What if you could make professional grade video the first time you picked up a camera? Videomaker’s new free report “8 Tips for a Stellar First Video” will show you how to become a better videographer on your first shoot.
Maybe you’ve wanted to make video for a while; maybe you just caught the video bug recently. Either way, something’s holding you back – maybe you’re worried that any video you make will look amateurish next to those made by long-time video enthusiasts. We know that initial step can be daunting when you feel like you don’t know the first thing about making video. You feel the passion to create and share video stories but it seems like there’s so much to learn first.
No more excuses! Videomaker’s “8 Tips for a Stellar First Video” is exactly the resource created for you. It’s written with the eager young newbie in mind, so you don’t need to have any familiarity with video equipment to get the most out of these tips.
Learn:
How to make sure that, before you even start, you have everything to finish
The Two Easy Steps to Handling your Video Camera like a pro… and getting the same great footage.
How to organize your thoughts into a video story
The Secret to shooting footage that looks good on any screen.
How video is different than real life… and how you can use that to your advantage.
The single most important tip for keeping an audience interested. This remarkably simple tip will free you from the old style of thinking that holds you back and let you see the world the way the video pros do.
The biggest mistake that can sink a first video and how you can avoid it.
“8 Tips for a Stellar First Video” is a quick and easy read for even the greenest video lover, but we didn’t want to leave you with obvious, philosophical tips that wouldn’t actually help you. That’s why we’ve picked the eight tips that you can start applying the moment you pick up a camera.
You can pick these tips out after hours of studying film theory or you figure them out after days of trial and error – or you can get them all here, collected in one place, in just minutes.
Have you ever had an idea for a documentary, but didn’t know where to start? Learn how to make a documentary with Videomaker’s upcoming Documentary Production Webinar. We will help you obtain the knowledge you will need to organize your documentary, tell your story effectively, and improve your chances for distribution success. With the proper techniques applied to your documentary, you can affect how the viewer perceives the issue while increasing the overall impact of your documentary.
Following the presentation, all registrants will receive a copy of our special report Mastering the Documentary Interview. In addition to valuable information and a free special report this event will also include a live Q&A segment; our team answering your questions. Videomaker’s Documentary Production Webinar starts at 11:00 AM (PST) on Wednesday, October 19th, so be sure to sign up soon!
Not interested in Documentary Production? Videomaker’s weekly Webinar Training Series is taught by our experts and features a wide variety of video production and post production topics including Advanced Shooting, Green Screen and Special Effects, Advanced Editing, Lighting for Video, and much more.
First a new pricing strategy, and now this. Netflix just announced that it will be splitting its streaming and by-mail video rental service into two brands hosted on two separate websites. Netflix will keep its original name for their once popular streaming service, but will be reorganizing it’s by-mail rental service into a different brand called Qwikster (a name that promises to bring about a fair bit of irony in the future). This comes on the heels of news that Netflix lost almost 1 million subscribers due to its new pricing policies and that various partners such as Starz and Sony are looking to pull out of their popular streaming service.
As anyone can imagine, this has come as a bit of a shock to current Netflix subscribers which prompted CEO Reed Hastings to respond to these concerns in a video online. In it, he tries to put out a few fires by revealing that both websites will be able to communicate with one another allowing subscribers’ ratings and favorites to stay consistent. He also tried to put a good face on the split by mentioning that it will allow them to update and improve both websites faster.
Whatever the case will be, this is certainly ominous news. Especially with new streaming services entering the market from companies like Redbox, Amazon, Sony, and even Facebook, it will be harder than ever to convince subscribers to try and learn how to use both services. Even more so when a splitting company usually signals a tanking market.
Of a more ominous nature, is the second guessing of many video streaming content providers. Just last month, Fox announced their plans to delay new shows on Hulu by 8 days. This was probably to encourage more people to buy Hulu Plus and other premium services, but is a blow to the traffic Hulu would usually receive. In a similar manner, Sony’s pullout from Netflix was probably an effort to drive more people to its streaming service called Crackle. Both of these events seem to be the start of an unfortunate trend of content providers leaving popular services. The logical conclusion is that instead of logging into one site for all of your content needs, it will be necessary to log in to several websites at once to watch programming. This seems like a disaster for both companies like Netflix and for the public at large. The simple truth is, everybody wants to have an easy way to access all of their favorite content without having to jump through several hoops to do it. Hopefully sometime in the future these companies will agree….but you shouldn’t hold your breath on this one.
