 designed to help you boost your ability to create quality videos and stories for your nonprofit organization. We will be starting the recording in just a moment and we thank you for joining us today. Welcome to the TechSoup Digital Storytelling Challenge as Yvonne Hayming, an interactive producer for TechSoup. For those of you who are new to the TechSoup world, TechSoup is an international nonprofit organization. We are based in San Francisco with offices in over 30 countries around the world. You will find us at TechSoup.org and if you are a part of our global audience, you can also go to TechSoupglobal.org to find an office in a country near you. For the last 25 years, TechSoup has been providing technology resources including information, software, tools, and many different types of educational resources including the Digital Storytelling Challenge. During the month of February, we are hosting the third annual TechSoup Digital Storytelling Challenge where we encourage you to make one-minute videos or a five-photo set that helps tell the story of your organization. This can be some subset of your work. It can be a program that you are proud of. It can be a tool for fundraising, advocacy, building volunteers, or whatever it is that your organization needs to accomplish. We are encouraging you to enter your videos and photos set by February 29th and the website for more information is on your screen. It's psdigs.org. And today we are happy to welcome David Neff of Lights Camera Help. I'm going to bring up just a little bit of information about David as we get started. You can see his lovely face there. David Neff is the creator and co-founder of Lights Camera Help. He is an author. He is a speaker, a network weaver, and he calls himself a social media scientist. He has been creating videos and stories with nonprofits for over 10 years including work with the American Cancer Society. And yes, you can find him on Twitter at DaveIM and you can find Lights Camera Help on Twitter at NPFilm. David, I'm going to be passing the screen share on to you and thank you for joining us today. Yeah, you bet. Thanks for having me. That's such a bad photo. I need to update that on our website. Well, we'll let you make your own story and there's actually a video of you on the psdigs.org website as well. So you can see David in action if you're looking for information about the Digital Storytell Challenge. David, you're teaching us today about production, correct? That is correct. We're going to walk through some basic steps on being able to go through and our first kind of session, Rich Vazquez, he's one of the co-founders of Lights Camera Help and he's on our board currently, walks you guys through what to do before you ever picked up a camera. So today we will talk about what to do once you pick up a camera or the iPhone and start viewing yourself. Great. Well, we are going to start with a poll and we wanted to find out just a little bit more information about who our audience is today and what skill level we are at. So I'm going to ask Kyla to go ahead and share the poll with our audience and then I'm going to give you the screen and let you take us through it. You'll see the poll in front of you asking you what is your video production skill level. So let us know where you're at so that we can help answer your questions in this hour. David, thank you and the floor is all yours. Cool. Thank you very much. So can you guys see the first slide there? We're actually just still showing the poll real quick and I'm going to close it in just a second, David, just so you know. Okay. I'm going to close the poll in about five, four, three, two, one. Really quick, I'm going to go ahead and share those results just so everybody can see them really quick. It looks like 40% say they've never created a video before, 38% say they've created a few videos, 20% say that they've done creative videos quite a bit but I'm still learning and then 3% are ready to teach other people how to make videos. So I'm going to close that and now it's all yours. I think that's perfect kind of our skill set because what we're going for today is definitely that I have to pick up a camera or I'm just now starting to pick up the camera. So I think we will be just perfect. So are we changing presenter right now? There we go. Perfect. So I'm going to take you through today. I'll first tell you guys a little bit about what is Light Camera Help. So Light Camera Help was founded about four years ago and we are the world's first organization that connects filmmakers and nonprofits and nonprofits and filmmakers. And we're very big believers in the fact that nonprofits and NGOs and cause-driven organizations should be showing their message, not just talking about the message. So you can find out more about us at LightsCameraHelp.org or at NPFilm on Twitter. The hashtag of course for this is TSDigs but we also have our own hashtags that we monitor at L, C, H and NP. So the first thing we're going to talk today is about putting your director's hat on. So the idea that as you're out in the wild, as you work with volunteers or a population you serve or even with your internal staff, you have to have a different mind. Normally you have to have the ability to put your director's hat on and remember and in fact embody all the things that we'll talk about today. So I have here the kind of stereotypical photo of a director, very intense, wild hair, their headphones on to monitor the audio, somebody behind them taking notes with their script in their hand and then maybe you guys don't need to get that, you need to remember to put your director's hat on because as a director, as a producer you're going to be doing your uncomfortable and maybe you'll also be doing stuff other people might be comfortable with and this could be anything from asking a question, asking your CEO to go change their shirt because it's not the right color. Putting your director's hat on means a lot of things but really it means having complete control of the situation in as much as you can. So if your CEO messes up you don't say, hey no worries, you say, hey we need to do that again. If you have a client that you're interviewing that is just not saying what you really need them to say it's figuring out what question to ask them to get that sound bite out of them. So that's the main thing, one of the main things I want you guys to learn today is putting that director's hat on when it comes to production. So we're going to go through