Building the Book Teaser - Part Two

Production

The next few posts in this series will cover the basics of the two most integral parts of production: image and sound.

Image

Ideally, you’ll want to use a video camera that allows you to manually control the following features: focus, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance. Now this may sound a little snobbish, but you also want a video camera that shoots full 1080p HD footage. Content should be the main concern, but unfortunately these days if you want your video to be taken seriously it needs to be in HD. Let’s take a look at what each of the features I mentioned actually does.

Focus: This controls the vertical plane, in distance from the camera, that will be seen as in focus (or sharp). I recently talked with a lady whose friend did some filming for her on a professional video camera but she failed to adjust the focus. She was left with blurry, unusable footage. Without getting too much into boring details, you want to be focused on your subject, and there will be a little room in front of and behind where your lens is focused that will also be acceptably sharp; this space is called depth of field. A lot of different factors affect depth of field, but the one you need to know for basic video production is focal length. Focal length, put plainly, is how wide or zoomed in your lens is. If you have a DSLR camera, pick it up and look at your lens, somewhere you’ll notice a marking of millimeters (e.g. 50mm or a range such as 55-300mm), this indicates focal length. The lower the number, the wider-angle view (think looking at something just with your eyes), higher numbers will magnify the image (like using binoculars). At higher focal lengths, your depth of field will be shallower, meaning there is less room for error in focusing. You can use this to your advantage when setting up your shots. Frame your shot, then zoom all the way in on the part of your subject you want to be in focus, now adjust focus until that area is sharp, now zoom back out. Zooming does not change the focal distance so what’s in focus when you’re zoomed in will for sure be in focus when you zoom out. DO NOT FORGET TO FOCUS!

Aperture: Aperture is measured in f-stops, which are ratios of focal length (f) to the diameter of the lens opening. Basically, they are a relative indicator of how much light is being let into the lens, which will affect how bright your image is. Lower apertures let in more light and provide a shallower depth of field; higher apertures let in less light and provide a deeper depth of field. This is important for properly exposing your footage. If your footage is too bright (you’ll notice bright parts of the scene starting to bloom out and you’ll lose detail in those areas) you may want to stop down your aperture to let less light in. Ideally you want to be able to see details both in the shadows and the highlights of your scene, preserving the most detail possible. When you’re editing your footage, you can adjust your contrast levels to give it a more stylized look.

Shutter Speed: Shutter speed is another part of the exposure formula. It refers to the length of time each frame of video is exposed for (how long light is allowed to hit the sensor) and is expressed as a fraction. Higher shutter speeds let in less light and cause less motion blur in the image (a good example of high shutter speeds is the beach landing in Saving Private Ryan, watch it to see how shutter speed affects motion). Lower shutter speeds let in more light and cause more motion blur, which can lend a dreamy feel to the footage if used properly. The general rule of thumb, for smooth motion, is to set the bottom number of your shutter speed at twice your frame rate (e.g. shutter speed of 1/48 at 24 frames per second).

ISO: ISO is a measure of the sensitivity of your cameras image sensor and constitutes the final component of the exposure formula. Higher numbers react more to light (which can be helpful in low light situations), but they also introduce digital noise into the image, which is not desirable. Lower numbers will produce less noise but require more light.

White Balance: This setting indicates the color that the camera interprets as white. It’s important to set this properly in each lighting setup you use so that your footage doesn’t have any weird color tints to it. Many cameras allow you to zoom in on a white piece of paper and press a button telling the camera to interpret that color as white, check your camera’s manual for specific instructions.

This is a very bare bones look at the key manual features on a camera but if you play around with them and see how they work, you’ll be well on your way to capturing a good-looking image. My next post will look at image composition and give some tips for keeping your video looking professional. If you have any questions, please share them in the comment section below.