The truth in advertising? Boy is this an oxymoron!

Ok, let’s look at the humorous side of things.

This is a bit of the topic but bare with me for a minute. From lot’s listening to commercials especially on TV, it seems to be that there a few big words that advertisers use to sell anything and everything. The words are:
*Just
*Only
*But wait
*Low Low
*Limited offer
*Have your credit card ready

JUST AND ONLY

Let’s look at (Just) & (Only) for a moment. When the advertised price is $19.95, you have to figure if that is good price or not?  They don’t want you to think about this so they think for you,,by sticking in (just or only). Now you’re convinced you can afford it because after all it’s just or only $19.95

BUT WAIT

Another big one is (but wait) They get you excited about the offer but just when you’ve got out your cheque book and about to write, the guy announces in a somewhat louder voice (BUT WAIT!!) startling you and causing you to knock over your cup and spill coffee all over your pants. This is called the up-sell.

LOW LOW.

A new one they are using now is (low, low). The phrase they used previously was; (for the low price of), but they found that it wasn’t low enough to get you to buy, so they introduced (for the low, low price of) I wonder what would happen if they introduced (the, low, low, low price of)? It’s got to cost less?

LIMITED OFFER

by the way this doesn’t mean that by waiting you might not get one. It simply means the advertiser has only so much money to keep the commercial running. It’s his limitation not yours.

OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY

What about (operators are standing by) Personally I have never seen an operator standing by and I’ve watched a number of telethons and channel 9 programs and they are never (standing) they are always sitting by. So why don’t they tell the truth, that operators are sitting by. The reason is that (sitting by) doesn’t really make you feel like they want your business but if they are leaning up against a wall… then they do?

HAVE YOUR CREDIT CARD READY

(Have your credit card ready)?? C’mon, nobody has their credit card ready. That’s why all those operators are standing by and seem to do more listening than talking. It’s because the person on the other end of the phone is off in the bedroom looking for their credit card number.

CHOICES IN EDITING

We could spend days on this subject but I will try to keep to the basics. When you get your video to the editing stage you have to have choices to make things work.

I don’t care what your subject is. Make sure you a have master or wide shot of things. Then go in for a more detailed look at things (medium shots) and follow this with close-up shots of more fine detail.

Always include reactions to the subject matter (people observing things etc.) When you get to editing you have to have your coverage (all the shots needed to make editing work)

Make sure there is at least a three times change in image size from the master to the Medium and to the close-ups.

If you’re going to zoom into the subject, zoom in first without the camera running, focus on the subject then pull back. Start the camera; hold on the wide shot for at least 5 seconds, zoom in slowly to the close-up and hold for another 5 seconds. Now if you don’t like the zoom or you screw it up for any reason, you can use the wide shot and then go directly to the close-up. Without using this technique you are stuck having to use the zoom. Like I said it’s all about having choices.

Cutting on action is an old established editing technique. If you have a wide shot of someone sitting, have them do the same action again in a medium or close shot. Now when you get to editing you can cut the shot on the action of sitting, which will carry the edit nicely and make the cut seem smooth.

You don’t want to bore your audience so make sure you have a variety of shots both, wide, medium and close.

Never assume that just because you can read whatever it is on the sign in the background that your audience can too. No no, always get an insert shot of what is on the sign. (An insert, is a close-up of some object so that the audience gets the point)

Contact me about coming to do a workshop in your area.

Cheers, Barry

Night for Night lighting

Had a couple of question on lighting lately, so here is something on night for night lighting. I am assuming here that some of you have at least a couple of small lighting units to work with.

The thing about night lighting is your frame basically will have more dark areas than light areas. Lighting a set for a dark mood does not mean an absence of light. It is a way of controlling the highlight and shadow areas and arranging these areas in a way that they still have a balanced composition.

Underexposing the image to give the feeling of darkness will just result in a noisy and muddy looking picture in video and a grainy image in film. You simply have to have enough exposure to pull out the detail in what you are shooting.

A very big clue to doing effective night lighting is to make very sure that you do not light from the front (at the camera position). This will destroy the mood and give your picture a very flat look.

