This segment we'll be going over how to properly operate your camera, how to frame your shots, what type of shots to shoot different types of camera movements, and all the proper terminology. At the end, I'll shoot and edit a story as an example, and we'll talk about how all the elements come together. Let's get started. First, let's talk a little bit about the basics of photography. videography. light comes through lens hits an image sensor is recorded to media.

The variables all working together in the camera or the lens focal length. That is how wide or how zoomed in it is. The lens aperture or F stop, lenses focus, the size of the image sensor and the sensitivity of the sensor. Your camera can be set to do all this automatically that as I mentioned in part one, to do it professionally, you need to be able to control all these variables manually. tripod as a pro list of your shooting will be and should be from a tripod. For now just the height to what's comfortable for you.

Loosen the ball and adjust the tripod head so the bubble is centered attach your camera securely to the tripod plate. Or if you're a camera attaches to the tripods wedge plate, slide it into place and make sure it is locked securely. Make sure the cameras bounced correctly if the cameras back heavy or front heavy, slide the camera forward or backward until is balanced and lock the plate into position. Adjust the pan and tilt controls to have enough resistance to give you nice smooth movement. Again what is pan until as we mentioned in part one, a pan is movement horizontally. A tilt is a movement vertically.

Sometimes you'll hear a producer ask you to pan up or pan down. It probably indicates they never learned the proper terms. You know they actually mean to tell so just do the tilt don't correct them. Once your cameras secured to the tripod, if you ever need to step away, make sure your tilt and pan are locked white balance The first thing we want to do is wipe balance or camera. If you miss part one white balance is basically telling the camera what White is. What's the camera knows what is white, all the other colors of the spectrum will be properly rendered.

White indoors is not the same as white outdoors. Outdoor light is bluish and indoor light is oranges. For every setup, you should wipe balance under the lights where you are recording your subject. It's pretty simple. A lot of people just use a white piece of paper. I don't recommend this.

As the whiteness of different paper stock can vary. The best thing you can do is purchase a white card that is calibrated for white balancing. several manufacturers have them in their small enough to always have your kit and will always give you an accurate white balance. Place the card where you're going to be shooting zoom in on it. This is one of the few times I use auto Iris by the way. Press the white balance button or toggle that's it.

The process has completed you'll see a visual confirmation in the viewfinder. But what if your camera gives you an error reading and is struggling to Iris down while you're shooting the white card? Well, that may happen outdoors if you don't have a neutral density filter engaged. neutral density filter cuts down on the amount of light and read the camera without affecting the color of the light. Simply turn the filter wheel on your camera to engage the neutral density filter and try white balancing again, Iris switch the iris to manual and correctly exposed for your scene. As we talked about in part one, it's best to make sure your zebra is turned on for this.

I set my zebra in the cameras menu to 100% so I know exactly how much I can Iris before video clipping occurs. If I'm outdoors, I'll Iris to where highlights have some zebra on them. For example, say white clouds or brightly painted house reflections off a cars, things like that. There's a person in the scene, I make sure the only zebra might be on the person's hair if it's blonde, or maybe some sunlight reflecting off their forehead, or maybe if they're wearing a white shirt. If their whole face is covered in zebra, then I know I'm overexposed. A key aspect of digital video.

Digital Video doesn't handle overexposure. Well, once your video levels are clipped, they'll just show up as white. And there's no digital information in that part of the frame that can be manipulated and post. color correction tools in post production can change colors, Chroma levels, in black and video levels, but they can't save badly shot video that has video clipping. Focus, zooming all the way onto your subject and get a sharp focus. then zoom back out to frame your shot.

Types of shots. Here are examples of types of shots. Here is an extreme wide shot wide shot, a medium shot, a medium close up. A close up. This is an extreme close up. Types of camera moves pan.

We talked earlier about the pain of being a horizontal move left or right. This is a good move to show the scope of a scene when shooting a wide shot. You can also use the pan as reveal. For example shooting a sign and panning away to reveal what the side is referring to, or vice versa. follow some action to reveal the sign. When making a long pan, set your feet and body its position for the end of the pan.

Then twist yourself with a camera to where you're going to start the pan. In this way, your pain will be smooth all the way to the end. And you won't have to struggle at the end of the move which will show up on screen. Tilt. We've mentioned that tilter moves up and down. These are handy moves to reveal your subject matter.

An example would be to tilt from a tree to a pastoral scene, or in this case, tilting from water to reveal a city skyline pan tilt combo here's an example of a pan combined with a tilt. Zoom in. Here we have the servo engaged in or doing a zoom in. In this zoom out, Dolly, a dolly is actually moving the camera physically closer further to or from your subject. You can do a walking Dolly with a camera handheld which is a bit shaky. Or if you're on a bigger budget project and have a crew read a dolly or use something handy with wheels such as a cart or wheelchair.

You'll need to make sure the ground is smooth if you go this last route. What's the difference? Between a dolly zoom. With a zoom, the camera is stationary and the elements in the lens move bringing your subject closer or farther. With a dolly, you're physically moving the camera in or out, or traveling left or right. It gives a much different perspective than a zoom is more cinematic.

Now is probably a good time to share my thoughts about zooming in camera moves in general. While they have a place in your arsenal, camera operators tend to overuse the zoom. It's almost like a crutch. People think they need to constantly be zooming in and zooming out or moving the camera in order to be doing the job. It's not true. It can get annoying to the viewer and will not make you a lot of editor friends who have to take your shot in the middle of a move or stuck with a series of shots.

