As you might have seen in my earlier post, I just finished my first short film. After doing this and reading across the web to find good pointers, I’ve put together a list of 10 tips to help you shoot better, more professional video. I’ve always been really fond of movie making, and there are so many barriers to making good movies. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of heart. And it’s a bit expensive, but you can get by if you are clever and know how to do things right. Hopefully some of these tips will be of use to you and let you do things you couldn’t have done on such a tight budget.

#1 - Acquire your equipment. Be clever.

One thing you’re going to have to accept is that your video is not going to look like Hollywood. It’s not going to sound like Hollywood. Hell it won’t even look or sound like Bollywood. But just because you aren’t shooting on film and don’t have a 10 thousand dollar sound system, doesn’t mean you can’t do well. If you’re lucky, you already have a video camera and maybe even some audio equipment. If you don’t have either of these, you’re best bet is to hit up you’re school (if you are a student). Lots of schools will have some sort of multimedia department and might have a few cameras and/or mics. It helps either taking a class in this course or buttering yourself up. When you plan on using mics or cameras from other people, it’s really important you make schedules, so you know exactly when all your crew can film so you can reserve the equpiment on these days. If your school doesn’t have these or you’re not in school, don’t fret. There are other places. Consider giving a prime role in your film to someone who does have access to such equpiment. Or you can make your way to one of your local film societies. There will probably be some budding directors in there that have cameras. Either make friends or try to network for someone to be your producer. If you are upset about this, get used to it. If you want to be in the film industry, networking and sucking up is a critical skill. There’s no way you can be a Spielberg or a Kubrick without a sweet tongue.

#2 - Lighting: Just because it ain’t there don’t mean it’s not there (and viceversa)

This one will really be crucial in the look of your film. After looking over how our movie looked based on where we shot, I’m going to have to say that low-light for many digital cameras is tough. We had a couple scenes where we didn’t have any auxilerary lights or we were shooting at night, and although they still look good, it’s tough to look great. Lights is another area where it gets pricey. I have two tips for this section. Anyway, the first one is to try and save money. Lights are great, but on most indie-budgets, you can use what’s around you to replace expensive lights. First and foremost is to shoot outside (during the day). We got this giant free light source you call the sun. The shots that we shot with the sun as our light looked absolutely the best. Also, if you are shooting inside, pick a room that has lots of big windows and open those windows up to get all that sunlight. Turn all the lights on in the room. Basically, flood the room with as much light as possible. It might be hot to work in and look over lit, but it makes good footage that much easier, and it’s free. The second tip is the reverse. If you are shooting on a tight timeline, and you can only get your actors in for a few hours during the middle of the day, it can really screw you up if you were planning on shooting that night scene today. Don’t worry. If you have a few extra guys, take some big heavy blankets and have them hold them up in front of windows (from the outside). We did this on the shot in our movie for the first voice over, and it looks like it was shot at night. This is a really simple tool that will help you shoot on schedule. Don’t let the light around you set your time. Manipulate it, and you will have a better movie.

#3 - A steady camera doesn’t have to cost 50 grand.

If you’ve watched any large-production-sized movie, you’ll notice that when their camera is moving it is perfectly steady. There are usually two methods to get this smooth motion. You either have a dolly which is the camera mounted on a track, and then the camera is moved over this track. If you don’t have a large budget this one is most likely out. The other way is to have a SteadiCam, which is a big apparatus that has weights and counterweights and other things that will allow a moving cameraman to keep the camera perfectly steady and clean. For the indie movie makers, there are ways to get these really nice shots without having to drop a fortune. If you want to dolly, try skateboards, we even used a car as our dolly. Just be creative here. If you want to do moving shots but need the freedom of a handheld shot, there are ways to emulate SteadiCams. What we used on our film was we attached the camera to a tripod. We then let the tripod’s three legs dangle freely. Our cameraman would then hold the side handle and walk with the camera. What this seems to do is counter a lot of the left and right movement from walking. Having those legs hang free worked very well. Having a SteadiCam (or a cheap replacement) requires a lot of work still to make steady shots. Industry experts describe how to walk as to simply “glide.” Here’s my try at an explanation. Separate the camera from you as much as possible. The farther the camera is from you, the less your movement will affect its. How I walk when I do steady hand held shots is to bend at the knees and crouch down a bit. I stick the Camera-Tripod out far in front of my body and sort of quickly walk in the direction of motion. This will be a very useful skill and gives a lot of professionalism to your work. Note: The picture to the right is a professional SteadiCam.

