Five things to help improve your video

Many of us will know the old addage that art is born from restriction and dies of freedom. Or something like that. Amazingly enough it is true. Take the vast majority of Hollywood films. They have budgets running into the millions and are able to hand pick the best people in the business to work on them, and yet more often than not the film sucks. All those glossy visuals and special effects and star pulling power all count for nothing if the audience hasn't enjoyed the experience or comes away feeling short changed.

I am a firm believer that glossy visuals do not necceserily mean shallow content. but we cannot lose sight of the fact that content is king. A great script will always produce a great story even if the camerawork is a bit on the wonky side. Of course choppy editing and bad sound will ruin the experience, but at the end of the day a good script is the foundation of your video brickwork.

Saddening it is then to see so many forums dedicated to equipment. Okay, I hold my hands up, I'm as guilty as anyone else when it comes to drooling over new cameras, and I have fuelled the desire in others from the numerous magazine reviews I have written over the years. I'm guilty as charged.

However it would be easy to assume that I have access to any equipment I like, and that my budgets are really high for the work I do. Nothing could be further from the truth. I struggle with having to deal with less than ideal budgets just like anyone else. I do not own a high def camera even though I have shot a lot of stuff with them. And I do not have lighting equipment, Steadicams, cranes and jibs etc filling my home to the bursting point.

The reality is that I keep a basic lighting kit for doing interviews and other small shoots and I still shoot the majority of my productions on my standard def PDW-510 XDCAM. If I need anything more I'll hire it in and account for it in the budget. Okay, okay, the 510 is still way out of the league of many people even now. However it is worth bearing in mind that before I owned this camera I did most of my work on smaller Prosumer style cameras such as the Canon XM1, XL1, and Panasonic DVX100 and had to beg borrow and scrape equipment for indie style productions like so many others.

Yet so many people still get caught up in the idea that they need to have certain pieces of equipment to do things well. Many people become so obsessed with their equipment that they talk about it much more than they actually use it! Judging by some people I read about it seems that they have enough lighting equipment to shoot Indiana Jones 5, yet most of the work they do boils down to simple interviews!

There are five main things that I think are the core of making your video look good while getting across content:

Good script

This is the beginning of it all. You don't set off into the unknown without a map, unless you are prepared to face up to and accept responsibility for the risks. Get this nailed first.

Camerawork appropriate to the production

This sounds like an obvious one, yet it is ignored time and time again, even by large broadcasters such as the BBC. An example would be to shoot interlaced for a news recap but try to jazz it uo with the use of 'twitch zooms' in a badly thought out attempt to make it seem 'documentary style'. Leave the 24 style camerawork to Rodney Charters. He knows what he is doing. If you can master this style of camerawork without it giving people motion sickness or distracting from the content then by all means use it. However many people who do try this style quite often fail because they haven't observed the detail of Charters cinematography and how he manipulates the style to add to the production, not to distract or take away from it.

Guys like Rodney Charters will have experimented for a long time before they ever committed to that method and style. If you are going to try something creative it is up to you to try it out and experiment first to make sure that it works. If you aren't sure of your abilities or haven't got time to experiment, don't do so on someone elses time and money. Keep it simple. Great basic composition will always beat bad experimental composition.

Note that I am not telling you not to experiment and risk becoming stuck in a creative rut. You must develop your style. But this has to be done over time to make sure that what you are doing works, and contributes to the production. Remember, the aim of 99% of video is to engage an audience who doesn't know one end of a camera from the other. Not to impress other camera guys.

Handheld camerawork is an area that takes a lot of practice. It isn't easy to do well with the smaller cameras, but no matter what camcorder you use, there are all sorts of methods and tricks to handheld camerawork which I will cover in a later article. Keep within the bounds of what you can do.

Variety of angles

In an ideal world you would be able to gracefully move the camera in your production at any time you felt like it. Unfortunately Steadicams and jibs are expensive items. If you can afford something along those lines then they are generally well worth their money in terms of the production value that they give you. Frustratingly the larger the camera that you use the more expensive such extras become, and the more extras you need in order to make them work effectively.

So what can we do if we only have a tripod and a pair of hands at our disposal? Well, one reason moving cameras are so effective is because they provide a constantly changing viewpoint, and in the case of a Steadicam can make everything more dynamic and three dimensional. A Steadicam will allow you to cover in a single set up what would usually take several. For this reason alone such a device is worth getting hold of, especially if you own a smaller style camera and your overheads are not huge. A Steadicam can save you a lot of time in many instances, but all is not lost if you haven't got one.

I'm not for a minute going to suggest building one of those wacky gaffer taped DIY Steadicam style devices that many people try out. That's okay if you aren't working in video for a living. But what if you are? Well, variety is the spice of life as they say. You are just going to have to keep your audience happy visually via some other means. And in this case it means you will have to make some more effort to get more varied camera angles. You need options in editing, but please do not misunderstand what is meant by that. Everybody likes choice, but too much choice can be overwhelming. You still need to evaluate how valuable to an edit a given shot will be. They must all work together as a whole.

A clip bin full of worthless non-relevant shots is not going to help anyone. Almost as bad is a collection of hundreds of really good shots! Which one do you use? Such things can slow an edit down, especially if time is of the essence. You need to find a balance. 

The real value of lighting

Even if you do not have any lighting equipment, good composition and nicely exposed shots will look a whole lot better than something shot by somebody with a lot of lighting equipment but no clue how to use it! How many times have you seen a studio shot, or interview shot from by an equipment junkie that looked as flat as hell? I've seen it so many times I can't count. They've ended up using six lights for a setup that only requires two or three. Basically they have shone everything at the subject and made them look like the star of an Australian soap opera!

When you have less lighting equipment to play with, you have to be more creative. Admitedly you do not want the low key look for an interview with Bono the clow, unless your intention is to make him look evil. But at the same time you want to have some sort of shape in most shots you obtain. The flat look of a soap opera didn't come about because the producers want it to look flat. It came about through neccesity of speed of shooting with actors moving around the set a lot.

Although having said that, one of my old colleagues, Neil Oseman, shot his indie movie "Soul Searcher" using a two point setup for the entire movie. It looked great and still allowed a fair bit of freedom of movement. 

If you have a lot of lighting equipment, try to curb what you do. You want to get the most for the least. The best lighting setups are the ones which nobody notices, and are usually the most simple and straightforward setups.

Editing pulls it together

Again, an obvious statement. But related to what I said earlier about varying your shots you'd be surprised how many edits from people I have seen that linger on a shot far too long. You must develop a feel for when a shot has outstayed its welcome. Establishing a rhythmn during an edit is essential. Even if your finished video does not contain any music, your edit still has to exhibit a rhythmn that will help the audience members mind flow in synch with what you have produced. Varying the shots is essential to this, but also important is the amount of time spent on any given shot. Just like the beats of music we subliminally know when things are not flowing well. During an edit you need to get a feel for this.

But you must have good shots to begin with. The post production process must be used for making good stuff look great, and not making bad stuff look passable. You don't need Final Cut Pro, Avid, or Vegas to produce a really great edit. You could be editing in iMovie or the Windows equivilent and the rules would be the same.

In conclusion the key to producing great video without having access to the latest and greatest equipment is to master the basics. It is the same for any profession or skill set. In the beginning you want to rush out and get the best stuff. Or if you are already established in the profession you can still sometimes be made to feel as if you are lagging behind or defficient in some way because you haven't got access to high def this or that or the latest Dedo Light set.

Knowledge of the absolute basics and how to manipulate them will trump being a gearhead any day of the week. 

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