All zooming just for the sake of zooming. There should be a reason for every move you make. Next time you watch a feature film, watch to see how many MCC and all likelihood that number will probably be zero. And let's unless it's a film from the 60s with zoom lens that may take focus throughout the zoom were first introduced. videography is about telling a story visually, and most effective storytelling is getting a good frame and letting the action happen within the frame. It's a similar gripe I have with editing.

The most effective edits a straight cut closely followed by simple fades and dissolves. Because one has a palette of digital transitions and effects, does it mean one has to use them all. It's distracting and unless done for a reason to tracks from the effectiveness of your storytelling. Now that I've totally trashed the zoom, let's check out a move with a zoom. We looked at a pan tilt combo a minute ago. Now let's add a zoom to the mix.

The last move I want to talk about is the gym. A sweeping gym move can add lots of production value and look spectacular. at the early stages of your career you will probably not be involved with chips anyway. But there is a good move you can do handheld that is effective as a reveal shot. bend at the knees, but a foreground object fill the frame that stand up and revealing your subject. A last thought about camera moves.

Make sure you record several seconds of video before you start your move. And then at least several seconds after you finish your move. The video editor will need these handles before and after the move to dissolve In and out of them or to fade. Since we just talked about foreground and background subjects a few moments ago, let's talk about something that a lot of videographers don't take advantage of. A lot of videographers will frame a shot but not take advantage of all the dimensions that visual photography affords. The end up with very flat two dimensional looking shots.

You can make your shots a lot more creative by combining foreground elements with background elements give your shots a lot more sense of depth. Which brings up another type of shot that is a little more advanced but effective and creative. The rack focus. Depth of Field refers to how much of your frame is in focus. Long depth of field means that objects in foreground and background are all in focus. Short or narrow depth of field means that only part of the frames and focus.

The foreground may be in focus in the background out of focus or vice versa. Zoom Lens as wide setting has a lot of depth of field. But as you zoom in the depth of field becomes shorter and shorter. Meaning that focus on your subject is critical. With objects in front or behind getting more and more out of focus, or as we say softer. You can use this to your advantage, although you will need to get further away from your subject so you will have to zoom in further to lessen your depth of field.

Make sure your lenses in manual focus mode. Remember we want to control over all of our cameras adjustments, and focus on an object either closest or furthest from you. manually focus the lens so that the object goes out of focus and the other object comes into focus. Camera placement a lot of videographers set the tripod so the camera is at their eye level. shoot everything from that perspective. try experimenting with different tripod heights.

Do you know that a lot of famous actors in Hollywood are short, they don't look short on screen because directors rarely put the camera at eye level. They shoot their actors from a lower perspective to make the actors and the action look more imposing. Also, try taking your camera off the tripod completely, and put it at ground level. put something under the front of the camera based on under the lens which could damage it and shoot upward at your subject. Shooting handheld. All the information we discussed about shooting from a tripod apply to shooting handheld as well.

There are three reasons for shooting handheld. The first is a stylistic decision. Your production may call for a lot of movement, and a lot of camera shake within a scene. The second reason is to get an angle or position that you couldn't get with a tripod The third reason is that if you're shooting in a fast paced environment, like news or sports, a tripod will slow you down. I've had to shoot on fast moving boats and choppy water in the midst of a throng of people getting a key interview for news with a camera on my head to get a shot where other photographers in front are blocking me. All these situations call for shooting handheld.

Here are two scenes I shot handheld to make a point. What do you notice? The scene without any action is noticeably bad. Two things to remember. movement of a handheld shot will not be noticed if there's action within the shot. If shooting is still life or scenic, camera movement and shake is very noticeable, distracting and amateurish.

The second thing to know is that as your focal length increases, so does your camera shake. That is handheld camera movement is less noticeable with your lens setup. Why, and if you're zoomed in tighter telling a story. Now that we have gone over various framing and various types of shots and camera moves, let's figure out how to put it together to professionally shoot a story. The two main categories of scenes you will need to capture our interviews, and B roll. If you're shooting a news package, you may also need to shoot some reporters stand ups.

Let's break these categories down. interviews are pretty self explanatory. You will need to frame your interview subject in a compelling way. Don't put your subject in front of a blank wall. Pay attention to what's going on in the background. If your interviews indoors, try to frame your subject in a setting where there are objects in the background that apply to the story, photographs, memorabilia, that sort of thing.

If you're in a difficult setting where there isn't much in the room to put in the background, Take advantage of your knowledge of depth of field and try to move your camera further away and zoom in tighter on the interviewees, the background goes out of focus. If you have a camera with a large image sensor like a DSLR, you will have no problem getting limited depth of field. If your camera has a smaller CCD like a third or half inch, there's another trick to getting less depth of field. We know the iris on the lens plays a major factor in depth of field. The more open the iris, the less depth of field we have. So open your iris all the way.

You will probably see that you are overexposing video with the IRS open all the way but we have ways to compensate for that. Once again, having your settings on manual and having total control over your camera. First, try dialing in neutral density filter to cut the amount of light hitting the cameras image sensor. If you still can't get proper exposure, adjust your shutter speed experience meant with making the shutter speed higher. A normal shutter speed is one 16th of a second. Go up and steps 191 120 fifth one 250 fifth, until you have a proper exposure with a lens Iris wide open.

Don't go below one 16th of a second as your video will look jittery and strobing