#4 - Circle shots mean easier focus

If you are using a real professional camera and are doing manual focus, I picked up this pointer from a really great indie film called Primer. Imagine you have two guys in a drive way. You want to basically move around and watch their dialogue exchange. You could A) move the camera on a dolly track from far up on the drive way all the way down to the street. Or you could B) build a circular track and put your actors in the middle. What’s great about this technique is that as you circle your characters your distance from them will stay perfectly constant. What does this mean? You don’t have to adjust focus as you move the camera, which makes it so much easier. If you are on a pretty large budget give this shot a try. It looks very nice and also professional.

#5 - Don’t feel everything has to be steady

Now before I go on to this tip, I want to state that this technique can be overused and often misused. Consider what type of movie you are filming. What’s your theme? What are your characters feeling? Are you trying to be strictly professional, or can you be more free with your camera? If these are pointing away from strictly steady cameras, then don’t be afraid. There’s a difference between shooting a movie handheld because you don’t have or don’t bother with a tripod and shooting a movie as if it was handheld. I mentioned this a bit in my 28 Weeks Later review, but this type of shooting can really affect your audience and transport them into your setting. Just be careful with it. I’ve found (like for the SteadiCam) that you should probably mount your camera on a tripod. This, again, counters some of the movement. You want it to be shaky or handheld, but not super shaky. So hold the Camera-Tripod near your chest, maybe even resting it against you. This will give a relatively steady shot but with the small jittery shakes you want. Also, when shooting this way, feel free to move the camera around. If you need to pan up and to the right because your character just stood up, do it. It will look very good, as if the audience is just a bystander looking up at your actor. The real reminder here is to not just shoot hand held. There is a difference between professional hand held and simple hand held. If you can master this technique and actually do it for a reason, you’ll make your film have a very meaningful impact on its audience.

#6 - Clapping makes recording easier

If you are using an external mic (which you probably should be), then this tip will help you when you get to the editing stage. Let me discuss how we recorded our audio. We had my Sony camera capturing video. Will brought his PowerBook, and we plugged the shotgun mic straight into the Powerbook. We then captured the audio into Garageband. Click export. Import into Final Cut. Now it’s time to match it up to the video. This is where the tip comes in. Start your camera videotaping. Start your laptop recording. Then after 2 seconds make a single clap. Then start your scene a second or two after. Why do this? It’s near impossible to get two different devices (in this case laptop and camera) to start recording at the exact time. We make this clap so we can, in post production, match up time-codes so that the clap lies at the exact same time. Since you’ll hear the clap on both audio sources: your shotgun mic and your video mic, it makes it easy to line up. This is easier to do then trying to match up peoples voices to their mouth, since you don’t know exactly when they actually started to talk. Their mouths might just open a little earlier than they actually talk.

#7 - FinalCut can actually do what iMovie does

This tip isn’t actually about trying to get editors to use FinalCut over iMovie, but this is as good as time as any to say just that. If you seriously want to make a professional movie, you need to switch over to a professional application. One of the things that I’ve used a lot in iMovie is how you can import (or capture) video and have it auto detect where you started and stopped the camera. This is really useful to help narrow down where the scene your looking for is. When I transitioned over to FinalCut, I was always looking for how to do this. I’ve finally found out how. The way I did this was by first taking all of my video that I’d recorded and use the capture now feature in FinalCut, so basically I just go have it capture, and I play my entire video. Once that’s done, I select this newly imported clip and click on the “Mark” menu and then click “DV Start/Stop Detection.” This will create markers throughout your clip separating where you started and stopped. Hopefully, this will help you in your editing process as it did me.

