IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | (music playing)
| | 00:04 | Hi! I am Jeff Sengstack and welcome to
Video Journalism Storytelling Techniques.
| | 00:09 | In this course I'm going to
explain how to use video to tell stories.
| | 00:13 | I'm going to present this topic
from the point of view of working with
| | 00:16 | clients, but you can use the approaches I
explain here anytime you use video to tell any story.
| | 00:21 | I am going to walk you through
three practical real-world examples.
| | 00:25 | (video playing)
| | 00:26 | I am going to create stories
about a rock wall climbing gym.
| | 00:33 | (video playing)
| | 00:37 | A small boutique bakery.
| | 00:38 | (video playing)
| | 00:43 | And a world renowned
ventriloquist puppet and animatronic maker.
| | 00:46 | (video playing)
| | 00:51 | My goal in each case will be to create a brief
story about these individuals or their products.
| | 00:56 | I am going to explain the steps I go
through in working with clients, including
| | 01:03 | helping them understand the video
production process, setting realistic
| | 01:06 | expectations about what we can
accomplish, and identifying the target audience
| | 01:10 | and central message for each video.
| | 01:14 | Then we shift to planning mode.
| | 01:16 | I'll show you how to create a basic story
outline, shot sheet, and production plan.
| | 01:20 | I explain the importance of
communicating with the clients, to make sure they
| | 01:24 | agree to all these elements, and I
choose the appropriate video, audio, and
| | 01:28 | lighting gear for each shoot.
Then we shoot our video.
| | 01:33 | I present some basic video shooting,
miking, lighting, and interview techniques.
| | 01:39 | With our raw video in hand, I'll go
over how to organize video assets, select
| | 01:44 | sound bites, and create a rough cut edit,
all the while keeping the client in the loop.
| | 01:50 | Finally, I present some script writing
techniques and video and audio editing
| | 01:55 | tips, including working with matched action
and shot sequences and J and L audio edits.
| | 02:02 | By the time we wrap things up,
| | 02:03 | I think you'll be much better
equipped to use video to tell stories.
| | 02:07 | So let's get started with Video
Journalism Storytelling Techniques.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a Premium member of the
lynda.com library you have access to the
| | 00:03 | exercise files used in this course.
| | 00:06 | I put the exercise files here on the
desktop. You don't have to do that, but it
| | 00:10 | makes a little easier to track
down. Let's take a look at them.
| | 00:12 | There are 8 video files here, and we use
this toward the end of the course, when
| | 00:18 | I talk about specialized audio
and video editing techniques.
| | 00:20 | We also provide this video shooting
tips here as a PDF, and if you're not a
| | 00:25 | lynda.com subscriber, you can still
access this guy for free, so I'll let that
| | 00:30 | be available to you too.
| | 00:31 | Let me close that down. So I think it's
a good idea to put your exercise files
| | 00:35 | here, but you can tuck them away wherever you like.
| | 00:37 | If you don't have access to the
exercise files, you can still follow along from
| | 00:40 | scratch or use your own
assets, so let's get started.
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1. Choosing the MessageMeeting the clients and setting expectations| 00:00 | I am going to present three examples
of how I work with clients to tell their
| | 00:04 | stories, but all the lessons in this
course will help you whether you're working
| | 00:07 | for a fee or for free.
| | 00:09 | The initial meeting with the
people for whom you're going to work is
| | 00:12 | tremendously important;
| | 00:13 | it sets the tone for all that's to come.
| | 00:16 | Your principal goal is to drill down to
the central message of the story they'd
| | 00:20 | like you to tell, but there's much
more that should go on in these meetings.
| | 00:24 | In this video I use my visits with
my three clients to briefly explain my
| | 00:28 | general approach when meeting with
clients for the first time, and then I present
| | 00:32 | some topics in more detail in
the other videos in this chapter.
| | 00:35 | The first order of business is
to make a good first impression.
| | 00:39 | (video playing)
| | 00:42 | Jeff: Hi! You're Marty?
Marty: Hey! I am.
| | 00:43 | Jeff: I'm Jeff. Pleased to meet you.
Marty: Great!
| | 00:45 | Jeff: You've got a partner right?
Marty: I do! Kathryn.
| | 00:47 | Jeff: Hi Kathryn, Jeff. Pleased to meet you.
Kathryn: Hi! Nice to meet you.
| | 00:49 | Jeff: I'm looking forward to
doing this little project together.
| | 00:51 | Marty: Us too! Great!
Jeff: Want to talk about it a little bit?
| | 00:55 | I usually try to dress up a bit, I
consider my client situation and try to dress
| | 00:59 | one level up from what they might be
wearing. Or if there are of the jacket-and-
| | 01:04 | tie set, I at least meet them at that level.
| | 01:05 | Of course, when I come back to shoot the video,
I wear clothes appropriate for that activity.
| | 01:09 | Not all video producers subscribe to
this philosophy. I don't fault them for
| | 01:14 | sticking to their personal style, but if
you're kind of new to the game, I think
| | 01:17 | it's better to be safe then stylish.
| | 01:19 | Jeff: All right, right. Steve. I'm Jeff.
Steve: How are you Jeff?
| | 01:23 | Jeff: I'm great! I can't wait to take a tour. Let's do it.
Steve: I'll be interesting.
| | 01:28 | I usually start my initial meeting by
taking a tour of the business or other
| | 01:31 | location where I'll be doing the shoot.
| | 01:33 | It gives me a chance to get to know
my clients and scout their locations.
| | 01:37 | I also use the tour in the more formal
sitdown meeting later to educate my clients.
| | 01:41 | The reason: most client don't fully
understand the video production process.
| | 01:45 | Some think that stories just kind of
create themselves. So filling them in on
| | 01:49 | how things work is an important goal.
| | 01:51 | I let them know what can and cannot be
done within their budget limitations.
| | 01:55 | I've had clients show me videos produced
by major advertising agencies with huge
| | 01:59 | budgets, and then they ask me if I can
do the same for considerably less money.
| | 02:03 | Steve: I think that's where the fascination is--
| | 02:06 | I conclude my meeting by making sure
my clients and I are in agreement about
| | 02:10 | several important topics.
| | 02:11 | We should have a clear understanding
about who the audience for the video will
| | 02:15 | be, and what that video's central
message will be, and then let them know that
| | 02:19 | I'll write and present them with a
barebones outline of the story and it's
| | 02:23 | principal topics, as well as the
production plan with a shot sheet.
| | 02:27 | We'll need to agree on all of these items
before shooting a single frame of video.
| | 02:31 | Once we have a complete understanding of
how the pre-production process is going
| | 02:34 | to play out, I wrap up our meeting.
| | 02:36 | (video playing)
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| Scouting locations| 00:00 | Sometime during your initial or
subsequent meetings with your client you should
| | 00:04 | scout the location or
locations where you'll do the shoot.
| | 00:08 | In my TV news days we didn't have that
luxury. We showed up with our regular set
| | 00:12 | of gear and just kind of winged it.
But that run-and-gun approach meant we
| | 00:16 | frequently missed opportunities to get
some great shots. We simply had to roll
| | 00:19 | with the situation we found ourselves
in, and then move on to the next story.
| | 00:23 | But in the video production world, you
usually have the opportunity to do some
| | 00:27 | preproduction planning,
including scouting locations.
| | 00:30 | That extra work leads to
a better finished product.
| | 00:33 | When scouting a location, you need to
consider several factors, including room
| | 00:37 | size, shooting angles, lighting, and how any
events you're going to cover will play out.
| | 00:42 | (video playing)
| | 00:46 | Male speaker: Hi Jeff.
Jeff: Hello Russ!
| | 00:49 | The Santa Barbara Rock Gym
presented opportunities and challenges.
| | 00:52 | I knew I was going to shoot folks
climbing up the walls, so I asked the owner if
| | 00:56 | he could provide a tall ladder.
| | 00:58 | The facility has large picture
windows in one area and artificial lighting
| | 01:01 | elsewhere, so I added blue daylight
gels to my equipment list. These gels
| | 01:06 | ensure our artificial lights will
match the color temperature of the daylight
| | 01:09 | coming in the window.
| | 01:10 | (Male speaker: What's the knot we tie in climbing?)
| | 01:14 | The event I was going to shoot was
a class with two instructors. Those
| | 01:17 | instructors would split up, so
getting clean audio from both might pose a
| | 01:20 | problem. So I added two wireless
lavalier mics, one for each instructor
| | 01:24 | with that growing list.
| | 01:27 | With the extra audio and the need to
move lights quickly, I knew I would need
| | 01:30 | a second set of hands. That's where my
grip and audio guy, Greg, would come in handy.
| | 01:35 | One thing that could've been a problem
was electric power. You might not think
| | 01:38 | to ask about something as routine as this,
but do look around as you scout your locations.
| | 01:43 | In this case, none other rock walls
had electrical outlets. It turns out the
| | 01:47 | closest ones were in a bathroom or
through a small door in one of the walls, so
| | 01:51 | I added long extension
cords to the equipment list.
| | 01:53 | (video playing)
| | 01:56 | Some climbers use chalk dust on
their hands to get a good grip.
| | 02:00 | I figured this might lead to a cool shot
of flying dust as a climber reached for a
| | 02:04 | handhold. All we'd need to do would be to
backlight it with a small portable light.
| | 02:09 | It turns out the shot didn't work as
well as I'd hoped, but that's show biz.
| | 02:13 | Jeff: You prepare in advance here?
| | 02:15 | The Sticky Fingers Baking Company
in Ventura, California, presented a
| | 02:19 | different set of challenges.
| | 02:20 | First up, the Owner and Chief Baker
Katherine Glassman comes to work at 5 a.m.,
| | 02:25 | well before sunrise.
| | 02:27 | I wanted to create a shot
sequence that told that story.
| | 02:29 | The couple exteriors of the storefront
looking through the window, so we could
| | 02:34 | see her on the kitchen would work, but
the store sign is not lit, so I chose to
| | 02:38 | add two small portable
lights to the equipment list.
| | 02:40 | I wanted to use them to illuminate only the
sign and not be obviously visible in the shot.
| | 02:45 | The interior is cramped and
needs supplemental lighting.
| | 02:49 | We usually work with some kind of
lighting kit, so I just made sure to check out
| | 02:52 | that there was enough room to
add a couple of basic light stands.
| | 02:56 | The front windows let in a lot of
sunlight, and that lighting would change as the
| | 02:59 | morning shoot rolled along, so rather
than constantly change the lighting, I
| | 03:03 | made a mental note to make sure I white
balanced my camera each time I move from
| | 03:08 | the kitchen to the front area and vice versa.
| | 03:12 | Finally, Katherine asked me to not
shoot some piece of equipment that are
| | 03:15 | proprietary in nature.
| | 03:17 | I made another mental note about that,
but more importantly, I let her know that
| | 03:21 | I'd make sure she reviewed the
finished video to check for any slip-ups.
| | 03:24 | Male speaker: So this blinker is done here. This is one of our inventions.
Stuffed raccoon: Oh, nice!
| | 03:34 | Axtell Expressions is a unique
business. It creates magic tricks, puppets,
| | 03:38 | animatronics, and props for
ventriloquists. Its facility is overflowing with
| | 03:43 | visual possibilities, kind of
like a playground for adults.
| | 03:46 | Jeff: I can imagine! You get to be a kid.
Wow, that's too much. It is.
| | 03:55 | As owner, Steve Axtell showed me around, and a
number of shooting possibilities
| | 03:58 | presented themselves.
| | 04:00 | They already had a rudimentary set, so
I asked Steve if he could demonstrate
| | 04:03 | some products there.
| | 04:05 | The dark audio editing suite would need
some lights. Steve's office would work
| | 04:09 | well for the interview as long as I
remember to use curtains to dim the
| | 04:12 | sunlight streaming in the window.
And they were in the final construction
| | 04:15 | stages of an animatronic tree that they said
would fully functional in the day of our shoot.
| | 04:20 | A high-angle shot would work well and
they, too, agreed to provide a ladder.
| | 04:26 | Had I not taken the time to scout
these three locations, I would have missed
| | 04:29 | some shooting opportunities.
| | 04:30 | They say the devil is in the details,
and that admonition certainly applies when
| | 04:34 | you're planning a video production.
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| Identifying the audience| 00:00 | When producing a video you need to
consider the audience. You can cover the same
| | 00:04 | subject matter in several ways
depending on your target audience.
| | 00:08 | Helping a client identify that audience
is crucial to choosing the message; it
| | 00:12 | helps narrow the focus.
| | 00:16 | Axtell Expressions is a perfect example.
| | 00:18 | It's a multifaceted business with a
diverse product line and customer base.
| | 00:22 | Its owner, Steve Axtell, reflects that.
He is a ventriloquist and a magician.
| | 00:28 | (video playing)
Steve: I'm Steve Axtell, and this is Axtell television!
| | 00:32 | Yeah, produced a children's TV program.
His company sells 80 puppet characters
| | 00:37 | to thousands of customers, and
he has pioneered animatronics.
| | 00:40 | So, we needed to narrow down the possibilities.
| | 00:42 | Steve: Now, puppeteers, they're more of an artsy, folksy
breed, and they all make their own puppets, most likely.
| | 00:51 | But ventriloquists are different. They're more of a
vaudeville performer, and so they look for good puppets to use.
| | 00:59 | Jeff: This is kind of a case of
chicken and the egg: What comes first,
| | 01:02 | selecting the audience or the central message?
| | 01:04 | As we tour the facility,
the two elements began to coalesce.
| | 01:08 | Steve decided to have me
produce a biographical video.
| | 01:10 | Steve: To probably know the heart behind
the guy that runs this thing would be helpful.
| | 01:11 | Jeff: Then the question was
what audience to gear it toward.
| | 01:19 | Steve: Here's our customers from around the world.
There's Shaq and Terry Fator and
| | 01:24 | something we made for a Capital One commercial.
| | 01:26 | Jeff: We choose to do a video with the professional
ventriloquist customers in mind. That's not
| | 01:31 | to say that those on the consumer side
of this product line would not enjoy the
| | 01:35 | video, but we wanted to show the
professional world just how much Steve is
| | 01:38 | respected in that community.
| | 01:40 | Jeff: So these are guys who are really serious about
making a living being entertainers
| | 01:44 | and they know what they want and they come to you.
Steve: Yep! They find us everywhere.
| | 01:48 | Jeff: They find you. It's phenomenal.
Female speaker: This is to die for.
| | 01:55 | Choosing the audience for the bakery
video might seem like a no-brainer; it
| | 01:59 | consists of people who like baked goods, right?
| | 02:01 | But that would mean casting a wide net,
usually not the best marketing strategy
| | 02:06 | when it comes to making a promotional video.
| | 02:08 | So, we needed to consider some
things that set this bakery apart.
| | 02:11 | For one, its owner's are
Internet-savvy. They have a beautiful interactive
| | 02:15 | website and a strong, regularly updated
Facebook presence with a loyal following.
| | 02:20 | Male speaker 1: They do come in the shop. And we get
people all the time who have never been in
| | 02:24 | but they're following us on Facebook, and they're
excited to come in, so it's great.
| | 02:29 | So we're always alerting people on what's in the shop
and hey, this is available, and you know,
| | 02:34 | we do polls and goofy little posts and fun things
and it's been great. So between her baked goods
| | 02:39 | So, we decided to aim for an online
audience looking for little more insight
| | 02:41 | and the Facebooks it's--
| | 02:46 | into this uniquely bakery.
| | 02:48 | The bakery produces a wide variety of
small-batch items, and each item is a
| | 02:52 | cut above the crowd.
| | 02:53 | So, we concluded the audience would be
current and presumably future customers
| | 02:57 | who want to know what goes on behind the scenes.
| | 03:02 | Finally, after talking with the owner
of the rock wall climbing gym, it was
| | 03:05 | clear that he had a long-term view of
his business and that the best way to grow
| | 03:10 | his clientele was by
reaching out to young people.
| | 03:12 | He purposely chose the gym's location,
because it faces a street in Santa
| | 03:16 | Barbara, California, with lots of foot
traffic, and lots of school kids pass by everyday.
| | 03:22 | Male speaker 2: We have a ton of kids that just walk over
after school or ride their bike or skateboard or something so.
| | 03:28 | Male speaker 3: That's some awesome-looking
climbing there, buddy.
| | 03:31 | But children don't pay the bills, so we
settled on creating a video that shows
| | 03:35 | kids how much fun it is to come to the
Santa Barbara Rock Gym and shows parents
| | 03:40 | how safe it is and how it builds
confidence, strength, and maturity.
| | 03:44 | Male speaker 2: Good kid activities. So that really was a
focus for us when we started was to really be able to
| | 03:52 | families and kids and bring them in.
| | 03:54 | Creating a video for two distinctly
different audiences, kids and parents, can be
| | 03:58 | a bit challenging, so we also decided
to make a brief fast-paced video geared
| | 04:02 | specifically for young people.
| | 04:04 | It's important to consider your
audience when planning a video production.
| | 04:08 | It will help you focus your shot
selection and script writing and lead to a more
| | 04:12 | effective finished product.
