Steve Stockman's Blog, page 20

20 Questions to Make Your Video Great

We talk a lot about "good video" vs. "bad video" but what do we really mean?   "I know bad video when I see it" works great when you're the consumer, but what do you do when you're the creator?

Welcome to the "How to Shoot Video that Doesn't Suck Checklist"– 20 questions to make your video great.

These 20 questions will help you cull the good from the bad in your own work. The more questions you can answer "yes" to, the stronger your video probably is.  Got a "no"?  How can you go back to the video and fix it?

And here's a really radical idea—refer to the checklist before you start shooting.  Problems prevented are problems solved. (That sounds like something Martha Stewart would say, doesn't it?  I guess that makes me the "Martha Stewart of Video"… or something like that.)

Planning:

1.  Is my idea best expressed as a video?

2.  Does it tell a clear story?

3.  Do I know who the story is about?

4.  Is there a clear beginning to the story?

5.  Is there a clear middle to my story?

6.  Is there a clear end to my story?

Shooting

7.  Do all my shots contain a clear subject and action?

8.  Does every location help bring the story alive?

9.  Do all my backgrounds help tell the story?

10. Do my stars always look great?

11.  Do I see a lot of their faces?

12. Are all my scenes lit well, so viewers can see what they're supposed to see?

13. Are all my scenes miked well, so viewers can hear what they're supposed to hear?

Editing

14. Is each shot cut to it's best and shortest version?

15. Have I deleted all shots that look/sound awful or are otherwise technically flawed?

16. Have I used only cuts to transition between shots?

17. Are my graphics simple and elegant?

18. If for the web, is my video shorter than 3 minutes?

19. If it's longer than 3 minutes, is there a damn good reason?

20. Do I like this video more every time I watch it?

10 Things Bloggers Need to Know about Video

Blogworld and New Media Expo rolls into the Los Angeles Convention Center November 3-5 for an exciting weekend that I understand is being filmed for "Nerdy Introverts Gone Wild" on Spike.  Or maybe not.

If you're a blogger interested in using more video, you might want to check out my session Friday November 4 at 3pm.  Not surprisingly, it's called "How to Shoot Video that Doesn't Suck:  10 Things Bloggers Need to Know."   Who knows, if I'm feeling really frisky, I may go to 11.  Or even 12!

Register!  Attend!  Use this cool VIP code and save 20%: BWEVIP20

If you can't make it (or feel the need to study in advance) here are just a few of the tips I'll be discussing:

10 Things Bloggers MUST Know about Video:

1. Entertain or Die:  Nobody watches bad video.  There are too many instantly available alternatives.

2.  Video is about the audience.  If they're not interested, they won't watch.  If they don't watch, you might as well not have made the video.

3.  Never confuse what you want with what the audience wants.  They have their own needs. Their needs determine how they behave, not yours.

4.  The Entertainment Transaction:  The audience pays (with time or money) the entertainment must deliver (with an experience).

5. A Viral Video is a "hit"—it's as tough to make as a hit record, hit TV show, or hit movie.  Unless you have awesome video skills, consistently good video is worth more than a strategy that hinges on "viral".

6. Video done right works.  It can increase the size of your loyal audience, or increase the participation/affiliation of your existing audience.  Or both.

7.  Make sure what you have to say is really a video. No charts.

8.  Find the story in your videos.  Hero, beginning, middle, end.

9.  Remember the Rubbermaid Rule. Keep your video short.

10.  Welcome to the Entertainment Industry. Like it or not, you're competing with all videos for attention.  Make sure your videos are worth watching.

 

 

5 Killer Halloween Video Tips

Going out to shoot memorable video of your kids?  Here are five Halloween Video tips that will help:

1) It's dark out at night.  I know you knew that, so let me be more specific:  If you shoot your kids outside at night away from any light, it will be too dark to see them.  Solutions?  Use the light built-in to your camera (you may not know it's there– took me a year to find it on my Sony video cam) or position the kids under streetlights or indoors.  Remember– if you can't see them in the viewfinder now, you won't be able to see them later either.

