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.

Download your FREE report 8 Tips for a Stellar First Video and start learning today!

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.

Making great videos begins with understanding lighting factors such as light temperature and lamp type, as well as design and set up. Videomaker’s Lighting for Video Webinar will cover studio and outdoor set ups, light theory, fluorescents, LEDs, accessories and will help you solve some of those difficult lighting situations.

In addition to valuable information, this event will also include live Q&A. So, if you have a question, be sure to bring it.  We’ll be kicking things off at 11:00 AM (PST) on Wednesday, October 12th. Be sure to sign up soon!



Do you already have a strong knowledge of how to light for video? Videomaker offers a different webinar each week. Check out our weekly Webinar Training Series; it’s taught by our experts and features a wide variety of video production and post production topics including Advanced Shooting, Green Screen and Special Effects, Documentary Production, Advanced Editing, and much more.

Videomaker’s Green Screen and Special Effects Webinar will teach you how to make the most of green screen and special effects illusion techniques – even with a limited budget.  One of the greatest things about making movies is being able to create any reality you choose. With the aid of green screens and special effects, even the most impossible scenarios can be a believable part of your video.

Following the presentation, all registrants will receive a copy of our special report The Keys to Chromakey.  In addition to valuable information and a free special report, there will be a live Q&A segment; our team answering your questions. This webinar is tomorrow — Wednesday, July 20th at 11:00 AM (PST) — so be sure to sign up soon!

Not interested in this topic? 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.

Everyone likes filling our surveys – giving opinions is fun and cathartic – it makes us feel like we have a little control over our environment. Videomaker is conducting a very short survey and we’d love you to participate to help Videomaker develop new training materials for the upcoming year.

As most readers of our publication and website know, Videomaker offers a varied collection of training materials from webinars and online video tutorials to books, DVDs and our well-known monthly periodical.

We’re in the process of planning new subjects for our training DVDs and we need your help. We want to know how we can best serve you, so let us know what YOU want to see from Videomaker.

You have a voice – we have many ears! Here’s your opportunity to be a ‘contributor’ to Videomaker’s decision making! Below are the titles of some of the planned features, what else would you like to see? We’re looking for your feedback, please check out our survey to give us your opinions – we’re listening!

Some suggestions are:

• Making Music Videos
• Shooting Commercials
• Low Budget Make-up Effects
• Fair Use & Music Copyright for Video
• Advanced Lighting Techniques
• Making Video Look Like Film
• Multi-cam Shooting & Editing
• Making Your First Video: an Introduction

So check out the survey, add your own comments and if you know of someone just starting out in their video production endeavors, please send the survey their way. A few of these subjects might be on the higher level of expertise, while others are planned to suit beginners just starting out who want to just learn how to make a video from the very first few steps. Our survey also has a selection for you to enter your ideas of training videos you’d like to see, so check it out and have your voice be heard!

TAKE OUR SURVEY TO HELP DECIDE OUR UPCOMING VIDEOMAKER TRAINING SERIES

Videomaker has been publishing video production tips and techniques for 25 years and on June 2, Matt York and Videomaker celebrated our Silver Anniversary with a party for family and friends. During the event, Matt sent a live-streaming message to our readers, contributors and a host of others who helped make Videomaker the success it is today. The following is the text from Matt’s live streaming speech.

Welcome to our humble abode and thank you for coming.
As you look around you will find the people most responsible for Videomaker’s success. I want to extend my warmest appreciation to each and every one of them. Starting with my son, daughter and wife (all of whom currently work here), thanks for putting up with me and my devotion to this company that, at times, may have overlapped into our family a bit too much. Thanks especially to my wife Patrice for being the keeper of the purse strings. She and I are a perfect balance, as I tend to be the visionary risk-taker and she’s the pragmatic voice who keeps us grounded in reality. As Vice President she has been and remains “the other half of the sky” involved in every important decision ever rendered here.

Outside of my family, I want to recognize the people who I approached 26 years ago when I first had the idea for this magazine. One of our local business leaders, Howard Isom, and I spoke last week about the day we first met. Howard said I was just a hippie living in the woods with a crazy idea and that no one had ever published an international magazine in this town before.

Some of the people who I pitched actually invested in Videomaker (Howard wasn’t one of them), but Garey Weibel (the then Publisher of our local newspaper, the Chico Enterprise Record) did. Some would say that Garey and I couldn’t have been more different, but we developed a keen relationship based on mutual respect. Garey’s advice over the first few years was indispensable and more than once helped save this fledgling company from disaster. In one harrowing incident in our earliest days, Garey literally rescued the company from the brink of disaster, contributing venture capital when it looked like this start-up was going to run out of cash.

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