So you want to make a documentary? We’ve all heard that before.  Just as we know that all the greatest writers are supposedly too busy hanging out in coffee shops and bemoaning the difficulties of writing to actually write, all the greatest documentarians are too busy worrying about where to start to actually, well, start.  When I was a kid, I used to love watching nature documentaries on PBS, all about the ocean floor or the rain forest or, especially, dinosaurs.  For years, though, I thought that a documentary HAD to be about some exotic faraway locale, that you had to travel to, say, the Gobi Desert or the Marianas trench, and that they always had to be about weird animals.  You might have the same problem, you’re too convinced that documentaries have to be sprawling, complicated affairs to realize that they’re actually pretty simple.  All you have to do it break it down!

Yup, it’s simple if you just break down the documentary process.  For example, take a look at Videomaker’s premium documentary series, now available to buy as one complete set at a $60 discount.  This DVD series divides up the daunting documentary process into four tidy little segments, so that you won’t get too overwhelmed.   All you need to worry about are four little things:

1) Documentary Storytelling: There’s good fodder for a stellar documentary anywhere.  Maybe you know a person with an unusual story to tell or maybe there’s a local landmark that you’ve always been curious about. Some of the most compelling documentaries come from personal stories or family histories, or dramas that, in the grand scheme of things, might not really be that dramatic. The incidents might be small or mundane, but if they communicate bigger, universal themes, they can touch people in ways that more polished but less intimate documentaries fail to do. For example, “The King of Kong” is a documentary about one man’s fight to become the world champion at the video game Donkey Kong. Most people would dismiss that as a silly goal, but the filmmakers were able to use his quest to tell a universal story about every man’s desire to leave his mark on the world.  This DVD shows you how to find the deeper meaning in even ordinary events and how to determine whether there’s enough meat in a story to be worth your time as a documentarian.

2) Documentary Funding: Yeah, so we’ve already established that you don’t have the budget to go down the Amazon. Unfortunately, even a modest documentary needs some budget and you don’t want to be stuck spinning your wheels because you can’t think of a way to get your hands on some cash.  Well, before you resort to robbing a bank, pulling off a daring international diamond heist, or something equally drastic (Pro tip: Don’t do that!), you should probably take a look at this DVD. Documentary Funding gives you helpful, practical and, above all, proven suggestions to get some cold hard cash to back up your documentary dreams. This feature looks at finding sources for funds, writing a thorough prospectus, knowing the details of an accurate budget sheet, organizing a successful fundraiser, editing a demo reel that impresses, and presenting the techniques of an effective pitch.

3) Documentary Equipment and Crew: Remember how we said you’d need money to shoot your documentary? Well, here’s where that comes into play. You may be able to cajole some friends into helping you out and you may be able to borrow your neighbor’s old camcorder for free… but let’s face it. You know you get what you pay for when you rely on the kindness of strangers (and friends).  If you’re going to make a documentary, make it good.  Cutting on necessary expenses always impacts the result and not in a good way. This DVD offers you tips on how to choose cameras, audio gear, lighting gear and accessories, and tips to finding and working with a professional crew. These tips will get you on your way to making a great documentary.

4) The Documentary  Shoot: And now that you’ve got all that preliminary planning and pre-planning and pre-pre-planning out of the way, it’s time to go out on the actual shoot.  This is where it all counts. The shoot is probably the most fun part of making the documentary, because this is where you really get to see your vision come together.  If you picked a good subject, you should feel re-newed excitement when you revisit the stories that originally sold you on it.  Conducting insightful interviews, setting up good lighting and audio, and getting location access are all part of the process here!

So there you go, the entire documentary process, all in four easy-to-digest chunks.  Now you better start filming, because, when you watch these DVDs,  you’ll no longer  have the excuse that you don’t know how to start.

Shooting and working in 4K is nothing new to professional film makers and compositors, but with the announcement of the JVC GY-HMQ10 being priced at under $5,000, 4K is finally within reach of prosumer and hobbyist videographers. However, most TVs and computer monitors will still max out at 1080p, so what’s the point? Personally, I don’t see 4096 × 3112 pixel TVs entering the average American’s living room any time soon, since if you’re sitting ten feet from the screen, the TV will have to be 80 inches before you’ll be able to see the difference between 4k and 1080p.

Even if your final output is still 1920×1080, you’re still going to get quite a bit of use out of 4k footage once you’re in post production. 4K footage is a whopping four times as many pixels as 1080p, and if you’ve ever had the experience of editing HD footage down to a final SD output, you know those extra pixels are a glorious luxury to have. It’s not uncommon to have a shot you’d like to crop and re-frame in post, and if you have four times the pixels, the amount of flexibility you have is enormous.

Additionally, shooting high resolution for green screen keying will make your keying process much simpler. With four times the data, your keying software should have an easier time differentiating the green pixels you want to key from the edges of your subject. Similarly, if you plan on doing any motion tracking, a more detailed image should help your tracker to stay on the points you’ve defined.