2)  Get down on kid level. Shooting at their height instead of yours pulls you into their world, which is what you'll want to remember in 20 years.

3) Get around front. Normal parent position on Halloween is behind the kids.  You're following them up the walk so they can ring the bell. Unless you want an all-butt video, you'll have to set up some shots from the front too.  Jog up the walk ahead of your kids, then shoot them coming up to ring the doorbell.  Stay on them as they interact with whoever answers.  Bonus:  The porch light will shine on their faces and you'll be able to see them.

4) Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes.  What will you want to remember in 20 years– vague shapes ahead of you in the dark, or your daughter's face as she bravely rings the bell for the first time?  Fill the frame with their little faces at least half the time, and you'll have video you'll cherish for years.

5)  Don't forget the prep:  Getting ready for Halloween is a blast too.  Carving pumpkins, getting the costume on, eating the candy you're supposed to be giving out.  All great memories.

Bonus tip:  The post-game interview amidst piles of candy is great too!

More tips for great Holiday shooting here!

Fixing Audio Cuts

Dear Steve–

I am reading your book and have an urgent question about sound.

I'll be taking video of an upcoming family celebration. If I follow your advice to shoot short shots, I'll be starting and stopping the camera a lot. I understand your point that our brains make visual sense of these cut-together images, but what about the sound? When I stop and start, conversations will be cut off and the resulting audio will be a jumble.

How do I fix this?

Cesar Vargas

It's true that when you start and stop the camera at a live event, sound transitions may get glitchy.  If one shot at your Thanksgiving Dinner is Mom and Sis having a conversation about gravy and you cut mid-word to a your cousins cheering the quarterback into the endzone, the change in sound will seem jarring.

Fixing audio isn't that tough.  Here are a few suggestions, listed from easy to difficult:

1)  Ignore it, and it will probably go away:  If you focus your video great shots of the action at your family event, you'll find that about 20 seconds into your video, the audio cuts will bother you less.

2)  Take out all the audio and replace it with music:  You'll end up with a "silent" montage of the party, set to a great song.  This requires rudimentary use of an editing program, but it's pretty easy. If you shot short shots, so much of the music will line right up with the video that it will look like you planned the whole thing.

3)  Edit your video for sound:  Place your cuts at the end of complete sentences, or at a lull in the noise.  Transitions can be further softened (or covered up) by adding sound effects or music.

4)  Do it like the pros do: Get even better sound by doing everything in option 3 PLUS a full-on multi-track mix in Garageband or even Protools. For serious sound geeks only.

Read more on sound…

Making a Simple Interview Look Great

I'm living in Holland and I'm working as a teacher and a radiohost for a local station. I have just bought in New York your book and I'm loving it very much! In the summertime I have every week an interview of exactly one hour with a local vip. During the program I record on tape the interview with one videocamera from one point of view. Any tips how I can make an interesting youtube videoclip from it, length: less than 10 minutes.

–Boelo Lutgert

I recently watched the limbo video "Wisdom" example in your book. It appears they have 2 cameras during this setup; one zoomed in as a close-up on the face and the other letting the character fill the frame. Is there a way to achieve this effect with only one camera?

–Craig Ebersole

Thanks for writing guys.

I'm bunching you together (may I call you Boelocraig?  No?) because these seem like the same question to me, which is "How do I make a simple interview look great?"  It's a different question than I've answered about interviews before (here and here, for example), but it's definitely worth thinking about.

I write a lot about how humans can't look at the same picture for too long. We get bored. It's a brain/visual processing thing. You need to change up the picture early and often to give us more information, thus making us very happy. Key question for your interview:  What's available to cut away to?