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| Drilling down to the central message| 00:00 | Drilling down to the central message is
sometimes the hardest thing to work out
| | 00:04 | with a client. Many want their video to
say every thing, tell their whole story,
| | 00:09 | and that's fine if you want to create an
archival history, but that's rarely why
| | 00:12 | a client contacts you.
| | 00:14 | They might have a new product or service,
want to make instructional videos for
| | 00:17 | their employees, or need to put
together a corporate backgrounder.
| | 00:20 | The best way to present these stories is to
find a central theme and to avoid complexity.
| | 00:26 | In my eleven years as a TV news reporter,
I wrote several stories.
| | 00:30 | I'd start with blank slate, gather
information, and then attempt to explain what I
| | 00:35 | have learned in a way that would inform
viewers while holding their attention.
| | 00:39 | After some of my more complex stories
aired, I'd ask folks in the newsroom what
| | 00:43 | they got out of the story.
| | 00:44 | Sometimes the message I intended
to present was lost on them. Why?
| | 00:49 | I tried to present every salient fact;
| | 00:51 | I didn't drill down to the central message.
| | 00:54 | So, here are the central messages I
came up with for my three clients.
| | 00:58 | First up, the Sticky Fingers Baking Company.
| | 01:00 | Jeff: Is there, like, a message that you want people to
take away from our video what would that message be?
| | 01:07 | Male speaker 1: Buy our stuff and give us money?
Jeff: Sold! But there's got to be a reason to buy your stuff.
| | 01:12 | So, the next step was to drill down to
that reason. We eventually came up with
| | 01:16 | three reasons. First of all, ambience.
| | 01:17 | Jeff: It's kind of like going to a European cafe kind of a thing.
Female speaker: Yes.
| | 01:17 | Male speaker 1: Yeah, but with an American take on it,
which is just very kind of casual, homey, warm, welcoming.
| | 01:17 | That's the environment we want to kind of convey.
Jeff: And then variety.
| | 01:33 | Female speaker: It is unusual to have such a variety,
and to be open to baking gluten-free and vegan and regular baked goods.
| | 01:41 | Jeff: Finally, all the extra special touches that
put their baked goods above the ground.
| | 01:45 | Female speaker: It seems that people are receptive to the fact
that, what are you going to have today? Surprise me and then--
| | 01:45 | Will Russ: And then we actually remove that.
Jeff: For Santa Barbara Rock Gym, it came down to kids.
| | 01:59 | The gym owner, Will Russ, has
a long-term business plan.
| | 02:01 | The most to put element is grow
his customer base from the ground up,
| | 02:05 | to attract children to his facility
and have them become long-term customer.
| | 02:09 | So, for him, the theme is fun.
| | 02:13 | Will: We try to throw in as much different types of
terrain as possible. If everything is just straight vertical walls,
| | 02:17 | it just kind of gets boring. So, having something to climb over
or under or around just kind of adds some fun to it.
| | 02:25 | Jeff: He gets the kids to come back by
reassuring parents that he runs a safe program
| | 02:29 | and by making the kids feel welcomed.
| | 02:31 | Do you think what will pull people in is the fact that you
guys are welcoming, it's comfortable, the kids are,
| | 02:36 | this is like their second home.
Will: Yeah, I think that kind of that interaction and that
| | 02:40 | attitude that they have when they come in is
a really important part of it. And that was really one of
| | 02:46 | our focuses was to make sure that they feel that way.
| | 02:50 | Jeff: So, the message we settled on
was to portray the gym as a safe,
| | 02:53 | kid-friendly facility.
| | 02:55 | Jeff: And then the passion that you have for
the business we can show here in the business.
| | 03:00 | For Steve Axtell, with his
wide-ranging product line and worldwide costumer
| | 03:04 | base, finding the nugget of a story
idea took some time. But eventually it came
| | 03:08 | down to telling his story and how he is
viewed by the top professionals in the
| | 03:13 | ventriloquism world.
| | 03:14 | Jeff: And so we need to think about the practical
side of things, how we can show that.
| | 03:18 | We decided to get testimonials from
several well-known ventriloquists.
| | 03:21 | Puppet: That's not it!
| | 03:23 | But we also needed to way to wrap up his
story. Steve is an innovator who avoids
| | 03:28 | long-term plans and prefers responding
to customer ideas, so we chose to end
| | 03:33 | this story with his latest products, large animatronics.
(music playing)
| | 03:38 | There is nothing quite like
a grumpy old piano player.
| | 03:40 | (music playing)
Puppet: It's hard to do with arthritic hands, you know!
| | 03:51 | (puppets singing)
Jeff: A singing monster.
| | 03:58 | And a talking tree to set
the stage for what's to come.
| | 04:02 | So, my suggestion to you is that you
need to help your clients focus their
| | 04:05 | expectations, to agree on a narrow
topic or theme that you can support using
| | 04:10 | video, images, text, and sound.
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2. Selecting Strategies to Prove the MessageAgreeing on a story outline| 00:00 | An important part of your
pre-production workflow is to create a
| | 00:03 | barebones story outline.
| | 00:05 | This is not a detailed script, merely a
series of concepts in the likely order
| | 00:09 | they will appear in the finished piece.
| | 00:11 | This does several things to enhance the
story. It gives you and your client, or
| | 00:16 | whoever you're creating the video for,
an opportunity to make sure you're on the
| | 00:19 | same page, that you really did agree on
a central message and the means to prove
| | 00:23 | that message visually.
| | 00:25 | It gives all parties some extra
time to think about the story.
| | 00:28 | It's not at all unusual for your
client to suddenly remember something they
| | 00:31 | wanted to include in the video or
something they really wanted to drop.
| | 00:35 | They can prompt you or the client to
rethink the structure of the story and
| | 00:39 | whether you really can get video to
support all the topics in your outline.
| | 00:42 | And it gives you a better sense of
the pacing, how much time you'll need reach
| | 00:47 | topic and whether you need extra shots
to transition from one topic to another.
| | 00:51 | (video playing)
| | 00:52 | For the Rock Wall Gym I came up with
three main topics. It's a place for kids,
| | 00:58 | it's fun, and there is a lot more
going on than simply climbing walls.
| | 01:01 | It helps kids build confidence,
overcome obstacles, get into shape, and
| | 01:05 | do problem solving.
| | 01:07 | As is the case for all clients, when I
wrapped up my initial meeting with the
| | 01:10 | gym owner, Will Russ, I let him
know that I'd keep him in the loop.
| | 01:15 | Jeff: I'll send you a copy of the PDF and you can look
it over, maybe talk on the phone. Just say really quick
| | 01:18 | Jeff: is this what you're thinking, and then we'll do that.
Will: Awesome! Sounds great. Yeah. Thank you!
| | 01:25 | For the bakery I listed three main
items. It's a small personal friendly
| | 01:29 | bakery; it produces a wide range of
products in small batches, including
| | 01:33 | options for gluten-free and vegan; and it builds
loyalty with specialty items on a rotating basis.
| | 01:39 | Marty: She puts--I know it sounds cliche--but she puts love
into everything in that case and people are really,
| | 01:46 | it's really coming back to us
in the feedback that we're getting.
| | 01:49 | Jeff: After e-mailing Katherine and Marty
Glassman a PDF of the story concepts, I did
| | 01:53 | some follow up to see if
they wanted to make any changes.
| | 01:56 | Jeff: Anything that sort of stood out that you thought
really wasn't the message that you wanted to send? All right.
| | 01:57 | For Steve Axtell, we came up with
five main topics: his early days as a
| | 02:09 | puppeteer and puppet maker, people
who helped him along the way, the arc of
| | 02:14 | his business, testimonials from
top ventriloquists, and how his latest
| | 02:19 | creations point to the future.
| | 02:21 | Steve's story would be the most complex
and longest of the three, so I made sure
| | 02:25 | he knew we would discuss it
before I came back to shoot it.
| | 02:28 | Jeff: I'll do a rough shot sheet and a rough script--
not really a script, but an outline.
| | 02:34 | And I'll get it to you and you look it over and then just say
we need to emphasize this, we forgot this, make sure
| | 02:39 | you put that in and things like that, and we'll get
that worked out in advance.
| | 02:43 | This extra bit of planning
saved me and my clients some grief.
| | 02:46 | Had I not taken these extra steps to
create basic story outlines, I would've left
| | 02:51 | out some elements or had the
wrong take on several topics.
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| Planning the production| 00:00 | In addition to the story topic outline,
there are a few other preproduction
| | 00:04 | items worth creating: a shot sheet, a
schedule, and an overall production plan.
| | 00:09 | I use these documents to ensure
clients and I are on the same page.
| | 00:13 | The shot shoot does not have to be
deeply detailed, merely list all the
| | 00:17 | activities, locations,
and items you want to shoot.
| | 00:19 | Adding instructions like camera, angles,
tighten wide shot, tracking aesthetic
| | 00:23 | shots is not really necessary, unless
you're going to use some specialized
| | 00:26 | equipment for those purposes and need a
reminder when and where you plan to use that gear.
| | 00:31 | I add a schedule to the shot sheet or to the
email when I send the client the shot sheet.
| | 00:36 | The purpose is the make sure the client
or representative is on hand to ensure
| | 00:40 | setup goes smoothly and that participants in
the project know when they need to be available.
| | 00:45 | Finally, I run through a checklist of
production plan items with the clients,
| | 00:49 | basic things like getting model releases
signed, reminding them about who I need
| | 00:53 | to interview, and letting them
know how I've structured the shot.
| | 00:56 | So, here's how I worked out
these items for my three clients.
| | 01:00 | The Rock Wall Gym is going to
be challenging, for a few reasons.
| | 01:03 | There would be a lot of one scripted
action, we would be dealing with active
| | 01:07 | children, and I would be meeting the
instructors for the first time just a few
| | 01:10 | minutes before I started shooting.
| | 01:12 | I needed the reassurance the
instructors would know what to expect.
| | 01:14 | Jeff: All the instructors that day need to be totally
aware that we'll be here and to be aware that they
| | 01:19 | don't talk to us, they don't look at our camera, just do their
thing. And if their thing means goofing off and making
| | 01:24 | wisecracks to the kids, or whatever they
would normally do, then do that.
| | 01:27 | Will: That's what they do. Yeah! Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, definitely.
Jeff: Don't hold back.
| | 01:32 | Male speaker: Great job tonight. Now stand on that.
| | 01:35 | My shot shoot had three basic
elements, children arriving, instructors
| | 01:38 | helping them, and climbing.
| | 01:40 | The primary goal was to show kids
having fun in a safe environment. During
| | 01:44 | the shoot I would have to keep my eyes
and ears open for the shots and sound
| | 01:48 | that was support that.
| | 01:48 | But I did put reminders in my shot
sheets to get high angle shots from the
| | 01:52 | ladder, bring daylight blue gels
for the lights, and remind the owner he
| | 01:57 | needed to help us track down
parents willing to be interviewed.
| | 02:02 | As for the schedule, because the shoot
had extra complexities, I let the gym owner
| | 02:06 | know we'd arrived an hour
before the class would start.
| | 02:08 | Jeff: You got it, Greg? Ok.
| | 02:11 | That would give me and my audio
group assistant enough time to mic the
| | 02:14 | instructors and set up and turn on the lights.
| | 02:18 | When working with kids it's best not to
give them an excuse to mug to the camera.
| | 02:22 | Jeff: We might need to put a couple lights up to have
generic lights. Will: Absolutely.
| | 02:23 | The bakery shoot would also be somewhat
unpredictable since the kitchen workflow
| | 02:27 | Jeff: And we'll get those up in advance so that people
aren't going, lights!
| | 02:36 | would not be linear.
| | 02:38 | The chefs would have several items in
various stages of completion at all times
| | 02:42 | during early morning hours.
| | 02:44 | The shot sheet listed three main topics:
baking, prepping the front display, and customers.
| | 02:50 | The goals were to show the extra care
and special ingredients that go into each
| | 02:53 | baked good, the ambience, and how much
the customers enjoy the tasty treats.
| | 02:59 | Since I was shooting was story on
Sticky Bun Sunday, I thought customers were
| | 03:02 | going to arrive promptly at 8 a.m. when
the bakery opened. It turns out the buns come
| | 03:07 | out of the oven a bit later.
| | 03:09 | Marty: 8 o'clock you'll get a couple scattered people
coming in, but 9:15, that's when you're going to start
| | 03:16 | getting people coming in.
Jeff: Good to know.
| | 03:19 | I told the owners I would arrive at
6 a.m. to ensure there would be a pitch-
| | 03:22 | black street scene and that we'd have
enough time to let the exterior sign and
| | 03:26 | put up lights in the bakery.
| | 03:28 | After checking the sunrise time,
I moved that to 5:30. I confirmed the
| | 03:31 | schedule change with the bakery owners.
| | 03:35 | Axtell Expressions would be the most
involved shoot. The basic goal would be to
| | 03:38 | show the range of items the company
creates. But beneath that I wanted to show
| | 03:43 | the creativity, passion, and
commitment of Steve Axtell and his employees.
| | 03:47 | As was the case for a rock wall gym
and the bakery, I needed Steve's employees
| | 03:51 | to sign model releases.
| | 03:52 | Jeff: Let's make sure everybody who might even for a moment
be on camera, we'll get them all to sign releases.
| | 03:57 | It's no big deal if they don't want to.
We just won't show them. That's fine.
| | 03:59 | The numerous visual and information
possibilities at Axtell Expressions were
| | 04:03 | overwhelming, but as Steve and I
swapped emails, the story and the shot sheet
| | 04:07 | began to take shape.
| | 04:08 | I would get shots to show the full
production process, have Steve demonstrate
| | 04:13 | some products, and get sequences
of shots of the three newly created
| | 04:16 | large-scale animatronics.
| | 04:18 | Steve: Monday, when you come back, it'll be all finished
with bark and all full color painted and everything. Jeff: Wow.
| | 04:24 | By creating a shot sheet, a schedule,
and overall production plan, and then
| | 04:28 | sending those documents to my clients,
we all had a clearer idea of how the
| | 04:31 | shoot would play out and how I'd piece
together all the elements of the stories.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selecting appropriate video, audio, and lighting gear| 00:00 | There are two approaches to choosing
gear: use what you have or rent gear.
| | 00:05 | Many video producers or small production
companies have their own gear, but even
| | 00:09 | if you have a full set of gear, there
are times when it's a good idea to rent
| | 00:13 | gear to supplement your setup.
| | 00:14 | Things to consider are whether
you're shooting indoors or outside, during
| | 00:18 | daytime or night, will you'll use
available light or supplemental lighting?
| | 00:23 | How will you get the sound, will you
shoot handheld or use a tripod, and will
| | 00:27 | you conduct formal, sitdown
interviews or get sound bites on the fly?
| | 00:31 | To give you a feel for the
possibilities, I am going to show you a few
| | 00:34 | camcorders, microphones, and lighting setups.
| | 00:36 | DLRs, digital single lens reflex
cameras like this Canon 5D Mark II, are gaining
| | 00:43 | popularity as dual-purpose
still cameras and HD camcorders.
| | 00:47 | Their interchangeable lenses are a plus,
and their large image sensor means they
| | 00:51 | can have narrow depth of field,
which gives video a more filmic look.
| | 00:55 | Their storage media usually are
relatively expensive CF cards like this, which
| | 00:59 | have fast record rates
but limited shot duration.
| | 01:02 | And I find that the camera's form
factor makes them a little bit awkward to
| | 01:06 | use as video camcorders.
| | 01:07 | This Panasonic HPX 170 is the camcorder I
used to shoot the video for this course.
| | 01:12 | It records DVCPro HD, a
high-quality video format.
| | 01:16 | It uses up two P2 cards. One 164 GB card records
about 1 hour of full HD video and costs $600.
| | 01:23 | The camcorder's form factor, including
their rotating viewfinder and the two
| | 01:28 | handles with the zoom and start stop
controls lends itself to video work.
| | 01:32 | It does not use interchangeable lenses,
but the 13X zoom lens it comes with gives
| | 01:37 | you plenty of possibilities,
including a macro close-up mode.
| | 01:40 | This Panasonic HGAF 100 is kind of
hybrid. It offers video shooters the
| | 01:44 | advantage of a DSLR with
the feel of the camcorder.
| | 01:48 | Like a DSLR, it has a large image
sensor to create a shallow depth of field,
| | 01:52 | works with virtually any professional
lens, including zoom lenses, but it is not
| | 01:56 | setup for powered zoom lenses.
| | 01:58 | You typically work with it in a film
production environment where you have a
| | 02:02 | full set of lenses for a
wide variety of shot setups.
| | 02:04 | It uses up to two SD cards, which are
the least expensive card-based recording
| | 02:09 | media. A single 64 GB card can
record 6 hours of high-quality HD.
| | 02:14 | The Panasonic HPX 370 is the form
factor of a TV news ENG, Electronic News
| | 02:20 | Gathering, camcorder. It uses two P2 cards.
| | 02:23 | In addition to recording DVCPro HD
like the HPX 170 I showed you earlier, it
| | 02:28 | also records to the
higher-quality AVC-Intra 100 format.
| | 02:32 | It's designed as a shoulder mount
camcorder, but at 11 pounds, it's heavy enough
| | 02:36 | that you want to rely on a tripod most
of the time. It comes with 17X zoom lens.
| | 02:41 | It has the option to use interchangeable lenses.
| | 02:43 | One of the considerations among
selecting camcorders is its frame rate.
| | 02:47 | If you're going to shoot action
footage, you want to get super-sharp
| | 02:51 | slow motion, then you might consider
using a camcorder like the Sony NEXFS700.
| | 02:54 | It can shoot 240 frames per second in full HD.
| | 02:59 | That means when you play that video back
at a standard rate, like 24 or 30 frames
| | 03:03 | per second, the video will
run at 1/10th to 1/8th actual speed.
| | 03:08 | I used the FS700 when I shot a
documentary on go-cart racing.
| | 03:12 | There are three basic choices in
microphones: lavalier, shotgun, and handheld.
| | 03:17 | My usual setup is to work with a
wireless lav. It can be the positioned on the
| | 03:21 | subject such that it doesn't show up
on camera, it puts interview subjects at
| | 03:25 | ease, and even if I'm not pointing my
camera at the person wearing the lav, I
| | 03:28 | can still record that person's comments.
| | 03:30 | If you know you're going to do a sitdown
interview, you might opt for hardwired lav.
| | 03:35 | Attaching the wireless receiver to the
camcorder can sometimes be a bit clumsy.
| | 03:39 | If you don't have mic shoe attached to
the camcorder handle, you can tape the
| | 03:42 | receiver to the handle or slide its clip
over the flexible camcorder handle like this.
| | 03:46 | The other mic I use in my standard setup
is a shotgun on the camcorder.
| | 03:52 | Its advantage is that it picks up sounds in
a focused cone in whatever direction I
| | 03:56 | am pointing the camcorder.
| | 03:57 | A windsock is given to cut down on wind
noise. This camcorder records four audio
| | 04:02 | channels, so I put the extra two
channels from the onboard mic to audio channels
| | 04:06 | 3 and 4, just for backup.
| | 04:08 | My handheld mic can come in handy if
you're recording speech, a news conference,
| | 04:13 | or doing quick interviews with a reporter.
| | 04:15 | But sticking a handheld mic an
interviewee's face can lead to mic fright.
| | 04:19 | So, if I need to grab a quick
interview with a nervous subject, I'll put a
| | 04:23 | shotgun like under my arm and
casually hold the camcorder off to one side.
| | 04:28 | That way I can have a simple conversation while
putting a nervous interview subject at ease.
| | 04:34 | It's almost always a good idea to use
lights that give your video extra sparkle,
| | 04:38 | better color, and greater depth of field.
| | 04:40 | At the very least, if the situation
calls for it, turn on as many lights as you
| | 04:44 | can. Here are few lighting possibilities.
| | 04:47 | This is a standard tungsten light kit.
