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The Technical Nitty Gritty

Howdy! I’m Sammy.

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About me

  • Grew up in Lincoln City- this is my home!
  • Spent some time at UO pursuing a Cinema Studies degree
  • I am a freelancer - I write, I research, I video edit
  • I have two cats

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Why am I here?

  • I’m the one editing your footage together to make your final video project!
  • I’m here to work WITH you to make the best product that we can.
  • I am a silly little robot taking your commands, beep boop

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Assumptions

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Setting up

Location, mise en scène

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Location

  • Regardless of what type of equipment you are using, you can control the location you film in!
  • Have a good, accessible filming location prepared
    • Quiet, minimal background movement
  • And a backup, just in case? :)
  • Location helps tell the “story”- it’s highly suggested to make it relevant to the people you interview and the topic you’re interviewing about

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Lighting

  • Please please please have something well lit for me to edit
  • How do you do that? WELL:
  • Choose a well-lit location
  • Have extra lights available
  • Three Point Lighting

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It is easier to light something in real life than it is to edit it brighter

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Three Point Lighting

  • Standard in like, all of filmmaking
  • Key Light
  • Fill Light
  • Back Light

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These don’t have to be actual studio lights. Get creative! Use the sun. Use reflectors.

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Other Tidbits

  • Get your interviewee to dress “neutral”
  • Prepare your questions ahead of time
  • Figure out your shot composition ahead of time
  • Put your phone on DND
  • Charge your phone

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Video

What’s it going to look like?

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HOW A CAMERA WORKS

  • All of the surrounding light hits a lens
  • The lens focuses the light and makes the light bounce into something that records it
  • With physical FILM: That ‘something’ is a photosensitive.. piece of film…
  • With DIGITAL: that ‘something’ is a sensor designed to activate under light, create a bunch of 1s and 0s depending on where the light hits, and turn that into a photo
  • Lots of factors affect quality: Aperture, Shutter speed, ISO, blah blah blah

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HOW A CAMERA WORKS (FOR OUR PURPOSES)

  • Magic

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What I need you know

  • Film horizontally, or I will find you
  • Film steady. A tripod works best here, but as long as the footage is stable I’m happy. For all I care, hot glue the phone to the table
  • Try to film straight- it looks nice! :)
  • That being said, it is easier to fix crooked footage than it is to fix shaking footage
  • Stick to one resolution and one frame rate
  • You can do one long take instead of multiple small takes

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Resolution and Frame Rate

  • iPhones can adjust resolution and frame rate (FPS)
  • Resolution: amount of pixels in each dimension
  • Higher resolution is higher quality but also larger file size
  • Frame rate is the amount of times the camera takes a “photo” per second

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Composition

How is your shot composed? When you look at what you’re about to film, ask yourself a ton of questions:

  • Where is your interviewee placed? Are they in the center? Off to the side? Are they angled?
  • How much of your interviewee can you see? How close are they to the camera?
  • Where is the interviewee looking?
  • The rule of thirds is a very easy method of making things look good

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The Rule of thirds

If you break an image into thirds horizontally and vertically, like a 3X3 grid, photos and videos generally look really nice if you put objects of interest where the grid line intersects. I don’t understand why, it just does.

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If only there was a way to do this on your iphone… OH WAIT

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Makes it easy to see if your shot is even!

Makes it easy to apply the rule of thirds!!

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I’m demanding you all turn this on right now!!!

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What I need you to know

  • Very important: HOLDING down enables the autofocus lock!!
  • From there, dragging up or down changes the iphone’s “Exposure”
  • Otherwise, not much manual control-- but we don’t need it :)
  • Protip: Introduce colorful object, let the camera adjust so the colors are accurate, THEN lock the autofocus

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B-Roll

  • Talking to a camera is SO boring. The solution is B-Roll!
  • B-Roll is supplementary footage designed to add context
  • It’s easier to film B-roll AFTER the primary footage
  • Film relevant objects, locations, to match what the interviewee has given you
  • Get creative with camera movements
  • Audio can add ambience but also be cut out

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Audio

How is it going to sound?

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Audio is more important than video.

(Sort of)

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Recording audio

  • Your phone’s audio is hot trash*
  • The solution: a lavalier microphone (lapel mic)!
  • Plug it directly into your lightning jack and the phone picks it up automatically
  • Pin the microphone within a foot of the speaker’s mouth (on a lapel, a hat, tape to the body…)

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Audio - one phone setup

Use a single phone to do everything; filming the audio and video together

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Regardless of method used, check what your audio sounds like! Do a test run before filming on the day of to see if your equipment works

PROS

  • Much easier!
  • Only requires one phone

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CONS

  • You’re “tethered” to the phone
  • Not infallible- if the audio is glitched or lost, I have nothing

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Audio - Two phone setup

Phone 1 records the video; no lavalier mic

Phone 2 is connected to the lavalier mic and records the audio

The two files are synched with a CLAP in front of the camera

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*Hot trash is better than no trash

PROS

  • Dependable - essentially two voice recordings instead of one
  • Less “tethered”. Can move farther from the camera

CONS

  • More complicated
  • Requires 2 phones
  • Seriously why am I even suggesting this

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Music

  • No, I won’t put Lizzo or literally any copyrighted music.
  • I mean, I CAN go searching for creative commons tracks. That’s an option! I just hate doing it because it takes forever.
  • If you can find a song that you like that fits thematically and ALSO has a creative commons copyright attached, send it to me
  • Royalty free =/= “free”

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Zoom Calls

Throw everything I just said into the garbage :)

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Lack of control

  • You have little to no control over your interviewee’s filming space and peripherals. Their camera might suck. Their audio might suck! You’ve made this bed, now lay in it
  • You DO have control over your own space
  • Dress rules now apply to you as well

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YOU’RE DONE!

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NOW WHAT?

(I hope)

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Sending me the goods

  • Collect all of your footage, audio, photos, scripts
  • Put them all into a Google Drive folder. Put your name on it somewhere
  • Name them all something that I can identify clearly
  • Share them with me: SamanthaAKuk@gmail.com

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.