12 Tips to Improve Your Video Now

Steve Stockman In 12 Tips to Improve Your Video NOW

A Good Video is Like a Sentence: 12 Tips to Un-Suck Your Video (#12)

Videos need to be about someone doing something.

The ideal video follows the classic “noun/verb” or maybe “noun/verb/object” sentence structure Mrs. Zellermyer taught you in third grade (note: the name of your third grade teacher may vary. Hopefully it was easier for you to spell when you were 8.)

“Our cute dog” is not a video because nothing happens. Random shots of your dog lying around the house are what we in the video business call “snapshots,” as in “take out your still camera and shoot snapshots because this is not a video.”

Video requires action to hold our attention. … Read the rest

Steve Stockman In Tips and Tricks, 12 Tips to Improve Your Video NOW

Use a Microphone: 12 Tips to Keep Your Video from Sucking (#11)

The microphones on most video cameras are programmed to adjust their own sound levels: they take whatever they hear and boost it to a constant, listenable level. Unfortunately, if they hear crowd noise around you, they boost that. Traffic noise, sirens—it all gets boosted.

In fact, if the camera mic hears nothing, it boosts that too. In an interview where the subject is too far from the mic, the camera will crank up every hint of sound between you and them, creating a big, echoey overlay of room noise.

If you’re as close to your subject as you should be … Read the rest

Steve Stockman In Tips and Tricks, 12 Tips to Improve Your Video NOW

Keep Your Video Short: 12 Tips to Keep Your Video from Sucking (#10)

When it comes to video, the old show-business expression “Always leave them wanting more” applies. Anything worth saying in video is worth saying shorter. TV commercials tell a complete story, entertain us, and sell us—all in 30 seconds. Benjamin Button lives his entire life on screen, backward, in two hours and 46 minutes (not a long time for an entire life, but still some might suggest it could have been done in 2:20).

The record of your mother’s second birthday party probably exists as either a grainy two-minute silent home movie or six photographs stuck in an album. Yet if … Read the rest

Steve Stockman In Tips and Tricks, 12 Tips to Improve Your Video NOW

Easy on the Graphics: 12 Tips to Keep Your Video from Sucking (#9)

Unless you have a real design sense (you’ll know because everyone in middle school wanted to work with you on group projects involving posters), take it easy on the graphics and titles in your video unless they’re really necessary. Extraneous graphics and titles are like extraneous anything else in video. They just confuse the hell out of people, pulling our eye away from the point of the video to focus on zooming, sparkly words.

How do you know if titles are necessary? Two tests:

1) Is it impossible to figure out the information the title gives us without it? If … Read the rest

Steve Stockman In Tips and Tricks, 12 Tips to Improve Your Video NOW

Shoot What Interests You: 12 Tips to Keep Your Video from Sucking (#8)

I recently watched a video blog post that featured an orchestra whose only instruments were iPhones. The players—it looked like there were about 20 of them—had special gloves with speakers on their wrists. Pretty cool idea, no? And very visual—a big circle of musicians playing iPhones.

The problem was the video. It started with a very wide shot of the group and then wavered, as if unsure where to look. Occasionally it veered off to one part of the group, then another, with no apparent motivating goal. I felt adrift. There were things I wanted to see—like a close-up of … Read the rest

Steve Stockman In 12 Tips to Improve Your Video NOW

Turn Off the Digital Effects In Your Video Camera. 12 Tips to Keep Your Video from Sucking! (#7)

There is no digital video effect that your camera can do that you should allow it to do.

Ever.

If you shoot nice clean video, you can always add a dorky effect like posterization later with one of many computer editing programs designed to do it. But if you shoot posterized video, you can never take it off. You’re stuck with it forever. Did I mention it was dorky?

Despite what the box at the store would have you believe, digital effects don’t give your camera special powers. Instead they take the high-quality picture your camera is capable of at … Read the rest

Steve Stockman In Tips and Tricks, 12 Tips to Improve Your Video NOW

Keep the Brightest Light Behind You! 12 Tips to Keep Your Video From Sucking: #6

Here’s why you should always keep the brightest light behind you when shooting video:

Modern video cameras, from cell phones to HD, adjust automatically for light. If the light’s too bright, they close down the lens to let less in.

Normally, no problem for you or the video camera. Your outdoor shots in bright light look great, and so do your indoor shots by candlelight.

Unfortunately that smart circuitry gets confused when it has to deal with multiple light levels in the same shot. Most video camera circuitry is set to expose for the biggest, brightest thing in … Read the rest

Steve Stockman In Tips and Tricks, 12 Tips to Improve Your Video NOW

Stop Moving the Camera! 12 Tips to Keep Your Video from Sucking! (#5)

One of the fastest ways to make your video suck less: Stop moving the camara.

Pros get to move the camera. You will too after you become a pro—or even after you’ve practiced enough to reach “skilled amateur” status. (Note, though, that some of the greatest shots in movie history don’t move the camera much at all!)

But if you’re not a pro, treat your video camera like a still camera. You don’t move with a still camera—you just point and fire. Same deal here. Point the lens, take your finger off the zoom button, look at the LCD screen … Read the rest