I know loads of you are gearing up for the Summer Vacation season, and kitting yourself out with a Flip camera and accessories. But do you ever get disappointed by the videos you shoot, do they lack direction?
Here are 10 tips how to make your videos rock this summer.
1. Be clear with your goal? Are you setting out to make a film of your entire holiday, starting with a shot of the airplane? If so, you will end up with a tonne of footage and a big edit job on your hands. That’s fine – but be clear how much time it will take. You might like to consider other approaches.
2. Go Niche. It is easier to breakdown what you want to shoot into manageable mini-films you can edit quickly or clips that are still watchable without any editing. For example a tour of the amazing food on offer at the buffet, a visual guide of the campervan (inside and out), a pan across the beachfront with you narrating the view.
As always, especially if you don’t edit, make sure the shots all count, don’t leave long empty sections top and tail, and plan how you will shoot before you hit record.
In the campervan example, a technique I use as a TV Director is to do a walkthrough first without recording to see if all the angles will work and where the obstacles are that might wreck your ‘live’ shoot. Then repeat again whilst recording.
3. Chat show. What’s great about holidays is often TV and the distractions of the Internet are low priority. This means family groups and friends actually talk face to face! So why not let the camera roll and just capture long chunks of chat.
But to give it a focus you need to put your Producer hat on. Throw in a theme to the conversation and it will be far more interesting to watch later on and be less random. The conversation will show a snapshot of views on one topic by a variety of people. Much like a TV chat show.
Example themes could be: ‘My most embarassing moment’, ‘My favorite joke’,'What I remember as a child’. You get the idea, I’m sure you can think of more.
4. Child Eye View: The advantage of the Flip is the fact it’s child friendly. Why not keep the Kids busy by getting them to create a short drama and then film it yourself, or encourage your child to film their own movie down on the beachfront and explain what they can see around them. It’s great learning exercise for toddlers.
5. Timelapse. This is an easy but effective way to capture the essence of your holiday. Get yourself a Joby Gorillapod and set up before sunset. Don’t let the camera budge and roll for half an hour or so. Then later speed the footage up in your edit software. Or you could capture the frenetic hustle and bustle of a market or city street in the same way.
6. Unusual angles. You can give your holiday video an extra kick by choosing to shoot unusual angles. Grab yourself an underwater case for your Ultra or Mino and get inside the pool, or down the slide for water action. Grab a suction mount to shoot yourselves riding in a rickshaw or the POV (point of view) of the route you’re taking across the desert!
7. Local Heroes. Your priority is probably your family and friends, but do you have a Video Journalist inside waiting to get out? Why not ask a friendly local to give you their take on life in their country or explain some of the history. Maybe if you are trying to learn the language you could ask them to pronounce tricky words to learn from when you get home.
8. Think Narration. For most of the ideas mentioned above it’s good to set the scene. This is what I do in when I make Reality TV. Get the people you feature to explain where they are, what do they see in front of them right now, how do they feel. Their voice will guide you through the clip, it’s so much easier than trying to remember it years later or adding voiceover in the edit. If you do edit your clips, another easy way to narrate is to add text captions overlayed across the video.
9. Don’t over or under shoot. Be selective with what you shoot to avoid cluttering up your PC later with nonsense. If you are a sure a clip is useless delete it as soon as you can to free up space. On the other hand don’t be so controlled that you end up missing key elements of your holiday. It might sound OTT but like any Video Producer you could write a list of things you want to shoot so you don’t end up remembering you forgot to shoot something as you board the plane home!
10. Legal Eagle. I don’t want to be too negative, but just in case your holiday turns out to be a disaster you could always use your Flip to record the faults you find in the hotel! Interview disgruntled fellow guests, show the cockroaches. It could be great bargaining power when you ask for your money back!
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- 10 Baby Flip Video Tips
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- Flip Video Tips – nice work!
- Flip project for 2010?
- 5 tips for using your Flip Video
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