Home Video Hints: Simple Steps for Camcorder Care (page 2)

The Video Crew

The topic of support offers a good place to shift our focus to those videomaking colleagues of yours, the crew.

"Crew, shmoo," you reply, with a tolerant chuckle, "since when have I had that luxury?" True, amateur, prosumer and entry-level professional videomakers typically work alone, or else depend on the occasional kindness of strangers (or relatives).

Which is precisely why you need to treat these volunteer assistants with special care. After all, they're doing you a favor.

Typically, amateur helpers present two problems: they don't know what they're doing, and they aren't exactly passionate about doing it. For instance, your Significant Other is unaware that a good microphone boom person plays a constant, teasing game with the video frame, sneaking that foam-covered mike as close as possible while still keeping it out of the picture. He doesn't know that in recording two people, he needs to shift the mike position constantly to point it at each speaker in turn.

This problem is easy to solve: just show your spouse how to operate the boom, preferably as he mikes an actual conversation while wearing headphones so he can hear and understand the effects of different mike positions. Improving crew performance by showing them how to do their jobs is an almost painfully obvious concept; but it may well surprise you how many videomakers ask their helpers to perform tasks they don't know how to do.

But if inexperience is easy to overcome, lack of enthusiasm is not. You have a natural interest in videomaking; that's why you do it. But if interests were universal, every last one of us would collect Barbie dolls and pitch horseshoes. In reality, the chances are that your part-time assistants are not as turned on by videomaking as you are.

In some cases, the only solution is to thank them sincerely and then show your appreciation by returning the favor--find the time to help them out with one of their own avocations.

If you're lucky, your assistant may actually develop an interest in video. The upside of that event is that he or she will dispatch your needs with more enthusiasm. But there is a downside too: before you know it, your once-docile apprentice will want a turn at the camera!

Whether assistants are enthusiastic or not, you can at least tell them what to do. Alas, the opposite is true with clients. The people for whom you make video programs call the shots--often quite literally.

Taking the time to care for your video gear may seem as thrilling as sorting your sock drawer, but wait! Don't you lovingly sponge off your golf club booties or rub nose oil on the joints of your fishing rod or burnish the tips on your stamp tweezers? Maintaining gear is less a chore than a ritual tribute to the hobby it supports. And if you reflect that replacing a lens can cost more than a new camcorder, you can see why video housekeeping's well worth the effor…