 So, you want to shoot some quality video? Well, you're watching the right video. We're here to help you with that. I'm with Scott Swanson. He's behind the camera. My name is Bruce Sundeen. We work for North Dakota State University, and we're electronic media specialists. For the first step, be sure and have a plan. Planning is really important. So before you go out, you figure out, okay, what kind of equipment am I going to need? What kind of clothes should I wear? We'll talk more about why that's important. You've got to figure out your location. Of course, the time of day makes a difference. It's about 9 a.m. Not super early, but enough that the sun is a little lower in the sky, so the sun is not as intense. When it gets up a little higher, you get a higher contrast situation. Right now, we have some nice colors, longer shadows, and usually in the morning the wind is a little bit lower too. So now let's look at what it's like when the sun is a little higher. It's about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and the conditions have changed. The wind has picked up, the sun has gotten brighter because now it's moved higher in the sky, but it also changes the way the background looks. The colors aren't as vibrant, I have to squint, and the high contrast makes it even difficult depending on what I'm wearing. We'll talk about that next. What's important about what you wear is if your camera is an auto iris, which most of you will be. The iris allows for how much light comes into the camera. So right now it should be pretty well because I have a fairly neutral color, not too dark, not too light, but now let's see what happens when I change to black. So this is what it looks like with a black shirt. Now the auto iris should be taking this in and saying, ooh, that picture's dark, I'm going to brighten it up. And it's really bad if you have a light pigment in your skin, there'll be a really high contrast, you'll be overexposed. So let's look at what it looks like when you have a white shirt on. So this is how it looks with a white shirt. It's really bright reflecting the sun. So the auto iris in the camera will try to adjust the entire picture darker in order to expose this properly, or it'll make this shirt so bright or hot that that's all you'll see in the picture. Now we have the option of a manual iris, hopefully you do too, and Scott can adjust that to make the picture look better, but the contrast still is too high. Now you can control what you wear, but you don't always have control what other people wear. So when they're out there and they're wearing a hat and you can't see their eyes, just ask them to tip it up. We have really good video, it's important, but if you're trying to convey a message, many times you're trying to talk. If you have a microphone on, the wind is going to hit it, and you might be hearing thunder right now. In the plane states where we live, I don't know about you, we get a lot of this. So there is a way around it. You can try a windscreen, it goes on top, but a lot of times it doesn't work very well. But what does work, it's going to be a little noisy when I do this. You flip it around, and you put it inside your shirt. It should cut out all the wind, and now whatever you want to say can be heard. Sound is important where you put that microphone, but also what ambient sounds are going on around you. Headphones are really important because they let you know every little sound, or in this case every big sound. So you can't always pick your location. Things like airplanes, they're really a pain when you're trying to do audio. So if you understand your surroundings, it helps a lot. It really helps a lot. Plants of some kind. Just waiting for the horn. You need to be aware of your surroundings. Even when it comes to the microphone, this probably sounds really weird. So avoid shooting in porta-potties. Scott's getting a nice wide shot of the fountain grass here, but he has to be aware of his surroundings, and so do I. Because I could be talking and not paying attention much, and next thing you know, oh look, my shadow is in his shot. You're ruining my shot. I thought you're a professional. Here's a really good example of bad composition. My head is right in the middle of the screen. Not necessary. All the space over here and up here are not necessary. You give your camera to somebody else, this is what you're going to get. That can be fixed real easily. Scott can tilt down and pan over. And now if I want to talk about this plant, it's easy to do with good composition. Well, I'd really like to talk to you, but there's an airplane up there competing, and it's really hard. I don't like that very much. There's a few problems with this shot. For one, we have a glare coming in from the sun, but that's easy fix. Scott can pan, and I'll go with him here. And that takes care of the glare, but we still have a high contrast with that right sun. So he can tilt down a little bit, and that'll help. But of course I'm not going to stand here and try to give you information like this. There's another fix. Now this is a better option for me, because I don't have to bend over. Scott raised the camera, which changes the angle. Not so much sun in the background, so the colors look better, more vibrant, not so high contrast. Ideally, we wouldn't want to shoot this way, but if you don't have a choice, this works best. If you had a reflector, you could put some more light on the subject too. That would help. It's not too often you get a beautiful day like this in the fall. It's warm, there's no wind, the sun's out. This is a perfect day for shooting, not just because of the microphone, but for all your aerial photography. Of course you might not