the top five nonprofit video tips. Obviously this is a lot more involved than a top five list or a top ten list or anything amount. We actually teach about a six hour film and video class offline to people and a big part of that is this production and actually having you guys go out, complete work sheets, actually go film each other, edit it at computers in front of you but today because of the time and technology we don't have that. So I want to give you guys simple takeaways that you can take away from the folks at Tech Soup and Light to Camera Help around how to think and how to actually go out and produce video. So number one is thinking frames. I'm sure a lot of you have taken a photography class in high school or college or maybe at the post college level but we talk a lot about in photography and film the rule of thirds. So what you see here on the left and what you see here on the right are basically the same photo but with different principles of photography applied to them. On the left you see kind of a very boring straight way shot. On the right you see what we like to call the rule of thirds. The ability for us to break up a shot into thirds. So you see in this photo there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine squares. And those nine squares are across everything whether you're shooting with a wide angle lens, whether you're shooting with your iPhone or your Android phone or whether you're shooting with one of the flip cameras offered by our friends and partners at Tech Soup. We want you to look at images and break them up in your mind into the rule of thirds. What makes the rule of thirds work is that things that are not in the center of the rule of thirds automatically become interesting photos. So when you go and look at the artwork in your house or you go and look at photos that you take of your children or your dogs or of artwork that you have hanging up in museums, you see the most interesting things in our society and the way that our minds or programs is to have things off-centered using the rule of thirds. And so think this way. Whether you have your executive director or a client or a volunteer or a patient lined up in the middle of the shot, that can be easy to do, but it's also one of the most boring and visually uninteresting things you can do. And that's why when you see professional documentaries, they always have people to the left or to the right. If they're on the left, they have a vase of flowers on the right or a piece of artwork on the right, something to offset them in the screen. For us in this frame, the picture that's more interesting is on the right because it uses the rule of thirds, it's offset, and you see the clouds in the background. You see the sand below the rock fixture. So that's what's interesting to us is framing these things using the rule of thirds. The second thing we're going to talk today about is headroom. So this is something that a lot of people have problems with, right? You're filming in a hurry. You haven't given yourself enough time. You're subject to leave. You're in a crowded environment. There's 1,000 reasons for you guys to film something and not leave enough headroom. But what it does is makes you look unprofessional, and it also makes it a lot harder for you to go back and actually edit the product. So at the end of the day, if you have someone with too little headroom or too much headroom, your editor is going to try and fix that when you give it to them. Or if you're the editor, you're going to have to try and fix that later. So why not take the extra time to line up your shots using the rule of thirds, which none of these are, and then also giving the appropriate amount of headroom? So you see in the first photo a portrait of a guitarist demonstrates an excessive amount of headroom with the subject's nose centered in the frame. A common mistake. Number two, a subtle lack of headroom with the subject's eyes, only 28% of the way down from the top, not 33%. For the third photo, good composition with the subject's eyes, one third of the distance down from the top of the frame. Following, you guessed it, the rule of thirds. And then last panel, for moving images, the active zooming in to fill the frame with the subject requires tilting of the camera shown by the red lines to maintain the correct amount of headroom. Conversely, zooming out requires tilting down. So what that means in plain English is that you can adjust the camera, you can adjust the person, you can adjust the camera. But what is a total pain to do afterwards is try and adjust it in the editing. Now a lot of you, when you're doing your TS dig story, will probably be doing maybe a little short documentary piece or maybe an interview with someone interesting or maybe an interview with one of your clients or your patients or an expert in your field. And so you want to make sure that you're lining them up correctly to the rule of thirds and you want to make sure that you're giving them the appropriate amount of headroom. And when you watch YouTube videos, you'll see that people mess this up all the time. They either cut off the top of the person's head or they cut off the bottom or the left side of their faces, way off to the right, or way off to the left. And you'll just see people go crazy with this. But what you want is the perfect amount of headroom to really have a clean, professional-looking fitito. So the top five nonprofit videotapes, number three that we're going to talk about today is worry about sound. And this comes down to technology at the end of the day, but it also comes down to common sense. So some of the hard and fast rules around sound is that people will always watch a video that has bad video but good sound. So let me say that again. People will always watch a video that has bad video but good sound. However, no one will watch a video that has good video but bad sound. So inversely, that law is correct. You want to make sure the sound in all of your video productions is as high quality as you can make it. So that means putting your director's hat on. That means even though you've scheduled the meeting room on the left side of the hallway, when you get in there and you turn on the lights, you hear that horrible hum from the fluorescence. And even though you scheduled it and you thought you were going to be in there, you have to put your director's hat on. And be like, I know that this is going to be a bad interview because I can hear that fluorescent light hum. So