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Need inspiration to spice up talking heads
No, not trying to revive David Byrne, but I’m having trouble getting motivated to cut a corporate piece that is mostly talking heads, with limited b-roll. Where do you guys go to get fresh ideas for the use of graphics, fonts, overlays, borders/frames, etc.? Is there like a website of corporate, commercial and training demos that we could go to for such ideas? If not, is anyone interested in starting one??? : )
thanks again!
mh
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2 Replies
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One quick thought. We’ve had a couple of similar situations with limited b-roll, and what worked for some of it was to scale down the talking head (1/4 to 1/3) and reposition it in different parts of the frame at cuts. So the full frame guy telling you how to mow the lawn becomes a 1/4 scale guy at the lower left when you cut to him telling you how to fill the lawn mower with fuel, and so on, and on and on…….
It also allows you to do fast cuts that you might not otherwise be able to do (now he’s big, now he’s small, now he’s big again, man this is exciting!!!)
Ed -
Here’s a trick I use is when shooting talking heads. Always get some quick B-roll of their hands. You can usually get this when you are setting up or after. Shoot tights of their hands while their talking. I’ve saved my butt many times when I have to cut sound bites together and have no B-roll. Also, shoot some shots of them just sitting there not speaking, you can do some quick flash cuts to give interest and to cover edits.
Here’s some other ideas… Try flops. Flop the scene to have them look the other way at the edit point. Go B&W with grain. (Doing this can cover noise of zooming the shot to avoid a jump-cut).
Ernie Santella
Santella Film/Video Productions
http://www.santellaproductions.com
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