To kick-start our ‘Useful info’ section, here are a few useful tips for shooting better video. Hopefully this will be helpful for any beginners/hobbyists.
Helpful Tips for Shooting Great Video
- Automation can be useful but if you want to be creative set your camcorder to manual & read up about the manual settings in advance of your shoot
- Set white balance at every location. Carrying out manual white balance is always better than pre-sets
- When shooting outdoors always consider the position of the sun and keep it behind you
- Always plan your shoot – It’s more cost-effective to make your shooting decisions at home rather than make those decisions on location while the cast and crew wait for you to make up your mind
- Keep audio in mind when carrying out a location recce
- Use a tripod or other image stabilizing device
- Shoot to edit and keep your average shot length between 4 and 10 seconds
- Be as inconspicuous as possible to capture realistic behavior
- Don’t allow your subject to sink to the bottom of the video frame by positioning their eyes at the top 1/3 of the screen
- Don’t be distracted by objects in the background and always keep looking at foreground and background as you shoot
- Only pan occasionally and don’t overuse on-screen zoom
- Always look for interesting angles rather than keeping in one spot and placing your every subject in the centre of your frame
- Don’t shoot everything from standing eye-level
- Make sure your subject is well lit rather than too much light falling on the background