we need to move. Maybe we need to go outside. Maybe we need to travel down the street to a quieter neighborhood. Maybe we need to move inside if you plan to film outside. No matter how beautiful it is outside, you need to worry about sound. The worst thing you can do is do an entire interview, watch it, play it back, and realize that the audio was messed up or the microphone level wasn't set high enough or that you were too far away or that you were too close. So you should always be worrying about sound. We're going to get to camera recommendations in a second. But we really encourage all of you to buy cameras that have external microphones. So the ability to plug a microphone into your camera and whether that is an Android or an iPhone or a Kodak Zi8, which is a camera that we really like, you really want to go for a camera that has the ability to buy a microphone and plug it into the side effects. Now the flips are a little bit of an exception than that. And then the flips have a really good audio quality and a good price. Our friends at TechSoup have been able to work with Cisco to get those cameras back out to the public. You see them on eBay. You guys probably might even see them at swap meets or garage sales and things like that. And those cameras have good audio, not as good as the next camera we're going to talk about. So what you guys see here is a really basic, nice microphone by Sony. It's the Sony ECM DS70P. Sony has absolutely horrible names for their products. They are all a jumble of letters and numbers. But this is a great microphone that you can find online. It's actually probably not as cheap as what you guys see here on Google products. But you can find it used for around this price. So for all the video shoots that like Camera Help does, whether we're interviewing people who come to the film festival, whether we're interviewing each other to do videos for the folks at TechSoup, or interviewing people at South by Southwest. We use a Kodak CI8 and then this Sony ECM microphone. And that makes a great combo. But regardless of getting lost in the rabbit hole of technology and microphones, how much to spend, across all cameras, across all models, whether you're spending $5,000 on a camera or $80 on a camera, you really want to look for one that you're able to actually plug an external microphone into. So number four, buy or hire a good camera. So for the purpose of the TSDX story you guys are doing really short videos, we really want to encourage you guys to film yourselves or get people involved in your office or your volunteers or people that can help you with this. But as you progress, as you begin to see the power of video, you want to actually go out and hire people and find people who are good at shooting video in your neighborhood, in your city, in your town and hire those local people or get them to volunteer or find somebody at the local college who's looking to do a volunteer project as part of their service learning or an internship. And that's what Lights to Camera Help does. At our core, we want to connect all of you on this phone call today with great filmmakers all across the United States and all across the world who make these cause-driven, nonprofit, NGO-focused type of film. So please, you guys can check us out lightscameralph.org. And then flash resources to see some of the good local people we use in Austin, Texas. And then email us for people all across the country who are good camera people to help you film. Now, in the case of TS Biggs, we're really encouraging you guys to go out and do this on your own. So the camera that we love a little bit more than the flip, although Cisco makes a great product, is the actual Kodak ZI-8, which is what you see here. So the Kodak ZI-8 is also not as cheap as this. Kodak, I think, and last time I checked, is either discontinuing it and it's come out with a new model. But we really love the ZI-8, which you can find on eBay or Craigslist or get donated from people who are not using theirs or whatever it might be. But the Kodak ZI-8 we love because you can actually put an SD card in the side of it. So you can take an SD card in, fill it, pull it out. You can plug a microphone into the side of it. The battery life is great. It takes great 5.0 megapixel still photos, as well for those photography folks out there. And it records a 1080p, which is just a great resolution. We love the flips too. Flip has great HD resolution. Flip has good sound on board, but you can't plug a microphone into it. And the Flip actually has its own easy to use editing software, which is a plus when it comes to you guys recording this. So cameras like this, sub 200 cameras, sub $200 US cameras, and things like that are a great price range for the types of videos that we want you guys out and doing for TSDigs. And the ability to pick up a camera that weighs a couple of ounces, point it at your executive director and get a blog update, or point it at your director of fundraising and get a blog update, or walk down the hall and interview somebody interacting with a patient or a client, or talk to somebody in the field and have them record a video and send it back to your office to post as a blog is absolutely amazing and ties in perfectly to all your social media channels. I think of getting a camera like this, doing a two minute update about what you're up to and then being able to send that to Facebook, Twitter, all of your social media channels, updating it, putting it on YouTube, Google Plus is a phenomenal thing in this technology that was not available even two to three years ago. So this is the Flip. You see they used to have a Flip spotlight program. We're all big fans of the Flip. This is kind of a rest in peace Flip slide if it were. But our good friends at TechSoup have brought this back and are now able to offer to you guys two one hour Flip video cameras and a tripod for 28 bucks, which is absolutely phenomenal deal. And you can check that out at TechSoup.org and actually go to the page. And like I said, we love these cameras. They work perfectly on Windows and Macs as well. So the last thing we're gonna talk about today in kind of our high level overview of production and technique is the ability for you guys to have good lighting and for you guys to be able to have good lighting when it comes to your video projects. So once again, some of you have never picked up a camera before some of you have, some of you could be teaching this class right now how Cardi Noropoul, which