Keep camera movments- focusing, zooming, etc.- as smooth as possible
like atmosphere( Go-pro helmet camera, exciting!) rather than amateur bungling. A video all made with an expensive panning tropod for total Hollywood smoothness can be a bit boring if you don’ t have Scarlett Johanssen to liven it up.
voicing concerns
You only need one shot talking to camera. After that, if you slot in voice-over above the natural sound effect of the original video clip, they’ ll think you’ re still there talking to them. Talking-to-camera shots can go wrong( eg my head wasn’ t in the picture) so I’ ll have a long slow shot of nothing much happening as backup that I could use with a voice over.
the White way to do it: interview tricks
In Andrew White interviews( Julia Bradbury does it too) the camera cuts away from the interview to watch the interview from further away. The first camera doesn’ t show in the second camera’ s shot, and anyway AW doesn’ t have a second camera … He’ s cut in a repeat of the interview, taken afterwards from further away, over the original soundtrack. You never even noticed that the hands were moving wrong and you weren’ t seeing the lips. things to do
Trim the starts and ends of the clips Drag them into the right order Pull in and insert stills.( In iMovie, you can drag stills straight in off the desktop.) Click somewhere marked with a T to insert a title over the top. Click something that might look like a bow tie to insert transitions. Mostly you can just cut from clip to clip but to establish a‘ paragraph break’ or time interval you put in a transition.( And set what sort of transition, and its duration.) After your second video you’ ll know to allow an extra 2 sec on the end of a clip when you might want to have a transition. A symbol slightly resembling a amicrophone( mic not mike remember) means insert a voice over.
Vary the framing when shooting interviews
interview tricks two
Interviews need to be edited, to take out the bit where he rambled on about the Beeching cuts yet again.
1 edit out the audio unwanted bits seamlessly 2 now there are jumps in the video!
3 drop in a closeup shot of what ever they were talking about to cover the join
This requires a slightly advanced editing trick called‘ detatching’ the video from the audio, so’ s to keep the audio running while substituting different video( or a still).
the cutting room
Shooting a 5 minute video takes all morning. Editing it into a movie takes all afternoon. The editing program will import your clips into a dump area, perhaps at the bottom of the window. You then drag the ones you want up into a‘ project area’, perhaps at the top somewhere.
dogmé dogma
A school of filmmaking following Lars von Trier says
1 Hand held camera only 2 No extraneous music
3 No fancy lighting; actual lighting as in the actual world
4 All sex scenes must be unsimulated
All this helps avoid the glossy Hollywood effect so repugnant to right-minded Danish film auteurs. But above all, no horrid music.( Apart from anything else, it probably violates copyright.) Sadly, my movies so far don’ t have any sex scenes.
see for yourself
A selection of the short videos from the weekend, with some dismissive comments by by me and / or Andrew White, are on display online at www. owpg. org. uk / video-workshop-newlands. The Guild, and the participants, are grateful to Andrew White for an interesting, instructive and energetic workshop session.
10 Outdoor focus | spring 2018