At the lower end there is a 150 Volt mini
| | 04:51 | light. The barn doors make it easier
than narrow the beam of light to add
| | 04:54 | highlights to a subject but to avoid
lighting a wide area when all you want to
| | 04:59 | illuminate is a small region.
| | 05:00 | At the other end of the light is this
600 watt light. In addition to the barn
| | 05:04 | doors, you can control the position of
the bulb to focus the beam and make it
| | 05:07 | work more like a floodlight.
| | 05:08 | If you're shooting in a room open to
daylight, then you can use blue daylight
| | 05:12 | gels to balance the
tungsten light with the sunlight.
| | 05:15 | You can use closed pins to attach the gel,
or if your light has built in clips, use them.
| | 05:20 | If the light is too bright, you can
slide in a wire mesh scrim to dim it.
| | 05:25 | LEDs--light-emitting diodes--are
beginning to replace tungsten lights.
| | 05:29 | Their advantage is they can work with
batteries, are cool to the touch, and have dimmers.
| | 05:33 | It's also much easier to add colored
gels. Simply slide them into place.
| | 05:38 | LEDs generally are not as bright as
tungsten, so if you want to fill a room with
| | 05:42 | soft light, you can combine a
tungsten light with a reflective umbrella.
| | 05:45 | An easy way to use a single light
but illuminate more than one side of a
| | 05:49 | subject is to use a reflector.
This reflector has two sides: gold to give a
| | 05:54 | warm glow and silver for a colder look.
| | 05:56 | You can use a diffuse
screen to soften the light.
| | 06:02 | For the production shoots I did for
this course, my grip, light, and audio
| | 06:05 | assistant tried out some new lights
known to us by LOW. They are LED lights that
| | 06:09 | have a blend mode. That is,
they have two sets of LEDs.
| | 06:11 | One glows at a daylight color temperature.
The other matches standards studio lights.
| | 06:15 | They have a graduated blend mode
that lets us match the lights to a mixed-
| | 06:20 | lighting situation, such as this
rock wall gym, which had skylights and
| | 06:23 | artificial lighting. Bottom line,
| | 06:25 | it's almost always better to add
lights to a scene. Your results will shine.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Getting Visuals and Sound to Support the MessageBasic video shooting tips| 00:00 | To tell your story well, you
need to shoot your video well.
| | 00:03 | In this lesson I am going to present
a full range of video shooting tips.
| | 00:07 | I don't plan to go into too much
detail in any one tip, since I have done a
| | 00:11 | complete lynda.com course on this topic.
| | 00:13 | If you want to check it out, it's
called Video Journalism Shooting Techniques.
| | 00:16 | I have also created a PDF that gives
brief explanations of the tips I present
| | 00:21 | here. You can download it from
this course's page on lynda.com.
| | 00:25 | The most important video shooting tip is
to get a wide variety of shots. Variety
| | 00:29 | as an editor's best friend, and since
you or a colleague are likely to be that
| | 00:34 | editor, do yourself or your
editor a favor: think variety.
| | 00:39 | Also, keep the story flow in mind;
| | 00:41 | ask yourself how the editor will be
able to go from one scene to the next.
| | 00:45 | Usually going from a wide shot to a
tight shot will suffice, but for example,
| | 00:49 | you can shoot a building exterior
to segue way to an interior shot,
| | 00:53 | or have someone walk out of a room
and then show them in another room.
| | 00:57 | Okay, so let's move on to some specific tips.
| | 01:00 | First, get an establishing shot that lets
viewers know where the story is taking place.
| | 01:05 | I'll show some examples of the
establishing shots and sequences in another
| | 01:08 | video in this chapter.
| | 01:11 | (video playing)
| | 01:12 | Follow action. At the Rock Wall Gym for
example, there was plenty of action.
| | 01:17 | It was a simple matter to keep climbers
in the frame. That said, sometimes it's
| | 01:21 | good to let action enter the frame or leave
the frame. That makes it much easier to edit.
| | 01:26 | If you have the person in two shots in
a row, if that person leaves the frame,
| | 01:30 | then you can do a cut edit to that
person in the second shot without causing a
| | 01:34 | disconnect for your viewers.
| | 01:36 | Use trucking shots. You can do this as
another way to follow action, but it can
| | 01:40 | come in handy when you have something
static in the scene, like these sticky
| | 01:43 | buns or these photos of Axtell Expressions.
| | 01:47 | (video playing)
| | 01:49 | At the rock wall climbing gym I wanted to
get what amounted to a series of close-ups of the kids,
| | 01:54 | so, I moved the camera along in front of
them as a means to reveal them one by one. Find unusual angles.
| | 02:00 | For example, I make a point of trying
to get high-angle shots. At the climbing
| | 02:05 | gym, I used the tall stepladder and
followed action that way, of kids climbing
| | 02:09 | up the wall and of an
instructor hanging from the archway.
| | 02:13 | At Axtell Expressions, I wanted to show
just how grand the new animatronic tree
| | 02:17 | is, so I used the ladder there as well.
| | 02:21 | And even at the Sticky Fingers Bakery, I used
a small stepstool to get a high-angle shot.
| | 02:25 | Another take on this is to put
the camera in an unlikely location.
| | 02:30 | I like to put it on tables and desks
like this, to get tight face and hand shots.
| | 02:35 | I also like to position the camera
directly above someone, looking straight
| | 02:39 | down, like you're at the bakery.
| | 02:40 | (video playing)
| | 02:43 | Or here at the climbing gym.
| | 02:44 | (video playing)
| | 02:47 | Or I get down low and look up.
| | 02:49 | (video playing)
| | 02:51 | One other unusual angle I like is
to put the camera right next to the
| | 02:55 | person's head and shoulder;
| | 02:56 | it's an effective way to get
a good point-of-view shoot.
| | 02:59 | Create strong foreground shots; that is,
shoot something as a wide shot but
| | 03:04 | position your camcorder so there is
something close to it in the foreground.
| | 03:08 | I shot through the animatronic trees branches
when showing employees working on its control.
| | 03:14 | I got right down next to the cupcakes
as the baker added icing, and I put the
| | 03:19 | kids in the foreground as they watched
their teacher climbing through the arch.
| | 03:24 | Get wide and tight shots. Our eyes
work something like medium-length
| | 03:29 | zoom lenses, so it's best to avoid
medium-zoom-style shots. They tend to be boring.
| | 03:34 | So, to add interest, get close to a
subject or far away. I like to shoot wide
| | 03:39 | and tight shots of the
same scene to add interest.
| | 03:42 | I've also used tight shots a lot.
| | 03:45 | Shoot matched action.
| | 03:46 | That's kind of a specialized pairing
of wide and tight shots, where whatever
| | 03:50 | action is happening in one
shot continues in the other.
| | 03:53 | You usually need to get the cooperation
of your subject to do this right. Either
| | 03:59 | they stop what they are doing for a
moment while you move the camera or you
| | 04:03 | have them do the same thing twice.
| | 04:04 | Jeff: Ok, go.
(video playing)
| | 04:06 | Get sequences of shots.
| | 04:08 | This works well if you have repetitive
action--you can shoot it more than once--
| | 04:12 | or you have a long even process that you
have time to shoot it from a variety of angles.
| | 04:16 | This animatronic monster is one example.
| | 04:19 | I present several more in
another video in this chapter.
| | 04:22 | (video playing)
| | 04:24 | Shoot cutaways. A cutaway literally
let's you cut away from one scene to go to
| | 04:29 | another, or covers what would have
been an awkward edit, such as two sound bites
| | 04:33 | from the same person.
| | 04:35 | To go from one scene to the next,
all you might need is a tight shot of the next
| | 04:38 | scene. Or in the case of the rock
gym, I could use a tight shot of an
| | 04:42 | instructor or a wide shot of group of
kids and put one of those shots between
| | 04:46 | two shots of the same climber.
| | 04:48 | (video playing)
| | 04:50 | Interview cutaways could be tight
hand shots as the interviewee gestures or
| | 04:54 | shots over the interviewee's
shoulder looking at the reporter.
| | 04:58 | If you do one of those over-the-shoulder
shots, don't break the plane. The plane
| | 05:03 | is an imaginary wall
that runs through the scene.
| | 05:05 | You want tot keep your camera on only
one side of that wall; otherwise, you'll
| | 05:09 | create a disconnect for your viewers.
| | 05:11 | When I got wide shots of Steve Axtell
talking with his audio specialist, I kept
| | 05:15 | the camera on one side of that plane.
| | 05:18 | Adhere to the rule of thirds.
| | 05:20 | This is a standard photo composing technique.
| | 05:23 | Basically, you want the center of
interest of your shot to not be in the
| | 05:27 | center of the frame.
| | 05:28 | In general, put it at an intersection
of two of the four lines shown here, or
| | 05:32 | put it off-center along the left or right side.
| | 05:34 | Horizon lines should not go
through the center of the frame;
| | 05:37 | rather, they should go along one
of these two horizontal lines.
| | 05:41 | Keep your shots steady.
| | 05:43 | I always bring a tripod with me and use
it where practical, but when I have to
| | 05:47 | move around a lot, I usually can't use it.
| | 05:49 | In those cases, I try to study my shots
using stationary objects. Here at the gym
| | 05:54 | I put the camera on the floor.
| | 05:56 | At the bakery, I used the countertop,
and even the oven--it is well insulated.
| | 06:01 | And in Axtell Expressions I use a
tabletop, workbench, and the floor. Avoid
| | 06:09 | fast pans, zooms, or tilts.
Generally, it's best to not remind viewers they are
| | 06:14 | watching a video. Fast moves
break that suspension of this belief.
| | 06:19 | I usually start rolling on a shot
and then count to five before and after
| | 06:24 | panning, zooming, or tilting.
Then I try to make the moves go smoothly.
| | 06:28 | The extra time at the beginning and end also
means I can use those shots as static shots.
| | 06:32 | Listen for good sound bites and natural sound.
The importance of sound cannot be overstated.
| | 06:40 | Even if you're not pointing your
camcorder in the direction of the sound, you
| | 06:43 | might be able to use that sound with
other video clips, so keep on rolling.
| | 06:47 | I present tips on interviewing and
miking techniques and specialized audio edits
| | 06:51 | in other videos in this course.
| | 06:55 | Use lights. They add life to a scene,
improve the color, help you get a sharper
| | 07:00 | focus, and create depth to
an otherwise flat scene.
| | 07:02 | I present a number of lighting tips
in a separate video in this course.
| | 07:07 | Get a closing shot or sequence of shots.
Female speaker: This is to die for.
| | 07:10 | Jeff: This is tremendously important.
The closing shots are what people remember, what
| | 07:16 | they take away from your stories.
| | 07:17 | I show some examples in
another video in this course.
| | 07:21 | Following these shooting tips will
greatly enhance your storytelling ability.
| | 07:24 | I recognize this is a lot to digest all
at once. I suggest you print up the PDF
| | 07:29 | file I included with this
course as kind of a checklist.
| | 07:32 | At the very least,
remember that variety is key.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Shooting multishot sequences| 00:01 | Multishot sequences are mini-stories
in themselves. The best scenario in which
| | 00:05 | to shoot them is when you have
repetitive action or something that takes enough
| | 00:08 | time to allow you to
shoot it from multiple angles.
| | 00:11 | If it involves people, you'll likely
need the cooperation of those involved.
| | 00:15 | They usually have to stop what
they're doing multiple times while you
| | 00:18 | reposition the camera.
| | 00:20 | The results though are worth that extra effort.
| | 00:22 | In this video I am going to show you
a few multishot sequences I shot when
| | 00:26 | working with my three clients.
| | 00:28 | I shot several sequences at each
location. I used a couple of ways to open
| | 00:33 | or close my stories, and I show you
those examples in another video in this chapter.
| | 00:37 | At the Sticky Fingers Baking
Company I wanted to get several sequences,
| | 00:41 | including one of their mixers,
affectionately dubbed big Bertha.
| | 00:45 | So, as is the case for virtually all
sequences I shoot, I got in tight, I got a
| | 00:49 | wide shot, and then shot
from a couple of other angles.
| | 00:53 | Sometimes it's difficult to get matched
action for all the shots, so I usually
| | 00:57 | grab a faced shot to use as a cutaway.
Here's how I edited that sequence.
| | 01:01 | (video playing)
| | 01:33 | For the cupcakes I got in real close,
to show the care used when adding icing.
| | 01:42 | And I learned that grating the outside of
an orange lemon creates what bakers call
| | 01:47 | zest, a special
ingredient in the sticky buns here.
| | 01:50 | (video playing)
| | 01:50 | At the Santa Barbara Rock Gym when the
instructor laid out the shoes for the
| | 02:04 | children, I had them do it twice.
| | 02:05 | Jeff: You need to do the same order you did before.
He put the one close to me first.
| | 02:10 | The second time he did it in a
different order, so I had them do it again to
| | 02:13 | match how he did it the first time.
[00:02:14 .93]
Continuity is important when
you are shooting a sequence.
| | 02:19 | (video playing)
| | 02:23 | The arch climb presented a challenge,
since it was going to be a one-time-only thing.
| | 02:28 | Fortunately, the climber had the
strength and ability to stop a few times to
| | 02:32 | let me reposition the camera.
| | 02:33 | Jeff: Stand by. If you have 30 seconds while I
get off the ladder? Hang on one second please. Don't fall!
| | 02:43 | The kids applauded at the end,
but I was busy shooting the instructor
| | 02:46 | dangling from the rope, so
I asked them to applaud again.
| | 02:50 | Jeff: Another applause for the guys.
| | 02:51 | Now, I am not a fan of asking children
to act, but in this case they had applauded
| | 02:56 | once already, so it was okay.
Here's how I edited that sequence.
| | 02:59 | (video playing)
| | 03:07 | Male speaker: Ok guys, ready?
Children: Yeah!
| | 03:09 | Male speaker: Three, two, one!
(applause)
| | 03:21 | Male speaker: You guys ready to leap-climb then?
All right. Maybe next class.
| | 03:26 | Jeff: Finally, at Axtell Expressions
there were plenty of sequence shooting
| | 03:29 | opportunities. The animatronics were
especially cooperative. None seem to mind
| | 03:34 | performing more than once, and here's
how that sequence of shots turned out.
| | 03:37 | (video playing)
(music playing)
| | 03:45 | (puppet gasping)
Puppet: That's hard to do with my arthritic hands, you know.
| | 03:51 | Multishot sequences add the variety to
your stories that help you hold viewers'
| | 03:55 | interest. They take extra work on your
part when shooting them and editing them,
| | 03:59 | but the results are worth the effort.
| | 04:01 | (video playing) (applause) (music playing)
Puppet: Thank you! Thank you!
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Getting establishing and closing shots| 00:00 | Establishing enclosing shots
and sequences are important.
| | 00:04 | Establishing shots give your
stories a sense of time and place.
| | 00:07 | They bring your viewers into the story.
| | 00:09 | They can be as simple as a single wide
shot of an easily recognizable location,
| | 00:14 | a sequence of shots, or a
few quick shots of an activity.
| | 00:18 | For my three clients, those quick
shots could be kids climbing at the Santa
| | 00:21 | Barbara Rock Gym, animatronic
puppets at Axtell Expressions, or baking
| | 00:25 | preparations at the Sticky Fingers
Baking Company. All give your viewers a sense
| | 00:29 | of where the story is going.
| | 00:31 | Closing shots are what
viewers take away from your story.
| | 00:34 | It's what they remember, so
try to make them memorable.
| | 00:38 | Closing shots can be as cliche as a
sunset or someone ridding off in a distance,
| | 00:42 | or someone closing a pen cap after
they finish writing a heartfelt letter.
| | 00:48 | In this lesson, I'm going to show
several establishing and closing shots and
| | 00:51 | sequences using examples
from my three clients.
| | 00:54 | As you'll see there are no hard-and-fast rules.
| | 00:57 | Jeff: All right, so I'll have you both come
in the same order you just came moments ago.
| | 01:01 | For Axtell Expressions, one possible
establishing shot sequence is to show
| | 01:06 | exterior shots of what amounts to an
unremarkable office park and a nondescript
| | 01:10 | building exterior and then segue to
the magic that takes place within.
| | 01:14 | So, I asked two Axtell employees to
help me make that transition from the
| | 01:18 | exterior to the indoors.
