Creating Motion Content You Can License

1. Introduction: Greetings, I'm Avtandil Chachibaia, I am an independent filmmaker by trade and I do video development and Pond5. Hi, I'm Robert Pascale of Pond5, I'm the director of artist development and experience. We're going to be essentially talking about tips and suggestions that are universal for everyone. Universal for not only stock media, but universal for general knowledge of video and creation of the video. There's never been a better time than now to shoot original content. The demand, we can't keep up with and the concepts that are being asked for, the themes that are being asked for. It's a great time utilize your skills and the camera that you have especially, whether it's a DSLR or if it's an iPhonet to provide us with content. Throughout this class, we'll be actually learning few key elements on content creation and first would be how to come up with concepts and ideas. Second one would be what are the sellable, licensable content trends out there, and thirdly, and most importantly, how to go about creating content. Take your skills, develop your skills, develop your style, pick up the camera and shoot away. 2. Project: Project for today for this class essentially is to create five to 30 second video clip or clips inspired by the keyword passion. No editing is required for this class. Students are more than welcome to use basically any video camera including iPhone, DSLR, anything that captures full HD,1080 quality. Students should estimate around 90 minutes to complete the project and this varies according to the skills you might have already with filming the content or amount of content you're producing. Share it on Skillshare class gallery, get some feedback from your peers, and essentially improve your skills as well as more than welcome to upload your content and monetize it through Point Five. 3. What is stock?: Stock video is a creative asset that basically allows video content creators, editors, filmmakers, advertisers, TV documentarians, allows them to essentially use small cutaway footage to make their projects that's much better. The most important thing or one of the most important things that you want to consider when you're getting into stock and creating content, is looking at your end-user. This content's going to be looked at by an editor. Could be working on a commercial, could be working on a major motion picture, you don't know. What you want to give the editor are options and variety. So, often there'll be an editing bay, an editor will sit there, he has one take, he might two take. "This is damn, if I only got the wider shot, if I only got the overhead, if I only got something a little bit closer." Make sure you shoot a lot of variety. Think of all the different ways that that can be used, and think of all the different markets, or artists, or places that this content could possibly appeare in. We're talking everything from digital billboards, to being in a movie theatre and seening it on the screen, to sitting at your home and watching it on television. So, I think it's important to shoot things that first of all, you make a connection with because I guarantee if you're making a connection with your subject, the people out there are going to make a connection with what you're shooting. So, make the connection. Think about possible places this content may end up, get a lot of variety and a lot of volume, a lot of different situations, a lot of different themes. Once you've shot your content, one of the most important things that we do anytime we're shopping online, and we're putting words into that computer, we're putting in keywords. Could be a specific brand, it can be anything as a sneaker, a trainer, or whatever. In our field, it is really really important to tag, provide metadata that not only describes literally what you're shooting, but the concepts and themes that are associated with it. You look at skateboarding, what are the keywords we could possibly think of that we can put in there, that don't necessarily have anything to do with skateboard tricks, for example. Well, we know there's agility, we know there's competition, we know there's precision, we know there's focus, and we know there's concentration. Let's look at the agency. Agency is building a business spot. What are the kinds of the ideas and concepts that business people apply? Concentration, precision, agility, all these different things. So, it is not uncommon for a business spot to have skateboarders in it. It's not uncommon for a business spot to have folks fencing. It's keywords, it's conceptual keywords and themes, that'll definitely boost your revenue and your collection. 4. What are good subjects to shoot?: So, in this part, basically, we're going to be talking about some of the most popular and universal trends or topics, if you will, that's actual and creative video, and viral video content world and that potentially includes firstly and mainly establishing shots. So, establishing shots essentially are the clips that help editors to cut away to create the geographical location of specific place, and establishing shots are usually very popular. There is the music is a keyword, is a topic that is always popular that could include life shows, that could include rehearsals in a band, or symphony playing cello and violin for example, or anything that involves the music. It's always popular, usually ends up on music videos or some other documentary productions or even commercial content. So, music is always trending. Newsworthy content essentially could be useful