Try to bring your light across the frame from the side and let the light beams bring out the edges of objects but keeping the front side dark.

You have seen this many times in motion pictures where a man walks into a dark warehouse and is lit only by some streaks of moonlight coming from a skylight. If you look carefully you will notice that the side closest to the camera is often very dark but the subject is rimmed or outlined by the moonlight making the scene look very real.

By the way, the blue light is simply accomplished by putting blue gel over a tungsten balanced light you light to give the effect that the light is coming from the moon. We have come to accept this in movies, though in real life you will notice the moonlight really isn’t blue but more of a chalky green/blue colour.

Points to remember:
Light from the sides not the front
Have more darkness in the frame than Lightness. Set up the areas of light and dark for a pleasing balance Don’t simply underexpose the whole image.

Try it out and let me know how it works for you.

Top this for the most embarrassing moment story.

Some years ago I was a rock n roll drummer and spent more than a year in England playing and touring with some famous rock n roll legends, namely: Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and The Original Drifters.

At one point I got tired of the on the road gigs and wanted a nice steady gig where I didn’t have to travel.

I saw an add for a drummer in a house band playing 5 nights a week in a large ballroom in Bristol. This is perfect for me, I thought. So I answered the add. After checking me out on the phone the band leader asked me to come down to Bristol and audition for gig.

Now most of the material being played by this group was big band stuff like Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, the forties dance tunes. I always liked these tunes and felt very confident to play them.

So now it’s my audition night and I’m watching the band consisting of
15 musicians, most with musical degrees and all reading music. Gulp!! I thought, I don’t read very well. Too late now I said to myself, but I am A good faker and I can pull this off.

After one of the breaks the band leader invites me up to sit in. To my left is a music stand with charts for each song. It might as well have been written in Chinese as for as I was concerned. So we go through several tunes and each time the band leader looks up to me, I quickly focus my attention on the chart and make like I am reading. Now you got to remember I had a good feel for the songs even though I couldn’t read music.

After the audition the band leader comes ups and shakes my hand telling me I did great. I do my best to blurt out that I don’t read very well, but he is just fine with everything and gives me the job. So I go back to London, grab my drums and move to Bristol.

Now it’s my first night on the job. We play a few tunes and each time the band leader looks up to me I once again focus my attention on the music and fake this reading stuff.

About half way through the evening me and the band are cooking along with this Benny Goodman tune and it comes to an end. So I rest my sticks on the snare Drum and start fidgeting with the music. Then the leader waves the band on and we play the tune again. We get to end of the tune and I turn To the bass player and ask “Hey Charlie, why did we play that last tune twice”? He looks at me with head bowed and says “We didn’t…there was a 16 bar drum solo in the middle”.

So for 16 bars every guy in the band is counting time and yours truly is fidgeting through the music oblivious to what is happening.

I got fired on that my first night. I could have died on the spot. I felt completely destroyed as a drummer and it took me weeks to talk myself back from this disaster. I did eventually learn to read music, never very well but enough to prevent moments like that from happening again. And the point of this story is?

“The greatest learning always comes
from our errors and mistakes, not
from our successes”

The difference between “Quality” and “Quality”

The word quality get kicked around a lot in the video business, but what do we mean by the word quality?

Well today anyone can buy a reasonably good video camera that delivers what we might call quality images.

With the consumer hi-definition cameras on the market, anyone can say “look at the quality”. They are speaking here about the resolution of the image, more scanning lines means a sharper image. But it takes more than a camera to deliver what I call a quality image.

Good lighting, an understanding of exposure (especially with videos lower dynamic range than film) and an understanding of composition is what quality is all about, not scanning lines.

It blows me away how many amateur video makers still sweat about the picture quality and yet give no thought to learning how to shoot. Anyone can turn on a good video camera and get a good image.

