pieces

• How Can I Make Quality Videos And Short Films On A Budget?
• Lens Whacking In Motion
• 3 Ways to Make Better Video Slideshows

• Interview Lighting
• The Friday Roundup – Depth Of Field, DSLR Lenses, Color Tips and GoPro’s
• The Friday Roundup – Framing, Establishment Shots and Zoom Transitions
• The Friday Roundup – Troubleshooting Editing Problems, Color Grading and more
• The Friday Roundup – Vegas Movie Studio 14, Depth of Field and When to Cut