Jeff: Perfect, thank you!
| | 01:21 | Here's how it turned out.
(video playing)
| | 01:33 | For the Sticky Fingers Baking Company
opening shot, I wanted to show that the owner
| | 01:37 | and her crew started their day before sunrise,
| | 01:40 | so I set up to get a wide
shot from across the street.
| | 01:43 | I waited for a car to drive through to
help make the transition to a tighter shot.
| | 01:47 | I planned to insert some audio of
the baker at about this point to help
| | 01:50 | transition to the interior
shots. Hre's how I edited that.
| | 01:53 | (video playing)
| | 02:02 | For the Santa Barber Rock Gym the
temptation was to start with instructors setting
| | 02:06 | things up, then greeting the students,
and then explaining the day's agenda; but
| | 02:10 | that would be more like a
documentary than a promotional video.
| | 02:13 | Instead, I opted for several quick
cuts of kids having a great time climbing,
| | 02:18 | knowing that I'd later
mention how the program works.
| | 02:21 | Here's how I pieced those shots together.
| | 02:23 | (video playing)
| | 02:31 | It's a little more challenging to
come up with closing shots. As you shoot,
| | 02:35 | you to the focus on the here and now
and you can lose sight of how best to
| | 02:39 | wrap up your story.
| | 02:40 | So, finding a closing shot or
sequence might fall off your to-do list.
| | 02:43 | When I am shooting a story, I already
have a good idea of the shots I want to
| | 02:48 | get to close out the piece, but at the
same time I'm more than willing to change
| | 02:52 | that plan if something better comes along.
| | 02:56 | For the bakery, I wanted the body of the
story to show the care used when making
| | 02:59 | the bake the goods, but the
conclusion would be the customers' reactions.
| | 03:03 | I couldn't script that, so I kept on asking
customers for their take on the tasty treats.
| | 03:08 | I wanted to make sure I had at least
three short, succinct sound bites. I like
| | 03:13 | writing and shooting things in groups of three.
| | 03:15 | So, here is that take on how
to conclude the bakery story.
| | 03:18 | Female speaker 1: I've had it once before and I normally
don't like these, but they're really, really good.
| | 03:24 | Male speaker 1: People say that it was the best red velvet
cupcake that they've ever had.
| | 03:29 | Female speaker 2: This is to die for.
| | 03:32 | Steve Axtell: I always wanted to be
able to take our puppets and animate them.
| | 03:36 | Jeff: Steve Axtell's story doesn't have an
end per se. We've concluded that much of
| | 03:40 | his creative spark comes from customer
suggestions and requests, so there is no
| | 03:45 | telling exactly where he's going to go next.
| | 03:47 | Where his challenges lie now though
is in large-scale animatronics. So we
| | 03:51 | agreed that we'd conclude his piece
with the sampling of his three most
| | 03:54 | current animatronics works.
| | 03:56 | Here's how I put together that
closing sequence for Steve's story.
| | 03:59 | (video playing)
| | 04:16 | Finally, for the Santa Barbara Rock Gym,
the conclusion would need to involve kids.
| | 04:20 | One of the stated goals of the gym
is for the kids to gain confidence,
| | 04:24 | so I thought a sequence of shots of
kids climbing to the top of the walls seemed
| | 04:28 | like a good way to show that.
Here's how I edited those shots together.
| | 04:31 | Male speaker 2: That's some awesome-looking
climbing there, buddy. There you go!
| | 04:36 | Establishing enclosing shots
and sequences are hugely important.
| | 04:39 | They set the stage for what's to
come and are what viewers remember about
| | 04:43 | your story.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Responding to unexpected developments| 00:00 | Few well-laid plans play out according
to the plan. Stuff happens, and you need
| | 00:05 | to recognize that, not let it get
you down and ultimately roll with the
| | 00:09 | punches. Come up with the
plan B or plan C or whatever.
| | 00:13 | For example, people will be late, doors
will be locked, you end with the wrong
| | 00:17 | gear, batteries and lights die, and
events don't play out as planned.
| | 00:22 | That's just how it is in the video production world.
| | 00:25 | So you frequently need to take a
deep breath and come up with a new plan,
| | 00:29 | unexpected developments came up to one degree
or another in each of my three clients'
| | 00:33 | locations. None were earth shattering,
but I think they give you a sense of what
| | 00:37 | can go wrong and how to react.
| | 00:39 | At the bakery, my initial plan was to
arrive at 6 a.m., two hours before the store
| | 00:46 | opened and shoot till about 9 a.m.
| | 00:47 | That would give me time to get there
before sunrise and stay long enough to get
| | 00:51 | several customers' reaction.
| | 00:52 | I am glad I outlined that schedule to
the bakery owners. It turns out that on
| | 00:56 | Sticky Bun Sunday, the buns are
flipped from their pans at 9:30. Also, they
| | 01:02 | do much of their prep work the morning before
they do the baking, another little surprise.
| | 01:06 | So they agreed to do some mixing and
another prep work while I was there to
| | 01:09 | avoid having me come in to
shoot on two different days.
| | 01:13 | Finally, after checking the local
sunrise time I figured that getting there at 6
| | 01:15 | a.m. would make getting a dark
street shot just a bit dicey,
| | 01:19 | so I changed that to 5:30. The bakery crew
had no problem with that since they arrive at 5.
| | 01:24 | Steve: You wouldn't be able to get
in it with shoulders this tall.
| | 01:25 | Jeff: The shoot at Axtell was more or less
trouble-free. There were a few technical
| | 01:32 | glitches. They were working at a pirate
suit for a theme park character, but a
| | 01:36 | few other pieces--the beard and the hat--
were not quit ready, so we improvised.
| | 01:39 | Female speaker: We're going to actually make that.
| | 01:42 | A couple mechanical devices that were
setup during my initial visit had since
| | 01:45 | been shipped out, so I wasn't able
to get those items back here in the
| | 01:48 | animatronics room. There were so
many the other goodies we made do.
| | 01:53 | Finally, the old piano player was not
synced up, so we put him aside and shot
| | 01:57 | another scene while the
technical crew made repairs.
| | 02:00 | Ultimately, the old guy came through.
| | 02:02 | We just had to make sure we had the
proper camera angle to avoid revealing any
| | 02:06 | of the behind-the-scenes magic.
(video playing)
| | 02:12 | The Santa Barbara Rock Gym had the
greatest potential for minor snafus because
| | 02:15 | of the number of people and the
fact that children would be present.
| | 02:19 | It started with a missing a shotgun
mic windsock. No big deal in a windless
| | 02:23 | environment, but without the windsock,
the mic rattled in the mic holder.
| | 02:26 | Jeff: It's kind of rattling. I can hear it
in the headset.
| | 02:29 | A little tape wrapped around mic fixed that.
| | 02:33 | (video playing)
| | 02:34 | One of the instructors called in sick,
so at the last minute, we had to make up
| | 02:36 | her replacement and explain what we were up to.
| | 02:39 | Male speaker 2: Let's try it the other direction
and face it this way.
| | 02:40 | We had planned to shoot in only two
locations in the gym, but that plan went
| | 02:46 | out the window almost immediately.
So my light and grip assistant Greg and I
| | 02:51 | moved the ladder and lights to other
locations and tracked down power outlets
| | 02:54 | we didn't know we'd need.
| | 02:57 | I had big plans to get a tight shot of
chalk dust flying off a climber's hand as
| | 03:01 | she grabbed the handhold. We set it up
with a couple of lights, including a
| | 03:04 | backlight to emphasize the dust, but
in the end, dust didn't fly. The shot
| | 03:09 | didn't work. Like I said, stuff happens.
| | 03:13 | One interview had issues. The young man here
was kind of shy. He tugged on his mom's
| | 03:17 | hand during what was a pretty good sound
bite, so after she let her son get out of
| | 03:22 | the glare of our lights, I
asked her to repeat that sound bite.
| | 03:25 | Finally, the gym owner and I had
discussed shooting someone climbing over the
| | 03:28 | high arch, but it just didn't fit into
the story about a kids climbing class.
| | 03:32 | During our shoot, we discussed it
again, and the owner suggested we can make
| | 03:36 | a teachable moment.
(video playing)
| | 03:37 | We did some quick equipment
adjustments to get that sequence.
| | 03:43 | In each of these cases, none of the issues was
a dealbreaker, just minor bumps in the road.
| | 03:47 | I try to keep things in perspective.
| | 03:50 | The goal is to tell my client's stories.
As long as the unexpected developments
| | 03:54 | don't preclude me from doing that,
I just try to take them in stride.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Using Good Miking and Lighting TechniquesMiking and lighting tips| 00:00 | Getting good audio is a
critical part of video storytelling.
| | 00:04 | In this lesson I am going to show you how I
and my audio and light guy, Greg, set things up.
| | 00:09 | My default audio setup is a single
wireless lavalier mic for the primary
| | 00:13 | subject of the story and a
shotgun mic on the camcorder.
| | 00:17 | I use a wireless lav because it's
unobtrusive. It puts the person using it at ease.
| | 00:21 | They frequently forget they're wearing it.
| | 00:24 | What that also means is that even if
I'm not pointing my camera at them, I'm
| | 00:28 | still getting their audio, which I can use
with other video in the story if need be.
| | 00:32 | Jeff: That way it's under your T-shirt.
| | 00:34 | I make sure that if the person wearing
the mic might remove some clothing like
| | 00:38 | a sweatshirt, that they put mic wire under
whatever they are wearing under the sweatshirt.
| | 00:42 | I also place the mics such that
clothes or hair don't brush up against it.
| | 00:47 | I wired up one client who later under
her pony tail, such that her hair rubbed
| | 00:51 | up against the mic. That's why we
have these good headset to catch these
| | 00:54 | unexpected developments.
| | 00:55 | When I shot at the rock gym I needed to
mic two instructors and get clean audio
| | 01:00 | of the kids, so I brought along a
second wireless mic and a shotgun mic on a
| | 01:05 | boom. Greg carried around an audio
recorder and the boom mic to take care of
| | 01:09 | those two extra sources.
| | 01:10 | The boom mic also came in handy when we
recorded the interview with the dad and his two kids.
| | 01:15 | To wire up all three with lavs
would've been the real chore.
| | 01:19 | One reason I like working with a high-
quality shotgun mic on the camcorder,
| | 01:22 | like this Sennheiser, is that it
makes it easy to get quick sound bites.
| | 01:26 | No need to add an element or formality
by attaching a lav mic or sticking a
| | 01:30 | hand-held mic in someone's face.
| | 01:32 | As long as there isn't a lot of noise
behind the person being interviewed,
| | 01:35 | shotgun mics work well.
| | 01:37 | In the case of the Sticky Fingers
Bakery customers, using a shotgun mic made it
| | 01:41 | easy to get spontaneous comments.
| | 01:43 | Female speaker 1: I've had it once before and I normally
don't like these, but they're really, really good.
| | 01:43 | Female speaker 2: They said they're the best in town, you've
got to go try them so that's what we're doing.
| | 01:53 | I cannot emphasize this too much:
| | 01:55 | good audio can make a huge difference
in the quality of your video stories.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Getting great sound bites| 00:00 | It's best to use people to
tell some or all of your story.
| | 00:04 | For that to happen, you need to get good
interviews, good sound bites in TV news jargon.
| | 00:09 | Some interview subjects are
professional sound bite providers, but most folks
| | 00:13 | are not seasoned interview veterans.
| | 00:15 | So in this video I give you a few tips on
how to get tasty bites from regular folks.
| | 00:21 | (video playing)
| | 00:22 | My basic approach is to try
and avoid doing an interview.
| | 00:25 | I want it to be more like a conversation.
| | 00:27 | I want to put people at ease.
| | 00:29 | That's one reason I use the
shotgun mic on the camera.
| | 00:31 | It makes it easy to get quick bites
without the formality of interjecting a mic
| | 00:35 | between me and the interviewee.
| | 00:36 | For planned interviews, I put a
camcorder on the tripod and then kind of stand
| | 00:41 | or sit off to one side of it,
| | 00:43 | try not to look into the viewfinder all
that often, and just chat with the interviewees.
| | 00:48 | One other thing that made this
interview go smoothly was that Will Russ
| | 00:52 | leaned on the rock wall.
| | 00:53 | It's just more comfortable to lean on something.
| | 00:56 | Another tactic I use runs counter to
the way people think of interviews.
| | 00:59 | I try to avoid asking a lot of questions.
| | 01:02 | I comment on their answers, make
observations, or reach conclusions.
| | 01:06 | Jeff: It's almost like you're
becoming part of the community here.
| | 01:09 | These interview techniques invariably
lead to a reaction and solid sound bites.
| | 01:14 | Will: We're here to help the community to give
kids something to do and a place for them to come
| | 01:20 | hang out and learn some developmental skills that will
help them in the long run, as well as to come and have a good time.
| | 01:28 | Jeff" Another approach is to wait.
| | 01:30 | You don't have to jump in with a question
as soon as someone finishes making a comment.
| | 01:34 | There might be another bite brewing, as
was the case with this Sticky Fingers
| | 01:38 | Baking Company customer.
| | 01:40 | Female speaker: Delicious! This is to die for.
| | 01:47 | Frequently interview subjects have
something they want to say, but they're
| | 01:50 | waiting for you to ask them the
right question to prompt that response.
| | 01:53 | But I am not a mind reader, so I almost
always ask folks if they have anything
| | 01:57 | else they want to add.
| | 01:59 | Many times this simple
question leads to solid bites.
| | 02:03 | Child: There's really no limit to what you can do here.
Man: It's a great place for families. Now I'm
| | 02:09 | Man: interested in it as well, and I highly recommend it.
Steve: You're still controlling the voice from here.
| | 02:15 | When working with client, by the time
we get to the interview, we've settled on
| | 02:18 | the central message of the story.
| | 02:20 | But I find it's a good idea to give
them the opportunity to state that
| | 02:24 | message directly on camera.
| | 02:26 | So I always ask my clients to do just that.
| | 02:28 | Jeff: So what do you want to let people know.
Steve: I think it's cool that we're creative people
| | 02:36 | working for creative people, and so our energies go into
making tools that they can use to make shows and entertainment.
| | 02:45 | Finally, even with all of your
planning, unexpected bites might pop up.
| | 02:48 | They can enhance your story,
so give them space to happen.
| | 02:51 | I overheard a conversation in the
bakery, so I used that to get a good bite.
| | 02:55 | Jeff: What did your friends tell you about it?
Female speaker: They said they're the best in town,
| | 03:00 | you've got to come try them. So, that's what we're doing.
