5 Tips For Shooting Good Videos

With a little planning and forethought you can shoot a good video. The quality of your videos directly reflects your brand so if you want your brand to stand out make sure you are planning, investing in good equipment and researching the production process. Here are five tips for shooting good videos.

1. Plan Your Production

Take a lesson from Hollywood, a movie never begins shooting without planning out all aspects of the film. Write an outline for your video, then write out a script and then plan out your shot list (called a storyboard). This will save you a lot of time on the day you plan to shoot as you will be able to keep track of everything and make sure you don’t miss any important footage. 

Below is an example of a basic storyboard.

2. Capture A Variety Of Shots & Angles

You’re telling a story with your film, it will be more interesting if you have a variety of shots. The best videos are made of short clips that are all edited together. Play with different kinds of shots, there are wide-shots that show the whole scene, medium shots that include one or more subjects, and close-up shots that are like portraits (cropped from the shoulders up) and extreme close-ups of details. Mix all these shots together for the best looking video. 

3. Shoot B-Roll

B-Roll is extra footage, this can be extra footage, pictures, graphics, anything to liven up your video. This will really make your video more interesting to watch. If you’re doing an interview with someone, shoot extra shots of them working, or doing extra things that you can use to cut-away from the floating head shots. 

4. Limit Your Camera Motion

Less is more! Zooming in and out and panning side to side is distracting, you can have a few but overusing it will ruin an otherwise good story. 

Your video will end up looking a lot like this home video, stabilize your camera!

5. Shoot To Edit 

Unless you are the most interesting person in the world, not very many people will want to watch an hour long interview with you. You can shoot an hour of footage and cut it down to a five minute video. Plan your shots and make them purposeful. Editing your videos will make them much better, you can use iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, or invest in a program like Final Cut Pro. It does require extra time but you can get rid of poor shots, add smooth transitions, background music, titles, call-to-actions, and make your production worth watching. 

Follow these steps and you should come out with a pretty decent video! For more information on video production visit us at www.maddoxmedia.ca