for TV stations or documentarians because of the subject matter, not necessarily how it's composed but more about what subject does it involve. Sometimes in news forecast cannot necessarily send their journalists in a conflict zone in Ukraine for example, but they can get this content from places like Point 5 and include it in their TV spot. Sports, kind of universal as well as some of other topics we just mentioned. Sports can be anything from already mentioned skateboards, videos to hockey match to Olympics to anywhere wherein a sports is featured. If you happen to be a video camera on a soccer game between Barcelona and Bayern Munich, please do film it because it actually has great value for stock content monetize. Action shots, anything that involves action, is that planes flying or is that war footage, documentary footage of the war or anything where for example athlete is running the marathon, that could be sports shot but as well action shot, and lots of type of content essentially can be involved in action shots, but general term action is always good to use when creating something that moves. Point of view shot. Some of you probably know this as GoPro shots basically where we create the content according to what we see, and it usually can be mounted on you or you can be holding the camera and POV, point of view shots, are crucial when it comes to anything action based production, so huge potential for using it in commercials, as well as music videos; also variety and your creative freedom applies with POV can capture it in million ways. Hyperlapses, it is essentially the time lapse but in action, so it moves. So, camera can move and it can be created not only with cellular device through the app but also with break any any sort of camera that you can basically shoot this still suite, and then you can match it on the timeline and speed it up and create the piper lumps. Timelapse usually is something that we see pretty much everywhere these days, where we actually create the sense of time passing and that could be given shot here where cars are passing really quick or it could be they transferring tonight, and so on, basically anything that shows not literal meaning but shows the time passing. Slow-motion kind of used to be niche market, but these days even with iPhone, we can capture 120 frames per second, and that allows us to create really smooth slow motion which is heavily used in commercial world, where you see, sometimes you see strawberries or bananas being dropped in a yogurt or milk. That's something that's shot with high-speed cameras, and high speed cameras can be iPhone, DSLR, or Phantom series cameras that actually can capture up to 3,000 frames per second which is rapid shooting and which creates extremely slow motion that is really delicate and really pleasant to look for human eye. Food. We all eat. It's unique subject, and filming food is passion for some people, is our keyword for this class, and actually, food content is always used in because there is huge awareness today in how we eat, how are our eating habits work. Lots of documentary productions and TV productions actually use content, build content that is relevant to food, growing it, as well as preparing it and serving it. Food is great topic. One advice that I could definitely give is that don't limit yourself within one topic. Try to cover variety. Maybe cover the three topics at the beginning. Pick three subjects and work with them. Don't necessarily limit yourself, for example in food videography or in action shot videography. There is lots of things going on around you and the sky's the limit. Just keep creating diverse content. 5. Gear: I think what was revolutionary, coming from a film background literally shooting film, was the digital revolution. The camera that was introduced that's still relevant today is the Canon Mark II. Originally, I remember I had, now they have the Mark III DSLR. It's completely mobile, the mobility is amazing. With the lens like a 24-70, which is a workhorse lens, you can pretty much spend the entire day with that lens. So you can go tight, wide, long, however. The great thing about this camera also is that it's affordable. I mean, the body is affordable, the lens is affordable, and it's a professional camera. It shoots great quality HD video. We prefer, on this end, if you're using this as a 24p, 1080. If you're in other parts of the world and you shoot PAL 25p, that's just as good and sometimes even better. So, 25p, 24p, progressive frame rate is what we're looking for. Shoots beautiful image. It's a full sensor, 35 sensor. I think there's also something that you should also think about when you're going to shoot and choosing a camera. This is suitable for most things. It does not shoot high speed. It doesn't shoot slow motion. If you're planning to shoot, whether it be a sports shoot, whether it be something where you're going to need slow motion or you're going to want to slow motion shot, there's other cameras on the market like the GH4 that will give you for 4K resolution in slow motion. So, if you're going to need slow motion, there are other DSLRs on the market that will give that to you for a reasonable price. Also, think if you're not going to purchase, there's great rental opportunities. For a couple hundred dollars, if not less, you can rent the same camera for a day. If you rent it on a Friday, that means you get to keep it all weekend. So that's another thing to think about. But for my purposes, this camera suits me fine. 6. Pro Tips: In this section of the class, I'll be talking