Saturday, July 07, 2007

Tips on shooting video

Some really good tips from Andy Dickinson about shooting online video over on his blog

Liked this one:

Auto controls

It doesn’t matter if they are
sub 300 pounds consumer units or high-def
camcorders, most cameras will have
extensive auto control facilities. If you are
going to get the best out of
your camera then (when you can) do the
following:

Locate the Auto Lock function for your
camera.Know how to turn
it off

Turn off the auto focus and learn how to focus
manually. The
auto focus is often slow and easily fooled by passing objects.
When shooting
an interview on the street a person may walk in front of the lens.
Your
viewer will ignore it but your camera focus may be upset. Even a very quick
refocus will distract your viewer and spoil the shot.
The general set up for
each shot would be to set the camera to
manual focus, zoom in as tight as you
can go on your subject (person or
object) and set the focus. Now, no matter how
you frame the shot, the
subject should stay in focus regardless of any passing
distractions :

Interestingly whilst Andy is extooling the virtues of online video,the BBC strangely wants it journalists to cut back on the medium.According to journalism.co.uk

"The head of BBC News Interactive wants the corporationto carry less online video and instead concentrate on improving the quality of its offering.Speaking at the Future of News Conference in London today, Pete Clifton told delegates that he wanted video that complemented stories, rather than repeating the offerings of streamed News 24 or the content of an accompanying text story."

I presume that this is the old argument of being jack of all trades and master of none



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