Constructive Criticism on Video

[Mark Suszko]

Single-shot is a shot of single person, also known as a medium close-up. Two-shots are a shot framing just two people. Three-shots are a shot of three people.

“Look space” refers to seeing more space in front of a person’s face, nd where they are facing whatever is oncoming, than behind them. Either standing still, or walking or running, you want to frame the body and head so that there is more space in the side where they are “looking” than “behind” them. If they are in profile, relative to the camera, you’d want to see much more of what is in front of them, than what’s behind.

Hands holding food or cutting food on plates, shots of mouths smiling and talking, not eating, unless it’s “tastefully” done. people chewing, closed-mouhted, and smiling, could be good.

One other idea about framing a close-up: you don’t always need to make as much headroom in the shot as you think. You CAN go closer, MUCH closer, as long as the eyes and eyebrows, and the mouth and chin, are still within the “safe action” area of your frame. CBS’s “60 Minutes” used to be famous for that kind of shot, where all the expression is there in the eyes and mouth.

When you get into those tighter spaces like corridors and doorways, and you have an on-camera light, try bouncing that light up at the ceiling or a wall that’s out of the frame next time, and this will help some of your shots where there’s a lot of shadow.

[Brock Burwell]

I got some more b-roll shots last night…

I think got a few good shots. I ended up replacing a few old shots with some of the newer stuff.

I got some close up of hands preparing food.

I got a another rack shot

I got a low angle shot I think is usable

I am struggling with the CTA after the last shot in the video. I tried using John 21:17 in more than one way and I can’t get it to look the way I want. It just looks bland and stupid. I want it to look professional but I can’t figure out a way to make it that way. Any ideas on that?

Also, is this the place where I should post these questions? Is there a different category where this would be more approporiate

[Mark Suszko]

The Editing forum might be helpful, for specific editing questions, and the Cinematography forum, for specific shooting and cameras questions, but there are smart people giving good advice in every COW forum.

If you’d put up a still or motion video clip of the ending you’re working on, we could give some opinions.

One thing I could suggest off the top is, if white type over black screens doesn’t work for you, you might take an extreme close-up still of an empty, finished plate or bowl on the table, dissolve to a deeply blurred version of it (just use the gaussian blur filter effect), and fly your type across that background image.

The”semiotics” (unconscious symbolism) of that shot is that there’s a void that needs to be filled.

[Mark Suszko]

Brock;

For the B&W piece you showed, With that kind of music and tempo, I think you could have a lot of fun by making the stills “2&1/2-D”.

Take each still into photoshop or GIMP if you don’t have photoshop.
Duplicate the image onto 2 layers. Create a third, empty layer below them.
On the top layer, draw a mask around the person or persons in the shot, then cut away everything else in that layer.

Save the three-layer images as .PSD with alpha channel and all layers preserved, or save as .TIF with all layers and alpha channel enabled.

Bring those back into your FCP timeline. Keep the stack of layers as it was in Photoshop, but now, keyframe the middle/second layer to go from clear to slightly soft focus (use gaussian blur filter). At the same time, keyframe the top layer to scale up just a few percent over the length of the shot.

When you play these clips now, you get a really cool fake 3-d effect that “pops” the subject out of their background and makes the eye follow it.

A variation on this is to make the subject layer be in full color and the background layer in B&W or monochrome/sepia.

If you’re looking for a visual metaphor to go with a particular sermon, like something about how people feel when they are alone, versus how they feel when they understand how loved they are… or maybe a before/after baptism kind of theme, …this is a great effect to convey such an emotion visually.

This is much easier to do in Apple Motion, but it’s not hard to do in FCP7.

To get an idea of how this looks, find youtube clips from the film: ‘The Kid Stays In the Picture”, or “Riding Giants” and see the animated stills. You’ll recognize them when you see them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJsiZ_0EaW8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF5tWOcc6Is

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[Brock Burwell]

Wow awesome advice…

I’ve always wondered how people did that. I will definitely be trying that out.

I stole that video idea from West Virginia University. When I was there, that was one of their ads that they ran. It was pretty easy to replicate. I’ll see how it looks with this effect. Thanks again!

[Joseph W. bourke]

Brock –

Here’s a really good place to start your education in film making:

https://nofilmschool.com/

Download the free DSLR Cinematography Guide, and you’ll be on your way to better understanding the terminology and techniques of film making.

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Brock Burwell]

I need your help…This is what I ended up finishing with on the video. I am happy with the video a itself, but I am really struggling with the audio. It sounds terrible and I’m not sure what to do.

I am recording on a canon t3i with a lapel mic. I watched a video where somone suggested that with this camera, I should go in and manually lower the audio to remove the hum that this camera produces a lot. I did that, but they also said that you need to turn the audio up on the lapel mic to make up for it. I don’t believe my mic has that option and I just didn’t think twice about it. I only did that for the interview with the Pastor. Once I heard the audio, I turned it back up for the other two videos. So to match it, I had to turn the two ladies audio down so it matched the Pastor. So the entire video volume is very low and I have no idea what to do to fix that. I can’t turn it up on the final cut timeline as the pastors is maxed. Any ideas?

Also, the audio for parts is only coming out of one side. I tried to change it all to mono, but some clips won’t allow it and I don’t know why. It’s so strange.

Any suggestions for me? Thanks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pszqVSLh3lM

[Mark Suszko]

You could try a freeware app called Levelator to make all the voice tracks sound closer in level.

What they were trying to tell you about the lav mic and your DSLR, is kind of garbled.
If you have a hum, that’s a sign of unbalanced audio coming into the camera, or an incoming level that is too low so the automatic gain control of the camera artificially cranks up the levels, and with it, the noise floor. This is one of those areas where I feel DSLR’s always suck, compared to dedicated video cameras, and a lot of DSLR owners use “dual-system sound”, i.e. they record the audio on a separate device, to counter these problems. But that adds works and complexity.

You don’t say if the Lav has it’s own battery, or if it is using “phantom power”, tapped from the camera. A buzz or hum can come from a battery-powered Lav with a low battery sometimes. Audio cables running alongside AC power cables also can pick up a buzz or hum.

The deal here I think is: you need something in-between the Lav and the DSLR, to feed the DSLR a level it “likes”, but disabling any automatic level controls the DSLR is imposing on the audio. The typical fix for that is a small outboard mixer/pre-amp/matching transformer, that uses balanced 3-wire XLR/Cannon tpe connectors.

Where the audio comes into the DSLR I think is typically a tiny stereo plug like they use for ear buds, and that connection is not what’s called a “balanced” input. Unbalanced inputs are a typical place for RF noise to get into a system.

So, there’s 3-4 places in the audio chain where it could have gone wrong. I think what you might have done in changing the camera settings was to change the impedance setting of the audio. If you set the recording system to expect line-level impedance signals, a mic-level signal is going to be VERY weak, nearly inaudible, without cranking up the gain and thus getting extra noise.

You might want to read up in wikipedia or other sources on any of the tech terms I mentioned here, then what I said might make more sense.

[Brock Burwell]

When listening to it, what do you suggest that I do?

My wife said that on her nice speakers at work, she had to crank the volume and still could barely hear it. She also said some of the people speaking went so low she couldnt understand what they were saying. She also stated that she though the music sounded just like noise in the background.

If you were me and had this video…what would you do?

[Mark Suszko]

Check the audio for phase cancellation: if it is 2-track mono, does it seem louder and clearer with one channel turned off?

As to what I’d do, not a fair question, since you and I have different expertise levels and gear. But if I were YOU, I’d maybe first try Levelator on the audio by itself, then re-synch that audio to your master and give it a listen.