Somewhere on this site I recall writing something about storytelling and video. If I was the kind of person who was organized I would be adding a link here to that very post so that you could be amazed at my brilliance!
Unfortunately I can’t find it right now but I strongly suspect it is in the Editing Tips section of the site… maybe.
Anyhoo that leads me rather seamlessly into what through no plan of mine, seems to be a theme for this weeks Friday Roundup… storytelling in video.
If you take a look at a bunch of videos that have achieved some success on the internet or even take a look at your own home videos you will notice one thing that stands out.
The successful videos or the more acceptable of your videos (to the audience) are those that in some way tell a story We humans just love that stuff and before you even get to shooting something or begin your editing it is a great idea to at least have a story in mind.
You don’t have to go all crazy and write a 50 page screenplay of your recent visit to the art gallery but you should at least have an outline (written down is better!) before you begin.
The benefit of this is that as you shoot or as you edit you are going in a direction, following a path so to speak which will invariably make the task easier and the final product more appealing.
I found a few resources this week covering the subject. Some are simple and some are more advanced but all in all they convey very well the need for story.
First up are four parts (so far!) of an ongoing series on storytelling from the Vimeo Blog. As I said, it is aimed more at the activity of making feature type videos but the lessons apply to all videos.
Next we have another tutorial this time from the TechSmith Blog (the guys that make ScreenFlow). This one is aimed at screencasts and again, maybe not exactly what you are doing yourself but very informative all the same.
And finally one with a more commercial bent as the guys from ReelSEO are prone to doing. This one really captures the essence of how the story creates the connection between the creator of the video and the intended audience.
Leading away from our main theme this week this is an interesting article again from the guys at ReelSEO on creating a successful YouTube Channel.
As usual the prolific PDToots has created another excellent instructional video for PowerDirector users.
This week he covers how to control the speed of your video by using keyframes and how to create a custom transition effect.
Next we have Jenna Marbles… Jenna who you may ask?
Well I guess the point of this post at the NYVS blog is not so much about watching her videos, although they are pretty good, but about what it is she is doing that makes her successful.
Time for something a little dry and technical I think!
Well… not really. This is a pretty good explanation that goes a long way in alleviating your possible aversion to having a separate audio recording system to your video camera.
Let’s face it, in the main any audio coming from a handheld video device is going to be of pretty poor quality yet it really isn’t all that hard to get external audio working for you.
From the people at Telestream who make the ScreenFlow video editor for Mac another solid tutorial on how to add transitions to video effects to create some unusual results.
And at last some footage from the soon to be released Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera.
I have embed the footage here but you may want to click on the link to view the original at on Vimeo to get the full effect.
The shots were taken “handheld” without any camera support or even a handheld stabilizer. Remember that this is super high resolution footage so any camera movement will be amplified.
There are panning shots where the motion seems to get blurred. Two causes of this are most likely that the cam was not stabilized and the footage itself has been further heavily compressed to upload to Vimeo.
The shots were taken in “film” mode so pay attention to the color, especially skin tones.
All in all I would say that it looks incredibly good and bodes well for the future of high resolution camcorders at the consumer level.