What’s Your Video Style? Take this quiz for fun and see what style of video best suits your personality. Agree or disagree with your results? Tell us why below!

1) What’s your Favorite thing about putting together a video?

A) I like working in a nice quiet studio, where I can devote all my attention to my work.

B) I like working with video tools and equipment. I’m a real hardware fanatic!

C) I like working with people. They fascinate me!

D) I like creating an ambiance, something that will really draw the audience into the movie!

E) I like the action. I’m not happy unless I’m in the center of the storm!

F) I like the chance to be creative, to experiment with new ideas!

2) What’s the most important thing you look for when you watch a video?

A) I look to see how well it’s technically put together. I appreciate good craftsmanship.

B) It has to look good! People aren’t going to watch it if it looks like it was made by amateurs.

C) I like a good story, something to really make me care about the people on the screen.

D) A good soundtrack! A movie is boring if it doesn’t have a some tunes!

E) I want to see real people in real situations! I want to see how things really happened.

F) Did it teach me something new? I always want to add to my knowledge!

3) If you could pick anyplace in the world to shoot a video, would you choose to shoot:

A) The Great Barrier Reef in Australia?

B) The Roman Catacombs in Italy?

C) The Great Pyramids of Egypt?

D) The Oktoberfest Celebration in Germany?

E) The Running of the Bulls in Spain?
F) Bodie Ghost Town in California?

4) How would you describe yourself?

A) Meticulous and Logical!

B) Dark and Mysterious!

C) An Avid Story-teller!

D) Epic, Bigger than Life!

E) A Romantic at Heart!
F) Curious and Restless!

5) What’s your Biggest Reward in Making Video?

A) The Satisfaction of a Job Well Done.

B) The Appreciation of an Audience

C) Making a difference in the way people see the world.

D) The Chance to do Something Challenging and Creative

E) Seeing People’s Faces when they see themselves in your video

F) Seeing your Work on the Big Screen.

If you answered mostly A, you are an EDITOR. Shooting video is fun, but you have a real appreciation for the craft and artistry that comes afterward. You know that every snip and splice has the potential to make a story come to life, and there’s nothing you like better than turning that raw footage into something compelling.

If you answered mostly B, you are a LIGHTING FANATIC. You know that a video isn’t worth anything if you can’t tell what’s going on in it. Your standards for lighting are strict and your videos benefit from your attention to detail. Whether it’s creating a noir atmosphere with shadows or illuminating an interview subject, you know that lighting is key to interesting, engrossing videos. You’re always up to meet the challenges that other videographers forget to prepare for.

If you answered mostly C, you are a DOCUMENTARIAN. You love story telling and you can find the story in anything. Whether it’s something as small and silly as a nature film about salamanders or as heart-felt and personal as a family biography, you’re aces at finding those telling moments that illustrate the big picture. You love exploring human drama and you’re not shy about capturing the best – and worst– with your camera.

If you answered mostly D, you are a SOUND FANATIC. You’re the person people turn to when they need to capture the soft sounds of birdsong or muffle out the interrupting din from the nearby highway, because you understand how important sound is. When you do your job right, the results are practically invisible. Audiences may not realize why they like your videos, that your perfectly-synced sound effects and carefully selected music are what’s pulling them in, but you know the secret. You’re always up to meet the challenges that other videographers forget to prepare for.

If you answered mostly E, you are an EVENT VIDEOGRAPHER. You’re a daredevil; you like being right in the middle of the action. You don’t shirk from a challenge and you’re not afraid to take on assignments where you only have one shot to get it right – weddings, celebrations, speeches, anything where there’s a vortex of activity, you’ll be there with your camera in hand. Action is your watchword!

If you answered mostly F, you are a JACK OF ALL TRADES. You’re always exploring, always searching for something new. You never accept that you’ve learned enough, and you’re always striving to improve your video-making skills. Your creativity and inquisitiveness show through in your videos, which are continuously changing and maturing.

For tips and tricks with all sorts of video, join Videomaker‘s  eNews electronic newsletter, chock full of the info and advice you crave, it’s just what you need to satisfy that nagging curiosity.