Male speaker: It was just amazing. It was great that
| | 03:07 | you know, Sticky Fingers was part of our family celebration.
| | 03:10 | If you keep things conversational,
take a genuine interest in what people say,
| | 03:15 | listen, and respond to their
answers, you will get good sound bites.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Lighting tips| 00:00 | If you don't have access to a light kit,
I strongly suggest you check around to
| | 00:04 | see if you can rent one now and again.
| | 00:06 | Lights make a huge
difference in terms of visual quality.
| | 00:09 | They give depth to flat scenes, add
highlights to elements in the scene,
| | 00:14 | and improve the color.
| | 00:15 | My assistant Greg and I worked on a number of
different lighting setups for my three clients.
| | 00:20 | At the Santa Barbara Rock Gym, we used
blue gels to have our lights match the
| | 00:25 | bright sunlight coming in from the
large windows in the front of the gym, but
| | 00:29 | in the back of the gym, we went with standard
studio color temperature light, no gels needed.
| | 00:35 | At the Sticky Fingers Baking Company
we had a couple of challenges. First was
| | 00:39 | lighting the sign. We used small lights
to limit the illumination to the front
| | 00:43 | of the store, while keeping
the light stands in the dark.
| | 00:47 | Inside there wasn't a lot of space to
spare. Greg improvised by placing a light
| | 00:51 | on a door frame. He also moved the
portable light in concert with the camera
| | 00:55 | move to create
consistent lighting for that shot.
| | 00:59 | In Axtell Expressions we shot in several
rooms and therefore moved lights a lot.
| | 01:04 | To give a consistent soft look to the rooms,
| | 01:06 | we used a large
reflector with a diffuse filter.
| | 01:09 | When working with the animatronics, the
soft lighting helped us avoid throwing
| | 01:12 | harsh shadows on the blue background.
| | 01:15 | To get the photos of famous customers,
Greg moved the light along with my camera,
| | 01:19 | just as he did in the bakery.
| | 01:20 | When I was getting a close-up of
someone working at a difficult-to-light work-
| | 01:24 | bench, Greg filled in the shadows
with the small portable LED light.
| | 01:29 | And finally, for the interview, we
closed the curtains to cut down on sunlight
| | 01:32 | and put two large
diffuse lights on Steve Axtell.
| | 01:37 | Adding lights to a scene
invariably improves the visual quality.
| | 01:40 | I recommend working with a
light kit whenever practical.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Organizing Your AssetsPreviewing and organizing media assets| 00:00 | Back in my TV news days it
was almost always crunch time.
| | 00:05 | I didn't have extra time to organize my media
assets: my video, audio, image and graphic files.
| | 00:11 | I just fast-forwarded through them, made quick
notes about those I definitely wanted to use,
| | 00:16 | and cranked out a script.
| | 00:17 | Well, the video production world usually
doesn't have that kind of time crunch, and you're
| | 00:22 | typically working with more assets
than you'd find in most news stories.
| | 00:26 | So I suggest you take the time to
preview and organize your assets.
| | 00:30 | Doing so will help speed up
the entire production process.
| | 00:33 | You'll have faster access to your video clips,
you'll be less likely to leave out an important
| | 00:38 | clip, and the final edit of your
story will go that much more quickly.
| | 00:42 | I am going to show you how I use Adobe Premiere Pro to
organize my assets, but there are other similar options.
| | 00:48 | You might work with Final Cut Pro or Avid, or
if you're not a video editor and are looking
| | 00:53 | for an easy-to-use media organizer and rough
cut editor, you might want to try Adobe Prelude.
| | 01:00 | So here we are inside Premiere and I have
already imported all of the video clips that
| | 01:03 | I shot at the three different locations and
put them inside folders; they're called bins
| | 01:07 | here inside Premiere Pro.
| | 01:09 | I've got the Axtell Expressions and the Santa
Barbara Rock Gym and the Sticky Fingers Bakery.
| | 01:14 | I have also got an extra folder for some
audio that we shot at the Santa Barbara Rock Gym,
| | 01:18 | because we had two instructors there, so
I've got some audio files there as well.
| | 01:22 | So I've organized things based on location.
| | 01:24 | Now, you probably won't have three different
locations when you're doing a story; nevertheless
| | 01:28 | it's how we organized it here.
| | 01:30 | First order of business is just to get a sense of what
I've got, just to get an idea of things went that day.
| | 01:37 | So I'm going to take a look at the Rock Gym,
and the way I do that is by just putting all
| | 01:40 | the clips on the Timeline in chronological
order, but that doesn't necessarily work when
| | 01:45 | you work with MXF files, with DVCPRO-HD.
| | 01:47 | I'll open up the Rock Gym here and take a look.
| | 01:50 | You'll notice the naming
system for all those files.
| | 01:52 | They have these little
numbers and letters there.
| | 01:54 | The naming system is not chronological.
| | 01:56 | I have got an alphanumeric order here, but
it's not chronological, which is a little weird.
| | 02:00 | If I put it on here, they won't
be in the order that I shot them.
| | 02:03 | So before I put them on here, I
want to put them in the proper order.
| | 02:06 | So in Premiere Pro there is a way to do that, and
there are ways to do that with other software as well.
| | 02:09 | I'm just going to scroll over to Media Start,
or a little bit farther to Video In Point.
| | 02:14 | If I click on that, that
puts it in chronological order.
| | 02:17 | So I click on the first one there, scroll
on down to the last one, right up there.
| | 02:23 | Shift+Click there to select everything, and I'm
just going to drag it over to the sequence here,
| | 02:27 | also called the Timeline.
| | 02:30 | And you can't see all the clips here.
| | 02:31 | There is a keyboard shortcut inside Premiere,
a backslash. I'll just hit that to able to see everything.
| | 02:35 | I'll just kind of quickly whip through here,
just to get a sense of how things went in
| | 02:39 | terms of exposure, and the basic order of things, and
the kinds of shots, it's just a quick way to see things.
| | 02:45 | One thing you notice right away are these
large clips here, these long clips. These
| | 02:49 | are the interviews.
| | 02:50 | So I like to kind of organize things in terms of the
interviews to keep them separate from everything else.
| | 02:55 | So the way that I do
that is I make a new folder.
| | 02:56 | I will go over here.
| | 02:58 | I'm going to click on Santa Barbara Rock Gym
like that, and make a new as it is called
| | 03:02 | here, a new folder.
| | 03:03 | I'll call this one SOTs.
| | 03:05 | SOTs is an old TV news term for Sound On Tape.
| | 03:10 | It's obviously not tape anymore, but
this is how we described sound bites, SOTs.
| | 03:14 | I'm going to take these three SOTs and
drag them in there one at a time, like that.
| | 03:20 | There is one, two, and three, and I now I
have moved them from their original location,
| | 03:27 | put them here, so that if I want to see them as a
group, I can just double-click on this little bin there.
| | 03:32 | Here they are, and I can
take a look at them like this.
| | 03:35 | And in the Premiere you can preview
things by doing what is called hover scrubbing.
| | 03:38 | I'm just rolling my cursor over
there, and I'm not actually dragging.
| | 03:41 | I'm just rolling the cursor over the top, and
that's the beginning of the clip and that's
| | 03:44 | the end of the clip like that.
| | 03:45 | So you can see that everything went smoothly
there, and I can close this bin down like that.
| | 03:50 | So that's one way to organize things.
I've put them inside these folders or bins here
| | 03:53 | inside Premiere Pro if I want to take a few
things and work with them and separate them out.
| | 03:58 | I can do something similar to the bakery.
| | 04:00 | I'll open the bakery up here. I'll just double-
click on it this time, take a look at the media
| | 04:03 | preview that way. It opens up in this panel. I can
spread it out quite a bit, take a look at the thumbnails.
| | 04:09 | The thing is the
thumbnails will not be chronological.
| | 04:11 | If I go to the trouble of going to video
and point to making a chronological like this,
| | 04:14 | and then open up the thumbnails, they don't
follow the same chronological order. Oh well.
| | 04:19 | But what I want to do here is I want to
put the exteriors in the separate folder, the
| | 04:23 | exteriors of the dark shots we got outside
there, this guy there. So I'll make a new
| | 04:27 | bin down here, click on that, there it is.
I'll click up Exteriors like so, and then
| | 04:33 | I can just pull this down a bit and take a
look at what we have got here. And let me
| | 04:37 | do some selecting of these various clips.
I'll click on this one, Ctrl+Click or Command+Click,
| | 04:43 | Ctrl Windows, Command in Mac, that guy, that
guy. Those are exteriors that are all selected
| | 04:49 | now. Let's scroll a bit
further, this last one here.
| | 04:52 | Now that I selected them, I can
just drag them to this folder.
| | 04:55 | That puts them inside the folder just so
I can open that one up separately if I want
| | 04:58 | to work on those guys individually there.
| | 04:59 | So I'll close that down.
| | 05:00 | I also want to create a folder for the sound
bites, so I'll just going to click here to make
| | 05:03 | sure that that thing goes away.
| | 05:05 | Click on the new folder there,
call it SOTs again to make things simple.
| | 05:11 | I know these guys from about there to there,
are all the sound bites. I'll click on that
| | 05:16 | and then Shift+Click to select all those guys,
and drag them down to the sound bites folder.
| | 05:21 | So I've now organized this reasonably well,
Let's close that down. Let's take a look at the
| | 05:26 | Axtell Expressions, it will be a
similar process for Axtell Expressions.
| | 05:29 | I'm going to double-click on that folder.
We can take a look at all these guys. I could
| | 05:33 | also put them on the timeline
and just quickly scan through them.
| | 05:36 | But I want to remove something here. So I
have this little shot where Steve came in,
| | 05:41 | picked up that thing and walked off. That shot
worked, but rather than get kind of confused
| | 05:45 | by multiple takes, this shot didn't.
| | 05:48 | It was kind of the wrong order. It didn't quite
work. I'm going to select that one here inside
| | 05:52 | this bin and just delete it. It doesn't
delete it from the hard drive; it just deletes it from
| | 05:56 | the project, so that's not a problem.
| | 05:57 | So we can kind of winnow things down that
way; that is one way to kind of narrow down
| | 06:01 | the focus a little bit.
| | 06:02 | Also, we've got some testimonials from three
different ventriloquists. I want to add that group of
| | 06:06 | testimonials to this folder. There's quick
way to do that here inside Premiere Pro. I'll
| | 06:10 | just select that folder and then we go to
Import > File Import like so, and here are those
| | 06:17 | testimonials. I'll back up a notch. You can
see there is a folder of testimonials. I'll
| | 06:20 | just select that, and rather than open it up
and select them all individually, I'll select
| | 06:24 | the folder by itself and say Import Folder,
and I get this little message, this XMP file.
| | 06:30 | It's not a problem. Let's click OK there.
| | 06:32 | And now that folder is inside here, and
there are these testimonials there, the audio and
| | 06:37 | the video for these testimonials.
Another way to organize things.
| | 06:40 | So this is how I get things set up, how I just
begin the process, just a quick look at things,
| | 06:46 | remove some things that are obviously not
going to be included in the final project,
| | 06:49 | and just kind of get my brain wrapped around
the project as I am about to dive into it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selecting effective sound bites| 00:00 | It's tempting to use sound
bites to tell your story.
| | 00:03 | That's okay if they're compelling, powerful,
or intended to be all or most of the narration.
| | 00:08 | But most of the time sound bites should
simply add emphasis, emotion, or opinions.
| | 00:13 | They can set up a topic or drive a message home.
| | 00:16 | They are a good way to use
people to help tell your story.
| | 00:19 | The thing is, it's best to keep them short; a
maximum of 10 seconds is a good rule of thumb.
| | 00:24 | Think of them as
something like exclamation marks.
| | 00:28 | Before I write a story,
I review and organize sound bites.
| | 00:30 | To do that I turn them
into what are called subclips.
| | 00:33 | This is a feature you can find
in most video editing products.
| | 00:37 | Subclips are not separate video files;
they're simply pointers, small pieces of data stored
| | 00:42 | in a video editor's project file that includes
the name of the subclip, the name of the source
| | 00:47 | clip, and the in and out point
timecode values of that subclip.
| | 00:51 | In this video, I'm going to show you how I use
Adobe Premiere Pro to create and organize subclips.
| | 00:58 | We're going to select some sound bites
for this Sticky Fingers Bakery shoot.
| | 01:01 | I've already organized them.
| | 01:02 | I took them from the original clips
and put them ina separate folder.
| | 01:05 | Here are the original clips. Let's scroll
through these guys and look through them to
| | 01:09 | find some sound bites, and once I found them, I put
them inside a separate folder here. Here they are.
| | 01:15 | We've got these woman here.
| | 01:16 | Each one of these women gives us a sound bites, so I
am going to make two subclips from this single clip.
| | 01:21 | This woman gave a nice sound bite to about
her friends telling them about the bakery,
| | 01:24 | but we're going to skip her because
I want to simplify this process a bit.
| | 01:27 | Then this gentleman came in and give a nice
sound bite about how great the cupcakes are, so
| | 01:32 | I'll close that down.
| | 01:33 | We make sound bites here inside the Source
monitor inside Premiere Pro, so that's how
| | 01:37 | I will do here. I'll open this up, and
I'll put the first one and the third one, I'll
| | 01:41 | do click on the that one and Ctrl+Click on
that one, or Command+Click on Mac, and drag
| | 01:45 | this to up to the Source monitor. So I've
got that guy, and I've got that other clip
| | 01:49 | with the two women. So let's start the
gentleman there, because it's just a single sound bite
| | 01:53 | there. Let me take it to the beginning
and get to the start of this thing loaded up.
| | 01:57 | Male speaker: Cupcakes you made for my daughter--
| | 01:58 | Jeff: So drag to the beginning a bit. I know the
sound bite starts right about there, so I'll
| | 02:05 | mark the In point there.
| | 02:08 | Male speaker: The cupcakes you made for my daughter's birthday
party yesterday were very well received.
| | 02:13 | Jeff: I will go to further forward here, because I
know that it kind of falls off. Right there
| | 02:19 | where the camera moves I know that's the end
of the sound bite, and then some, so I'll mark that.
| | 02:24 | I'm giving my clients more then the full thing.
I want to just mark more than the actual sound
| | 02:29 | bites. We will have to slop at the beginning
to the end, I'll let them see everything when
| | 02:32 | I preview these sound bites with them.
It also gives me the option later of having
| | 02:35 | some sound under before I pop this on by
dropping the sound on to the next clip.
| | 02:39 | So now that I've got the In and the Out
point here, I want to turn this into a subclip,
| | 02:43 | so I am going to click way down here so it'll
come in out its own. I am going to right-click
| | 02:48 | up here and say Make subclip.
| | 02:50 | Now this would be different if you don't
have Premiere Pro, but any product of this ilk
| | 02:54 | will have the option to make subclips.
So I'll click on that, and that's our subclip
| | 02:57 | and it says what's the name. I'll call it SOT-1--again,
SOT stands for Sound On Tape. That's an old
| | 03:05 | television term but people use when they refer to
sound bites, so I will call it SOT-1. Click on that.
| | 03:10 | It adds it to the Project panel. And it's not
a separate file; it's just a pointer, a set
| | 03:13 | of pointers to this file. It's not a
really big thing; it's just a little bit of data
| | 03:17 | inside of the project file.
| | 03:18 | Let's change over to that other clip now.
Here we have two sounds bites. I'll just back this up a bit.
| | 03:26 | Jeff: Have you tried this before?
Female speaker 1: I've had this once before.
| | 03:32 | Okay, so the sound bite starts a little bit
before the camera pops up, and you will hear
| | 03:35 | all these background noise. That's because
we're working with 4 channels of audio here,
| | 03:40 | one of which is inside the bakery, so
you're picking up a lot of noise there.
| | 03:43 | When I send this to the clients for the review
and later edit it, I'll use only the microphone
| | 03:47 | that was pointing at her, and that was the
shotgun mic on the camera. I'll back up a bit here
| | 03:51 | to where the camera is pointed down.
| | 03:53 | That's the end point.
We'll go to further forward here.
| | 04:01 | Female speaker: I don't like these,
but they're really really good.
| | 04:03 | There we go. That's a good Out point. And again,
all that noise in the background will be removed
| | 04:06 | and that will pop here a couple of times, again,
that was not her mic; that was a mic inside there.
| | 04:11 | So I'll click the Out point there, and
we'll make a subclip here by right-clicking, go ahead
| | 04:14 | and Make Subclip. We'll call this
SOT-2, I'll click OK, and that'll add it down
| | 04:20 | to the Project panel.
| | 04:22 | Now we can go to this next person, but I
need to clear out the In and the Out points here,
| | 04:26 | so in Premiere, that's a right-
click and the I say, Clear In and Out.
| | 04:31 | Then I will go to her.
| | 04:34 | Female speaker 2: This is my first time.
| | 04:36 | That's a good start there, so I'll back up a
little bit and that would be the end point.
| | 04:43 | Female speaker: And I'm speechless.
| | 04:46 | One good interview technique is to wait,
not just jump in there. So if she was sort of
| | 04:51 | done with her sound bite, but I just waited a
little while longer and got a good finish here.
| | 04:56 | Female speaker: Delicious. This is to die for.
| | 05:04 | There you go. So that's a good sound bite, so
I'll click the Out point there, I will right-
| | 05:08 | click, and go Make Subclip, and now
I'm going to get SOT-3. There we go.
| | 05:15 | And I've got these three guys down here,
and I can put them inside of bin to kind of
| | 05:18 | organizes them too.
| | 05:19 | So I'll click on this and this say subclips like so
| | 05:22 | and I'll close this down, take those
three subclips, click on one, Shift+Click on the
| | 05:28 | last one there, and drag
them into that new bin there.
| | 05:31 | And that is how we make subclips.
| | 05:34 | And later if want to edit these subclips,
I can grab them like so, and I can just make
| | 05:39 | a whole sequence where I can drop them on an
existing sequence. I will drag them here and
| | 05:43 | make a new sequence.
| | 05:44 | So, and those are the three sound bites, and I
can trim them up down here, adjust the audio,
| | 05:49 | what have you, and then I can also make a little
bit of a file that I can send off to my clients
| | 05:54 | to show all three at once here, which is how I let
them preview with the sound bites. So there you go!
| | 05:59 | That's how you make subclips
here inside Premiere Pro.
| | 06:01 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cataloging natural sound| 00:00 | Natural sound, or nat sound, is an important
part of storytelling. Videos that have no
| | 00:05 | nat sound just don't work all that well.
| | 00:08 | You expect to hear what you see. There are
exceptions, music videos for example, but
| | 00:12 | for the most part using nat sound
under the narration is a given.
| | 00:16 | You should also use full volume snippets of
nat sound that help break up your copy. Doing
| | 00:21 | so, will hold your viewers interest.
| | 00:23 | One thing to keep in mind: it's not all that
unusual to record nat sound of something but
| | 00:27 | not actually have that thing in the video.
| | 00:30 | You might have recorded the cry of a hawk, but did not
have time to get it in the viewfinder, but that's okay.
| | 00:35 | You can always use that video clips nat sound audio
with a different video clip of that soaring hawk.
| | 00:41 | Just as I do with sound bites, I create
subclips of nat sound and put them into separate folder,
| | 00:45 | in my video editor.
| | 00:47 | I work with Adobe Premiere Pro, but other
video editors have the same kind of feature.
| | 00:52 | We're going to work with clips from the Sticky
Fingers Bakery and from the Santa Barbara Rock Gym.
| | 00:57 | At the bakery, we're going to get what you
might consider to be legitimate nat sound;
| | 01:00 | that's just noises, right?
| | 01:02 | But at the Rock Gym we're going to get
people saying things, which you might consider to
| | 01:05 | be sound bites, but I view them more as
nat sound, because they just start as little snippets
| | 01:09 | of audio that help me break up my copy.
| | 01:11 | So let's take a look at the Sticky Fingers
Bakery. Once again, I just took a look at
| | 01:15 | every clip by double-clicking here and kind
of scanning through all the clips and deciding
| | 01:19 | which ones have the nat sound that I wanted to
work with here, and there's lot of nat sound
| | 01:23 | opportunities here, but I just
selected a couple for this demonstrations.
| | 01:26 | I will close that down. And I put those
files or those links to those files here in this
| | 01:30 | NatSound folder. I will double click on that,
and there are those three that we're going to work
| | 01:34 | with here. In fact, I will limit it to just
a couple, but just to show you that we have
| | 01:37 | got these three different things here.
| | 01:40 | This is the one I'm going to use in the
opening of the story. I'm going to have the exterior
| | 01:44 | shots, but I'm going to go to her whipping up
this batter as sound under. So that's something
| | 01:48 | I really want to work with now to
make little subclips there, so I'll close that
| | 01:52 | down, open you up, and take those three clips
and drag them up to the Source monitor, select
| | 01:58 | all three, drag them up there, there you go.
| | 02:00 | And I'm going to take a look at that one, which
was this one here I think. Let's take a look. Yeah!
| | 02:06 | That's the one, so I want to have her start
when she finishes with this first one here.
| | 02:11 | (video playing)
| | 02:14 | So I want to get the audio of that where she
starts the second one, so I'll put an In point
| | 02:18 | there, mark In. And that's how it works
inside Premiere, again. This can work similarly in
| | 02:23 | other nonlinear editors like this.
| | 02:25 | So let's go forward a bit
here before she finishes.
| | 02:27 | (video playing)xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
| | 02:30 | Here we go. So that's the whole thing.
