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Steve Stockman
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

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Steve Stockman
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

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Steve Stockman
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

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Steve Stockman
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

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

Zoom with Your Feet: 12 Tips to Keep Your Video from Sucking! (#4)

It’s an education to watch professional news videographers in action. They put their camera on their shoulders, march through the crowd right up to whomever they want to shoot (and by “right up” I mean 2 feet away) and go.

They don’t care whose view they block. They don’t care how the subject feels having a camera up their nose. They know that if they don’t get the shot, they don’t eat. Period.

Behavior like this at, say, the “I do” moment of your friend’s wedding would probably result in a flying tackle by the mother of the bride. But … Read the rest

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