When we find an interesting video project, we like to point it out to our readers. Videomaker’s Facebook friend Charlie Essers (@PushEject) recently shared a corporate video he made to help promote a new craft beer brewery in Los Angeles.  I thought this was a great example of the effective use of B-roll, so I wanted to share: Welcome to the Golden Road

You can see some excellent use of B-roll in this video, with shots of people enjoying the product are interspliced between interviews with the brewery founders. As you know, B-roll is essential for a number of reasons.  First, it helps break up the monotony caused by a series of talking head interviews.  There’s not much visual interest in watching people talk about the. Second, B-roll is useful for hiding cuts and splices.  Oftentimes, when you’re shooting an interview, your subject will ramble on or pepper their responses with “um”s and “you know”s.  Obviously, you’ll want to cut out the chaff to make a more compelling, dynamic interview.  But if you don’t have good B-roll to smooth over the transition, you’ll get something akin to Homer Simpson’s infamous interview on the fictional magazine show “Rock Bottom.”

Finally, in this video, you can see that the B-roll thematically fits the purpose of the video, promoting the Golden Road Brewery. If you haven’t shot enough B-roll before you start editing, you might be forced to fill the gaps with images that don’t help bolster your video’s point — for example, random crowd shots or street scenes. In this video, every second of B-roll helps to drive home the goal by showing happy customers using the product.  Fancy work!

How to Make a Viral Video? Make a Cute Cat Video

Having a successful YouTube viral video is the dream of nearly every person who hits the upload button, but the fact of the matter is you might have a better chance of getting hit by the proverbial lightening bolt than having a successful viral video. (Remind me to tell you my lightening bolt story later.)

According to Most Watched Today, viral cat videos are one of the biggest group of videos people watch and share, as this “Catvertising“  commercial spoof tries to illustrate – as well as Kittywood, a spoof on a Hollywood-type production company that only makes cat videos.

Viral videos today are what catchy jingles and slogans were pre-internet. Remember “Where’s the Beef”? How about “Got Milk?” or “Don’t Leave Home Without It”. These particular slogans were so popular that they took on a life of their own and are still parodied today. Read the rest of this entry »

We live in an age were most every family in America owns a video camera and editing software, even if they never sought out either. Anyone with an internet connection can put their video online where it can be seen by everyone on the planet. The web has given anyone who wants it, access to far more information than any film school alone can provide. The world of video production has entered a golden age. There are no more excuses not to pursue whatever goals you hope to achieve with video.

In the late ’90s, when the average middle-class American could purchase video editing software to run on the home computer they already owned, it was clear that we were entering a new era of video production. Consumer camcorders were already common, but with non-linear editors entering people’s homes, so too, was a quality of production reserved only for professionals or those willing to spend thousands on uni-tasking equipment.

Consumer video production stayed at that point for about 10 years, as individuals shot SD footage on their home camcorders and edited on their PC or Mac.  In the last few years, however, we’ve seen a surge forward in the process of consumer level video production. It’s a result of computers and cameras getting cheaper, and moving into every electronic device in the home.

When The Blair Witch Project came out, people were amazed that someone could shoot an entire film that would be released world wide, on a simple consumer camcorder. Today, an iPhone 4S could easily take better quality video and cost significantly less. The only reason, I believe, that we haven’t seen a nationally released film shot entirely on a smartphone yet is simply because an upgrade in picture quality and functionality can be purchased for under a thousand dollars.

It’s not just the cost of quality cameras and accessibility of editing software that is bringing good looking video to the masses, it’s also the size. It turns out that a fluid-head tripod capable of supporting a 3lb camcorder doesn’t cost a lot of money. The same can be said about slider dollies, jibs, and even stabilizers.

Of course some equipment is as pricey as it’s ever been. Lights and microphones, for example, don’t seem to be getting any cheaper, but we live in the age of the internet. It’s much easier to learn from others about how to build your own lighting rig, or even record studio quality ADR straight into your laptop or iPad.

Cameras and editing systems are getting cheaper by the day, and the free flow of information on the internet is making it easier than ever to break into video production. As a result, Hollywood is losing its hold on the film industry, which is a good thing for both consumers and producers of great video.

We frequently get questions from video creators about the rules for making use of other creators’ work in their own projects.

If a piece of art was created so long ago that its copyright has expired and it’s since fallen into the public domain, you’re free to make use of it any way that you want. (To learn more about using archival footage in your videos, check out our  informative Archival Storytelling book) But if a piece of art is still under copyright, you’ll want to make sure that you’re in the clear. Most U.S. Creators are aware of a legal doctrine here in the States called “fair use,” an exception to copyright law that lets you make use of copyrighted material for your own artistic purposes. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of confusion about exactly what constitutes fair use. Let’s try and clear up some of the misconceptions so you can better understand when you can incorporate others’ material into your videos.

(First, please be aware that nothing said by Videomaker should be construed as legal advice. If you’re really worried about your rights, you should consult an attorney or legal expert before you make any rash decisions.)

