- At first glance, how many lights do you think
I'm using in this setup?
I'll show you guys.
First we got the key light.
Does the majority of the job.
Then we have
a light back there,
and we have a whole bunch of small, little lights.
One here.
Two up here.
And then one here.
This one's actually a new one,
it's called the Crack Light by Blind Spot.
You can power it through USB, so that's kind of interesting,
it's really strong.
It's the little things that make a big difference.
I think that's why I do this or because I just felt like it.
But one thing I do know is that B roll is the quickest way
to make or break your video, and recently we talked about
solo B roll, and you guys sent me a bunch of your videos,
and it was really cool watching them.
There was a lot of really great videos, but I did notice
some very common mistakes, the same mistakes
being repeated in the B roll.
So in doing my job as the B roll police,
I'm gonna try to fix some of those mistakes
or give you guys some insight on those mistakes.
Here are our five mistakes that I see people make
all the time in B roll,
the first one being not shooting enough.
It's actually really rare to have too much B roll.
B roll is one of those things where you go to edit,
and almost always, you end up using pretty much all
of the B roll or you notice that I don't have enough B roll,
I wish I had a little bit more, and how do I know
that you're running out of B roll?
Well it's when you start using a shot
that's very similar to another shot.
It's kind of like when you're trying out different shots,
different framing but kind of from the same spot,
same angle, it's using all of that footage
when you really should be just using one in your B roll
because you're running out.
In order to have enough B roll footage,
you wanna think about all the different ways
that you can illustrate what the point of the video is
or what's being said, showing and illustrating the points
instead of just having them being told through audio.
And in order to do this properly,
you're gonna need to leave a lot of time
when you're filming to shoot that B roll.
It really quickly and often gets forgotten about
and you kind of just rush to get a few shots,
let me just get some B roll real quick,
and you just don't end up getting enough so make sure
you're scheduling in a nice chunk of time
to just get some good B roll to illustrate your points.
In this case, less is not more, so make sure you're filming
a lot of B roll.
Number two, I find a lot of people
just don't get creative enough.
It kind of just boils down to whatever is the most obvious.
For example, if you're talking about coffee in your video,
you just film yourself or whoever's talking making coffee
in the most basic and generic way.
Instead, you could go out and film a whole bunch
of different coffee shops or you could film
your main character going into a coffee shop
and hanging out with friends instead of just making coffee
which is the most obvious thing
when you're talking about coffee.
Or if you're gonna do that,
then do it in a totally different way.
For example, do it in a microscopic level,
do really crazy macro shots, and remember, you don't need
to film everything on that same day, you could film just
a few shots with your character and then you could go home
and film for hours of different little closeups of coffee
and just mix those all in,
nobody's gonna notice, movie magic.
So don't be scared to get creative with your B roll.
Number three, and I see this mistake
being made all the time.
It's inconsistent direction of movement.
Half of you are probably like I don't know
what the heck he's talking about.
What I mean is let's say you have somebody walkin' down
the street, you gotta keep that same direction going.
So let's say that person is walking to a restaurant,
and he's walking from left to right in the frame,
then when they're going into the restaurant,
you don't want them going from right to left
into the restaurant, you want them to be going
that same direction keeping that same direction going
unless they're leaving the restaurant,
then it's a good thing to change the direction
so then the viewers know that okay,
they're going back to home
or back to wherever they came from.
Keep that same direction going otherwise there's a weird
thing that happens in the brain
and you start getting confused
and then once you get confused, you lose interest.
Brain's a pretty weird thing.
And also, do the same thing with camera movements.
So if you have let's say an orbiting shot going around,
make sure to continue that movement in your next shot
if there is movement in it.
So for example, if you wanna do a wide orbit
and then a closeup, make sure you're going around
the same direction.
Don't change the direction of the movement in between shots.
Again, it's gonna be really jarring and weird for the brain
and pro tip here is to film both directions of movement
so you're not being forced to break that movement
in between your shots.
Number four is no sequence.
You don't want just these random clips from random things.
You want a few shots in that same spot
I never or very rarely will film just one clip
from a specific location.
I'll try to do at least three to five different clips
so I can make a nice sequence out of it.
Let's say I'm going out one wheeling from one location
to another, I'm not gonna just film one shot
of me on the one wheel, I'm gonna film one of me getting on
the one wheel, one of the board as I'm riding,
maybe one of my face, a wide shot,
and then a shot of me getting off,
so I have a whole bunch of clips in that sequence
so I can tell that story
and I have a variety of B roll clips to use.
Remember that the point of B roll is to illustrate
the points of your video so if you're not telling story
through your B roll, your B roll is basically
just pretty pictures with no point to it,
which is still better than no B roll,
but it's not the best use of B roll.
And number five, this one's probably
the most classic mistake people do with B roll,
and it's not having your B roll be focused enough.
For example, if you're doing a wide shot,
your eyes should immediately be able to see
what you should be focusing in on, your subject,
or the object that you're filming.
You want your B roll to be focused in,
really focused in on the thing
that your audience should be looking at.
If it's a person, it should be really obvious
which person you should be looking at.
If it's a car, you should know the car
that you should be looking at.
Your eye shouldn't have to be playing Where's Waldo
trying to figure out what am I supposed
to be looking at in this frame.
With B roll, it should literally take a millisecond
for your eyes to know what they should be looking at
and how do you make it more focused?
Well there's a bunch of different ways,
it's basically all of filmmaking,
but some of the easy ways are depth of field,
you can use colors, kind of contrasting colors
to make things pop, you can use lighting,
framing, leading lines, there's so many different ways
to make something stand out in your footage.
And again, if you're watching a video and you see B roll
and you don't really know what to look at,
your brain's gonna get confused,
your brain's gonna get bored,
you're gonna lose the audience's attention,
and therefore your video is not gonna be
as good as it could be.
Your B roll should always be illustrating,
telling story if possible, but these are really some
of the most common mistakes that I see being made
all the time, and they're actually really easy to fix.
It doesn't take very much to fix these mistakes.
You just need to be aware of them so that you can plan
and work hard to not make these mistakes.
I really love it when you can just make
some small little tweaks, and your video can turn out
way better and, again, doesn't cost you a single penny.
Those are always the best tips and tricks I think.
The ones that cost you no money, 'cause, yeah,
none of us have extra money lying around.
All right, I hope you guys learned something,
and I hope you enjoyed these top five B roll mistakes
that I see being made all the time.
I'm sure you guys see them being made also.
Learn from them, don't make them,
and yeah, learn, make, repeat,
and enjoy the filmmaking process.
I think I used to say that as a tagline almost.
I should probably bring that back or something,
that's a good one.
You know what the worst part about having
so many different lights?
Having to charge them all.
Okay I'm gonna go charge them all
so I can film the next video then.
Bye guys.
(lights clanking)