I think is great. And some of you are probably professional filmmakers even dropping in, but we want you guys to come away with the idea that light is very, very important. So if you imagine what light looks like in your office, if you're like me, I'm in a conference room right now and I've got one fluorescent light peering down at me and then I've got two fluorescent lights flipped upwards that are bouncing off the ceiling. So this room actually has pretty good light. There's not five banks of fluorescence shining down at me turning everything green, which is the color that fluorescence naturally are when you look at them is kind of a greenish hue. And instead I've got one kind of soft little LED light looking down in the room with some really good backlighting. No matter where you guys are right now, except some of you caught in cubes, look at the closest window to you and take a second to just observe the type of light coming in from the window. Is it soft? Is it hard light? Is it filtered through the shade in front of it? Do you have Venetian blinds on it? What does that light look like? And think about it in your mind for a second. Now, next time you're able to, especially after this call, get up and just stand in front of the window, put your arm out and look at the shadows that are cast from the light. When I do this in this conference room, even though I've got a soft LED bulb, I have hard shadows. I can make out shadow puppets on the wall or the outline of my hand or the outline of my hair even on the walls. And that's an important characteristic of light is how bright of a light is it? And of course the key when filming is to manipulate that light, right? When you do your video entry for Chia Stig, be aware of the light. Sometimes you can be outside in what we like to call the magic hour, which is later in the afternoon, right before the sun starts to go down. And the light is gorgeous. There's orange hues in the sky, there's red, there's all sorts of different colors. And sometimes the light will be perfect. If you go outside and film at high noon, you're gonna get a very harsh staring down that you long shadows light. And if you film in the morning, that's another great time where the light is a little bit softer, a little bit nicer. For those of you who go running, I love the light that shines in the morning when I get up and take a run in Austin, Texas around 7 a.m., it's just absolutely gorgeous. And all of this is interpreted differently by you and I's eyes and what the camera sees. So we have to adjust for what our eyes see, but then we have to take out our camera, take out our iPhone, take out our Android phone. And if that's what you're using for filming is what does the light look like through the lens to camera. And that's something very important to remember. You can't just go on what you see yourself. You have to go on what the digital device sees as well. The reason this photo that you guys see on the screen is so interesting is the way the light is coming through her hair. It's illuminating the left side of her face, not the right side of her face. It's actually reflecting off of her jewelry. You can see that curtain behind her actually absorbs some of the light. And your shots don't have to look like this for TS-Takes, right? But what we want you to think about is not having shadows in people's faces, not having to have them wear sunglasses because you put them outside and they're staring directly into the sun. Not filming things at night where there's not enough light. We want you guys to pick good lighting conditions in your videos and really highlight people. We think of light as something that can really highlight the scene. It's something that gives your video maybe even an edge off of the next video in the TS-Takes competition. So we really want you guys to play with light and put your director hat on. If you've set up a chair somewhere and you get there and the person in your interview is running late and by the time they get their lights back, hey, sorry, we gotta reschedule. Or hey, we're gonna have to move. We're gonna take all this stuff and move and go to another room. Now, if you're filming outside, that's one thing. If you're filming inside in a conference room and you like the light, that's a good thing. But if you want to and even have an extra edge on this, there's something in the business that we like to call standard three-point lighting. So there's three lights. And that could be lights in the room or that could be lights that you go by at your local hardware store or you order off Amazon. Just really simple work lights do the trick. And number one is the key light. Number two is the fill light. And number three is the backlight. So the backlight can go anywhere you want it to go. You see that object? You see number one is on the left. Number two is on the right. And number three is on the back. Now, number three is at an angle. You see, object would be the person facing towards the camera. With one, lighting the left side of his or her face. Two, lighting the right side of his or her face. And the backlight, just giving a nice, soft glow behind them. What you want to avoid if you get this complicated in your TS Digs video is shadows. You want to set up the lights to eliminate as much of a shadow off a person's face as possible. Unless you're trying to put a shadow on their face for some sort of artistic reason or maybe it's an old film noir movie and you're trying to make the person look good or bad depending on the shadows. A great movie that uses shadows a lot is any of the Coen Brothers films, but especially Fargo. I mean, light was its own character in Fargo. And who knows, maybe we'll see the TS Digs Fargo equivalent this year now that I've said that. But standard three-point lighting is really easy to use, especially when you're actually interviewing someone. But then again, that's kind of an advanced thing. But it's something you guys can definitely try out, experiment with and actually build into the storytelling process. So unfortunately we have way too many of you for exercise time on this call, but I will give you guys a little bit of homework. What I would like all of you to do that are gonna participate in the TS Digs challenge or even if you're not, is to do this little bit of homework. And that is to simply find a partner in your office at home, one of your kids, your boss, whoever it might be, and do a little video exercise. Take your camera, whether it's your iPhone