Are you new to video? Then let's improve your skills with these top five quick tips
Maybe you run a small business and you want to start using the power of
video marketing to elevate your business or maybe you run a small agency and
you're looking to help your clients by shooting some simple videos for them
or you're a filmmaker that's brand new and you want to start earning some money off
your skills or maybe you're someone who just wants to get into video but you're
not quite sure where to start. If you're one of these people then these tips are
just for you now. My first tip is when you think you've finished the shot and
you get that urge to zoom in or pan away and move on to something else
breathe and hold it for another 10 seconds. When people are new to video
they tend to get nervous and they have this frantic energy about shooting
that they think ah! I've got to get this shot, well I've got to get that shot, or I've got
to move over there while this is happening,...... and then they get to the
edit and they realize that they've got a whole bunch of shots that are only you
know 1 to 4 seconds long and they really have trouble cobbling it all together.
So breathe deep and every time you do a single shot hold it for at least 10 seconds
My second tip is to learn to think in sequences and if you can learn
how to do this well your editor is going to love you and if you're editing your
own material then you're just gonna love yourself, because your edits are going to
be so much smoother. Now what do mean by a sequence? Well a sequence is
just a variety of different shots and shot sizes of the same action that you
cut together to create a finished piece. If you want to see really clear examples
of efficient sequencing then watch some TV commercials. If you've got a TV
commercial for a local coffee shop for example, they're not just gonna have one
shot of the barista in a wide shot just making a cup of coffee, they're gonna go
in and they're gonna have a close-up of that person smiling face for the entire
process. They'll film the close-up of the coffee pouring into the mug for that
entire action, they'll get close-ups of the
milk being frothed then poured it into the coffee mug. All of those shots will be cut
together to create a sequence and learning how to think in sequences and
shoot in sequences is going to be one of the most valuable skills that you can
cultivate as a new shooter. My third tip is, record really high quality audio.
Very few new shooters focus on audio but audio is half of the video, if you have
bad quality sound then you have a bad video and audiences simply just
won't watch, they won't tolerate that in this day and age. There are so many high
quality microphones available at a pretty low cost today, so you could pick
something up very easily and basically instantly improve your videos. Have a
look at first at on-camera microphones like the rode videomic pro and lavalier
microphones like this one here, you can start with something like the rode
smartlav+. They're really gonna help get you going and will really up the quality
of your audio. If you want to learn more about audio and how to get really crisp
clean sound we're gonna have a video that we will link somewhere around here
that is just on that topic. My fourth tip is think about the background, now when I
say background there's two backgrounds that I want you to pay attention to, the
first is the visual background. You know what's going on behind your subject in
the background of your shot. Has someone left their Darth Vader water bottle
sitting right behind your subjects head and it's kind of just poking into shot
awkwardly. Are there people that are just gonna wander by out of a building and
stickybeak in the background and ruin your shot? Whats
going on in the visual background. The second type of background is the audio
background. So when you're planning your shoot are there gonna be really loud
sounds that could ruin your audio. You need to think about these things and
when you get on location just take a minute how to listen and think what can
I hear and can you control or eliminate those sounds?
Now my fifth and final point is stabilize your shots, now handheld camera work
though it can work for certain types of productions it takes a lot of skill
and a lot of practice to get good at that, even if the shots meant to be
moving what people have come to expect these days is that there's some form of
stabilization, there's three tools that I suggest you can use. The first is a
tripod and if you're just starting out this is where I would recommend you
start. Do individual locked off shots and focus on getting those shots really good
if you need to shoot a little more run-and-gun and you need to move quite
quickly, you might consider swapping out your tripod for a monopod. Now monopods
still allow you to get nice stable shots that you can pick it up and move
much faster. Now if you want to incorporate movement and moving shots
into your videography I recommend checking out some form of stabilizer or
gimbal, that will help you to really take the rough and tumble and bumpiness out
of your shots and give it that nice smooth gliding movement. And that's it
guys that is my top 5 tips for improving your videos straight away, if you enjoyed
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