about the commercial market, the commercial segment and the advertising agency, and the things that they're looking for. There's different market segments that we license content to. There's your individual, there's your brands, there's your agencies. So, there's a wide variety of clients that Pond5 works with. We look at the individual user, and that could be the student, that could be the independent filmmaker, documentarian. Those are our clients as well as the bigger agencies, advertising agencies, they're looking for content to pepper within a commercial spot. It's just a wide, wide variety of people that we serve. It's safe to say that a lot of content that you see here is actually been licensed through a company like Pond5. It's an incredible asset to be able to sort of go to a bank of content, be able to utilize that and use it within your work. Again, safe to say that, and you're completely probably not even aware that you're looking at stuff that was pretty shot or shot with the themes and concepts that we developed here and so on, fits into their work seamlessly. Again, I can guarantee that you wouldn't even know that if you looked at the content that it had some stock in it. Every artist is different. Every artist has a specific thing that they'd like to do and like to shoot so what I tried to do is find out what that thing is, and then I tried to build something from that. I think that your best work is when you're shooting something that you're passionate about. What stock does, it affords you to be able to do that. When you're working with a client, you get the job, whatever it may be, and you shoot it. The beautiful thing about this is you get to shoot what you want and what you like. I can almost guarantee, if you're shooting what you like, there's money to be made from that. Not to say that you shouldn't take a challenge here and there. I have one I guy I know that all he shoots is dancing, ballet. That's his thing and he's done very, very well with it. But what he has to do if he continues to shoot the same thing is reinvent himself all the time or reinvent what he's shooting, and he does. So, you can pick a genre that you like to shoot and you can master it and there are clients out there that will get to know who you are. The one thing about Pond5 is that if you're an artist you could put your name up there and we do have clients that go directly to those artists and choose their work. Could be because of their style, could be for a number of reasons, but they feel comfortable going directly to that artist. I'm choosing the genre that an artist usually works in. If we're shooting something local here in New York, we think about the global reach of the content that we're shooting. Could a client or people around the world identify with the moments that we're creating here in New York, in the United States. There are certain things that are going to translate to India, to Europe, to South America, Asia. Milestones. Milestones are sort of the bread and butter of what we do. We have birthdays, we have baby births, we have weddings, we even have funerals. These are all things that anyone anywhere in the world can relate to. Now, what we do we want to capture what's happening regionally. We also want to have global outreach. The idea of creating volume not for volume sake but for storytelling sake is incredibly crucial. When I talk about volume, I talk about cutaways to the story, I talk about transitional elements shots, all kinds of things that create the entire story from beginning to end. When we talk about volume it is not unlikely, it's happened many, many times. If you shoot a subject, guitar player for instance, make sure that you get coverage. Make sure that you do your close ups, your mediums, you're whites. You might want to do the take of that song, the guitar player is playing three, four, five times until you get it right and you feel you know it's right. Get a variation, different setups and submit the entire shots. There is a strong possibility that client will use all the shots for the entire spot, very, very important. I think it's really important. I still believe that shoot briefs are very, very important. A shoot brief is your strategy. It's your shot list. It's basically the structure of what you're attempting to produce. I still produce and create shoot briefs today for the guys that I work with. We also develop mood boards to accompany those we pass everything from videos off to each other, links and all kinds of things to get us inspired. I think that sometimes it takes a month, takes sometimes two months to get it actually produced. By the time we're out there, we have a pretty good idea of what we're doing. We know what we need to shoot. I still think it starts with the shoot brief. I really think it has to be put down. I'm still kind of an analog paper guy. I like to take a pen, and if I do have that piece of paper, a brief in my back pocket, if you think of an idea in between something, you write it down or you take out your iPhone and you're putting it in your notes. This happened, that happened. You're taking a picture so you remember. So, things do happen, but you have the structure that you can refer to in your shoot brief. I think that's one of the most important thing. It's probably the most important thing that you can have when you're producing a shoot. Here's the most important thing about key wording and a shot. So, you want to get a shot, first of all, that you can embed as many keywords and concepts and as you possibly can, because those are the shots they're going