Video Journalism 101

Tips for Compelling Video from Hanson Hosein and Alex Stonehill

These are some basic pointers to help those without professional training to shoot professional looking video.  Video is essential the synthesis of audio and photography, so refer to Photojournalism and Audio Production 101’s for other important tips

Get in their face – Get as close to your subject as possible.  Don’t use the zoom.  Close-ups tell more than wide shots, and engage the audience.

Good sound is more important than good visuals – unless you've got the ghost of Elvis in your sights, sound matters more.  An audience will tolerate bad video, but will quickly lose attention if there's bad sound.  Use headphones if you can while you're shooting, pay attention to audio levels.  Let your subject finish speaking before you ask the next question.  Nod rather than saying “umm humm”, smile instead of laughing.

Think about what you want to say before you turn on the camera – you should have a pretty good idea of what your story is about before you shoot one frame of video.  Do your research, talk to people, think about how the story will play out from beginning to end.

Set up your shot carefully – Before you press record and the magic starts happening in front of the camera, make sure you’re ready to capture it properly.  Do you have the camera on a tripod or held comfortably so the shot will be steady? Is the subject in the right place (with a long backdrop behind them, no distracting lines going through their head, following the rule of thirds)? Are you getting a proper audio signal?

Hold the camera still and let the action happen in front of it – Panning across a landscape, or zooming in and out is hard to do smoothly, and it almost never looks good, because our eyes don’t naturally move that way.  What you want is a series of shots from different angles and ranges (Wide, Medium, Close, Extremely Close) with the camera staying perfectly still.  USE A TRIPOD! You might think you can hold it still in your hands, but when you go back and look at your footage, you’ll almost always be disappointed with how shaky it is.

Natural light, Use it Right! What you see on TV is shot with thousands of dollars of lighting equipment.  But you have something almost as good: the sun! Think about how you’re using available light when you’re setting up your shots.

Know how you’re going to edit before you turn off the camera -- while you're acting like a cameraman, you should be thinking like an editor.  How does the shot you're taking right now lead to whatever you'll shoot next, and what you've already shot?  Never forget the story.

Imagine the finished product of your interview before you start recording– Are you just looking for sound bites? – then make sure to have the subject repeat your questions.  Are you putting yourself in the story? – then you might want a second camera shooting back at the interviewer.  Do you want your subject looking to the left, right or directly into the camera? Answering these questions before you start will save you a lot of trouble once it comes time to edit

Sometimes you need to let the story tell itself – No matter how much you plan ahead, sometimes stories have a way of telling themselves.  After you're finished shooting, make sure you watch every single millisecond of video you shot, and listen carefully.  Take notes.  Think about the story you originally planned, and whether the content you've gathered makes more sense going in another direction.

Make it beautiful -- Everything you know about photography, art, beauty applies to moving images as well.  Use your aesthetic sense to make every shot as pleasing to the eye or visually dramatic as possible.

Shoot way too much B-roll – B-roll means every shot that’s not a person talking – it’s the action in your story.  You’ll need it to cover up edits in your interview footage, but more importantly, its what gives your story life.  Shoot a ton of it, as creatively as possible.  Then when you think you’ve got enough, shoot some more! You’ll almost always end up wishing you had a few more shots once it comes time to edit.

When editing, think about sound first – Audio is what’s going to drive the narrative of your story, so put together a script or rough cut concentrating only on the sound elements (interview clips and narration) first.  Then build the visuals on top of that.  Your audio script should be short (less than 100 words per minute of length), leaving spaces for the audience to digest what they’ve heard and look at visuals.  

Don’t try to say too much ­­– Once it comes time to edit, sometimes it helps to have a single thesis sentence in your mind that all of your story relates back to.  This should be a pretty simple concept.  You can’t get too complex with video, or you’ll have narrate though the entire piece.  The trade off is that the message you do get in will be that much more memorable because you conveyed it using so many engaging visuals.