Contemplating a Career Move?
You know if ever there was a time when you thought maybe you might like to take that “video editing” hobby and get serious with it… now would be the time.
This report from Cisco really highlights just where the traffic on the internet is going moving into the future.
The combination of the convenience of mobile and the immediacy of video content means that clunky old websites like this where we go to read words are probably numbered as the dominant force.
Twitter Jumps the Shark… a little late.
Well it certainly looks like Twitter is finally beginning to feel the heat from some of the more video based social networks like YouTube, Instagram and Vine.
Even FaceBook have recently upgraded and improved their video uploading and sharing features in an effort to get users to use FaceBook directly rather than upload to YouTube then Share.
So this Twitter announced they too are giving this part of their service a bit of an overhaul.
Creating a YouTube Series
I am hoping that there is no-one reading this blog that is still suck in the mindset regarding YouTube that all you have to do is make a video and overnight success will surely come your way!
Probably there was a time long ago on YouTube that you really could just post a video and become world (well YouTube anyway) famous.
However those days are long gone and with and development of YouTube as a profit making enterprise as opposed to a blood sucking money hole, things have tightened up a little… or a lot!
So, one of the best ways to garner an audience on YouTube is to have a Channel.
Having a channel means you can organize your videos into categories much like a blog as well as have a place to introduce yourself or your brand as the originator of that video content.
An even more popular and successful method is to use your channel as a launch pad for a series.
It can be a series on one particular subject or can be an ongoing series very similar in nature to a blog.
Either way the apparency of just slappin’ some stuff up on YouTube and success will surely come is just that… an apparency.
Just like anything else there is some serious planning to do and a bunch of best practices to follow.
Rolling Shutter Explained
If you are at all interested in the field of video editing and shooting your own videos you will probably have come across the term “rolling shutter” once or twice and wondered what that meant.
In fact it is quite common these days to hear of some software being tweaked so as to deal with the “rolling shutter effect” or to somehow compensate for “rolling shutter.”
Now if you are smart and it comes up in conversation you of course take a long and meaningful pull on your pipe, tweak your moustache and sagely say something like, “Ah yes, rolling shutter,” all the while nodding your head in what you hope to be a knowing kind of way.
Well the good news is that you don’t have to fake it anymore! Check out this totally cool video below and find out what it’s all about!
A Brief History of Frame Rates
These days we seem to be drowning in a sea of video parameters from frame rate to bit rate to resolutions and then we start on the encoding!
Have you ever wondered why we have 24 frames per second on movies, 25 frames per second for PAL T.V. and then 29.97 for NTSC in the United States?
Well the reality is that most of the frame rates we are dealing with these days come from standards worked out many years ago for a bunch of reason that actually no longer exist!
Food Glorious Food!
Whilst strictly speaking the article below is aimed at the photography world I think it has enormous application to video.
Very often on Video Blogs, YouTube and Vimeo I see amatueur video productions showcasing food or food related videos that fail to make the star of the show (the food!) stand out in any way.
In fact when you look at it, if you are creating some kind of content regarding food then it makes sense that you make the food look as good as possible.
When you see T.V. food shows don’t think it is through some kind of happy accident that everything looks so good.
Hours of preparation and design go into presenting the food to look that way including the use of “food stylists” whose sole purpose is to make the food look better than it could ever be in real life.
So, maybe you are not going to hire a food stylist for your latest chocolate cake but at least pick up a few tips on making it look good.
Engaging YouTube Subscribers
OK, so carrying on with the theme of world domination by video and more importantly your role in world domination by video we have another video from Tim Schmoyer on at least YouTube domination!
In this video Tim quite cleverly gets a bunch of successful video people who have already had success on YouTube and gets them to give over some of their best tips for engaging and keeping engaged people who you have already attracted attention from.
A Little Something on Composition
This article is in reference to another video by Tony Zhou who makes some great videos that breakdown scenes within movies and explains exactly what is going on.
Although from a technical point of view his videos are way above not only my level of shooting and editing, from an interest point of view I find them fascinating.
I am not really sure I am learning a great deal from them with regards to my own projects but it really is interesting to see just how detailed the thought process is behind just about every scene shot in a movie by someone who knows what they are doing.
Rules to Ignore… sometimes.
Shooting video at any level will always to some degree be dictated by using or not using various rules.
In fact most of the rules we are familiar with in the field of video come from film movies and in turn they came from photography and before that from the world of fine art.
Of course along the way as the medium changed, some rules were found unworkable and other continued on.
Composition rules such as the Rule of Thirds started in fine art and have remained relevant all the way through to video.
The important thing to remember about many of the rules is that they are operating within a creative space and as such can often be used to create just as powerful an effect by their lack of use as their use!
You can frame a shot “just so” according to the rules and get something great.
But just as easily, if you really know the rule, how it works and why it works you can create an equally effective shot by intentionally ignoring or breaking the rule.
Scene Breakdown
OK, I am not that delusional to think that I or anyone else reading this blog has there idea that they are going to simply watch a scene breakdown of a Kurosawa movie and come out the other end a cinema genius!
But as I often repeat on this site there is always a lot to learn by not just watching a master but by having someone that actually understands what’s going on explain it to you.
Tony Zhou is a guy that has not just a great understanding if the film making process but also an ability to explain in simple terms what you are looking at on the screen and why it works… or doesn’t.
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