I won't need all this audio, but I would like to have a
| | 02:34 | little bit of head and tail frames when I'm
making subclips. So I'll click on this. Now
| | 02:38 | I'm going to right-click up here and say,
Make Subclip, and it's going to add this to
| | 02:42 | the folder in a second here. I'll call
this one Batter-NAT, as a reminder that it's a
| | 02:49 | battery she's whipping up here. I will click OK.
| | 02:52 | That adds it to that folder we got that
file from in the first place right there,
| | 02:56 | under NatSound. Okay, let's just check that out.
| | 02:58 | Here is the end point, she starts up, and
then let's go to the out point, and she wraps it up.
| | 03:07 | Okay, so that a subclip.
| | 03:09 | Let's take a look at another one here.
Here she's cracking some eggs, and I'm going to
| | 03:13 | skip that one and go to this one down here
where I'm going to make a match shot later.
| | 03:16 | So I have her kind of wait for a second while
I get set up. Right about there is where
| | 03:22 | I want to pick it up, so I'll go right there, click
the end point there, and then I ask her to redo this.
| | 03:33 | Now, I could take this whole clip or I could
divide it into two, so I'm going to divide
| | 03:36 | it into two, just to show you how you do that.
| | 03:38 | So I'll click on there to make the out point,
make this one another subclip, click on that,
| | 03:42 | and we'll call this one
Oven-NAT1, and I'll click OK.
| | 03:51 | Now, I'm going to continue here, ask her to
do it again. So I'll pick it up right before
| | 03:58 | she pulls it out. I'll clear out this by
going to right-click on it, and go to Clear In and
| | 04:02 | Out, and I put in a new In point there.
| | 04:04 | (video playing)
| | 04:07 | She's done putting it in, so I'll have this
be the close for that shot. I will right-click and
| | 04:11 | have a subclip for that one. We'll call this
one Oven-NAT2, and then we'll put these three
| | 04:20 | guys together and we'll be able to edit
them together as a matched shot later.
| | 04:22 | All right, let's take a look at the Rock
Gym now. I will show you that's a little different
| | 04:26 | now. It's not just NatSound;
it's people talking.
| | 04:28 | If I go to the gym here, and I've got that
separated out as NatSound there, I will double-
| | 04:33 | click on this, and these are the shots we're
going to use, instructors working with kids.
| | 04:37 | And I'll just limit this to a couple of things,
close this down, and put those guy up inside
| | 04:42 | the Source monitor over there.
| | 04:45 | Now when you work with long clips, it's really a good
idea to try to limit things. These are really long clips.
| | 04:52 | (video playing)
| | 04:54 | All right, so if I want to try to find a sound
bite later, it's nice to get a kind of setup
| | 04:58 | so I can get to it quickly.
| | 05:00 | So right here at the top the instructor
tells her to come on down, something like that.
| | 05:05 | (video playing)
| | 05:08 | So I've got you, ready to lower,
so I'll put that as the end point.
| | 05:16 | (video playing)
| | 05:28 | So I can use that sound later, just
kind of interject things, at least part of that
| | 05:32 | sound, maybe a word or two, something like
that. But at least now I've kind of limited
| | 05:34 | things by making a subclip there, so I'll
right-click there and say Make Subclip, and
| | 05:38 | I'll call this one Lower-NAT.
| | 05:43 | Now we'll just try one more here. I'll go
to the first clip there where he is talking
| | 05:48 | to these kids. And it's a long talk,
but I want to get the kids answering.
| | 05:54 | (video playing)
| | 06:01 | So she's going to say something here I think,
let's see (video playing)
| | 06:09 | So, I'm going to like to use that little climbing,
so again, to swift to this later I'll probably
| | 06:14 | forget what I got. So now that I've got her
set up, I can make an In point Out point there
| | 06:18 | as well, so I get there, get her past the
climbing and I'm going to put in Out Point
| | 06:23 | there and do the same routine: right-click, make a
subclip, and add that. I'll call this one Climbing-NAT.
| | 06:28 | And now we've organized these things to make
it easier later on to sift through all these
| | 06:36 | things and quickly interject them into the
story. So that's how work with nat sound here
| | 06:41 | and make subclips to ease the
process of putting your story together.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a rough-cut version of the story for client review| 00:00 | It's a good idea to let clients review
sound bites and some of the natural sound clips
| | 00:05 | you plan to use in their stories.
| | 00:07 | You can send them transcripts, but seeing the
clips is much more effective. Facial expressions
| | 00:12 | are an important part of the story, and sometimes
clients choose to drop some clips for that and other reasons.
| | 00:18 | Presenting those sound bites is very easy.
| | 00:20 | I make a rough cut in my video editing program,
export it as a relatively low-resolution video
| | 00:25 | file, and then either upload it to YouTube or
if I'm sure my clients can view video files,
| | 00:30 | I use an online file sharing program or my
FTP site to get the video into their hands.
| | 00:36 | Here's a quick run-through the process
using Adobe Premiere Pro and YouTube.
| | 00:41 | This is how I set things up before I
create the file to send to my clients.
| | 00:44 | I take the audio subclips and put them into
a timeline, or sequence as it is called here
| | 00:49 | in Premiere Pro. I give
them head and tail frames.
| | 00:52 | I give them more than just the sound bite.
| | 00:53 | I give them things that came before the
sound bite and things that came after.
| | 00:57 | Plus I also adjust the audio so that
you are hearing only the audio associated with
| | 01:00 | the sound bite, not wireless lavalier mics
that are in another room for example. So everything's
| | 01:05 | all set up here inside the timeline.
| | 01:06 | Now I want to export these four clips as one video
clip, so I do that by going to File > Exports > Media.
| | 01:11 | That opens up the Export Settings dialog box
here inside Premiere Pro, which will eventually
| | 01:17 | go to the Adobe Media Encoder.
| | 01:18 | I choose the H.264 format. There are lots
of formats there obviously, but H.264 is the
| | 01:25 | de facto best format for YouTube.
| | 01:27 | And then I kept it in its full HD resolution.
Even if my client has a slow connection, it's
| | 01:32 | so good to put it as a full HD resolution on
YouTube, because it down converts for folks
| | 01:37 | who have slow connection, so slow or fast
doesn't make any different, you can still
| | 01:40 | make it full HD here, which is a good thing.
| | 01:42 | Then I'll give it a name, and I'll go down
and export this thing. I have already done
| | 01:46 | that, so let me just jump
ahead here. I'll close this out.
| | 01:49 | And now the thing to do is to go to YouTube.
| | 01:52 | In YouTube you go to whatever your
page is and then go to Upload like that.
| | 01:55 | I am not going to go through the entire upload
process, but I do want to show you one thing here.
| | 02:00 | When you upload something, you have some choices
here in terms of the privacy: Public, Unlisted,
| | 02:02 | Private, or Scheduled.
| | 02:04 | The one I use is Unlisted. That way people
don't stumble across this thing. They won't
| | 02:10 | see it, it won't become the latest
sensation on YouTube, but it's not private.
| | 02:14 | Private means they have to have an account
on YouTube to see some things, so rather have
| | 02:17 | it Unlisted where anybody can see it.
| | 02:19 | So, then upload this thing, and then send
the link to my clients, and they can come
| | 02:23 | watch it. And even if it's here for a long
time, people are not going to find this thing.
| | 02:27 | It's not like people are going to stumble
across and see something private, but it's
| | 02:30 | best to just put it up long enough for your clients
to see it, and then when you are done, remove it.
| | 02:34 | So, keeping my client in the loop like this
throughout the video production process is
| | 02:38 | worth this extra time. In particular, I like
to let them review the audio, because it ensures
| | 02:43 | that there will be few, if
any, misunderstandings later.
| | Collapse this transcript |
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6. Scripting Your StoryWriting tips| 00:00 | Telling a story using video means using writing
methods that might not fit your normal writing style.
| | 00:06 | The most important thing to consider is that
you are writing for the ear. People watching
| | 00:10 | your story will listen to it, where unlike
a story on a printed page where you can go
| | 00:14 | back and reread a passage, they most likely
won't go back and listen to something again.
| | 00:19 | True, these days with online videos, DVDs
or Blu-ray discs, most folks have access to
| | 00:24 | a rewind button or some other means to
relisten to a video, but you don't want to write such
| | 00:29 | that there is a need for your viewers to have
to listen to a segment twice just to figure
| | 00:34 | out what it's about.
| | 00:34 | So, there are several things you can do
when writing a story for video to ensure your
| | 00:39 | viewers get your message.
| | 00:41 | In this video I am going to cover those
smaller topics. In two other videos, I go over larger
| | 00:46 | techniques that take additional time to explain:
writing in the active voice and using people
| | 00:51 | to tell your story.
| | 00:52 | So, let's get started.
| | 00:54 | First up, write for the ear. Be conversational.
Try not to use formal intellectual language.
| | 01:00 | If you do, you will lose listeners.
| | 01:02 | A good way to check your work is to read your
copy out loud. Keep it simple. Write one thought
| | 01:08 | per sentence. That will help
your viewers understand your story.
| | 01:12 | Write to the visuals but do so with care. Video with
obvious subject matter needs minimal descriptive text.
| | 01:19 | Use short sound bites. Let the narrator
tell the story and explain concepts. Use sound
| | 01:24 | bites to add emphasis, emotion, and personality.
Add snippets of strong natural sound that
| | 01:31 | forces you to break up your copy
and makes your story more interesting.
| | 01:35 | Write factually. If you are not sure of
something, don't include it in the story.
| | 01:39 | A journalism axiom is,
when in doubt, leave it out.
| | 01:43 | Build in surprises. Unexpected
twists can further engage viewers.
| | 01:48 | Here are some things to avoid.
| | 01:50 | Avoid numbers. Listeners have a
hard time remembering numbers.
| | 01:54 | Avoid pronouns. If you use pronouns, make
sure viewers know who you're referring to, and
| | 01:58 | avoid telling viewers what they already
know or what they can see in the video.
| | 02:02 | Finally, give your stories
a beginning, middle, and end.
| | 02:06 | The beginning should set the stage, grab
viewers' attention. The middle should have more than
| | 02:11 | five main points that you support visually, and
the end should be something viewers will remember.
| | 02:17 | Following these tips will help you create
stories that hold viewers' attention from
| | 02:20 | beginning to end.
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| Writing in the active voice| 00:00 | When writing for the ear, it's best if your
copy is linear. You don't want viewers have
| | 00:05 | to unravel a complex sentence they just heard.
| | 00:07 | The best way to publish that is to
write in what's called the active voice.
| | 00:11 | If you write in the active voice, not only
will you write straight-line copy, but you
| | 00:16 | will also write tighter copy and
your stories will be more interesting.
| | 00:19 | On the surface, active voice is a simple concept,
but actually doing it is something else entirely.
| | 00:25 | Learning how to write in the
active voice takes practice,
| | 00:27 | so don't expect that by the end of this
video you will start writing all of your
| | 00:31 | copy in the active voice.
| | 00:33 | To explain active voice I'll start by showing
you some sentences written in the passive voice.
| | 00:38 | The men were rescued by the Coast Guard.
| | 00:41 | The house was damaged by floodwaters.
| | 00:44 | The dog was bitten by the snake.
| | 00:46 | You might notice one obvious thing that's common to
all of these sentences and one that's not so obvious.
| | 00:52 | The obvious thing is "to be" verbs. In these
instances the "to be" verbs are was and were.
| | 00:59 | The other more important but less obvious
common trait is that the receiver of the action
| | 01:03 | appears before the verb, and the actor, the one
doing the action, comes after the verb. That's backwards.
| | 01:11 | That latter point is the toughest active
voice concept to grasp: putting the receiver of
| | 01:15 | the action ahead of the verb and
the actor after the verb is confusing.
| | 01:20 | Your goal is to use linear writing.
| | 01:22 | You don't want your viewers to have to
replay what you wrote to understand it.
| | 01:26 | It's easy to turn those sentences into the
active voice. Simply rearrange them: put the
| | 01:31 | actor before the verb and the
receiver of the action after the verb.
| | 01:35 | The Coast Guard rescued the men.
| | 01:37 | The Coast Guard is the actor, the thing taking
action; the men are the receivers of the action.
| | 01:43 | Floodwaters damage the house; floodwaters
are the actor, the house is the receiver.
| | 01:48 | The snake bit the dog; once again, the
snake is the actor, the dog is the receiver.
| | 01:54 | Putting the actor before the verb and the
receiver of the action after the verb makes
| | 01:57 | it easier for the viewer
to understand the story.
| | 02:00 | It also shortens your sentences. In each case
switching things around meant that I removed the "to be" verb.
| | 02:07 | If there is a "to be" verb in a
sentence, it's probably passive voice.
| | 02:10 | "To be" verbs are am, is, was, were, are, or been.
| | 02:16 | So, does this mean that active voice
sentences never have a "to be" verb?
| | 02:20 | Consider slightly different
takes on the previous examples.
| | 02:23 | The Coast Guard is rescuing the men, floodwaters
are damaging the house, the snake is biting the door.
| | 02:31 | All have so-called "to be" verb helpers--are
and is--but they're all in the active voice,
| | 02:36 | because, you guessed it, the actor comes before the
verb and the receiver of the action follows the verb.
| | 02:42 | So, should you always
write in the active voice? No.
| | 02:46 | For example, you wouldn't say, his mother
gave birth to him in 1990. That's active voice,
| | 02:51 | but it's not conversational.
| | 02:52 | Instead, you would say, he was born in 1990.
| | 02:56 | That common phrase, he was born is a less common
and less obvious instance of the passive voice.
| | 03:01 | When a sentence has no
actor, it's usually passive.
| | 03:05 | For example, the ship was towed to the pier;
the missing actor is the towed boat. That
| | 03:10 | kind of passive voice is harder to
identify and usually conversational anyway.
| | 03:14 | Bottom line, when you write, strive to put
the actor ahead of the verb and the receiver
| | 03:19 | of the action after the verb, and watch out
for "to be" verbs; they frequently are signs
| | 03:24 | of the passive voice.
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| Telling your story through people| 00:00 | The best way to tell your story is
through people. Even if the story is about a
| | 00:05 | product or service, it's best to use people.
| | 00:07 | Consider a story about some kind of
newfangled widget. If you simply state
| | 00:11 | that your widget will make your
viewers' lives better, you will lose your
| | 00:14 | audience in an instant.
| | 00:16 | If instead you show people using
your widget and having a grand old time,
| | 00:20 | that'll make your widget story compelling.
| | 00:22 | Or if you have some super service,
simply listing its marvelous attributes is
| | 00:27 | certain to turn off your audience.
| | 00:29 | If instead you show the people who
provide that service then that will hold
| | 00:33 | your audience's attention.
| | 00:34 | So, to see this in action, let's
take took at our three stories.
| | 00:36 | (video playing)
| | 00:40 | The Santa Barbara Rock Gym is a fine facility.
| | 00:43 | To tell its story, I could
have listed off its features.
| | 00:45 | It's close to the city center, has
lots of free parking, is well
| | 00:49 | managed, has well-built climbing walls,
good rental climbing shoes, and lots of
| | 00:53 | variety. All are solid reasons
to stop by and give it a try.
| | 00:59 | But even taken collectively,
they don't make a compelling story.
| | 01:01 | (video playing)
| | 01:05 | Instead, it's about people: qualified
and caring instructors, enthusiastic
| | 01:09 | children, pleased parents.
| | 01:11 | Jeff: What about the fun factor?
Female speaker: Well, that's what it is to him.
| | 01:15 | I mean everything else is hidden for the children,
all the strength building and the confidence.
| | 01:21 | It's just a fun place. It's camp for him.
| | 01:24 | Jeff: How about the Sticky Fingers Baking Company?
| | 01:26 | There is no doubt that it has a wide
variety of tasty treats, but so do a lot
| | 01:31 | of bakeries. That alone will not be enough to
convince potential customers to stop by.
| | 01:35 | (video playing)
| | 01:38 | What will work is to show the
people who create those tasty treats, let
| | 01:40 | potential customers see the extra care
Katherine Glassman and her kitchen crew
| | 01:45 | put into each item in their display case.
| | 01:46 | Marty: Thanks you guys! Enjoy.
| | 01:50 | And point out the personalized,
enthusiastic service all customers receive.
| | 01:54 | The Sticky Fingers Baking Company
is more than a neighborhood boutique
| | 01:57 | bakery; it's people.
