Professional Shooting Secrets for Camcorder Shooters

You keep seeing the background go lighter and darker as you pan a scene

You notice the sound on some shots is much louder than other shots

These are just a few of the problems that you can run into without previous training and information on shooting techniques.

Lets discuss "composition" for a moment, one of the reasons why your footage doesn't look as good as what you see on TV. Here we are talking about arranging the elements in your shot in a pleasing manner. Sounds pretty easy, right? and in fact it isn't really that hard. For example:

The fewer elements in the shot, the more power the shot will have!! Having six items will be easier for the audience to grasp than havinga cluttered frame full of to much information.

As the camera operator you are the one who chooses what will be in your frame.If you feel or sense that the shot isn't right, try moving to a differentposition or angle to improve things. Professionally we do this all the time to improve our composition or to have better lighting on the subject.

If there are vertical or horizontals lines in your shot such as the horizon line or telephone poles or edges of buildings that we know in real life are 100% horizontal or vertical, then make sure your camera is seeing these as true horizontal and vertical lines. Simply having your camera tilted by 10 or 20 degrees can make the shot look amateurish or shall we say less than professional.

We will see these askew shots in some TV shows where the director is endeavoring to suggest an unreal moment such as some one strung out on drugs or the like and for this shot the camera is purposely tilted 20 degrees or more. This is called "Dutch Angleing"

That all to busy Writing in the background Human beings are very predictable. If you have a shot where there is some writing in the background of the scene that has nothing to do with the subject matter, I can gaurantee you that if the writing is legible, then the audience will try to read it, it's human nature. You don't want your audience trying to read this writing instead of paying attention to the individuals in the shot that you want their attention on. Also watch out for subjects than have T shirts with writing on them. The same rules apply here.

A simple way to avoid the problem as mentioned in the first example above, is to move your camera back further and tighten up the shot using your zoom lens. This will create a shallower depth of field (the area that is in focus) and will allow you to "fuzz out" the background writing. You can see this same technique on many television show that you watch where the director wants to keep the attention of the audience on the actors, not on the pictures, photographs, or award plaques that are behind the subject on the wall.

You can pick up a lot more tips and techniques from my"PROFFESSIONAL SHOOTING TECHNIQUES FOR CAMCORDER OWNERS" workshop that I do around B.C. This one day course is loaded with helpful tips and examples from a number of the videos I have produced. Call me in Victoria at 381-3032 or out of town toll free at 1-888-522-FILM(3456) for more information about how I could bring this exciting workshop to your area.