or a digital still camera that has video capabilities or Kodak or a flip and just ask them their name, ask them their position title and have them give you their mission statement. What is the mission statement of your organization? And then set it up, go outside, film it inside, go film it in the back room of your office, go film it in your backyard and see what all those different conditions look like. And that's really gonna help you get ready for when you do the TS Digs video. And then give that person the camera and have them film you in two or three different conditions. And then at the end of this homework assignment you'll have six tiny little videos 30 seconds each that you can watch and see how the light's different, see how the sound is different, see if you put your director's hat on and ask good hard questions. And then something that when you learn from Aaron Bramley who's coming up later this month on how to edit, you'll actually have six or maybe four or five or even six little pieces of video that you can then practice editing with before you do your main TS Digs entry. So that's the main things that I'm gonna cover today. And I know it's kind of some complicated stuff but it's all based on really simple ideas and concepts, stuff that hopefully you guys can do. You know, without a big expensive camera, something that you can do by screwing in an extra light bulb or turning the lights off in a room. You can buy a road and see how cars sound when they drive by. And it's all experimental getting you guys ready to do your first video. And with that being said, I will hand it back over and take questions. Of course, I'm happy to answer questions on Twitter for those of you who are a little bit shy. And I know that folks from TechSoup are happy to do that as well. Thank you, David. That's very helpful. We have a lot of questions coming in. Some of them are more nuts and bolts. And first off, I'm gonna answer just a few quick questions about the TechSoup Digital Storytelling Challenge. We have people asking if it is too late to enter, and no, not at all. You can enter your photo sets or videos. That's a one-minute video up through February 29th at tsdigs.org. And we've had people ask if they can do both a photo set and a short film, and yes, you can enter one in each category. We encourage you to do so. These webinars are recorded and archived at tsdigs.org. You can go and find our previous events. Last week's webinar with Rich was fantastic on writing and pre-production. And this one will also be archived along with next week's with Erin Bramley. If you look in the chat window, you will see the link to next week's webinar next Thursday at 11 a.m. And we would love to have you join us. And that one will be on post-production and looking at what happens after you do the recording. So the other questions that are coming in are a little more nuts and bolts. And a few people asking about those microphones. And we've also had a number of people asking about any sorts of things. So question about an external microphone. Mer Swallow asks, I have an AP 2020 that is a USB mic. If I plug that in and use my onboard camera on my Mac, will that work? Ah, good, good question. I have not used that microphone before, but I think that would work great just depending on the microphone quality. If you're happy with it and you're happy with the camera on your Mac, if you have a Pro or an Air, of course they have great built-in cameras. Then I think you have a pretty good solution right there. Yes, and that also can work for those of you who are struggling with the quality of your camera. For instance, we did have someone who is struggling with the Flip Ultra sound quality. And so keep in mind that you can record sound on a secondary device, even while using a video camera like your Flip Ultra. Definitely, and I think Erin will cover too that you guys can actually go out and film something really cool on your iPhone and then go in and do a little bit of a voiceover, describing where you were and what you were seeing or getting that one friend of yours who has that amazing voice to do the voiceover and have you write it for them. So that's always an option and one of the great parts about film and production is mixing and patching. Right, and Dave, while we're here, are there particular software that you recommend for audio capture? Yeah, that's a good question. I'm a big iMovie fan and iMovie actually lets you do voice capture in it as well if you're on the Mac platform. And then there are just various and sundry online websites that let you, probably they were designed for podcasts, but just let you do audio quality. And then of course, going back to the Macs, not to overhype our friends at Apple, but GarageBand, makes an excellent audio recording tool as well. Right, and there are other tools from Adobe that are very useful, I've used as well. You can get a fairly good audio capture even off of an iPhone. And so think about like if you need to get audio in the moment with someone that you're not gonna be able to bring into the office, get them in a quiet room and record what you can and then you may be able to do some mastering of that sound later. We have a similar question. Can you discuss inexpensive software for editing? These are people who have found that they've hit the limit on what they could do with the FlipCam software. So besides iMovie, are there other tools that you can recommend? Yeah, you bet. The good part is that besides iMovie is Premiere, Adobe Premiere is coming down in cost a lot. And so Adobe Premiere is something interesting for you guys to look at. Lightbox, L-I-G-E-H-T-B-O-X makes a open source video editing program that is really robust. It also has a difficult learning curve to it. So that one is a little bit tricky to teach yourself but there's a good community online around Lightbox. But in reality, video editing software is usually pricey and has a little bit of learning curve just because it can and because there's only certain people in that market making it and no one yet has designed that just killer video app. So for all you software people out there trying to think of your next big idea, a cloud-based video editing software that's easy to use, I'm sure would kill. Absolutely, and keep in mind that there are now apps available for your iPad so you can even shoot via your iPad or your smartphone and edit it in the device itself. There are a handful of apps that I have used. I can't say that I recommend one