(video playing)
| | 02:03 | Axtell Expressions has a successful
business with a worldwide costumer base.
| | 02:07 | A visit to their shipping
room was a case in point.
| | 02:09 | Virtually all of these boxes are
heading off to foreign countries, their
| | 02:12 | shelves are lined with products, but
showing only the products misses the point.
| | 02:18 | (video playing)
| | 02:20 | What Axtell Expressions customers are buying
is characters: entertainment and innovation.
| | 02:24 | (video playing)
| | 02:24 | And the Company's driving force is Steve Axtell.
| | 02:29 | (video playing)
| | 02:33 | So, instead of a story about
puppets, make it about the puppet maker.
| | 02:37 | People are fascinating;
| | 02:39 | they're much more
interesting than products or services.
| | 02:41 | (video playing)
| | 02:45 | So, use people to tell your stories.
| | 02:47 | (video playing)
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| Keeping the client in the loop| 00:00 | Just as you keep your clients in the loop
when you create a story outline, shot sheet,
| | 00:04 | schedule, and production plan, you need to keep
your clients in the loop as you write their story.
| | 00:09 | I always show them the script and ask them
to point out errors, omissions, and things
| | 00:14 | they would like to change.
| | 00:15 | Scriptwriting is a collaborative process.
| | 00:18 | I write scripts using Microsoft Word. If my
clients have Word, I email that document to
| | 00:22 | them with the Track Changes feature turned on.
| | 00:26 | That way any changes they make show up in the
newly saved document--and they can also add comments.
| | 00:32 | If my clients don't have
Word, there are other options.
| | 00:34 | The easiest is to convert my Word doc to a PDF.
| | 00:38 | I use Adobe Acrobat to do that, but there
are several other products out there that
| | 00:42 | let you convert a Word doc to a PDF.
| | 00:45 | Clients can then use the free Adobe Reader to
highlight things they want to change or add comments.
| | 00:50 | Another option is to use Google Docs.
It's a free service, part of Google Drive, where
| | 00:55 | you can store and share files online.
| | 00:57 | Simply write your script in a Google Doc or
copy and paste your script into a Google Doc
| | 01:02 | and then share oit with your client online.
| | 01:04 | As an aside, when I share scripts, I generally do not
include sound bite copy, unless a client insists on it.
| | 01:11 | By this time on the production process,
I have already shown my clients the sound
| | 01:14 | bites I plan to use or might use, so in my copy
I simply refer to the bites by name or number.
| | 01:20 | It's always good to have clients review your
script. No matter how well you have communicated
| | 01:23 | with them throughout the
process, you might make mistakes.
| | 01:27 | So it's better to catch those mistakes before
you record the narration and edit the video.
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|
|
7. Putting It All Together in Post-ProductionAudio editing tips| 00:00 | There are plenty of video editing courses
on lynda.com so I am not going to duplicate
| | 00:04 | those courses here. But I do want to show
you two basic editing techniques that relate
| | 00:09 | to concepts I have discussed
several times in this course.
| | 00:12 | I'm going to show you how
to make J and L audio edits.
| | 00:15 | They are de facto
standard audio editing methods.
| | 00:19 | They let viewers know that another shot is
about to appear and help ease out of one clip
| | 00:24 | and into the next one.
| | 00:25 | They are used most frequently when you're
about to go to a sound bite or when you're
| | 00:29 | going to change locations.
| | 00:30 | They are used so often you might not even
notice them, which is a sign of a good editor:
| | 00:35 | you rarely notice their work.
| | 00:37 | The other tip I explain here is how to use
audio from one clip with video from another.
| | 00:42 | This too is a given among video editors.
| | 00:45 | In both cases I'm going to work with Adobe
Premiere Pro, but the approaches I take here
| | 00:49 | work with virtually any video editing software.
| | 00:51 | We are going to work with these six files
here, three from Axtell and three from Sticky
| | 00:57 | Fingers. These are all inside your Exercise
Files folder if you want to follow along.
| | 01:01 | We are going to work with the Axtell clip
first. I want to work with the sound bite
| | 01:04 | and have a video come into the
sound bite and video go out of it.
| | 01:07 | So I will take all three of these guys by clicking
on the first one and Shift+Clicking on the last one.
| | 01:11 | Pulling them up to the Source monitor so we
can see them, and there is Steve. I want to
| | 01:15 | do a sound bite with him, so let's see here.
| | 01:21 | (video playing)
| | 01:30 | Right about there will be the
beginning of the sound bite, so I will click that.
| | 01:32 | He's going to talk about how other
entertainers are better way for him to impact the world
| | 01:37 | in a greater way than just him
alone being the entertainer.
| | 01:40 | Let's go to the end here.
| | 01:42 | (video playing)
| | 01:43 | All right, so there is the beginning in the
end of that sound bite, I am going to drag
| | 01:48 | it down to the timeline
here, to another sequence.
| | 01:50 | We will pull this up a little bit
so you can see the audio there.
| | 01:54 | Now I want to put a clip ahead of this.
| | 01:55 | I will slide over a little bit,
so you can put clip in front of it.
| | 01:58 | Let me go get that grinding clip here, with
the woman working on latex here. I like this.
| | 02:05 | I want this to come into the clip, so I need
that little bit of tail room here, so I can
| | 02:09 | take the audio under, so I am going put an Out
point here, right about there will be an Out point.
| | 02:14 | I am going to drag it down here.
| | 02:16 | I want to put it such that I can put it on the
second track, so we can blend it together more easily.
| | 02:20 | Now if I don't do anything at all, it looks
like this. It would be a really, really abrupt,
| | 02:27 | not a good thing. But I want the audio to kind of
fade out under the beginning of Steve's sound bite.
| | 02:32 | So I am going to take this audio down here
which has room, has some tail frames after
| | 02:35 | this point, hold down the Alt or the Option
key here, and select just the audio, like that,
| | 02:40 | and I can drag it under Steve.
| | 02:43 | This is what's called an L cut, because
it goes like that, like the shape of an L.
| | 02:48 | So we are going to take this audio and
fade it out. Let's start about here by putting
| | 02:51 | a keyframe here, holding down the Ctrl or
Command key, and clicking. That adds a keyframe,
| | 02:55 | add another keyframe there, drag that guy
down. Let's see what that sounds like now.
| | 02:59 | (video playing)
| | 03:00 | That's basically how it works. We could have
shortened that up a little bit, I think, but
| | 03:06 | still you can get the idea there.
| | 03:08 | I can also put in a cross-dissolve here.
I will take this little video there, I can put
| | 03:13 | cross dissolve there to make
that cut more smoothly too.
| | 03:15 | Let's go over to Effects for a second here, go
down to video Transitions > Dissolve > Cross
| | 03:21 | Dissolve, put that between those two
clips, and that too helps the transition.
| | 03:24 | (video playing)
| | 03:26 | Here we are going to take the audio out here.
We are going to bring some audio under him
| | 03:30 | as he finishes the sound bite. Go back over
here to get this little monster. This is going
| | 03:34 | to be a J edit, because it
is shaped like this, like a J.
| | 03:38 | We'll take the monster so that we hear him under
Steve for a while, then have him pop up just
| | 03:42 | after Steve finishes his sound bite here. So right
there, it's probably where we want the edit to be,
| | 03:50 | so we take that as the end point.
Drag him down right after Steve, pop him up to the
| | 03:55 | second track, like that. It will look like this,
a little abrupt, (video playing)
| | 04:02 | Let me shorten Steve's bite just a little
bit here like so, pull that over. This is not a
| | 04:07 | good thing. I will show you
why it's not a good thing.
| | 04:09 | (video playing)
Too abrupt, right?
| | 04:12 | I think we want to make
it a little more gradual.
| | 04:14 | So I will take the audio from the monster
and put it under Steve, so get a hold on the
| | 04:18 | Alt or Option key to select just the audio
portion of this clip and drag it to the left,
| | 04:23 | put sound under it like that.
| | 04:24 | Now I will make the sound come up gradually
by adding keyframes here, Ctrl or Command,
| | 04:27 | add a keyframe, add another one, drag it down
like so. We will see how this thing plays out.
| | 04:33 | (video playing)
| | 04:37 | It came in too early. We could always bring it a
little further to the right, Alt or Option again
| | 04:42 | to select this guy like so, maybe start a little
bit later instead of having it start so early there.
| | 04:48 | Another keyframe, pull it down
like that. Let's see how that one sounds like.
| | 04:52 | (video playing)
| | 04:54 | Yes, that's a great way to go there. I can
add another transition here as well, but you
| | 04:59 | see how that works. That's
called J and L, or in this case L and J.
| | 05:03 | Let's talk about another kind of audio editing
technique where you put audio from one clip under another.
| | 05:08 | Let's slide over to the right here a
bit to get some space to work here.
| | 05:11 | We are going to work with the three clips that
we got from the bakery, over here, StickyFingers.
| | 05:15 | Select the first one, Shift+Click on the last. I'm going to
get rid of these guys by going up here and Close All.
| | 05:21 | We will take these three up there now.
| | 05:24 | What we have here is this interior shot that I want
to use the sound from under something else, like
| | 05:28 | that, but I also want to use sound under a different
clip from a different source. I've got two exterior
| | 05:35 | shots here. I like this one here, where the car goes through and then
tails under like this. It keeps on going away.
| | 05:42 | I want to keep that consistent audio,
when I edit another one next to it, so I have
| | 05:47 | got that shot and I have got a tight shot here.
| | 05:49 | But I want to take the audio from the first
shot and run it under this one, and also take the audio
| | 05:54 | from her working in the
kitchen under this one as well.
| | 05:56 | So the audio from here is irrelevant. So I
will start off by taking that exterior wide
| | 06:00 | shot here, bring it on down to timeline.
And when that car is through, that's the place
| | 06:09 | that I want to make the edit to the next shot,
because it is kind of nice way to make an edit when
| | 06:13 | something goes through the frame like that.
| | 06:14 | So we get the next one here, this shot here,
and that works okay. So let's take the whole
| | 06:22 | shot and I am going to put it right there,
right on top of this one, which looks like
| | 06:26 | a terrible thing, but we
will fix that in a second.
| | 06:28 | I want to get rid of the stuff at the end here,
by deleting it.
| | 06:30 | I have got an edit like this, where the audio
is distinctly different, and we don't want that.
| | 06:38 | I want to get rid of the audio for the
second clip. I am going to Alt or Option click on it
| | 06:42 | like that and just delete it, gone.
| | 06:44 | And take the audio from the first clip, click
on that, click on Alt to select just the audio,
| | 06:49 | and drag it under like that,
and go beyond it like so.
| | 06:52 | Now it will be smooth, a much better
way to make that kind of shot work well.
| | 07:00 | Now I want to take audio from her working
in the kitchen under this one as well, as
| | 07:05 | we transition to her shot.
| | 07:07 | So let me go back up to here and grab that
shot there. Here she is working. I want to
| | 07:12 | get this one where she is just about to have
the camera tilt up. Let's see how it works.
| | 07:18 | (video playing)
| | 07:20 | Okay, so this is the edit point right there,
right about there, but I am going to get audio ahead
| | 07:26 | of that under here.
| | 07:27 | So I have to take this image here, put it up
on track 2 like that, so I can see it better.
| | 07:32 | It's going to go like this, which
should be really horribly abrupt, right?
| | 07:38 | We're going to take this audio here and put that
under, the Alt or Option key. Click on that
| | 07:42 | to select the audio, drag it
under just as far as we can there.
| | 07:45 | Maybe not that far about, have it gradually
come up. So we are taking this audio and putting
| | 07:49 | it under another clip, so we are using
audio from one thing under another thing.
| | 07:52 | This is a great editing technique.
| | 07:54 | I'll add some keyframes, hold down the Ctrl
or Command key, and this guy's now like that,
| | 07:58 | and we will see how this sounds here.
| | 08:00 | (video playing)
| | 08:01 | It kind of comes up kind of loud. I think
the second keyframe can be brought down; it
| | 08:06 | doesn't need to be that loud, so I will pull
down the volume level a little bit like that
| | 08:09 | and see how that works now.
| | 08:12 | There we go. That's a nice transition from
one shot to the next, using distinctly different
| | 08:18 | audio from a different source under an entire
clip here, and then doing a J cut here as
| | 08:22 | we are combining the two techniques into one.
| | 08:24 | So that's how you do J and L audio edits,
and how you use audio from one clip under
| | 08:28 | another clip.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Video editing tips| 00:00 | When shooting your story it's a given that you
should shoot matched action and multishot sequences.
| | 00:05 | They make your piece much more visually
interesting and help move the story forward.
| | 00:10 | The thing is, they can be a bit tricky to edit.
Lining up the action and then editing it so
| | 00:14 | that it plays out smoothly
takes some extra effort.
| | 00:17 | There are several ways to edit
matched action and multishot sequences.
| | 00:21 | I'm going to present a couple in this video.
| | 00:23 | I am going to use Adobe Premiere Pro, but the
techniques I will show you here are applicable
| | 00:27 | to just about any video editing software.
| | 00:30 | We are going to work with two files that are
inside your exercise files folder: the StickyFingers-
| | 00:35 | cupcake and StickyFingers-oven.
| | 00:37 | The oven is the matched action, and
the cupcake is the multishot sequence.
| | 00:41 | We will start with the matched action. Open that
up inside the source panel, double-click on it.
| | 00:45 | There we go.
| | 00:46 | Let's just take a look at this.
| | 00:47 | I will drag through it.
(audio playing)
| | 00:53 | Once you put it in, I thought let's do
that again so I can get a matched action.
| | 00:56 | So I asked her to put in twice.
(video playing)
| | 01:04 | Nice, that will be our matched action edit
that way, and that's something I do frequently
| | 01:09 | when I am working with people who don't
mind that I ask them to do something twice.
| | 01:12 | Well, let's just take a look at that.
| | 01:15 | It's a good in point there. And we are not
going to worry about the edit point just now.
| | 01:22 | I am going to drag this down to the
timeline for the sequence like that.
| | 01:24 | Let's just put it there.
| | 01:26 | I'll worry about the cut point in the second.
| | 01:29 | Let's go back and look at this again
and find the matched action moment.
| | 01:33 | Basically, I want to get it
just as she is pushing it in,
| | 01:38 | so I will just play it here.
| | 01:43 | I am going to use the arrow key, the left arrow key to go
back, and right there is she is beginning to push it in.
| | 01:51 | That will be our in point.
| | 01:51 | So I will click this to get our in point.
| | 01:53 | Now I want to find the out point down here,
and this is kind of the brute force method
| | 01:57 | for matched action editing,
but I think it works pretty well.
| | 02:00 | Let's go forward here a bit.
She started pushing it.
| | 02:07 | I am going to do back up
the video with the arrow key.
| | 02:11 | Right there is where she
is beginning to push it in.
| | 02:14 | That's the edit point here.
| | 02:15 | I could trim to that edit point or I could
use the Razor Blade tool here and cut that
| | 02:20 | and delete the stuff, but instead I am just
going to cover it up. As long as the current
| | 02:23 | time indicator is right there and
I have got Snap turned on,
| | 02:26 | I can get this guy lined right up
with the current time indicator.
| | 02:29 | So I will take this and drag it down there,
like that, snap it to it, get rid of the stuff
| | 02:32 | after here. We don't need that. I'll delete that.
| | 02:35 | Now let's just take a look at
this edit here. Pretty darn good.
| | 02:41 | What I want to do now is just
fix the audio just a little bit.
| | 02:44 | So I am going to press the plus key a
couple of times to expand my view, and I am going
| | 02:47 | to take this little audio clip and pull it
down one track so we can have them overlap.
| | 02:52 | I want this first one to kind
of extend into the next one,
| | 02:54 | so I will just Alt+Click or
Option+Click on it to select just the audio.
| | 02:57 | Pull it to the right a bit.
| | 03:00 | Right there I am seeing some noise that
shouldn't be there. Let's see what that is. That's me talking.
| | 03:06 | I don't want that there,
so I am going to get rid of that.
| | 03:08 | I want to blend these guys together a little bit,
| | 03:11 | so I am just going to have them
do a little bit of cross fade.
| | 03:13 | I can do that manually by leaving on the
Ctrl or Command key and adding some keyframes here
| | 03:17 | and then working on them to
have them blend together nicely.
| | 03:20 | I won't go through all the details, but
basically this guy comes up while this one comes down
| | 03:25 | essentially, and that would be
the way you blend them together.
| | 03:31 | Something like that.
| | 03:33 | Now what I could do is I could put a
transition here, a video transition, but I don't want
| | 03:36 | to do that because the
matched action works pretty well.
| | 03:39 | Let's talk about the multishot sequence now.
| | 03:43 | Let's double-click on the
cupcake to bring that up here.
| | 03:45 | Let's just take a look at it
and see what it's all about.
| | 03:48 | It's one shot only, but I did
it from multiple angles.
| | 03:50 | I will just drag through it here, tight, face shot,
wide shot, super-tight shot here. Here we go.
| | 04:04 | So I try to figure out what
order I am going to do this in.
| | 04:07 | The face shot is my go-to shot when I
don't have something that matches perfectly.
| | 04:11 | So I am going to use that at some point here.
| | 04:12 | Let's take a look again.
| | 04:13 | I think I will start wide like this.
| | 04:19 | She reaches inside there and then comes out.
| | 04:22 | So we start out like this and here we go.
| | 04:26 | Let's see how that looks.
| | 04:33 | That's my out point here,
set that, drag it down here.
| | 04:38 | So just as it comes out, I am
going to take an edit there.
| | 04:42 | So let's go back and look at this guy here.
| | 04:46 | Right about there, I think is my edit point.
| | 04:49 | I need to get her hands.
| | 04:50 | It's not on the cupcake paper.
| | 04:53 | So I'll have that be the new in point.
| | 04:56 | I need to have the out point be
before the camera tilt up. There we go.
| | 05:03 | So I put that next to this one now.
| | 05:05 | Let's see how that works.
| | 05:09 | The audio is obviously
different, but the edit is good.
| | 05:11 | We will deal with audio later. And I am not
going to go over that in too much detail,
| | 05:14 | but what you can do is you take audio from
one track here and run it under the whole
| | 05:18 | thing, or you can put some cross-fades
here to make those transitions go more smoothly.
| | 05:22 | But just take a look at the edit.
| | 05:24 | Look at the video only.
| | 05:25 | Try not to listen to the audio too much.