Have you decided to learn video editing, but don’t know where to begin? The Videomaker Basic Editing Webinar is aimed at answering your hardware and software questions, as well as providing information on how to use pacing, transitions, motivated edits, and more in order to start editing great videos. By learning the techniques and information taught in our webinar, you’ll be able to tell a more concise and entertaining story.
Following the session, all registrants will receive a copy of our special report Time Control. In addition to valuable information and a free special report, we also include a live Q&A; our team answering your questions. This event starts at 11:00 AM (PST) on Wednesday, August 3rd, so be sure to sign up soon!
Do you already have a firm grasp on basic editing techniques? Check out Videomaker’s weekly Webinar Training Series. It features a wide variety of video production and post production topics including Green Screen and Special Effects, Advanced Shooting, Lighting for Video, and much more.
Lighting green screens can be tricky. There are many factors that must be addressed in order to get results that are not only effective, but believable. Properly lighting your green screen is a good place to start, and lighting your subject in a manner that sells the effect will also help. However, where you place your subject in relation to the background will determine the ease in which you can key the it in post production.
The problem with light is that it wants to go everywhere, and where it can’t go it will certainly leave a shadow. This becomes a problem when attempting to light a green screen. If your subject’s key light throws a shadow on the background, it will be harder to key out during post production. If the green screen reflects onto your subject, your subject will be bathed in a greenish hue, which will obliterate any chance of the effect looking real.
There is a simple way to solve both of these green screen lighting blunders: pull your subject further away from the green screen. By increasing the distance between the subject and the background you’ll be able to avoid shadows cast by your subject. Increasing the distance between your subject and the green screen will also decrease the possibility of light reflecting off of the green screen and onto your subject. Additionally, it’s a good idea to keep the green screen limited to one wall of your studio. Outfitting an entire studio in a green screen chroma may seem like a good idea, but it will lead to a higher risk of spill since the light will be reflecting off of each surface.
Understanding how light behaves will help you get around problems it can cause. Reducing the amount of blunders in your green screen lighting will ultimately save you time and energy during post production while allowing you to create believable green screen effects.
Good videographers seek out projects that challenge them, taking them out of their comfort zone and requiring them to hone new skills and refine old ones. With this in mind, Videomaker has developed a comprehensive line of Video-On-Demand titles covering virtually every detail of good video production. Order 3 or more and save 30%. Learn more.
Interested in more video tips? Sign up for Videomaker’s free email training course. This free tip series is designed to help you improve your video production skills, fast.
In a world where planes are constantly flying further and faster and where particles can be accelerated nearly to the speed of light, it’s no surprise that a new type of data storage has been proven to be faster than anything on the market. Scientists at UC San Diego performed an experiment that showed phase changing memory can beat some of the best off the shelf flash memory on the market. They were using a prototype phase changing module called Onyx made by Micron.
Of course this was only when writing small bits of data at a time. When doing so, the memory was able to achieve speeds that were 70 to 120 percent faster than its flash counterpart. When writing larger chunks of data, the drive was actually slower than flash memory. Nonetheless, the phase changing memory was faster at reading data of any size and placed a significantly smaller load on the CPU when used. Phase changing memory also has the added benefit of being able to write on demand without having to keep tables or logs like flash memory does.
Besides the uptick in speeds, the most fascinating part of phase changing memory is how it works. These chips work by storing data in a metal alloy called chalcogenide. In order to write memory, small bursts of heat switch sections of the material between its crystalline state or an amorphous arrangement that represent either a 0 or a 1. These 0s and 1s are then translated by the CPU into a digital file.
In practical terms, this increase in read times means that RAID drives and internal drives using this kind of memory should help editors save time when editing and rendering – especially in an era of large HD video file sizes. Also, this memory has been shown to have an average life of 100 million write cycles compared to a paltry 100,000 for NAND flash, meaning that these drives might be around just long enough to seem rather slow.
Video editors are constantly demanding more of their computer’s software. So it’s been interesting to note that in a coincidentally close space of a couple of days, two of the world’s largest software manufacturers released new operating systems. Windows released a sneak preview of their newest operating system, Windows 8, while Apple just released their newest iteration of Mac OS X code named Lion at their WWDC conference today.
Taking a close look at both operating systems, it is clear that the latest trend in Silicon Valley is to make operating systems for PCs that are either similar or downright copies of tablet and phone operating systems. The most visible example is Window’s newest operating system. It has adopted the colorful modern tile look of both its discontinued Zune player and its newest Windows Phone operating systems. Though this hasn’t fared well in the cell phone market (some carriers are calling Windows Phone sales “disappointing”), Windows is hoping it will catch on with PC users. That’s one steep hill to climb, but since Windows will no doubt be looking to avoid the type of drama surrounding the release of Vista, they have all the motivation in the world to get it right the first time.