out of the over another but there are different tutorials and websites you can look at that will compare and contrast the different apps that are available. Most of them are under $5 which is great if you're looking for a low cost solution that's going to allow you or your volunteers to shoot on the fly or out in the field. We have a lot of questions coming in around lighting and so I'm going to go to a few of these here. The first one, can you talk a little more about lighting? A lot of our building is darker. Any recommendations about what lighting to use or where to purchase? So leave your building. A recommendation, people should not be tied to spaces for any of these videos. If you have a great story to tell and you want to tell your community garden or a park or at someone's house that it's just perfect then you should be able to go and do that. So don't be tied to spaces and if your building has bad lighting, avoid it. That's very true and others were asking about temperature of lighting and this is something that we work with quite frequently. I live and work in Hollywood and have a special effects company on the side as well and you can use very simple and inexpensive LEDs but keep in mind that LEDs may be too cool. If it's a white LED it's gonna look a little bit bluish at times and so you may look for something a little bit warmer. There are warm white LEDs and those are going to be a little bit kinder to skin tone versus a cooler white LED but you can get very low cost clip lights for 10, $15 and use that effectively in your office if you need to do ahead and do a shoot in the office showing what you're doing. There are a lot of different ways to do low cost lighting. I recommend clip lights because they're very easy to move around. And the only thing I would add to that is if you're asking about color temperatures and lights you're probably above and beyond some of the stuff we talked about today but if you're actually looking to spend money and buy lights is always go LED. LED lights, although they cost more than a traditional lighting kit, make just beautiful changes in color. A lot of the lights you can actually change on the fly what color they are through gels or it's pre-programmed to turn red when you hit a button depending on the lights you need. And LEDs are gonna be a lot better obviously for your electricity bill and for your health and that they're not burning at hundreds of degrees and it's severely burning you if they break or explode or if you touch them in the wrong way. So LED lights are definitely the way of the future. Yes, and we are seeing clip light like you could get at your local hardware store. A very simple clip light with a light bulb in it. They allow you to sort of attach it to different types of things. So that makes it easier to position the light exactly where you need it to get the right light shining on your subject. So thank you for those questions that are coming in. Yeah, and the other tip and trick I would add is Ikea, the universal furniture company at least here in the United States and in other countries as well has a great desk light that clips on. So it's basically your standard desk light that you'd have in any corporate setting but it has a great clip on it and it's maybe $18 at Ikea. Great, it sounds like number of the videos that are coming, a number of the questions that are coming in, some of them are around alternative ways to tell story beyond video. And just to note, we had someone ask, does it have to be video or can it be photos that are put into basically a one minute photo montage? And last year, our TSDICs winner did exactly this. They took their photos, I believe into iMovie or something similar and it was just photos with a voiceover. It was very simple but it was very effective storytelling. So do not feel limited to capturing video, to create a video. You can certainly use your photos and put them together in creative ways to create video out of your photosets. We have a number of people asking about more questions on the audio than anything else. The best and cheapest way to capture audio. Are there any sort of on the fly solutions you would recommend, David, that we haven't hit yet? Alvon, I think you nailed that one on the head when you said your iPhone or your Android phone. The ability to capture audio on the fly is definitely the realm of mobile devices. So whether it's an app, whether it's something that's normally on your phone, that always makes a cool tool to have. And even I see a lot of directors who do this in that when you are filming with your normal camera, you have an iPhone on the table capturing audio. And as long as your iPhone's not ringing in the middle of the interview, that can be very beneficial to have a secondary stream. So go with mobile devices. When I was at the American Cancer Society about six or seven years ago, I remember I actually went out and bought a little audio recorders that were digital made by the folks at Creative Labs. If you guys remember Creative Labs. And we would take these and actually do podcasts from them. Or if our CEO was giving a speech, we would put one right up next to him on the podium. Or while we're filming, we would have that secondary source of audio from an MP3 player that was set on record. So definitely get creative around the audio. Nowadays, of course, it's a lot simpler than it was back in my dinosaur ages of production in that you can just put yourself on down and fire up and happen record. And I was just gonna say, yeah, go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say, does Evernote record audio as well? I haven't used Evernote for audio, but there may be others. We've had a couple of people asking about our favorite apps for the iPhone or for the Android for doing editing and also for capture. I don't know if you have any particular apps you would recommend. I don't, I'm kind of old school and I love to do all my editing on the computer versus the mobile. So maybe somebody else on the call can throw that out there. Yes, okay, so I'm looking through our questions to see which ones we've missed. For those of you who are wondering if these sessions are recorded, they are the slides along with the recording will be available on our website soon and we will be sure to send a follow up not only for this week but also encouraging you to register for next week's webinar with Erin where we'll be talking about post-production and getting into deeper on how to do the editing side and then