A few years back now I started shooting videos for my wife who wanted to start her own YouTube channel.
Up until that point I was mainly involved in editing videos and as far as shooting them went, it was strictly “point and shoot” family and friends stuff for me!
So the style of video that I was going to be learning and shooting for YouTube was a single person in front of the camera in maybe medium shot or medium close up.
To light something like that all the advice I came across was to just slap up a three point arrangement and we are all good to go.
The reality proved to be something entirely different!
Available lights, how much space is there, what are you shooting with, what is the focal length of the camera lens, how can you position the person in that available space to light them… I mean the variables seemed to just go on and on!
Each one of those variables meant some kind of compromise in some other aspect of the overall activity.
So in light of that I came across this video from Gabriel VIP that covers this exact subject in great detail taking all of those variables into consideration.
When it comes to anyone achieving any sort of success in the world of online video I tend to see one set of factors pushed while one simple one falls away.
What gets pushed are the technical aspects of optimizing videos, recording them and uploading a certain way, understanding search algorithms and the list goes on… and on!
The one that gets missed is one of the most basic points of video creation and that point is story.
We humans just loves us some story and if you give us story, we will wait around till the end to find out what happens.
I’m sure I am not alone in saying that I have watched some pretty awful movies in my day and while watching them have said to myself and others, man, this is a really crappy movie!
Yet despite that… I watched until the end because once I am following the story, I have to see it through to find out what happens!
And even if the ending was just as crappy, I still feel correct in having persevered through to resolution.
So in light of that here’s what I think is a very good walkthrough on working out what the story is for any video.
Converting a 16:9 (landscape) video to a 9:16 (portrait) video is a relatively simple process these days but there are a few things you need to keep in mind.
First up is that often when you add 16:9 footage to the timeline, your editing software assumes you want to operate at 16:9 from start to finish.
So you have to let it know that’s not what you are doing!
The other thing to keep in mind is that often as you go from 16:9 to 9:16, when you crop the video you may also have to zoom in on it to fill the new frame size.
That zoom-in may be minimal with no real effect on your footage or it may be extreme resulting in loss of quality (resolution).
It always helps to record your video if you can at the highest possible resolution available to you in order to preserve quality.
As an example I shoot my wife’s videos at 4K widescreen all the time on the understanding that at some point I may re-use that footage in a short form 9:16 video..
Often she will want portions of those long form videos cut into pieces for YouTube shorts, Instagram Stories etc.
In that case I set up projects that are at 1080p resolution in 9:16 and using the 4k footage I can zoom in and crop easily with no real loss of quality.
Last week I added a tutorial from the guys at Movavi showing a few tips on how to speed ramp effectively.
This week the folks at Wondershare posted their own speed ramping tutorial and have added what I think are some great points to the conversation.
The key point they are pushing is that if your footage has not been shot with speed changes in mind, you may not get the results you imagined!
For example if you shoot at 30fps and want to slow the footage down, the motion is going to get very blurry in the process.
On the other hand if you are shooting with the intention of speeding the motion up, then your camera movement and even the movement in the frame has to be really smooth.
Any sudden movements or jerkiness within the shot will only be accentuated in fast motion.
Check out the video for some well considered tips related to speed ramping.
For anyone just starting out in the world of video editing, even the simplest action can seem like a bit of a nightmare!
Let’s face it, all video editing software user interfaces are unbelievably confusing in the beginning because of one key reason.
Video editing software can not mimic anything familiar to the new user from the real world.
Microsoft Word looks like a piece of paper in a typewriter, the drawing tools in Canva look like a sheet of paper with some pens and stuff.
There is nothing like that for video editing so… it’s all a bit confusing!
In the video below from the folks at Movavi you can see how to at least make those first basic cuts without chopping everything to pieces, losing it all (and your mind!) and starting again!
Whether you want to go with Theodore Roosevelt saying, “Comparison is the thief of joy” or Mark Twain’s, “Comparison is the death of joy” the result is always the same.
And trust me when I say no-one understands that concept better than your average marketing guy in just about any company anywhere!
The reason I say this is because of the video below created by Zac Ramelan who has been producing videos at a pro level for years now.
In that video he points out that yes, you can create a fully cinematic, Hollywood level video with an iPhone.
All you really need on top of that is a million dollar budget and you are good to go!
When you compare those results with an iPhone to your own results I think we can safely say that any joy has made its way down the toilet!
So in the video he strips away that million dollar budget to make his own short movie but in the process delivers the real lesson.
The phone he uses to record the video is not the make/break point of the process.
The real driver of that process is the technical skill and creative ideas the person making the video brings to the table.
Over the past year or so I have been using various A.I driven tools to correct or enhance the audio on some of the projects I have been working on.
One thing that I have noticed very clearly is that as far as most of those solutions go, the better the quality of what you input, the better the output will be.
For example I have one client who sometimes finds himself recording video well away from any studio scenario.
Usually that means audio recorded though the onboard microphone of his smartphone and on top of that he is often either outside or in a noisy environment somewhere.
If I feed that audio into an A.I. tool like Adobe Podcast, I will get pretty decent results.
However, if I clean that audio up just a little in DaVinci Resolve or similar by taking out some background noise, adjusting levels, maybe doing a little Eq work before I send it off, the results are way, way better!
Here’s a little video from Jason Yadlovski showing how to clean up and level an audio track fast.
This is a preview of one of the features inside the new version of DaVinci Resolve to be released… soon?
Officially speaking Resolve 21 is still in Beta but is available to the general public Here at the Black Magic Website.
However the official “latest version” is still Resolve 20.
Black Magic have generally followed this release path where they create the new version, test it, release as a beta to the public for a few months, go back to the drawing board for bug fixes then finally release the full version.
Anyhoo, a few brave souls (not me!) have installed the beta and are posting their experiences online.
Here’s one from Jason Yadlovski showing one of the new features.
This episode 12 in a regular series (irregularly posted!) by the folks at Film Riot.
These days it is becoming more and more a matter of being able to write a precise SFX prompt into an A.I. video model to create astounding SFX.
So I like to go back in time to when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the special effects department did not have things like A.I or even CGI!
A time when some really smart thinkers used a comprehensive knowledge of their craft to think up effects techniques all done with their human brains!
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