I’ve just been looking over a bunch of family videos I’ve shot over the past couple of months. Most aren’t artistic or prize winners they are just good memories. Three birthdays including my own yesterday (!) and many visits to the park with the Kids.
Many of these videos I’m never going to edit, there isn’t enough time to edit everything. Instead I have, as the phrase goes, tried to ‘edit in camera’. This means being selective of what you shoot and knowing when to start and when to stop.
So you don’t hit record until things really start happening in front of the Camera, no wastage by shooting the floor or before your subjects are ready. Then not letting the footage drag on, once you’ve got your Kids coming down the slide a couple of times, do you really need to see it six more times?
During the sequence you’re planning in your head to get all the ingredients on camera: All the key participants, the reactions, the setting, ensuring the scene makes sense and is easy to ‘read’ by a viewer who wasn’t there. Once you have these ingredients you have the scene you don’t need to drag it out.
As you stop and start recording on the Flip you are creating a new clip. My aim is to be a able to watch a bunch of 10 clips in a row, and each clip to have a start, middle and end. I want each clip to be watchable without being boring or too long and ideally not need any editing.
If you are shooting on a day out each clip becomes a scene, and each scene leads you through the story, so make each scene count as something new that moves the story forwards.
Anything that’s plain rubbish heads, well that heads straight to the trash.
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- 5 tips for using your Flip Video
- Shooting Death on a Mino
Tags: flip video shooting advice, flip video tips, how to self-edit footage, how to shoot on the flip video
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