Learning about the frame and and to compose elements in the frame is vital to the “quality” of the image. While we are on the subject. Remember that is is best to include not more than 6 elements in the frame if you want to keep strong composition.
(By elements I am talking here about major objects in the frame)

You can learn a lot about composition by simply renting some of the great films of the past. Citizen Kane is a good place to start. Any of John Ford’s Westerns would be other good films to study. One of my favourites for strong compostion is Sergio Leon’s Once Upon a Time in the West. This film has stunning images with great use of depth of field.

With a title like this you are probably wondering who cares?

Here is a simple explanation.
The hyper-focal distance is the near part of the depth of field (area of acceptable sharp focus) while your lens is focused at infinity. This means turning the focus ring on you cameras past 30 or 50 feet or whatever is the last mark on the focus ring of your particular camera.

Please note that depth of field does not drop of like the side of a cliff but rather tapers off.

With your lens stopped down to say an aperture of 11 or 16, as you look through the viewfinder you will get an idea of the area that is in focus.

Most Professional camera people have a chart with them that tells them that with a given aperture and a given distance from the subject and a given lens, (either a wide angle or telephoto) what the length of the depth of field is.

By pre-measuring the focus points as an actor moves around the set, the first A.C (assistant camera) person can keep the actor in focus.

Here is something you can use in your shooting.
For example lets say you set your zoom lens at the 50 millimeter setting on your video camera. I will assume that it has a target size similar to a 16mm film camera

Using an aperture of 5.6 with the camera lens focused at infinity. Let’s say the depth of field will be 40 feet 6 inches to infinity (now this is just for reference and I am not using actual values here)

The near part of this depth of field is called the “hyper-focal distance”. This is the 40 feet 6 inches mark. Now if you want to increase the depth of field all you need to do is change the focus from infinity to 40 feet 6 inches, (that’s right, reset the focus for this
point) and your depth of field will Increase by half as much again.

In other words the depth of field will now be 20 feet 3 inches to infinity. Trust me it works.

I often get asked about getting permission to use someone In your video and is permission necessary. The answer is yes and no. Let me explain further.

Years ago there was a Hollywood movie shooting in a big city and in the background of one scene was an elderly lady selling apples from her cart.

The lady was quite recognizable in the background of the shot and her son was a lawyer. As you probably guessed, the son sues the production company because they didn’t get a release form from the woman and gets his mom a nice chunk of change.

What this all comes down too is whether or not there is money to be gained that is over and above the costs to gain it.

In all the work I have done, whether it’s a TV spot, a corporate video, a TV drama, educational film or a PSA, I always get the people who are recognizable in the video to sign a release form. It’s just good business practisen to do so.

The release form I use I got from Hollywood Enterprise stationers In L.A. It’s a pretty detailed one sheet that uses the phrase “for valuable consideration” which is whatever you and the other party agree on for you to use their likeness. It also covers voice and other attributes.

It’s not likely that someone will sue you over your little educational backyard video that you show to you family and friends, but if you have something that makes your video very saleable and you make money from it you never know. So always get releases.

Sometimes you might get the release on an audio tape or saved on a wave file.
The important thing is to always get permission whenever possible.

Even putting up a poster saying something like “We are shooting an educational film here and would appreciate you staying out of the camera’s field of view” is better than nothing at all.

Outlines and Scripts for Promotional Videos.

I can’t remember the last time I presented a script outline to a client and had them say they didn’t like the concept. This is not because I hire the best writers in the world, although the ones I work with are truly gifted. It has more to do with the client not really knowing a good script outline from a bad one.

An outline is simply a short narrative of the script without any dialogue or scenes written in; it is more like a story.

If you are having a twenty-minute video produced, you can expect an outline to be in the range of three to five pages. This outline is the first step in getting both producer and client comfortable with the scenario.

The next phase is what we call a rough draft. This is mostly complete but still requires some changes. At this stage, we have narration or dialogue or both depending on whether we are having some dramatization portions).

The final stage is just that, a “final draft.” This is the completed script.
This is the show on paper, and if it works on paper, you’re off to the right start. It is very important that you approve and initial this final copy; this prevents any problems later concerning what is in the script.

The creative treatment involved in a script can cover a wide area. There really are no rules regarding creativity. However, looking back over the shows I’ve been involved in, there is one aspect that most of the scripts have in common. It is the wrap-up.

