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CHAPTER TWO ..... USING A CAMCORDER. One thinks about the old 8MM movie cameras and the film they produced, overexposed, underexposed, double exposed, out of focus, indoor film giving a blue picture outdoors, and outdoor film giving a red picture indoors, not enough light, dirt in the gate, and lots of scratches. Then one thinks of the modern camcorder, with automatic exposure, automatic focus, automatic white balance, sound with the picture, low cost reusable video tape, no waiting for processing, and everything is just perfect, right? WRONG! Lack of care in the technical operation of your new toy, and, equally important, not knowing what you want to say in your video, will turn off your audience as fast as that reel that Dear Old Dad shot at Disneyland when he was holding the camera upside down. When you have a story to tell, regardless if it is the kids going to music camp, or a plug for your wife's favorite charity, the camera should be a transparent means of presenting the story, in color, movement and sound, without calling attention to itself, just as when you read an interesting article in a book, you are not aware of the book unless you find smudged ink or some pages missing. Camera shake is probably the most distracting fault. Your viewers are no longer considering writing a cheque for that charity, they are wondering why you are too cheap to buy a tripod. If they see enough of it they are also probably feeling a little sick. The rule is if you have to hand hold the camera, and you can't get your elbows on something steady, stick with wide angle shots which will not be as distracting. Bad Zooms and Out of Focus shots.. These go hand in hand, because nearly all zooms are bad zooms, and they nearly always result in out of focus shots. A zoom lens is great. Back in the old days we had three lenses on a turret, and rotated their position to get the angle required. Sometimes you were not sure which lens you were shooting through.
The typical problem with a zoom shot is that you go from a wide angle that looks good in the viewfinder to a close-up of someone and find that he has gone way out of focus. The problem here is that the telephoto lens has a depth of field much less than the wide angle lens, and the only safe way of making that shot is to pause the camera, zoom in on the subject, focus, go back to your wide angle, start the camera and zoom in. This is a bit difficult if the subject is your star basketball player in action, but that's life. Automatic focus can give you a hard time, particularly in low light, or if your batteries are getting low. It will not track as fast or as accurately as you can do it manually. Under the best of conditions it wants to focus on anything that comes between you and the subject. It is best if all automatic features can be used manually if required. SOUND: The camcorder mike is great for picking up traffic noise in Times Square, but physics tells us that sound decreases as the square of the distance, and if you are videotaping an interview with your great aunt, the elderly wealthy one, and the room tends to be noisy, it would be better to use a plug-in mike placed within about eighteen inches of her mouth. This will get more of her and less of the background sound. Sometimes it helps to carry a small kitchen sponge, to which you can fasten the mike with an elastic band, then set it on a table.
Try not to let anyone hold a live mike, for the noise they produce will be much louder than the energy from the speaker's voice. LIGHTING: We can't all carry a lot of lighting equipment around, but we can take a couple of steps to avoid the greatest pitfalls.
Most important, don't shoot your subjects in front of a window. The automatic exposure goes wild with the amount of light from the window, and your [girlfriend] [boss] [wealthy great aunt] (choose one) will be a black silhouette. Also the window light will be blue, and throw your automatic white balance off. While not quite as drastic, you should try to keep table lamps out of the picture, that light will be on the red side. A small, battery operated light that will brighten up the subjects' faces is a valuable addition, or at least a reflector made of aluminum foil on a piece of thin plywood will help. Finally, shoot lots of cutaways, and don't hesitate to shoot your material out of order. You will get the whole thing back in shape when we get around to editing this video. |