The easiest thing to do by far is have two cameras, manned by bright camera operators.  Set one for tight closeups on the face, the other for a waist-up shot.  That's more or less what's going on in the Wisdom video. Or have the second camera shoot closeups of hands, eyes or other body parts that help your subject express emotion.

Don't have another camera?  You can accomplish the same thing with a couple of shooting and editing tricks.

1)  Shoot "cutaways" Ask your subject to sit tight and talk more with you after the interview, while you shoot tight closeups that you can cut in later– about where they would have gone if you DID have two cameras. When your interviewee talks about her excitement about the city council budget, does she gesture with her hands?  Get her to do it again by asking a similar question.  Shoot her hands waving around.  Cut it in later.

2) Shoot "b-roll."  If you're watching an interview with Beyonce and the camera cuts to a shot of her rehearsing for her tour while she talks over it, that's "B-Roll."  You shoot it separately, then edit into your interview to pick up the visual pace. Be careful!  B-Roll had to not only be great looking, it also needs to help you tell your story.  If the b-roll doesn't give us more information, we'll be almost as bored as if it wasn't there at all.

3)  Blow up your shots: Are you shooting 1080p HD and posting your video to the web?  If so, you have extra resolution to play with since almost nobody watches web video on giant screen.  If you convert the video to 720p (a lower resolution) you can blow up your original video quite a bit without it looking fuzzy on playback.  That shoulders-up medium shot could become a big-head closeup with the touch of button.

Whatever you do, Boelocraig, keep your videos short. An hour long interview is terrific for radio, during which we can drive or exercise or whatever.  But a 10-minute interview with anyone will be tough to watch without cutaways.  Even with cutaways 10 minutes is a long, long time for anyone who isn't extremely interesting or naked.

 

Generic Animation: Another Toy You Don't Need

In a Facebook thread last week after my Marketingprofs.com seminar one person bemoaned the expense of shooting live action. "Maybe post production animation is cheaper?" he wondered. Someone else jumped in and recommended Flixpress.com– a place you can get very inexpensive (sometimes free!) customized animations.

I took a look, and created the sample animation above.  Although I just threw in images and titles at random, you get the idea.  Almost everything on the site is similarly slick, similarly constructed and similarly long and boring. Sure, it's cheap, but so is fast food.

Here's the problem with generic animation:  it looks generic.  It's simultaneously glossy and empty.  Because the animation wasn't created with YOUR story in mind, it doesn't tell any story at all.  Even if you load it with your images. Instead of knocking your audience dead, the only thing it kills is time.

Ironically, if you think using generic animation is a good idea, that's a pretty good sign that you shouldn't use it.  Every moment of your video should carry your intent, your story, the emotion of the tale you should be telling.  Instead of adding pointless decoration, you need to make your video stronger.  Which doesn't cost money– just thought.  Go back to the drawing board and make sure every single element grabs the audience by the eyeballs and makes them watch.

Blogworld: the happiest place on earth!

Oh, wait. Maybe that's "Disney World". No matter. For three days, Blogworld and New Media Expo will be the happiest place on earth as thousands of bloggers pack the Los Angeles Convention Center November 3-5 for an uncharacteristic weekend of extroversion (Have you ever told a joke to a group of bloggers?  I have.  You land the punchline and it sounds like "click click click tap tap tap".  "I heard your speech went well, Steve" someone said later.  "How would I know?" I asked.  Turns out you have to read the tweets.  But I digress…)

If you're a blogger interested in using more video, you might want to check out my session Friday November 4 at 3pm.  Not surprisingly, it's called "How to Shoot Video that Doesn't Suck:  10 Things Bloggers Need to Know."   Who knows, if I'm feeling really frisky, I may go to 11.  Or even 12!

A great lineup of pretty cutting edge types speaking besides, um, me.  Interested?  Of course you are.  Want 20% off when you sign up just because you know me?  Naturally!  Use this cool VIP code: BWEVIP20

And see you there!