Now for the bad news. Much higher resolution images means much bigger files. The JVC GY-HMQ10 shoots to a variable bit rate h.264 file, which should be manageable, but if you’re editing in Final Cut Pro and have to trans-code to ProRes, file sizes are going to be enormous. If storage is a problem, plan on shooting in 4k selectively, and sticking to 1080p for the bulk of your footage.

It’s worth noting that with files being compressed to h.264, much of the color data will be lost. We’re excited to get our hands on some GY-HMQ10 footage to see exactly what we can do with it.

JVC has decidedly beat most camcorder companies to the punch by releasing the first ever handheld 4K camcorder at CES and it’s a doozy. Using the power of their newly released Falconbird processor, the camcorder’s 1/2 inch CMOS has more than 8.3 million active pixels and can deliver real-time 3840×2160 footage at 24p, 50p, and even 60p. What’s truly incredible is that at a time where most DSLRs and camcorders struggle to make Full HD, or 1080p footage record at 60p, JVC has already achieved 4K resolutions at the high frame rate. With this ability, JVC’s new camera, called the GY-HMQ10 should be able to give even high end camcorders a run for their money like the RED Scarlet and the new EOS 1D X from Canon. The only real issue most shooters may have is the size of the sensor. With more and more cameras sporting full 35mm sensor technology, JVC is decidedly behind the times on that front.

The camcorder records in the MPEG-4 format at up to 144 Mbps – much more than the typical 24 Mbps that AVCHD recording offers. JVC also claims that the camcorder can record up to 2 hours of footage to a single SDHC or SDXC memory card making it more than capable of being used at live events. As for the lens, the GY-HMQ10 has an f2.8 10x zoom with an optical image stabilizer making it a perfect handheld option. The camcorder also comes with a 3.5 inch touch LCD monitor and manual controls for audio. It has two balanced XLR connectors with phantom power which will come as a relief to those hoping for better audio quality from camcorders and DSLR cameras.

Oddly enough, JVC has included 4HDMI ports for delivering 4K real-time video feeds to a projector or monitor. This seems like an inconvenience since even plugging one cable into a monitor can quickly result in a jumble of cabling.

JVC is really counting on 4K to be the next big thing to hit both Hollywood and consumer’s homes with this announcement. Of course with a price of $4,995, that could very well be the case. We’ll just have to see if hardware and software editing technology can keep up. No one wants to wait several hours for a piece of footage to render.

In what seems like a theme this year, Canon just announced at CES the refresh of their Vixia camcorder lineup which sports an improved CMOS sensor, MP4 recording, DLNA, and a WiFi module allowing shooters to share their content on DLNA televisions and social sharing sites. Their new lineup of camcorders called the M and R series record to 8 or 32GB of flash memory, has an improved sensor which allows better capture in low light, a anew new Intelligent Image Stablization system. We actually got to try Canon’s last image stablization version and we’re quite impressed with how steady they kept the image even though the camcorder was so small in a shooter’s hand. So we’re really excited to see how their new image stablization performs.

In addition, the camera allows dual codec recording, giving users the option to record in AVCHD and MP4 – something usually only found in higher end camcorders. The Vixia also sports a sensor that can see as low as 1.2 lux which is also not often seen in consumer devices.

The camera lineup will still keep many of the same features that led to its success in the past such as Canon’s Smart AUTO mode that intelligently detects and analyzes brightness, color, an distance to select the best preset for shooting. A touch panel LCD screen where you can set focus, Cinema-Look Filters that give the image a cinematic look, and relay recording between two cards for uninterrupted video recording.  The M series will include a 10X HD video lens as well as a 3.0 inch touchscreen and has a wider dynamic range than it had before giving you more bright and dark values to work with in post.

The M camcorder lineup will be available for $749.99, $649.99, and $549.99 while the R series will be available for $549.99, $449.99, and $349.99 respectively. Most of the camcorders are similar in function but have a few different features such as flash memory size that account for the difference in price.

Nearly everyone the world over celebrates some sort of “Winter Festivity” and it’s the most beautiful time of year for gathering great video of annual traditions along with a reflection of the past year and getting a year-ender together to share with family and friends.

Whether you’re making a holiday video filled with all the pageantry and glorious color, or have taken on the daunting task of making a year-end compilation, there are a few things you can do to make your task a little bit easier, more fun, and artistic.

I’ve covered the holidays for decades and have made many year-ender and ‘this is your life’ compilation videos. Next week, I’ll have some tips on getting those year end compilations together. This week: a few tips for shooting the holiday events, for a special video to give as a gift to family and friends.

If you have some holiday video tips, pass them along and we’ll share them with our wonderful readership, too.

-1- Let the magic of light and color work for you. Here’s a few tricks for shooting holiday lights. first thing’s first: You have to use manual focus and manual iris for these tricks, and a tripod or some other steadying device.

If you see a specially vibrant over-the-top light display on someone’s home, ( or your own!) don’t make fun of it, rather make use of it… the lights can make for a beautiful backdrop portrait. Set your camera and subject across the street from the lit up home, so you’re not too close. Too many people get right in front of the lights for a photo op, and lose a lot of the beauty of the shot. By setting across the street, your lights will be in softer focus, be more plentiful, won’t overwhelm the scene, and your subject will stand out from the background better. Read the rest of this entry »