Movie titles, lower thirds and video bugs are a great way to add a professional element to your videos, brand your product, and enhance the viewer’s experience through additional information. However, if not done properly, titles and graphics can have the opposite effect, resulting in your video being labeled as the work of an amateur.

Videomaker’s The Art of Titles and Graphics Webinar will help you design titles and graphics that will increase the effectiveness of your message while adding value to your production. In our webinar, we will cover purpose, design and placement, as well as mistakes to avoid. You will learn how to create great-looking titles and graphics that are clean and professional.

Following the webinar, all registrants will receive a copy of a special report. In addition to valuable information and the free special report, The Art of Title and Graphics Webinar will also include a live Q&A segment; our team answering your questions. The Art of Title and Graphics Webinar starts at 11:00 AM (PST) on Wednesday, Feb. 8, so be sure to sign up soon!

Not interested in The Art of Titles and Graphics? Videomaker’s Webinar Training Series provides a wide variety of webinars that cover topics including Advanced Editing, Documentary Production, Lighting for Video, Advanced Shooting, Audio for Video, and much more.

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.

Anyone can point a video camera at something and press record. However, creating quality videos requires an understanding of basic video production concepts. This time, Videomaker takes video production back to the basics with the newest addition to our webinar training series: Basic Video Production.

Whether you’re interested in video production for your business or interested in improving your home movies and personal projects, our comprehensive Basic Video Production webinar will teach you the techniques needed to get a jump start on making better video. You will learn basic techniques such as shot composition, camera moves and controls, microphone and audio techniques, as well as lighting setups and techniques.

Following the webinar, all registrants will receive a copy of our special report “Handheld Shooting”. In addition to valuable information and a free special report, the Basic Video Production Webinar will also include a live Q&A segment; our team answering your questions. The Basic Video Production Webinar starts at 11:00 AM (PST) on Wednesday, Jan. 11, so be sure to sign up soon!

Not interested in Basic Video Production? Videomaker’s Webinar Training Series provides a wide variety of webinars that cover topics including Advanced Editing, Documentary Production, Lighting for Video, Advanced Shooting, Audio for Video, and much more.

The art of the long continuous shot has always been rooted in exhaustive pre-production planning, precision timing, disciplined talent, and more than just a little bit of luck. To shoot a video in one continuous take means getting the ball rolling (sometimes literally) and then following the action, hitting one’s marks along the way, until the climactic end. Filmmakers and videographers have been pushing the boundaries of the continuous shot, aiming for longer duration and challenging themselves, and their talent, to nail these long shots in single takes.

When thinking about long continuous shots, most of us start with Alfred Hitchcock’s iconic Rope. Rope (1948) is often casually referred to as the best example of a feature length movie shot in a single continuous take. The reality is, of course, that the film was shot in 10 segments, ranging in length from 4:37 to 10:06. (The maximum shot length at the time was approximately ten minutes due to the limit of the film magazine.) But even though Rope is not actually a single continuous shot, the length of the shots, the beauty of the transitional edits, and the resulting real time narrative is still astonishing 63 years after it was made.

Hitchcock may have been a pioneer of the marathon continuous shot, but he has been joined by others since. Robert Altman’s The Player (1992) features the famous opening sequence, a continuous shot with a duration of 7:47. Orson Welles’ 1958 Touch of Evil opens with a 3:20 continuous shot. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is famous for it’s long shots, as is Martin Scorsese’s The Godfather.

Much more extreme are examples like Timecode (2000) and Russian Ark (2002), both feature length films shot in a continuous take. Timecode, in fact, consists of not one, but four continuous shots displayed simultaneously with each shot occupying a quadrant of the screen and relying on the audio to direct the audience’s focus and to drive the storyline.  Russian Ark, is a 99 minute feature film shot in one continuous take; it follows the narrator (in first-person POV, no less) as he wanders from room to room in a palace (actually The Hermitage Museum) in St. Petersburg encountering figures from 300 years of Russian history.  Pretty heady stuff and a masterful technical achievement.

And, of course, one of the most extreme examples of the continuous take is Andy Warhol’s Empire. Made in 1964 with cinematographer Jonas Mekas, Empire consists of over 6 ½ hours of film shot at 24 frames per second and designed to be projected at 16 frames per second so that when viewed the film lasts for over eight hours. This would be mind (and rear-end) numbing in and of itself, but add the fact that the film is simply an unblinking still-mounted camera shot of the Empire State Building as it transitions from sunset to full darkness on the night of July 25^th, 1964, and you have a piece of cinema that is all but unwatchable.

But you don’t have to go to that extreme the next time you set up a long duration shot. YouTube and Vimeo are both replete with examples of continuous shot videos (at least in part made famous by our favorite contemporary example, the band OK Go and their continuous-shot music videos). While perhaps doing something of an end-around on the editing side, these unbroken shooting sessions are great exercises in pre-production work, from storyboarding to set-design and from directing to complex camera work. After checking out the examples we’ve described here, give the long continuous shot a try and let us know how it turns out.

You’ve completed production on your documentary, and now you’re ready to start post production. The only problem is you’ve got so much footage and archival elements it’s hard to keep everything straight, let alone organize it into a cohesive story. An easy way to sort through your thoughts is by using index cards to outline your story.

The first step to this process is to write each of the basic elements of your story on its own index card, including any photos or archival footage that you have acquired. Once you’ve completed this step, lay the individual pieces of your story (written on the index cards) out in front of you in a way that you imagine the story unfolding. If a story element doesn’t seem to work, move it to another place, or pull it out completely.

By using index cards to outline your story, you’re able to mix and match the individual pieces of the documentary’s structure. This will help add to the creative process by breaking the confines of a word document outline. So, take a moment to step away from the computer and mix things up – you may be surprised at what you come up with.

Learn how to plan, organize, and distribute documentaries successfully from our eBook The Videomaker Ultimate Documentary Set. Planning is the first step to creating your documentary and we show you where to start. In the second part of this PDF, we take a look at details such as casting, shooting, sound, and more. For the third part, it’s time to share your story, and not just with your friends. We explore several different avenues to get your documentary out there, from film festivals to public TV and the Internet.

Interested in more tips on Documentary Production? Sign up for Videomaker’s free Documentary Course. This free tip series is designed to help you improve your video production skills, fast. Learn More.

There are many transitions you can use when editing, such as a cut, dissolve, or fade. But how do you edit in a way that adds intrigue to your story? By using a split edit.

A split edit, also known as a J-cut or an L-cut, is a transition in which the audio and video of a clip are introduced at different times. For example, you may hear several seconds of a person being interviewed before you actually see the person who is speaking. This technique is used to add a dramatic effect to the scene and is relatively easy to accomplish. After selecting a clip, unlink the audio and video tracks. Once you’ve done that, you’re able to shorten or lengthen either track, depending on the desired effect.

Split edits are a great way to add spice to your everyday transitions while keeping the audience engaged in what’s happening on-screen. Whether you’re trying to add intrigue, maintain continuity, or just break from your normal editing choices, using a split edit can help.

To find out more about using split edits and the effect it can have your story, check out Tricks for J and L Cuts.

Interested in more tips on Editing? Sign up for Videomaker’s free Video Editing Course. This free tip series is designed to help you improve your video production skills, fast. Learn More.