Shooting: collecting good raw material
Production means making the raw material. For video this is shooting. The things you film or photograph are called clips (video) and stills (photos).
- Wide shot: shows the whole place and where everyone is.
- Medium shot: shows a person from the waist up, so we see the action.
- Close-up: shows a face or a small object, so we feel the emotion.
Good habits: hold the camera steady (use both hands or a tripod), keep the light behind you, record clean sound, and shoot extra clips (called cutaways or B-roll) so the editor has choices. A video is a quick series of pictures called frames; common speeds are 24, 25 or 30 frames per second (fps).
Photo retouching
Retouching means improving a photo after it is taken. It does not mean changing the truth of what happened.
- Exposure and brightness: make a dark photo lighter (or a too-bright one darker).
- Contrast and colour: make colours look natural; fix a yellow or blue tint.
- Crop and straighten: cut away what you do not need and level a tilted horizon.
- Spot fixing (clone or heal): copy clean pixels over a dust spot or a small blemish.
Rules: always work on a copy, keep the original, and be honest. A news photo must not be changed to show something false.
Editing: trim, join and tell the story
An editing program shows your clips on a timeline, a line of time going left to right. The playhead is the marker that shows the moment you are looking at.
- Import the clips and sort them into folders.
- Trim: cut the start and end of each clip so only the best part is left.
- Join: place clips in story order. A change from one clip to the next is a cut. A soft change is a transition (fade or dissolve); use these rarely.
- Check the rhythm: short clips feel quick and tense, long clips feel slow and calm.
A useful trick: start a new shot when the action or the speaker changes, and mix wide, medium and close-up shots so the picture never gets boring.
Layers: pictures, titles and sound
The timeline has many tracks. Video tracks hold pictures; a title track holds text; audio tracks hold voice, music and sound effects. They play together, so you can put a title on top of a clip or lower the music when someone speaks.
Animation works with the same idea: a drawing or 3D model is changed a little each frame, and played quickly, it seems to move. In a narrative animation the frames tell a story (beginning, middle, end); in computer animation the computer creates or moves the pictures. Titles that slide in are simple computer animation too.
Export and printing
Exporting a video
Exporting (or rendering) joins everything into one video file, such as MP4. Choose the size (for example 1920 x 1080 pixels, called Full HD) and the same frame rate you shot. Bigger and better quality means a bigger file.
Printing a photo
Screens make colour with RGB light (red, green, blue). Printers use CMYK ink (cyan, magenta, yellow, black), so printed colours can look a little different. For a sharp print you need about 300 dots per inch (dpi).
Print size in inches = pixels / dpi. A photo 3000 pixels wide prints 10 inches wide at 300 dpi.
Try it: edit a 15-second clip
Film three short clips on a phone (wide, medium, close-up) of a friend opening a door. Use any free editing app. Trim each to 3 to 5 seconds, put them in order, add a title, and export. Then swap the order and watch the 3D (step 6) again: how did the feeling change?
Key formulas and definitions
- Production = shooting. Post-production = retouch, edit, export.
- Shot sizes: wide (place), medium (action), close-up (feeling).
- Total frames = frames per second x seconds.
- Print size (inches) = pixels / dpi.
- Screen = RGB light. Print = CMYK ink.
- Timeline total length = sum of clip lengths.
Worked examples
1. A film is 8 seconds long at 25 frames per second. How many frames is that?
Frames = 25 x 8 = 200 frames.
2. A photo is 3600 pixels wide. How wide can you print it at 300 dpi?
3600 / 300 = 12 inches wide. At 150 dpi it could be 24 inches wide, but the print would look softer.
3. You have raw clips of 12 s, 9 s and 14 s. You trim them to 5 s, 4 s and 6 s. How long is the film, and how much did you remove?
Film = 5 + 4 + 6 = 15 s. Raw total = 12 + 9 + 14 = 35 s. Removed = 35 - 15 = 20 s.
4. A school sports-day video opens with a close-up of a runner's feet, then a wide shot of the track. Why is that a good order?
The close-up makes the viewer curious and feel the effort. The wide shot then answers 'where are we?'. Starting close and then going wide creates interest before it gives information.
Common mistakes
- Keeping every clip at full length. Trim it: cut anything that does not help the story.
- Editing the only copy of a photo or clip. Always work on a copy and keep the original.
- Ignoring sound. Bad sound (noise, loud music over speech) spoils a good picture.
- Printing a small web photo at a large size. Low pixels at a big size look blurry; check pixels / dpi first.