Here are some common misconceptions that we see from video creators:

“This counts as Fair Use because I gave credit to the original artist.” Giving credit where it’s due is always a best practice – and just good manners. However, giving credit does NOT instantly bestow fair use protection upon you. At best, a polite tip of the hat may encourage the original artist to allow you to use their work for free. But this is entirely up to the artist’s discretion. They don’t have to let you use their work just because you acknowledged that they are the original creator and, if they don’t like what you’ve done, they can still try to make you remove it.

“I’m not making any money off of this, so it must be fair use.” Again, whether or not you make money can be a consideration in fair use, but it is not dispositive. In fact, some fair use works can be sold for profit. The fact that you’re not profiting may again make the original artist more sympathetic to your case, but it doesn’t mean that you’re automatically covered by fair use.

“I found this original artwork on the Internet, so obviously it’s free for me to use.” Just because an artist places his or her work on the Internet does not mean that they are giving you carte blanche permission to use it as you will. The same copyright restrictions that apply offline still apply online.

Again, acknowledging that you don’t own the original artistic work, giving credit to the original artist or using a work without any intention to profit will often encourage an original artist to let you use his work, but it does not necessarily mean that your work will fall under fair use.

You’ll always want to make sure that you’ve got your rights protected when you put together a video project.  Besides Archival Storytelling, you can get more help in keeping your project legally in the clear with our Indie Film/Video Legal Documents DVD.

“Today, everybody’s a filmmaker.”  That’s the message of director Wim Wenders (“Paris, Texas” and “Wings of Desire” among many other films, as well as music videos for U2 and The Talking Heads) as he introduces a new innovative video competition in partnership with the pen and watchmaker, MontBlanc. Launched in September, the competition, titled “The Beauty of a Second” is designed to celebrate the 190th anniversary of the invention of the Chronograph by Nicolas Rieussec, which was able to record time to an accuracy of one fifth of a second, quite a feat in 1821.

“One of the great things about cinema is how it makes us aware of time.  Each film consists of many brief moments of life that altogether create a unique and new space in time.”  If you’re familiar with the project, or if you’re paying close attention to the tile of the competition, you’ll realize that the emphasis here is definitely on “brief.”

The MontBlanc video competition is for films one second in length.  As Wenders eloquently points out, every video we shoot is a series of one-second moments.  But what if you as a videographer set out specifically to capture the perfect one-second on film?  Would it be a moment in nature?  The start of a smile on a child’s face?  A white shirt hanging to dry on a line?  How do you capture not only a beautiful moment, but perhaps even a compelling story in just one second?  Maybe it’s not possible, but that’s precisely the goal of this competition.  And from the entries so far, it looks like many videographers are capturing great moments in very small cuts (or, more precisely, in very precise edits).

Since the competition opened, the first three submission timeframes, or “rounds,” have been completed.  As of this writing, we’re mid way through round four.  The final round will finish on February 12th.  At the conclusion of the contest, Wim Wenders will select the winning one-second film.  Once you’ve viewed a few dozen of the one-second clips, you’ll likely agree that choosing a winner seems like an impossible task.  Just how good can one second of footage be?

But the hosts of the website, “The Beauty of a Second,” provide an additional incentive for film makers and film buffs alike to join the fun. Even if you haven’t submitted your one second entry, you can assemble your favorite one-second films into a “Playlist,” thus editing together a film of up to sixty seconds, comprising sixty segments.

In our Videomaker blogs and forums we’ve talked frequently about outlets for creative videography and film making.  We’ve even reviewed the history of continuous shot films that can last as long as  eight hours.  This film contest from MontBlanc is clearly at the other extreme.

But MontBlanc is not the only outfit with a focus on the one-second film.

“The 1 Second Film” is a non-profit organization that has already produced what they describe as “the world’s biggest shortest film.”  The concept here is to produce a one-second animated film where each two frames of animation is comprised of a single collaborative painting.  (Actually, the twelve paintings that compose the animated film were produced at a kick-off party years ago.)  The one-second film will then be followed by a one hour credit roll, during which a “making of” documentary will run while all the contributors (the “producers”) to the non-profit will be listed.  The project’s beneficiary is The Global Fund for Women.  Producers, who have contributed everything from a few dollars to tens of thousands, include everyone from celebrities (Kevin Bacon, Steven Colbert, Kiefer Sutherland, and many more) to corporations (Apple, FotoKem, and others).

These two projects have a couple of things in common.  First, participants share a love of visual arts and experimental video.  Second, both projects are profoundly rooted in a sense of collaboration.  Both are worth paying attention to in 2012.