Video

Video Production For The Web
Caleb J. Clark (calebjc at well dot com) & Ruth Sergel. March 2007. For ITP/Xavier Digital Storytelling Project.

A how-to for beginners. You will need a simple video camera (or still camera with video ability) set on “Auto.” An average computer with the free software iMovie (Mac), or MovieMaker (PC) and any Internet connection above “dial-up.”

There is a circle of production. The circle starts when you walk out the door with a camera. The circle ends when a person watches that video on a TV or Website. Making short videos is the fastest way to learn this circle. This how-to covers the part of the circle where the video is made and exported for upload. See “Broadcasting” for help with upload and publication. Contents:

  1. Record
  2. Edit
  3. Export

Record

  1. First. Make sure you have the camera’s manual or a person who can help you use it and hook it up to a computer. Get to know your camera. Practice turning it on, recording, stopping, zooming, etc. Playing is the best way to do this. Trying to do this while you are trying to get good video is the worst way. Camera manuals can often be found on Google by entering the “manual” and the camera’s model number.
  2. Second. Terms: Focus point = what is the clearest part of the video Pan = move camera left or right. Tilt = up and down. Zoom = in or out. Truck = Move camera left or right on a track, or outside a car window. Dolly = Move camera (not zoom) forward or backward.
  3. Third: Think like a camera. That is, become sensitive to what you SEE and what you HEAR.

Techniques

  • Light: We’re assuming you don’t have a 20 person lighting crew. So, use natural or existing light. Keep the light to your back. Don’t shoot at windows, or while walls (people become silhouettes). Go outside if you need light. Find a window. Turn the lights on. Move that lamp. Buy a couple $5 clip-on construction lights and a “Natural” light bulb.
  • Sound: Mics on little cameras are also little. So, zoom all the way out and get very close to the subjects mouth! If you want good audio of a person talking, we’re talking being within 5 feet of them. Be careful of traffic, air conditioners and other noise.
  • Rule of Thirds. Watch the photo on this web page until the lines appear. Notice the subjects (tree, horizon) are on the lines, or intersection of lines. Put content on the intersections of the line or the lines themselves.
  • Movement: Use a tripod if you can. Shaky cameras are for amateurs. Pros do shaky smoothly. Hand-held is fine, but be smooth and purposeful. Zooming makes everything worse; less light and more shake. Walk forward instead of zooming.
  • Look Space: Give subjects space to look. If they are profiled, give them space in your frame to look forward, so if they are looking left, put their head in the right side of the frame.
  • View Angle: Camera above eye level makes people look less powerful. Camera below eye level gives a feeling of power. Stay around eye level for the most neutral shot.

Shooting Homework: Watch TV! Or online video, movies, but in a DIFFERENT WAY. First, watch with the sound OFF while you watch the lighting, camera movement and framing. Then with the sound ON, listen to the use of music, sound effects and their combination with the sound recorded on location (voices, etc.).

Edit

This is primarily for basic editing using iMovie (Mac) or Movie Maker (PC)

It takes about 150 people about 3 months to shoot you’re average Hollywood movie. It takes a 1 or 2 people 6 months or more to edit that movie. These people are editors. They are like editors of books or magazines. They take a writers draft and cut and paste and move stuff around to make it a cool story that flows well.

First: Get some help importing video and audio tracks into a program. Then play around so you know how to move around clips, adjust the volumn of the sound, and cut at the play head. Also be able to import other music and stills from other software, access any built in sound effects, or special effects, and play with titles.

Basic tutorials can be found here: iMovie (Mac) tutorial. Movie Maker (PC) Tutorial Here’s some terms you’ll need to know:

  • Anchor point: The little points that allow you to raise and lower volume by clicking on the horizontal sound lines in a clip.
  • Clip: Pieces of video and audio
  • Clip view: when yo view or listen to only a clip
  • Master view: When you watch all your edits on the timeline
  • Timeline: Where your video (top) and audio (bottom) go. The timeline is where you edit. It runs left to right. It tells you how long your video is.
  • Scaling The Timeline: Oh so important, yet hard to find the damn buttons. Usually on bottom of the timeline is a sliding bar. Move this and the scale of your timeline will change. You can see your entire project, or a small part of it to do detailed work.
  • Play head: The line that runs vertically along when you play a video is the play head. This is where the action is. This is where you tell the software to cut a clip of sound or video. You can move this around.
  • Transitions: Cut, dissolves, fades, cross fades, etc.

Techniques

  • Sound is the secret of good video. When people watch a video, or TV, or a movie, the volume is set to one setting in the beginning and they expect not to have to change that volume during the show. Getting solid and balanced audio is crucial and often overlooked. One simple editing technique is to first “edit to sound” so you look for all your video with good sound and make your story paying attention to sound. Then you go back and pay attention to video.
  • The Cut. Basic editing is the act of cutting up video and audio to the “good” parts and moving it around so it makes a nice story, whether documentary (non-fiction) or drama/comedy (fiction). Video and Audio is cut up and moved around.
  • Cutting sound and picture in the same spot is jarring. It’s OK, but most cuts have an audio track under them that is not cut when the video cuts. You know, someone talking with music under. One consistent song with lots of cool shots for a music video.
  • Flow and Rhythm: Cuts should try and make some sense or flow and have a rhythm. From a moving camera to a moving pan shot. From the coffee to the coffee pot. Follow the bird in several cuts.

Editing Homework: Watch TV! Or online video, movies, but in a DIFFERENT WAY. Watch the cuts, the transitions. Listen to the sound track with your eyes closed. Think about it.

Export

Cool, you’ve got the next big thing all edited. It rocks. But nobody can see it. So you’ve got to get it out of the software. This is called “exporting” or “sharing” etc.

There’s two types of exports every video master piece needs.

  1. Master: This is when you are done editing and you don’t want to carry around all those clips and stuff or save them on your computer taking up a lot of space. This export should simply be at the same resolution you edited it. The file name should be have “master” somewhere in it.
  2. Web version: This is the smaller version for uploading. It should have “web” or “upload” in the file name.

First. Terms:

  • Codec: Geek speak for a thing that compresses video. Stands for “compression” “decompression.” Has names like “h.264″ ‘mpeg4″ etc.
  • Pixels: It’s all about pixels. 72 pixels = 1 inch. Burn that into your memory. Most video is about 320 or 480 pixels wide. But it’s getting bigger. It’s up to you, but shoot for 640×480 pixels and you’ll be OK.
  • Frames Per Second: Frames…per…second. 15 is the least you want. 30 the most. TV and movies are 30. Online is generally 15.
  • There’s lots of settings. You generally want to use “Web” or “Web streaming,” and it will make OK video. Or “Advanced” or “Expert.” in this case, you want to use compression settings.
  • Data Rate: A way to control video quality by telling it how much data (aka detail) you want transmitted. Most web video is 400 to 800bps (bits per second)…now. Next year, a lot higher.
  • Mhz: Sound stuff. 44’s good. Mono’s fine. Stereo for important music or effects.
  • Bps:?? 128 is what you get when you download most audio .mp3s. It’s pretty good quality.

Or here’s some easy settings to get started with in iMovie Ok. So here’s some excellent short video tutorials for export settings in iMovie and Movie Maker can be found at the video blog help site www.freevlog.com

Now you’ve got a video. Go to the “Broadcasting” how-to for help on getting the word out!