Master Video Storytelling With The Hollywood Look

There is a hush that falls over a crowd when a classically shot movie appears on-screen. It's that same hushed anticipation that hovers around the campfire when someone says "Once upon a time ..." as we give our full attention over to being entertained. The movie-maker's storytelling magic is a carefully honed craft called the Hollywood Look. Wedding videos, vacation highlights and corporate presentations can all benefit from the classic techniques of the silver screen.

Anyone, no matter what your level of experience, can achieve the Hollywood Look by using subtle techniques. Every shot and every edit must count. Hollywood relies on enormous sums to achieve "production value" but for you, the only requirement is your careful eye. With this article, you'll learn what these techniques are and how to use them to create a classic video.

Build Your Video Vocabulary
A master videographer does not create a classic video by stringing completely unrelated items together, any more than a journalist writes a prize-winning story full of nonsense words. Because video is so realistic, we tend to forget that it's a complex language of pictures instead of words. When we collect all of our video from an entire day of shooting, we usually have random shots strewn across the tape. Played back "as is," our video is just as confusing, and just as boring, as a sentence composed of nonsense words. What's the solution…