to sell the most. So, being able to come up with, for instance, skateboarding. I think I used the example earlier where if you take a skateboarder, you start to think about agility, precision, focus, concentration. Besides all the literal interpretations of what a skateboarder does, what you're doing right there is your embedding. That shot with a pretty substantial amount of key wording. Why that's so important is a lot of clients, will not only look up the literal term, but they'll put conceptual terms into the browser, into the search area. So, it's one thing to think about is if you're going to shoot something, how many conceptual terms and ideas can you embed into the keyword search. So, I would say the more that you have, the more valuable and lucrative that shot will be. The best shots for stock or any sort of video is what has the most motion first of all. The subject. Which subject has the most motion in it? You know you think about a writer. As much as I love literature, it probably wouldn't make the most exciting shot. You can put keywords in there and whatever have you, but there's not a lot of action going on. If you take a street artist, you've got a hell of a lot of action going on. So, it makes the perfect subject to actually shoot is someone make a street art. You have the literal interpretation. Then, you have an abundance of themes and concepts that you can put on that as well. So, you got to pick your subject where you can get a lot of volume, a lot of different angles, and sort of keep away from the things that are pretty stagnant or stationary. As we all know, videography and video is movement. That's really the key. So, think about subjects that move. Are there a dynamic and that you can get volume from. There's also something that's really, really great training for what we do. You have to capture what you're trying to say without any sound. We don't have any narrative. There's no dialogue. I think it's been one of the best training exercises I've ever had is to be able to make something look natural without the use of dialogue. You're still capturing the energy. You're still capturing all of that. It's funny because even though we shoot with no sound at all, we never know what the client's going to put on top of that. We never know if it's going to be a voiceover, and that's one of the most exciting things about what we do. Are they're going to put music? A famous piece of music over it? We never know. So, approach every job whether it's a band thrashing on the stage to that writer sitting at his desk focusing on his next novel. You'll find the passion in both those situations that are just as equal. So, for the project in this class when you're creating your clip, think about how you're going to be covering motion, incredibly crucial. Think about that. 7. Keeping Shots Sellable: One thing a very, very important thing is, as a videographer, you may not be aware of this, I'm sure you're aware of this. But it's really, really difficult to remove logos, out of a shot, faces that aren't released, props, anything. Incredibly difficult, time-consuming. It's been a lot of time and money trying to remove things. It's really, really important to remember that you're aware that there's no logos, in any of your shots. No alcohol. Also, be aware of anyone that you cast or use, it's under 21 serving alcohol can definitely limit cells, probably won't sell it all in this country. Just things to be aware of that could definitely hamper your sells. The most important thing that you can bring to the shoot other than your camera, is app called Easy Release. Easy Release, I've been using for years. It's a mobile App, you have it on your iPad, your iPhone. Make sure you have it on a shoot. What it is, it`s a buyout model release, property release. What you want to be aware of is, after you shut the talent or even before you hit the record button, you have the model, sign a release. Also important if it's necessary is to get the Property Release. You can find both of those on that app besides, a children's release. Now, if you're working with kids they are under 18 years old. I believe it's under 18 years old. They have to have the parent sign. Something for you to understand also is a shelf-life. Shelf life is super important, to keep your work timeless and sellable for more than five years, make a timeless. Think about the styling and think about the technology. If you do that, you got a long shelf life. The trick is to find fashion that doesn't compromise the shot five years down the line. So, you could still be cool, find something that's hip and stylish, that's not going to date it in about a week. In preparation for this Skillshare class, couple of weeks ago, I was in London, and we brought the mark three. We knew we were going to shoot a band in London, and we needed mobility. I think it was the perfect time to demonstrate the passion of this band that we were shooting. They were real, they are authentic. I think this footage shows that. What makes these clips incredibly attractive to our clients, have strong sellability is the authenticity. We're looking at a real band, a real record company, that we were able to work with purely through connection. The band wanted a music video, we decided to make a music video. Because of that, we were able to keep the content and get the club for free. I touched upon authenticity. So, to prove authenticity for this class, we shot a couple in East London. A day and life of a couple from East London. There was no hair, there was no makeup. They came as they were. The