have a drone. For a more artistic look, you can do something that's called framing. Works in still photography as well. This is an okay shot. You see the fountain grass, but if I move over just a little bit and get right inside of these plants, you've got something on either side that really frames a shot. Just makes it more interesting. Here's an example of a zoomed in shot. Scott is a professional. He's shooting off his shoulder, zoomed all the way in, and it's really hard for even him to hold this steady. Now the camera is on a tripod and you can tell the shot is way more steady. And if I wanted to talk about this cool plant over here, you'd be able to tell easier what I'm talking about because it's not shaking all over the place. So your best bet would be to move in closer, but there's also another disadvantage. This microphone, if you're not using a wireless or a corded, it'll sound like this. Now I have to yell, it makes it even harder. Scott moved the camera closer and I'm still using the microphone on the camera. So you can hear it. It sounds better than when we were far away, but still it's not very good. We'll use this mic instead. Now with this microphone, Scott closer, it is way steadier and you look how much more background you can see. That's great when you're trying to explain something like that, but if you don't have a tripod, this is how to do it up close. I got a little issue with the sun. Got an airplane. Stop doing that! Another example, if you don't have a tripod and you're getting some shots off your shoulder, it doesn't look too bad wide like we talked about before. But if we zoom in and I try to get the shot, it's really hard to hold it steady. So a way to get around that is to zoom all the way back out and then actually go down there. And you might have to use the macro and focus up a little bit, but you get a really actually fairly compelling shot doing that. You do have to look out for light because if I turn this way you can see the shadow of the camera, which isn't so good. But this way at least, if you don't have a tripod, you can get by without it. You can see there's something wrong with this shot. It's really at an angle. So beware of tilted video. Try to shoot it straight. You know, this kind of reminds me of the old Batman TV series. Don't make me come and take your shot. Inside lighting can be tricky. If you don't have your own light you can use window light. But this way doesn't work so well. This is a very high contrast situation where the iris is exposing the outside and keeping me really dark. Happens in photography as well. It's really bad if you're doing an interview this way, or if I want to show you something, you can't really see it. Even if I put it in the sun, it's just not an ideal situation. But there is a way to still use this light effectively. Now I'm in front of the window. Lots of light coming in. Probably too much light because I have to squint. It's not easy to present information when you're squinting. And if I want to show you something, it may be hard to see because of the high contrast. We haven't changed the lighting in this room at all. It's all about that iris. So if I step out of the direct sunlight and indirect light hits me, everything gets better. And if I want to show you Mr. Plant here it works the best. There's other issues with inside lighting. Like what if you don't have a window? If you can't find a nice window and you just have to use existing lighting, this could be okay but you can see that I'm kind of dark and not really ideal. But at least from here I could step back and get under more of this light. The problem is it's not good light from above. It creates interesting shadows and things that really aren't very attractive. But some cameras do have a light on top of them. It's called a fill light. And you flip on that little fill light and that helps fill some of those shadows. And I can actually step in a little closer. That really does help. The solution to a dark room can sometimes be as simple as a lamp. If I turn on this lamp in a dark room like this, it can help to fill in my face. The light's coming from the side which helps. But it's still a little on the dark side. But just simply removing the lampshade can really make a difference. And now it's much easier for me to convey a message like this than like that. We really want to stress how important sound is to your video. If you have a soundproof room like this, that's great. But you probably don't. So what you could... Sorry phones, yet another distraction. Speaking of phones you can use your phone to record video and sound. The quality has improved immensely with phones. But a couple things will help you out. One is sound using a special microphone made just for phones. And also they have mounts on tripods that will help hold your phone steady. But how you hold your phone is important because a phone is easy to turn, which way do you hold it? You should hold your phone sideways or horizontal, just like your television or computer monitor. But if your video is going to stay on your phone, you can shoot it vertically. You can hold it like you use it. But if your video is going to YouTube, Facebook, your computer monitor, television, this is how it's going to look. And the only way to fill in this black space is with more video. Or, and that's a good choice, turn the video horizontally to fit the format. Not good. Thanks for watching. We hope our video improves your video. A few things to remember. A good tripod, microphone, and good lighting will make a big difference along with a plan. So if you're waiting around for the perfect conditions with no cars, no lawn mowers, no wind, it might be a long wait. Thanks for watching.