#8 - In and out points make the difference

This is a problem lots of beginner editors experienced. I admit that on my very very first movie (The Noodle Cup), the in and out points were horrible. If you watch any professional movie and then watch any beginner’s movie you’ll instantly notice the difference. It’s something everyone notices but either is to lazy to fix or inexperienced to fix. If you are not familiar with movie editing, in and out points are set on a particular clip to note where the program should start playing this clip and where to stop. The problem I see repeatedly is that people either don’t use in and out points or don’t set them correctly. Say we have a short sequence of dialogue between two characters. We have camera A pointed at character A. We have camera B pointed at character B. They do their lines, and we’ve imported everything. We’re ready to piece this video together using crosscutting (film terminology for flashing from one character to the other). So our inexperienced editor takes the first line of dialogue for character A and plays it. He then cuts to the video for character B. Only there’s this long pause in the video for character B. He just stands there for a few seconds and delivers his lines. Another great example of this is with characters moving in and out of frames. A lot of novice directors will put their characters on screen standing still. Start rolling tape, then call action, then their actor starts walking across the scene. This is fine except when they go in to editing, they leave in that 1/2 second pause where their actor is just standing there waiting for action. It looks bad, unprofessional, and really lame.

How do we fix this? Simple. Move your in and out points closer in. When you cross cut practically cut just as the person is talking. When you have characters walking around camera, I’ve found it’s best to have characters part way into frame already moving. So cut in about a half a second into their walking so that they’re already in stride. This looks good when watching. It also might be better to have your characters start out of frame and then walk in. That way you can have a little buffer room on your footage instead of having your character magically appear in the middle of your screen. The main focus here is to get you to edit like the pros. Make sure it looks fluid and that the only thing you are showing your audience is real action, not a person standing there waiting for you to call action. As a side-note, make sure you apply the reverse of this. If your actor stops walking make sure you cut before he does. Don’t leave film in your movie that doesn’t fit coherency. This is in essence common sense, but I see this mistake made so often, I had to mention it.

#9 - Be an actor yourself

I can tell you first hand. Trying to get a group of 8 people together much less 4 people together is really hard. Especially if you need to do it multiple times a week. If you aren’t paying people, it’s even more difficult. Basically the tip I have here is you are, for sure, going to have trouble getting people to show up. The easiest way to cut out one required person is to be an actor in your film. If you have a major role that is going to need to be there every time, and you’re not a half bad actor, then play that role (unless you really need someone else). Being an actor in your film assures that you will be on set whenever you’re part is needed. It also cuts one slot on the need-to-be-there list. On a related note, do make sure your main staff (e.g., you’re DP, you’re cameraman/sound recorder) are reliable people you know are interested in the film. Having people that want to be there as much as or more than you makes getting together and staying organized a lot easier.

#10 - A great soundtrack can make or break the movie. It can also save your bad sound quality

The first part of this tip is to emphasize how important music is on the effect of your film. After talking with some people after they watched The Family Name, they said that they really loved the music selection and that it really conveyed the tone and feelings of each character and what was going on at the time. Once you have your footage down and ready, take a long time deciding on this. It might be smart to call in some friends who have broad music tastes. I’ve found that limiting your selections to non-lyrical songs makes it easier. Lyrics can get in the way, misconstrue the feelings of the shot, and otherwise screw up your movie. Unless the scene demands a real hardcore song, try to pick more instrumental tracks. If you watch our film, you see that all the songs try to fit the mood of what’s going on. The break-in scene has a great track by Coheed & Cambria that sounds exactly like break in music while at the same time contributing to the feelings of both characters. It might also be good to break out of the usual movie sound track box and find some lesser known instrumental bands. I guarantee, if you look hard enough, there is the perfect song for each scene you shot.

Part 2 of this tip is to talk about the other use of music. It can make up for crappy audio. If you are anything like us, you’ll probably have days when you don’t have an external mic to use, or you are having trouble recording it correctly, or it’s picking up a big hum, or any other possible things that screw with your audio. The good thing is that a low volume song behind your dialogue can help to hide extra noise or other problems with your audio. This takes a lot of practice and is really based on what footage and sound you’re dealing with, but there is a good balance of having an instrumental song playing behind dialogue that both contributes to the movie as well as saves your less than satisfactory audio.

That’s it

And with that, our list of ten pointers and tips for shooting video is complete. This is by no way an encompassing guide, and I intend on posting more stuff about movie making at a later date. I hope you enjoyed this article, and maybe it will have a little effect on your next film. If you have any comments or other tips please leave a comment below. I’m sure me and a lot of other indie film makers would love to hear any insight you have (that means you Mr. Spielberg. I know you’re reading). Also, if you liked this article, please subscribe to my RSS feed to get future articles and tutorials about film and technology in general. Thanks for reading.

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