Lights, Camera, Satisfaction!

With the advancement of digital video technology and the relatively cheap cost of digital editing software, an even greater number of people are making their own home videos from the comfort of their home computers.

Shooting your own home video can be a fulfilling experience. It can also be a frustrating one, as you worry about light, focus and holding the camera steady. So before you rush out to shoot, take some time to read the following tips.

Get Comfortable
• Before you do anything, read the manual that comes with your new purchase. Familiarize yourself with its multitude of buttons and special features and learn how to properly maintain it, to ensure optimum performance every time.
• Get a feel for your camcorder. While most digital camcorders are small and lightweight, you'll need to discover your own technique, so you're comfortable and relaxed at every shoot.

Be Prepared
• There's nothing worse than running out of battery power when little Suzie is about to blow out the candle on her first birthday cake. Check and double check to make sure you have everything you need prior to shooting.
Note: Always carry at least one extra charged battery. Don't wait until your battery is dead before changing it. Your camcorder will come equipped with a battery warning light. When it starts flashing, take the next available opportunity to make the switch.

Check Your Settings
• White balance. This controls the way your camcorder sees the colour white. To avoid colour tints on your finished product, set this to automatic or the indoor or outdoor setting. The default settings aren't always perfect and can be affected by various things such as fluorescent lights or haze. When you have become more adept with your camcorder, follow the simple instructions and set your white balance manually to ensure optimum results.
• Focus. Again, set this to automatic until you're ready to advance into more complex compositions. By increasing or decreasing the camcorder's aperture setting, you can cause certain parts of a shot to become blurry, drawing particular attention to the people or objects that are in focus.
• Date stamp. The quality of many a video has been hurt by the infamous date stamp. Check regularly to make sure you haven't accidentally switched this feature on, as it will imprint the date and time over top of your video.

Avoiding Camera Shake
• Brace yourself. Lean against a wall or tree or prop your elbows on a table or other solid object.
If the shot is short enough, try and hold your breath as you shoot.
• Never walk or crouch while shooting.
• Use a tripod. If it's a long shoot, it will be tough to keep steady throughout and you may want to look into buying or renting a tripod.

Composition
• Don't shoot subjects against backgrounds that are lighter than their faces. This will give you poorly exposed shots.
• Some camcorders have a rectangular window within the viewfinder. The space within the rectangle is what you will see on a monitor. If your camcorder does not have this rectangular window, assume that one-tenth of the outer edge will not be viewable and make sure your subject(s) are within safety margin area.
• The rule of thirds. For most, the natural instinct is to centre everything within the viewfinder. This works adequately for stationary subjects but makes for bland visuals. Using the rule of thirds, mentally divide your viewfinder into three columns and three rows, similar to a tic-tac-toe board. Keeping your subject on an axis within this framework makes for a more interesting shot.
• Lead the action. Using the rule of thirds, keep moving subjects on the axis farthest away from the direction in which they're moving. In other words, give them room to move into. If you have someone's profile, give them space to talk into.

Audio
• Stay close to the subject to minimize background noise.
• Avoid shooting subjects in front of noisy places. Position them away form the noise and shoot with camcorder (and mike) facing away from noisy area.
• Don't give verbal directions. Your camcorder's mike will pick up your voice and detract from the final product.

Pans, Tilts and Zooms
• Avoid these when possible. Pans, tilts and zooms can seem fun at the time but they rarely translate into good home video. They're choppy and take away from the subject(s) and the action.
• If you really want to experiment with these, and you will, be sure to get a minimum 10-second shot of the subject(s) before and after the pan, tilt or zoom. This way you can edit out the middle and keep the two key shots.

There are other things to learn about shooting great video but these tips should get you off to a pretty good start. Just remember to get to know your camcorder and most importantly, have fun!

Recommended Books

Digital Video for Dummies
By Martin Doucette
IDG Books Worldwide, Inc., 1999

This book covers everything from the basics of shooting digital video to preparing your computer for loading video editing software and editing home videos with various Adobe products. It comes with a CD-Rom that contains video samples to practice on as well as Adobe's Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator and After Affects
programs (these are all outdated by newer versions at this point).

Video: Communication and Production
By Jim Stinson
The Goodheart-Willcox Company, Inc., 2002

This book deals with the production of programs in the medium of video. Plenty of diagrams and bright colour photographs illustrate the principles discussed here. A very thorough textbook for budding videographers.