Having put out the message in the body of the video, we return to the important points and re-establish them at the end. The old sales adage “tell em,” “tell em,” and “tell em again” is worth remembering.

Writers and I often get into discussions surrounding the differences between the words on paper and the images a producer, director or director of photography has to translate these into. There is a phrase used in the film industry, which is… “And then they took the Alamo.” That’s only six words and pretty easy for a writer.

But let’s take a look at this phrase from the producer’s point of view.
Well, let’s see now. I’ve got 4,000 actors all in period costumes. I have cannons, guns, bullets, and my director has to bring them together in this battle.

The director must think clearly about breaking down the script and taking an honest and serious look at the prospects of pulling a scene off realistically. With that in mind, a major consideration at the script stage is how long the video will be.

The length of your video is an important consideration for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is financial. I’ve had a number of clients approach me wanting to know the cost of an hour-long production for their company.

I usually give them the price along with an oxygen mask to revive them.

However, I find it truly amazing that in our fast-paced society, some people still think someone is going to sit for an hour to watch anything less than a superb documentary, Gone with the Wind Two, or a very funny video starring a known actor doing the on-camera presentation.

It isn’t easy today to get anyone to sit and watch a video for an hour, or even half an hour. Provided you aren’t trying to capture something as complex as the taking of the Alamo, you can pack a lot of information into a video that is less than ten minutes and reap great benefits.

Any salesperson calling on a client has no difficulty with the statement:
“Have you got six minutes? I’d like to show you something.” Try this with a forty-five-minute video.
Much more info in my book “The Video Bible”
Get it at www.speakfilm.com

Here’s a really effective good lighting tip called the Rembrandt
Patch It is called that because this great painter used this
technique to paint his models.

Ok, so you’re outside on a sunny day and you are making a
Video and you have a subject for your shot.

If you place your subject with the sun directly on her with the
Sun coming over your shoulder she is going to squint!! No good!

If you have the sun over her shoulder and hitting you in the face
you will find she isn’t squinting but you will probably under expose
her face unless you can bounce some light into her face to reduce
the overall contrast. (In movies we do this all the time but use
lights and reflectors to help bring down that contrast) I am
assuming you don’t have the tools that I have.

Try positioning your subject so that the sun hits her face but in
such a way that you notice a triangular patch of light under her
eye that is the furthest from the sunlight. You may have to get
hour to turn her head slightly to see the patch but you will see
it.

Think of it as a circle with your subject in the middle and the sun
light coming from somewhere between your camera and 90
degrees to your right or left.

This is the Rembrandt Patch and is the same lighting as the great
painter used on his models. The only difference being that he
used the sunlight (diffused) coming in through a window on the
north side of his studio. He chose this because the shadows would
pretty well stay the same all day as apposed to shooting on the
south side where the shadows would continually move.

*A simple idea than most camcorder users don’t use”

It amazes me when I see friends who come back from a
vacation with numerous tapes of their trips and now have
to start figuring out what’s on each tape. Most of the time
It’s one big job trying to remember which church steeple that
was or in which city was the interesting grave yard etc. etc.
This is a very common problem that can be solved very
simply.

Go to your nearest plastic store and get a piece of rigid
plastic about 10” wide by 8 “high. You may be able to find
a piece around your house. Now take some thin black tape
and put it on the plastic so that you have 9 different areas.
You might divide the surface of the plastic by having
two vertical strips and two horizontal strips.

This will give you the 9 areas that you can write in with a dry erasable
marker. You could have less than 9 and you can make up your own designations on the plastic but you may want to have headings like: date, City, the tape number (important if you have lots of tape) time of day, and any other designations that will help you.

What you do now is keep this piece with you in your bag
whenever you are going to shoot something. You simply
make sure the camera lens is on the wide angle setting.
then just mark your plastic with the info and hold it out in
front of your camera for a few seconds before you shoot
anything.

All your tapes will be numbered and you will have a great
Identification of all the material you shot. Pretty simple
stuff but you will appreciate your efforts when you come
to look at the tapes later.