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Shooting and assembling successful movies

Rounding up his short series on Digital Video and your PC, David Dorn offers a few words of advice on shooting the footage in the first place, and then assembling it.

Given that most of the editing software available on the market today – from the very cheapest, up to fully professional packages – can accurately split your video footage into clips, or individual scenes, there’s no need to shoot your video footage with chronological order in mind. Neither do you need to think too much about editing “in camera”, which means planning your shots, transitions and scenes such that the whole movie is composed and edited “on the fly”, and what’s on the tape is what will be seen.

Quite the reverse, using a digital video editing package means that you can add a scene or shot that will fit in with something you’ve shot right at the beginning of the tape much later, and, using the edit software, move the clip to the right place in your movie. For instance, you may be on holiday in Paris and visit the Eiffel Tower. You may not have had the chance to video the view of the whole tower before you get in the lift to get to the top, but, once there, let’s assume you shoot five minutes of panoramic footage,  the kids being excited, a low-flying plane below you, and the awful drop to the ground. As you leave, you may decide to shoot a vertical panning shot of the tower itself. When you come to edit the film later, you can easily re-order the clips, and even slot one in of the kids mounting the first flight of stairs that you shot after the shot of the whole tower.

One area that I haven’t covered in the walk-through is the concept of the narration track. Digital video is wonderful in that it allows you to add a further stereo track to your pre-recorded audio that is captured with the video itself. Each of the Non Linear Editing (NLE) packages currently on the market allows you to do this, without needing to “overdub” – that is, mix the real-time recording with your narration, a fiddly process at the best of times.

Instead, you can sit and watch the video through, once you’ve assembled it, and record narration, or background music to the movie as a whole, and, even fade it in and out according to what sounds on the original tape you wish to keep, emphasise or de-emphasise. However, it is as well to realise that the built-in microphones on all but the most expensive DV Cams are not meant for recording the softly spoke voice of a loved one 50 yards away! So bear that in mind when you record your footage.

Clips

If you watch much TV, you’ll know that the viewpoint on any given event changes fairly often, and, in some cases, very, very often. Each “clip” can be very short (Top of the Pops and other “music” shows are a prime example of very short clips), and for a very good reason. A “static” shot – one in which the viewpoint doesn’t change for ages and ages – can be exceedingly boring. Remember the potter’s wheel, once so beloved of the Beeb? Guaranteed to send you to sleep, that was.

So, when you’re shooting, try to move about, move around the action and get various different views on it – you can split a continuous clip into shorter ones, and switch between them as you go, to make your movie much more interesting. If you’re stuck for space, though, use the zoom facility on your DV Cam to vary the viewpoint – zoom in close on a child concentrating on a jigsaw to show only the face, maybe the tongue sticking out, and the head being scratched, then zoom out to show what he’s actually doing, then zoom in on the hands as a piece is placed into position, or is offered up to see if it fits. You can then separate the three different views and use them in any order to show the action.

Effects

A plea from the heart. Many of the video editing packages currently on the market feature some very strange effects – you can show a negative image of your video, colorize it to be all in tones of one colour, swirl it, spherise it, make mosaics – all sorts of stuff. Like fonts in word processing, all these effects are very nice and exciting, but they should be used in moderation, nay, even sparingly. Do bear in mind that your viewers will not have had the benefit of being there when the video was shot – they don’t necessarily know what’s behind the swirling mass of red mist your effects have produced, so, if you must use them, be very sparing with them!

The same goes for transitions between scenes. If you have 80 clips in your hour-long video, and the package you have chosen to edit it in has 50 transition types, it doesn’t mean that you have to use all 50 of them. Sometimes a straight cut will do. A few dissolves here and there, and maybe one or two wipes (old fashioned as they are) and blinds will just mix things up enough to keep the interest – but beware of long transitions between short clips – they’re guaranteed to confuse. Use a cut instead.

There you go – a short introduction to editing Digital Video at a low cost. Enjoy it, but don’t, please, email me the results!

Read part one

Read part two