how to handle distribution as well. We haven't mentioned here around iMotion as a potential app to look at. I'm testing one called Blurb Mobile right now on my iPad, which allows you to weave together photo, videos, and audio capture into one story. And there are, yeah, there's some really interesting apps being developed right now for bringing together different types of media into creating rich stories that are available and they can be pushed to YouTube and to your other social sites as well. We have a few more questions around how to deal with those of us who have cameras with the microphone inside. Is there a way to still shoot with that device with the microphone inside? How close do we have to be in order to get good sound quality? Can you give some tips on that? Good question. And our good friend, Michael DeLong, says yes, Evernote does record audio. So for those Evernote addicts out there, which I am recently become one, that's a good source for audio as well as Evernote. And then on the video, it's true. I mean, you want to be two to three feet away from someone to get good audio. Not more than that. I mean, it's hard. It's definitely hard with anything that has an internal microphone to rely on it. And like I said, people are correct to worry about audio because people will flip away if there's bad audio. But the good thing is, is you put your director's hat on, you film it two feet away from someone, and then you say, hey, thanks. Can you hang around a second while I preview this? And then you play the entire thing back while they're there. They can get to sit there awkwardly and make small talk while you listen. And then you see if it's good. And if it's good, then you call it a wrap. You're done. But if it's bad, you move closer or you move farther away because they talk loud. So good audio versus bad audio really comes down to the person. And we like to blame technology, but in reality, it's up to us as producers and directors to put that hat on and redo it if it's not good. And we've also had some questions around how to deal with motion. Let's say you're out in the field with your smartphone or your flip cam and you don't have a tripod. Are there any tips to keeping it steady? Yeah, good question. Just pull your arm back and keep your arm as close to your body as possible. So you'll see professional photographers do that. You'll see professional video folks do that. Even the guy who shoots your local news keeps that camera on their shoulder or as close as possible as they can to their body to keep it still. So that is a big, big tip right there is just keep that arm close and keep it as close as you can to your body to keep that camera image still. And plus, we're very lucky nowadays. We're very spoiled by image stabilization that's built into everything from our smartphones to the Kodak to the Flip. So that's always gonna help you as well. Great, great. This has been extremely helpful. I hope we're getting to as many of these questions as possible. We've had a couple of questions around people wanting to use DSLRs that have good video capability, people who are journalists and need a camera, but one thing that will do both bills and videos. Can you have any particular recommendations? Gosh, I mean, that is its own subfield of what we do for a living and entire classes are shot or taught on shooting on DSLRs. So if you have the money to go out and spend 3K on a Canon 70 or a TI or a 2 or all those beautiful, beautiful cameras out there by all means go to it. I think that's a little above and beyond those nonprofit folks' resources. But a digital SLR that shoots video and especially nice HD video that's just seen absolutely amazing shot on those. So if you have the money and you have the budget, definitely buy one. I think they're great. And I especially love the Canon products. Yes, yes, I agree. The Canon's have great lenses. Some of the Sony's with the Zeiss lens are quite good. And you can even find DSLRs that will shoot in 3D, which the Fuji's are really fascinating if you're looking to do something unique and possibly appropriate for 3D as well. We have a couple more questions. Go ahead. Oh, not. I was gonna say, Yvonne, are you ready for your first 3D film in TS-Diggs this year? I would love to see 3D films in TS-Diggs and I would love to see more nonprofits able to get their 3D films into the marketplace because there are media producers and distributors hungry for good 3D content right now. There are more 3D channels than there are content. So we have an opportunity there for nonprofits to think about how to tell their story in new ways, especially if you can take people into places that they haven't been before. If you are giving them an opportunity to see a perspective that they're never otherwise going to get to, that can be an extraordinary storytelling tool. Yeah, I'm absolutely ready to screen our first 3D film at the Lights, Camera, and Film Festival this year. So bring it on, guys. Great, great. We've had some questions coming in around other types of software like the Corel, Video Studio X4. I've also used Final Cut Express. These are tools that you may be able to get your hands on fairly affordably, depending on your educational licensing and those sorts of things. Some libraries have access to those quite affordably as well. So whatever video editing tool you can get your hands on and feel capable to learn and use would be an appropriate tool for you. But if it feels like it's too much, or if it feels like it's going to take you too long to learn it, go for a simpler tool. Something like iMovie is very intuitive. Yesterday we also talked about some of the online tools, like WeVideo and Stroom, that allow you to do it online with your collaborative teams and not necessarily need to learn the nuts and bolts of video editing. So we have just a few more questions. Any recommendations for framing regarding subtitling and subheadings? Does that change your frame? Good question. It usually is going to always be the lower thirds, so it should not change your framing. If you have your interview subject on the left-hand side of the screen, you have something visually interesting on the right-hand screen such as a piece of artwork or flowers or a candle. Nothing that's alive and moving. Avoid cats, dogs, animals in your frame, which can be very, very distracting unless you're a animal rescue organization, then that makes sense. But the titles in that case will either be at the bottom left, so underneath