Similarly, Apple’s announcement of Mac OS X Lion at WWDC 2011 showed that Apple is either trying to kill the mouse or is headed in a similar direction as Windows. Apple introduced integrated multi-touch “gestures” into their latest operating system allowing users to keep windows in full screen without closing them, t0 scroll a webpage quickly, and to keep windows organized all with the use of the computer’s trackpad. Though these are great features, one has to wonder how enticing the software will be for those working on a more traditional style PC like the Mac Pro. Nonetheless, it was interesting to note how similar the presentation for Lion and for Apple’s iOS 5 for the iPhone actually was. There’s no doubt these companies are trying to close the gap between cell phones, tablets, and PCs. The only question is, by joining the software from three very separate devices with three distinct uses, are they sacrificing too much for the PC user to be satisfied? Only time will tell.
In the summer of 2010 I directed, edited, co-wrote and co-composed music (among several other odd-jobs) for my first feature film, The Legend of Action Man, a comedy which we shot on a low-budget of $200. The question we got the most at the Q&As after our screenings was how we were able to pull off making a full-length movie on that low of a budget.
First of all, if you’re taking the true Independent “DIY filmmaking” approach, don’t pay for anything or anyone if you can’t help it; a majority of our little budget came solely from things we couldn’t make by ourselves (ie we have a scene with a functioning ice-cream truck in the movie). You’d be surprised how many people are willing to work for virtually nothing just to be in a movie, especially if people are going to see it. If we wanted to use a location like a restaurant or a business (or an Ice Cream Truck), we told them we would put their logo in the credits. In our case we got great discounts from the owners just from having their business featured in the movie (hey, just because you’re independent doesn’t mean you’re too good for a little product placement).
As for the cast, if we wanted to use an actor we’d promise them an IMDb credit, footage for their reel, a chance to see themselves on the big screen, and lunch (note: we didn’t always give them lunch). However, when it comes to pulling a tightly knit cast and crew together (and for that matter, one you don’t plan on paying), make sure you hire people that you trust and believe will really put their hearts into your project. Being a director is tricky; sometimes you have to be a little assertive, but you don’t want to be halfway through shooting and have your lead actor drop out!
I think what a lot of filmmakers today don’t realize is that we live in this unique digital day-and-age where filmmaking is so much more accessible and affordable: we shot with DV tapes, we cut the whole thing together on a laptop, we bought props and costumes at goodwill, we borrowed any equipment we could get our hands on and we squeezed every penny to make this movie. So the best advice I can give to you is finish that script, pick up a camera and just make your movie! Don’t get me wrong; making a feature film is a big mountain and an uphill climb, but its not impossible. Even if you have to make it on a shoe-string, if you have a story worth telling, a talented cast and you’re willing to make mistakes and work some long hours, you can’t help but make something that’s worth watching.
Andy Young lives in Austin, TX and continues to make low-budget independent films. His movie The Legend of Action Man is now available to buy on Amazon.com.
Well, it’s finally about to happen. Intel announced that they’re getting into the world of high capacity drives by releasing a new line of solid-state drives all the way up to 600 gigabytes. The new drives are the third generation of Intel’s SSD 320 Series. The new series is an upgrade to the high-performing X25-M SATA by using Intel’s new 25nm manufacturing process. With this process, Intel is able to shrink the size of the chips that the flash memory is held on making it possible to fit more flash memory within a standard 2.5 or 3.5 inch drive enclosure.
The new series comes in 40, 80, 120, 160, 300, and 600 GB flavors and will be using a 3 gigabit per second data interface for fast transfers. However, with 6 Gb/s SATA interfaces available, it’s curious why Intel decided to go with the much slower 3 Gb/s interface. The solid-state drives boast up to 39,500 input/output operations per second of random reads and drops to 23,000 IOPS of random writes for their high capacity drives. Read and write speeds have also doubled from their last drives at 270 MB/s and 220 MB/s.
This announcement finally makes solid-state drives large enough to handle the typical HD workload at speeds much faster than any disk-based hard drive can achieve. Though the drives are rather expensive going all the way from $89 for the 40 GB model to a whopping $1,069 for the 600 GB model, they can still be worth the cost for many who need better read/write times and reliability. Many of these drives will still be out of reach for the average video enthusiast, but this latest announcement from Intel shows that the technology is heading in the right direction. It’s no stretch of the imagination to think that someday a few years from now almost every video editor could be using a RAID full of inexpensive, 1 TB, solid-state drives.
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