Video production tips | Digital video | DV

Digital video (DV) has many perks associated with it: good clarity, good colors and the convenience of capturing and exporting it with FireWire. However, digital video has one major drawback relative to analog video: it becomes very ugly if you overexpose it. Overexposure, particularly with backlight, is an important tool in cinematography, but it looks much better on film than on digital video. Very briefly, this is because the change from "very bright" to "completely white" happens suddenly in digital video - it is not a gentle transition as it is with celluloid. If you have ever seen someone's cheeks go completely white in a video, this is why. Overexposed video looks terrible, and digital cinematography is the art of shooting digital video in a cinematic way, which involves tip-toeing around its shortcomings, among other things :-)

For best results you should really get hold of a camcorder that allows manual control of exposure. Frame your shot and reduce the exposure until almost nothing in the field of view is burnt out. If there is a large difference in brightness between different areas in the field of view, you will not be able to achieve a perfect frame: you will either have burned-out highlights or unacceptably dark shadows. Which way you go really depends on what your priorities are. If someone is talking and you want the face to be visible you may want to give priority to the face, but this will mean that the sky behind them (for example) will go completely white and may even eat into the edges of your main subject.

If your camcorder does not allow manual control of the exposure, you can still shoot decent video if you can lock the exposure. The way to do this is point the camcorder around the scene until it adjusts its exposure in such a way that the highlights are not too bright and that the main subject has a reasonable level of exposure. Now lock the exposure and frame the scene as you want it. The exposure will not change in response to your panning or tilting, because the exposure was locked.

Shooting good video is particularly tricky when shooting outdoors, because lighting conditions tend to be more contrasty than indoors, which will put you in the difficult position described earlier. The best results, you should stick to shooting in the morning and in the evening, when the sun is lower on the horizon and the lighting conditions are less contrasty. You can also a carry silver or gold reflector with you to reflect light into your subject, reducing the contrast of the scene and ensuring that nothing is too bright or too dark. These reflectors are easily obtained and can make a huge difference to your outdoor shoots.

The way you frame your subject will tell the audience a lot about how competent you are as a film or video maker. I strongly feel that everyone should learn framing and composition from the best filmmakers out there: Steven Spielberg and James Cameron are a good choice. The only way to become good at composing a good image is to experiment with your own camcorder, watch films, experiment some more, watch more movies, and so on. The only way you will ever develop a true filmmaker's eye is by spending as much time as possible walking around with your camcorder, using the LCD screen as a viewfinder. If you are very serious about gaining advanced camerawork skills, you may want to read the piece I wrote on how to learn camerawork, which will cover this process in more detail.

Sound is at least as important as picture, believe it or not. Your audience, whoever they are, will forgive the low picture quality if the sound is clean and clear. Do not record sound using the on-board microphone: in most situations it is simply too far away from the subject to pick up decent dialogue. Even when shooting the simplest video you should have either lapel mics (lavalier mics) or, even better, an overhead mic on a boom pole. By far the best dialog microphone is the AT4073a short shotgun condenser microphone - the standard dialog mic used by professionals. I have personally used it with outstanding results.

If you have to use a lapel mic, the Sony ECM-77B is the lapel mic of choice for quality film and video production.

If you are making a video that is supposed to be watched by an audience -- regardless of whether it is on the Internet, on TV or elsewhere -- you must budget for excellent sound recording before you budget for anything else.

Good lighting is important, particularly if your project has cinematic ambitions, but poor sound is so unacceptable that it has to be given priority if a choice has to be made.

The sound levels must be set correctly by a location sound recordist who knows what he's doing. When using digital audio formats - which is true virtually all the time these days - you must allow plenty of head room, because digital audio distortion is unacceptable.

Discipline is one of your biggest allies in film and video production. When shooting, being disciplined involves all sorts of things, such as:

- holding the camera with both hands when shooting handheld -- this will make the image steadier;

- when doing pans and tilts, execute the movement smoothly and with confidence: go from A to B without stopping and without going hesitating, unless of course you are doing that to achieve a specific effect.

Even if you are shooting a non-scripted event, making a list of shots you want to capture is vital, even for the most experienced pros. For example, for a boat race, you might want an overhead shot from a bridge over the river, a wide panning shot of the boats from the riverbank, close-up shots of the rowers, a telephoto shot off the boats coming towards you from a distance, and so on.

Your shot list should include any remarks and details that may help you when shooting - for example, a note like "Must cut smoothly with shot n. 34a"

What really distinguishes talented filmmakers from average ones is the ability to watch the film or video they want to make in their own head before they start filming. You should visualize it with a high level of detail: what cuts you want to make, how the shots will be framed, what the overall vibe is like, and so on. If you're able to do that, you are valuable and are likely to produce very good work. One reason for this is that if you do not have a clear idea of how you want your film or video to be edited, you will end up shooting things in such a way that smooth editing might be difficult or impossible in the cutting room. Which brings me on to my next point:

Even if you're not interested in cutting your own video or film, understanding how editing works will make a big difference -- perhaps the biggest difference -- to the quality of your work. It is when you deliver your footage to the editor that your weaknesses as a video maker become painfully obvious. I strongly suggest you read Grammar of the Film Language by Daniel Arijon, if you are serious about becoming a highly skilled director.

