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Filming and Editing

At my last supervisory meeting I was encouraged to create something a bit more visually interesting in my video than I had submitted at the meeting.  The videos I submitted for the meeting were the first videos I had ever tried to edit on Lightworks rather than windows movie maker. I was just trying to get to terms with it all and create a functional lesson in a technique.

In my mind after finding applications like Meerkat and Periscope, was that I would just live stream a class with an application like Go To Meeting where the participants can meet each other.  Though it wouldn’t help if people weren’t there, though I could easily record it and they could play it back later.Filming is something I want to learn anyway, so this week I have put aside writing up to film and edit some short films together.  In my mind there is a problem with finding the balance between three main elements of:

  1. Visually interesting
  2. Tells a story
  3. Actually teaches something

Along with these goes having everything good enough quality with the audio and the visual.  In the first batch of films everything was captured with my Kodak Z981. Now I use my Kodak, a brand new iPod as a secondary camera shooting video or timelapses, and a Philips Dictaphone with a lavaliere microphone attached so the audio is clearer.

I have also been recording separate sound effects for dubbing onto the tracks.  For things like the Pot Gear introduction above I used a samson microphone attached to my computer and recorded the voice over straight into audacity.

Honestly I don’t learn as much about filming until I come to the edit and then wonder what on earth I have filmed.  A top gear intro generally has 3 clips they make fun of I have more than 3 tracks I could have used for my out takes.

Yesterday I went back into the studio to record additional footage as I understood a bit better what I was missing.  I haven’t made it through the edit yet to check I have enough, but we will see.

If I were continuing with this, I would probably use 3 cameras, but get an SLR camera as the main shot. Get some mounting to mount the cameras from, my ipod it mounted to a goose neck mount so I can move it around quickly. Use better equipment for recording the audio and actually build up a bank of audio sounds, named, timed and ready to drop into the editor.  And finally invest in a decent lighting set-up for the workshop, currently I rely on natural light coming from my one window and generally it isn’t enough.

I have learnt so much from the process of going through it all, I can take me hours to edit one of these videos, sometimes I don’t know how to proceed so I have to go off and watch a video about how this all works.

There are so many little tweaks that can help it flow better, but they all take time and I don’t always know what I am doing, so the undo key is my favourite.

What do you think that the balance should be between Visually interesting, telling a story and actually teaching something?

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