MNPW: How good video works
Posted on August 17, 2007 by Melissa Worden
Julie Jones, award-winning television journalist and doctoral student at the University of Minnesota, talked about what makes good video in her “Visual Grammar” discussion Thursday at the Multimedia News Producers Workshop in Minneapolis.
Here are some notes I took from her presentation:
We publish moving images because it makes the reader feel something, pulls the reader into your story, is enjoyable and helps the reader remember a situation.
OK, so how do we do this?
We need to mimic how the eye/brain works. Basically, the human eye looks at the world for information. Our eye may scan the world, but our brain looks for information. So when we do this in video editing, we need to break down the scenes for the viewer and act as the eye/brain does.
This is why pans and zooms are BAD. They aren’t how the eye works. In real life, while watching two people talk, we don’t pan the scene from one person to the next. Our eye jumps back and forth. And we don’t suddenly run across the room to get a closer work (a zoom). Only use them in special situations when you have a clear reason for doing so — ie, when you know you’re breaking the rules and why.
Here are five tips for shooting good video:
1. Think in shots — wide, medium, tight, super tight
This gives the viewer a variety of scenes and a variety of intimacy within those scenes. Wide can be an establishing shot, medium gives more detail, tight brings the viewer into the subject’s personal space, and super tight allows for detail/accents shots.
2. Shoot and move
In a video, we’re trying show little sentences that convey information; we call these sequences (two or more shots of the same action — but they shouldn’t be from the same place).
You shoot sequences with:
>> Cooperation: understanding what will happen when (talk to your subject to learn about the story and to make landmarks in your mind of where you want to be when)
>> Repetition: looking for overlapping action
>> Anticipation: knowing what is coming next
3. An action creates a reaction
When you shoot something that has an action (ie, the flip of a switch), make sure you get the reaction (the TV turns on).
4. Cutaways.
The little details that cut away from the action, within the context of the same action. They will help you get around
5. Enter frame, enter frame, enter frame
OK, I have to admit this took me too long to grasp (to the frustration of my classmates, I’m sure) and may take a while to perfect. But if I understand it correctly now, you always want the person you’re interviewing to enter the frame and not to exit.
So if someone’s walking toward you (imagine a politician walking down a sidewalk shaking hands), shoot while they’re walking, then stop and run ahead so you can pick them up again entering the frame. You’re going to lose the viewer when you let someone exit the frame and then enter back in again. And it’ll just help you get more material to work with if you’re always in front of the person.
And here’s some technical tips I picked up in the classroom before going out and finding out for myself (so nice of Julie to share these ahead of time):
>> Give yourself some editing cushion. Record 30 seconds to 1 minute of blank tape at the beginning and end. This will help a lot when you capture and start to edit. Why, exactly is TK when we go through it ourselves Saturday.
>> Don’t cut your shot short. You’re going to think you got enough, but you most likely won’t. So count to 10 seconds in your head for each shot.
>> Avoid a break in time code. In cheap cameras, if you power down, the time code will stop, there will be noise, and the time code will power back up; when you bring something in and batch capture, you could possibly overwrite your content.
>> Don’t replay your video in your camera in the field It’s tempting to peek at what you shot to see if you got it. But doing so will restart your time at 0:00 (which will mess with your time code). Plus, you’ll run a chance of accidentally recording over your original tape. It’s just easier to wait until you get back at your computer.
>> Headphones. You wear them for your audio recorder. You have to wear them for video. Just get over feeling like you look like a dork. No one really cares.
>> Screen direction. Keep what you’re shooting in the same direction — the noses know. For example, when you’re shooting a conversation between two people, they should stay in the same place in space (aka, axis line, 180 degree rule). Don’t shoot on one side of the axis line and then cut to the other side so that they’re now facing in opposite directions. You’re going to confuse your viewer.
>> More tips from Jones.
Here are a couple of takeaways from our discussions during the lesson:
>> Natural sound pieces are the toughest thing to tell. And newspaper Web sites seem to be taking ownership of this form. I’ve heard several times: “We HAVE to have the person we’re interviewing tell the story.” But do we ALWAYS have to do a nat sound piece? Are we locking ourselves into only one form of online storytelling?
>> Starting as a photographer in video storytelling isn’t necessarily an advantage. Writing teaches you structure, and the video demands a structure to begin with.
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