your subject or the bottom right, underneath your visually interesting artwork or flowers. So I'm not too worried about that because it's always going to be in the lower thirds of your shot. So don't worry about that too much. But yes, the more TS digs we saw that had nice titles coming across the bottom and had that kind of professional shine, I think the better. Yes, absolutely. And especially as we're thinking about international audiences and being able to have our global stories be understood, subtitles. And we yesterday also talked about a tool called .sub that can be very helpful for getting your stories out into multiple languages as well. So we encourage you to go ahead and think about subtitling not only for accessibility, but for international audiences. We have had a number of questions coming in about the flip-cams and whether there will be more in stock. We will do our best to get more information on that and get back to you as a community in our follow-up emails. I know that there have been flip-cams and I know that they have been very quickly flying through the TechSoup stock. So we will do our best to find out more of a product update on that. And let me see. There were some questions around whether Audacity for Windows would do the sound editing. I believe that would work fine. I have not used Audacity. Have you, Dave? I have used Audacity. It's been probably two years, but I really did like Audacity. I used it for a lot of podcasting back in the day. So I'm sure if it's maintained its product level, that that would be great. Yes. And for those of you asking about YouTube and Google+, we will be talking more about distribution next week. So if you want to tune into our tweet chat on Tuesday on social amplification, that will be Tuesday at 11 AM. Also, you can check in for our next webinar as well. And that will be next Thursday with Erin, your colleague. You can see that on the screen right now. The tweet chat on the 14th is on amplification and helping to get your story shared, where Google+, and YouTube come in very handy. And then we're going to talk more post-production with Erin on Thursday at the same time. You will also see on your screen right now a link to the TSDigs Google group if you have more questions and want to speak to others in the challenge. You can join the Google group. And you can get your questions answered in our forums. And Dave and Erin and many of our pros have been hopping in there to answer your questions regularly. So we encourage you to go ahead and use these resources as well if you didn't get your question answered during this particular session. And as a reminder, you do have until February 29th. So now is not too late to start creating your stories and get them up and running. We would love to see your photo sets or your videos. 20 days last. That's very exciting for everybody out there. Yes. We have some really fascinating questions coming in. And thank you to our audience today for giving us so many different options. Again, those of you who want to do the picture set as a video, you may want to try something like Animoto for a very quick version of that. Otherwise, you may want to do that in iMovie to put an audio track or a voiceover on top of your five photos that can be a much more effective storytelling method for some people. It helps set the tone. And it also makes it available in different ways. OK, interesting. We've had some questions around color to suggest for a one-on-one video. I'm not sure if there's one color or another that would set a tone appropriate. But, Dave, any suggestions? I know I tell people never to wear patterns on camera because that can be really trippy. I'm a big fan of blues and greens. Avoid the purples and the reds and things like that. And I don't know. It goes back and forth. I see people wearing earth tones. And they look like they melt into the couch behind them. But I guess that all depends on the color of the couch as well. But yeah, Vaughn's right. Avoid the patterns and the wild stripes and big hats that cover people's faces. If you're outside, I know a lot of people want to put people in sunglasses. But unless you're going for that Miami Vice cool hipster look, I'm trying to avoid sunglasses. People like to see people's eyes. Very true. Very true. And for those of you who can't possibly show your subject for one reason or another, whether it's a safety concern or needs to retain anonymity, think about lighting different ways. You can use silhouettes. Instead of showing their faces, you can show their hands while you have audio of them. Hands are very personal and allow you to feel connected to the person without necessarily showing their full body or their face. So there are ways to feature them. And another good thing on that Vaughn's absolutely right on the hands. But you can show the backs of people. So if it's kids, the backs of kids playing on a playground, maybe it's a softer focus so you can't really see what's going on. But you know, people are there laughing, having a good time on a playground. Another thing is feet. I always love if you're showing an event, of just showing hundreds of feet walking towards the camera or people running if it's a running event, or if it's a concert. The same thing, just kind of that low to the ground interesting shot of people walking or running or dancing. It's always a very cool shot. Yes. So thank you, David, for helping us figure out how to be both personable and personal in the way we tell our stories. Thank you for the tips on lighting and framing and sound quality. And also, thank you to all of our participants and guests today who've been asking great questions. If you did not get your question answered, please go to the forums. That's bit.ly-tsdigsforum, again, for that URL. And we would love to answer your questions there. From all of us at TechSoup, this is Yvonne Haining, Interactive Producer. I am joined by Kyla Hunt, our webinar producer, and David Ness of Lights Camera Help. Thank you so much, David, for joining us today. Yeah, and I just want to thank Susan, Yvonne, Christie, Michael, Kyla, and everyone who has just been amazing at TechSoup for having us and letting us be a partner in TS-Digs this year. Well, thank you for powering us. And we will let you go for today. And thank you for joining us again next week for the next webinar and the next treat chat. Have a great day, everyone, and we will record this in our kind of session for you. Thank you for joining us at TechSoup.