The invention of adapters like the Mini 35, Redrock Micro and the Letus35 has made it possible to shoot video with the same depth of field characteristics as 35mm motion picture cameras.

These adapters work by focusing the image produced by 35mm movie lenses onto a ground glass, and then projecting that image onto the camcorder's CCDs. The result is that the depth of field characteristics of the image will be identical to those of 35mm film. Of course the depth of field will depend on the focal length of the lens, its aperture and the camera-subject distance.

You can really shoot impressive videos using this technique, but remember that you will need a real focus puller if the distance between the subject and the camera changes during the shot.

Lens filters can be very useful in achieving a high-end look when shooting video (and film, for that matter).

There are several types of lens filters:

* neutral density filters are used to reduce the amount of light that goes through the lens. This would allow you to use a low f-stop (wide aperture) even in the brightest of conditions, allowing you to achieve a shallow depth of field;

* color correction filters are used to achieve specific looks or compensate for the color temperature of light;

* graduated filters are used to filter specific parts of the frame selectively. The classic use of these filters is to darken the sky without affecting the rest of the landscape. Ridley Scott (Gladiator) and his brother Tony Scott (Top Gun) frequently use graduated filters;

* diffusion filters should be avoided like the plague, as they degrade the image, and video needs all the help it can get, frankly. Some people advocate the use of diffusion filters to achieve a film look, but in practice I have never seen evidence that this actually works, and have seen plenty of diffusion-filtered infomercials and soap operas, so be very careful with this look!

You can massively increase the production value of your videos by using dollies, cranes and a Steadicam® to add camera movement to your productions. Of course camera movement should always be motivated by the content and should not be gratuitous, but when used wisely, good tracking and crane shots unquestionably make a big difference to how the viewer perceives your work. My advice is to learn from the best: excellent dolly shots are to be found in Steven Spielberg's films, whereas the undisputed master of Steadicam® work is James Cameron.

Terrence Malick is also an extremely creative user of the Steadicam®. Check out his movie The Thin Red Line for some well-executed and solidly motivated Steadicam® shots.

I have had excellent results in the past with the doorway dolly and the Cobra Crane II. The Cobra Crane II can be (and in fact should be) operated by a single person, although it needs two people to be mounted on the tripod. It produces very impressive results. The doorway dolly, although nowhere near as heavy and slick as heavy-duty dollies like the PeeWee dolly, produces very respectable results if used properly. You will need a decent dolly grip and correctly assembled tracks.

Video color correction is done during post-production and can make a big difference to how good your video looks. If you want to make digital video look like film, color correction will be vital, and you will also have to tweak the brightness and contrast. In serious filmmaking, grading or color timing is a big deal, because it makes a huge difference to how the audience will perceive the finished product. Any decent video editing program will have basic color correction tools, and you can take it further by using advanced packages like Magic Bullet or Adobe After Effects.

Very briefly, the color correction process involves tweaking the hue of the scene. For example, in many movies, scenes shot at night are given a distinctively blue hue. James Cameron's The Terminator is one of many examples. Even saying "blue" is not enough: what kind of blue do you want? It can be a very bright blue (favoured by Michael Bay), it can be a greeny blue, it can be subdued and grayish, or any other hue you care to imagine. These are all great looks -- it all depends on the tone of your film and what the scene needs. Use your taste: it is the whole point of being a film or video maker. The point is that you have to make a decision regarding what the color balance of each scene will be: will it be warm, will it be cold, sterile? In Traffic, directed by Steven Soderbergh, scenes set in the US are very blue, whereas scenes set in Mexico are an intense yellow. That is perhaps the ultimate example of strong color correction! You have to decide one way or the other. Whatever you do, don't release the video in its raw state: it's like mailing a letter without signing it.

I hope you will see now that your biggest assets when making a film or video are your knowledge and experience, which you can use to make a very decent project regardless of whether or not you have access to the coolest toys. If you give Steven Spielberg a cheap VHS camcorder from the 1980s and make him shoot and edit something, I guarantee that the product will still have excellent camerawork, smooth editing and all the hallmarks of his outstanding work. A good close-up is a good close-up regardless of what camera was used shoot it; by the same token, good editing is good editing regardless of how cheap other production values are.

Good luck!

Video production tips

The two principal video formats are NTSC (used in the USA, Canada and Japan) and PAL (used in most of Europe and Australia).

NTSC video runs at 30fps (the average frame rate is actually 29.97fps, because two frames are dropped every minute). The vertical resolution of NTSC video is 480 pixels.

PAL video runs at exactly 25fps and has a vertical resolution of 570 pixels, so its picture quality is considerably superior to NTSC video.

There is another reason for which PAL video looks better than NTSC video: PAL uses 4:2:0 sampling, whereas NTSC uses 4:1:1 sampling.