(audio playing)
| | 05:28 | And that works nicely.
| | 05:31 | You can see how the hands come
into the picture right in time there.
| | 05:34 | Let's take a look at this thing now at the end.
| | 05:37 | Getting from this shot to let's say a wide
shot would be impossible, because it would
| | 05:40 | have that scoop in that cup in a wide shot.
| | 05:43 | So now I am going to take
a look at her face shot.
| | 05:45 | That's the fallback when you
don't have a matched action.
| | 05:48 | So you need to make sure she is
looking toward the right here.
| | 05:55 | Right there would work I think.
| | 05:57 | So I need to finish this
before she turns to the left.
| | 06:02 | Let's start right there, the in point, and
the camera pulls away as well, right there.
| | 06:11 | Pull that one went down
like so. Try that one now. (audio playing)
| | 06:17 | Now we need to get that final tight shot here.
| | 06:24 | So if she is working on something,
coming to the last cupcake here.
| | 06:34 | So I get it just as she finished as this one.
| | 06:35 | That will be the in point,
and that's the out point.
| | 06:41 | Let's take a look at this one now.
| | 06:44 | Watch edit here I will just
forward the videos to take a look at them.
| | 06:51 | That worked really well.
| | 06:51 | So now I have got those four-shot sequence.
| | 06:53 | I will just going to cross
through it here. (video playing)Here you go.
| | 07:02 | So that's how you do a multishot
sequence and a matched action edit.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selecting exporting options| 00:00 | Once you've completed your video editing,
it's time to share your finished product.
| | 00:04 | I always edit using the
original assets with no compression.
| | 00:08 | So when I am done, everything is
in its original pristine state.
| | 00:12 | Then no matter what format or formats the
client wants, I always start with full-resolution
| | 00:17 | video and audio, which then
ensures high-quality output.
| | 00:20 | The format you choose depends on how your
client wants to let people see their story.
| | 00:25 | I am going to explain a
few formats in this video.
| | 00:27 | I am going to use the Adobe Media Encoder that
comes with Premiere Pro as a means to do that.
| | 00:32 | The options will be similar
for other video editing software.
| | 00:37 | Inside Premiere Pro to export a sequence or
timeline, I need to make sure that sequence
| | 00:41 | is active. T=Right now it's not, so I click
here and that makes it active. You can see
| | 00:44 | the yellow border on it.
| | 00:45 | And once it's active, this is the guy that's
going to be selected, I want to go to File > Export.
| | 00:53 | That opens up the Export Settings dialog box.
| | 00:55 | And it asks you whether you want to export
the work area, which is the area under this
| | 00:59 | little bar here, or the entire sequence.
| | 01:02 | In this case, they're both the same thing, but
sometimes you can export part of a sequence.
| | 01:07 | Then I need to set the format.
| | 01:09 | Now if you are going to upload something
to YouTube, the format to select is H.264.
| | 01:12 | I go over here. There is H.264.
| | 01:16 | And I know it's H.264 because YouTube
says do it in H.264. Let me show you that.
| | 01:23 | This is the YouTube Advanced Encoding Settings
page, and if you look here it says the Container
| | 01:27 | is MP4 and the Codec is H.264.
| | 01:30 | Now it's called format over there in
Premiere, but that's the same thing.
| | 01:33 | So you are taking this video format--codec
is also correct--and then putting it inside
| | 01:39 | the mp4 Container, and that's what they
want. And they say really, your frame rates and
| | 01:43 | everything else should match your source
material; that's the best way to do it.
| | 01:45 | You want to aim high; you really want to get
a high-quality output if you're going to put
| | 01:49 | something up on YouTube.
| | 01:52 | So back here, I have got mp4 and mp4 is
selected because I chose the H.264 format. That's what
| | 01:57 | shows up here when you do that.
| | 01:58 | And I can adjust video settings down
here if I want to make it even better.
| | 02:02 | I can roll on down here and change the
settings to have them be better than just variable
| | 02:06 | Bitrate 1 pass. I can make it 2 passes.
I can change the quality setting down here.
| | 02:09 | But nevertheless, this is the way that you
export things if you want a go to YouTube.
| | 02:14 | That's just the best approach.
| | 02:15 | Now, not all of your clients will want to
post things to YouTube. Let me show you couple
| | 02:18 | of more things here.
| | 02:19 | They might want to go to DVD or Blu-ray. So I
click over here and there are DVD and Blu-ray
| | 02:22 | settings in here. H.264 and MPEG-
2 are both available for Blu-ray.
| | 02:28 | If I select those, then they both
will be compatible with Blu-ray.
| | 02:33 | Also, DVD has its own setting down here as well.
So if you want to go to DVD, that's the one.
| | 02:37 | But the thing is, when you are working with
HD and DVD, you are going to get these little
| | 02:39 | black bars here, because DVD is intended to
use with widescreen as opposed to HD; they
| | 02:44 | are not quite the same.
| | 02:47 | People may also want to use Flash.
| | 02:48 | There are still issues with Flash in iPhone
and iPads, but there is Flash: F4V or FLV.
| | 02:54 | Either one will work when
you want to work with Flash.
| | 02:56 | And also people may want you to export
the product in the original format.
| | 03:00 | In this particular case, it's a P2 movie
like this, but I am going up here and click on
| | 03:04 | this little button. That also makes it a P2.
| | 03:06 | So we'll export in the original format. It
will be as pristine as you can get, basically
| | 03:11 | as unchanged essentially.
| | 03:12 | And that's an MXF file, if you want to do that.
| | 03:16 | Finally, people like to use QuickTime a lot, and
that's what we did for you for the exercise files.
| | 03:20 | I am going to go down here and choose QuickTime.
| | 03:24 | QuickTime works a little bit differently in
Premiere. We've got some presets here but not very many.
| | 03:28 | What you really want to do is go down here
to the Codec, and for you folks we did this
| | 03:33 | codec here, DVCPRO HD 1080i60, because that's
the original format that we shot this in and
| | 03:39 | make sure that it stayed pretty clean.
| | 03:42 | So this is a QuickTime movie. It's not the
P2, not the MXF file, but it's MOV file with
| | 03:47 | the P2 in codec, if you want to call it that,
the DVCPROHD1080i going on inside there.
| | 03:52 | So that's kind of a generic look at
the various options that you might have.
| | 03:55 | Keep in mind when you've created a sequence
like this or put together all these assets
| | 03:59 | into a timeline, you don't have just one option,
you don't have one shot at it; you can export
| | 04:03 | it as many times as you want.
| | 04:05 | So, you may want to export it one time as
H.264 and another time, let's say as an MOV
| | 04:10 | file. You can always do it over and over again.
| | 04:11 | Just save this project and always come
back to it to export it again and again.
| | 04:15 | So those are the various export options you
have when you work on a product for a client.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
ConclusionNext steps| 00:00 | So, that brings us to the end of this course.
| | 00:03 | Thanks for watching.
| | 00:04 | I hope you took away some
helpful video storytelling techniques.
| | 00:07 | If you're interested in learning more
about video making, there are a couple of
| | 00:11 | other courses to check out on lynda.com.
| | 00:13 | One near and dear to me is the
course I did called Video Journalism
| | 00:17 | Shooting Techniques.
| | 00:18 | It goes into detail on some of the
subjects I touched on briefly in this
| | 00:22 | storytelling course, and ventures into
additional video shooting techniques.
| | 00:26 | In addition, I recommend that you
check out Anthony Q. Artis's course,
| | 00:30 | Fundamentals of Video: Cameras and Shooting.
| | 00:32 | It goes over foundational concepts
of working with camcorders, as well
| | 00:36 | as lighting and sound.
| | 00:37 | I'm Jeff Sengstack.
| | 00:39 | Thanks for watching Video
Journalism Storytelling Techniques.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
Bonus Chapter: Edited SequencesSanta Barbara Rock Gym| 00:00 | Jeff Sengstack: The Santa Barbara
Rock Gym is a place for kid.
| | 00:05 | Will Russ: As a kid, I remember always
climbing things, trees, rocks, whatever I could.
| | 00:10 | And you know, it's just kind
of a natural thing for kids.
| | 00:13 | Jeff: The gym offers multiday programs
for kids and teens;. They build skills from
| | 00:18 | the ground up, starting with safety.
Male speaker 1: Do you remember how to put this on.
| | 00:21 | Jeff: The first order of business
is properly adjusting the climbing gear.
| | 00:25 | Male speaker 1: Excellent!
| | 00:26 | Jeff: Next up is communication.
| | 00:29 | The belayer, the person holding the safety
rope, needs to know the climber's intentions.
| | 00:33 | Male speaker 2: Okay, what do you say? Take gottcha.
| | 00:36 | All right belay is on. Child: Climbing.
| | 00:40 | Male speaker 2:: Climb on.
| | 00:41 | Jeff: Parents feel comfortable leaving
their children in the care of the staff of
| | 00:45 | the Santa Barbara Rock Gym,
knowing that safety comes first.
| | 00:48 | Dewey Nicks: Safety is a giant part of it,
the idea of process they teach, and so it's
| | 00:55 | challenging in an athletic way, but also the
respects to the process is a big part of what
| | 01:01 | they do here, so we like that.
| | 01:03 | Speaker: Now, left hand up.
| | 01:05 | Jeff: With the safety procedures firmly in
hand, it's time to learn some technical skills.
| | 01:10 | For kids new to climbing, much of that
involves learning how to plan their routes and select
| | 01:14 | foot- and handholds.
| | 01:15 | Speaker: Now, there you go.
| | 01:16 | How about the right foot,
where is it you want to go?
| | 01:19 | Jeff: Kids learn how to overcome obstacles,
solve problems, stay focused, and reach new heights.
| | 01:25 | All this physical activity has its benefits.
| | 01:27 | George Nicks: And you have to pull yourself
up with one hand, and it really gets your arms,
| | 01:32 | legs, core, every part of your
body that--becomes a lot stronger.
| | 01:37 | Speaker: Nice, good job George.
| | 01:39 | George Nicks: And there is really
no limit to what you can do here.
| | 01:44 | Jeff: And parents know there is no
limit to the fun their kids can have.
| | 01:47 | Deanna Akinn: Well that's what it is to him.
| | 01:49 | I mean everything else is hidden for the children,
all the strength building and the confidence,
| | 01:55 | it's just a fun place, it's camp for him.
| | 01:58 | Jeff: The kids also get a
chance to see how the pros do it.
| | 02:04 | This is lead line climbing. It
takes strength, endurance, and skill.
| | 02:09 | Speaker: Okay, guys ready. Children: Yeah.
| | 02:14 | Speaker: Three, two, one. All right! Nice work!
(applause.)
| | 02:20 | Speaker: Santa Barbara Rock
Gym owner Will Russ and his crew have created
| | 02:23 | a supportive, caring, and safe environment.
Male speaker 1: You guys ready to leap climb then? All right.
| | 02:30 | The gym benefits the local community. It's
a positive place to hangout where kids feel
| | 02:36 | welcomed and part of a group.
| | 02:38 | And it gives kids a sense of accomplishment
and a confidence boost each time they reach
| | 02:43 | the top of the wall.
| | 02:44 | Female speaker: Did you get to the top?
Child: Yeah!
| | 02:46 | Male speaker: That's some nice-looking climbing
there, buddy. Push it to the top. Great job!
| | 02:52 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Steve Axtell| 00:00 | In an unremarkable industrial park, inside
a nondescript building, is the playground of
| | 00:06 | the fertile imagination of Steve Axtell.
| | 00:12 | (video playing)
| | 00:21 | Steve Axtell is the Founder and
Creative Director of Axtell Expressions.
| | 00:25 | His company makes puppets for ventriloquists,
magic tricks like this talking white board.
| | 00:31 | (video playing)
| | 00:35 | And animatronics. His products are used by
thousands of customers worldwide, including
| | 00:42 | some top-flight entertainers.
| | 00:44 | Terry Fator the winner of America's Got Talent and a
hugely popular performer in Las Vegas is a big fan.
| | 00:53 | (video playing)
| | 01:17 | Jay Johnson's won a Tony Award
for his Broadway Show, the Two Only.
| | 01:28 | (video playing)
| | 01:34 | Steve Petra is highly regarded in the
industry for his educational programs.
| | 01:38 | (video playing)
| | 02:03 | Steve Axtell was drawn to the puppets as a child.
He made this puppet when he was six, and later crafted
| | 02:10 | puppets that emulated Jim Henson's Muppets.
| | 02:12 | With Henson's encouragement, Steve developed
unique characters and a new look by sculpting
| | 02:17 | molds and building puppet faces from Latex.
| | 02:20 | (video playing)
| | 02:21 | It wasn't long before to demand for his
puppets led him to transition from entertainer, to
| | 02:26 | a full-time puppet maker.
(video playing)
| | 02:34 | As he ramped up his business, he sought
help from experts. Ron Palmer the man who build
| | 02:39 | kit, the talking car in Knight Rider, helped
Steve build hands-free remote-control animatronics.
| | 02:45 | Anthony Boulogne, the designer of iconic
products like the Mattel Barbie Doll and those
| | 02:50 | famous little Green Army Men joined Steve's
staff for a few years to craft some new characters.
| | 02:56 | Now, Axtell Expression's product line includes
about 80 characters. There is no end to the
| | 03:02 | demand. While puppeteers usually create
their own puppets, ventriloquists usually do not.
| | 03:10 | (video playing)
| | 03:17 | And that Axtell puppets are made by a fellow
performer builds customer confidence. Steve's reach
| | 03:23 | goes beyond creating characters.
His website has tutorial videos.
| | 03:28 | (video playing)
| | 03:31 | He records voiceovers using
his numerous character voices. (video playing)
| | 03:48 | A video of his singing platypus posted to
YouTube has led to a huge demand for consumer-
| | 03:55 | priced platypus puppets.
| | 03:58 | (video playing)
| | 04:01 | Steve's latest venture has been
into large scale animatronics.
| | 04:05 | (video playing)
| | 04:17 | This tree is going to a private school in Texas.
| | 04:22 | (video playing)
| | 04:26 | And here is the world's oldest piano player.
| | 04:29 | (video playing)
| | 04:32 | As for the future, Steve has never been
one to create a long-term business plan.
| | 04:38 | (video playing)
| | 04:41 | He prefers responding to
inspiration and his customer's needs.
| | 04:48 | (video playing)
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Sticky Fingers Bakery| 00:00 | Early morning on main street here in Ventura,
California. It'll be an hour before the sun rises,
| | 00:07 | but that will go mostly unnoticed by the
folks here at the Sticky Fingers Baking Company.
| | 00:12 | (video playing)
| | 00:13 | The kitchen crew here has other things
on their mind. It's Sticky Bun Sunday.
| | 00:18 | Hungry costumers will start arriving promptly
at 9:30. That's when co-owner and Chef Katherine
| | 00:23 | Glassman flips the sticky
buns out off their baking pans.
| | 00:27 | (video playing)
| | 00:28 | But sticky buns aren't the only items on
the menu. This small boutique bakery produces
| | 00:33 | a surprisingly large
number of mouthwatering goodies.
| | 00:37 | (video playing)
| | 00:41 | The Sticky Fingers Baking Company serves
muffins, cookies, cupcakes, scones, macaroons, and
| | 00:48 | pies, and even Belgian Liege waffles. And they
offer many of those tasty items as gluten-free or vegan.
| | 00:58 | (video playing)
| | 01:00 | In addition to the wide variety of goodie,
there is the care and extra touches Katherine puts
| | 01:04 | into each delectable treat.
| | 01:06 | For example, the sticky bun dough gets its
extra flavor from what Baker's called zest,
| | 01:11 | grated orange or lemon rind.
| | 01:13 | She tops the cupcakes with care, adds sweet
sugar crystals and glaze to her scones, and
| | 01:20 | brightens her macaroons in a rainbow of colors.
| | 01:24 | (video playing)
| | 01:28 | All that work and attention to
detail pays off in customer loyalty.
| | 01:32 | (video playing)
| | 01:41 | In addition to all that tasty treats, the
Sticky Fingers Baking Company serves a full
| | 01:45 | range of coffee drinks.
| | 01:47 | (video playing)
| | 01:49 | Capping all that, there is the friendly
ambience fostered by Katherine's husband Marty Glassman.
| | 01:54 | (video playing)
| | 01:57 | A visit to the Sticky Fingers Baking Company
is a complete experience, and by the way, the
| | 02:04 | sticky buns are amazing.
(video playing)
| | 02:24 | The Sticky Fingers Baking Company,
East Main Street, Ventura, California.
| | 02:28 |
| | Collapse this transcript |
| | Santa Barbara Rock Gym quick cut story |
|