beautiful thing about this couple is they were a real couple. So, there was no weirdness. So, they interacted, completely natural. These clips are attractive to advertisers. Now, things to remember. One, be inspired and keep inspired. Two, think volume. Think about shooting for transitional moments. Think about the big picture, get the whole story. Three, go for those universally motion, sand milestones, everything from baby births, weddings graduations, birthday parties, even funerals. Four, think about your most targeted client. Your market segment you have commercial clients, you have editorial clients, and non broadcast clients. Think about those when you're shooting. Five but not least, think about what can ruin a clip. Logos, alcohol, and unreleased people in your shot. So, if you remember those five things, you're going to have one hell of a successful shoot. 8. Gear: There are few major benefits when it comes to iPhone cll or device cinematography. First one is mobility and access, instant access to it that we can basically utilize smartly. If we happen to be in newsworthy or interesting environment, we can just immediately access it and film it. The quality that phone like these can provide is tremendous. It is broadcast quality. So, a few handful gadgets that can be used when iPhone cinematographic and content creation for monetizing and licensing could be tripod mount for iPhone, lenses because besides the standard focal length that you are getting with your device, you actually can enhance that with mountable lenses and get that different for cinematic, more professional look. Tripod essentially allows you to tilt or pan or keep it steady. There are few great apps that can help actually look into focus, look in the aperture of the camera and create special looks for your footage. I use Instagram because of great filters. I use FiLMiC. It gives you access to some of the tools that is not available on camera itself. I use 8mm app that actually keeps that almost like 8mm Vintage look to your footage. That's also low cost app that could potentially give you great value proposition when you're creating content and offering it to great audiences. My advice when it comes to using the filters is that use your best judgment. Stay creative but also keep mindful that some of the people that are licensing content created by you will most likely actually end up adjusting colors or adding filters or making enhancing some certain characteristics of that video at particular video clip themselves, because they wanted to feed on their project. Sometimes that extra filter that you might feel that works for individual clip might not work for the bigger project. So, stay mindful on what the buyer might want. Considering the video is usually a raw material, try if you don't need to use extra filters and extra enhancements, don't do it. 9. iPhone Upgrades: So, here I have few very inexpensive gadgets that I use usually to create video content, and they will be handy I bet you, that they'll be handy when you're creating your content. Firstly, I have my case that makes my phone safe, because sometimes you might be dropping it, and I can actually mount my zoom lens on it. That's going to actually give me a bigger range for zooming, and actually focusing. That's how it looks, pretty cool. I'm going to place it down, I'm going to actually mount my camera holder on my tripod, I'm going to place my tripod table, and finally I'm going to basically mount my iPhone on a tripod chue, and here we go, I have a fully functional camera on a tripod that I can use for creating video content, and I can actually even the lens here, and I can swap it to smaller, less noticeable wide-angle, and actually get a 160 degree shot instead of actually more limited 80 millimeter shot. So, basically with these gadgets that might not even run you more than $50, you actually can improve the look, make it more professional. But here's the tip, you can always move with your camera closer to the subject, get that medium shot, get that close up shot. Sometimes, the clip, a video clip essentially needs the motion, because the action, it needs to come and it needs to follow the action and frame needs to follow the action. In that case, and if the topic is interesting enough, you can handheld but try to keep it balanced. 10. Shooting Tips: Basically, Rule of Thirds suggests that we divide the frame that we are capturing in three different parts, equal parts, and we try to balance the shutter according to, that is, where we keep our subject matter on left, center, or right side according to what we are looking for. But basically, everything that we see on screen these days are somewhat based on that rule. Even on your iPhone, you actually can enable the grid and see it in there already implemented for you, suggesting right framing for you. Ten major tips for shooting with cell phone, iPhone in this case. First one is, keep your shot steady. We can argue as much as we want about what's the creative means of the shot. But usually, in stock media environment, steady shot is better used than handheld and shaky, if you need to make the shakiness of the camera as subtle as you can. Get the full picture. Full picture meaning that don't necessarily zoom if you don't have to. If there is things going on, if I'm for example, filming in New York and I'm filming just the Brooklyn Bridge, there is great skyline of Downtown Manhattan that's available right on the edge of my frame, that if I zoom out and get the full picture will give more production value, because that could be any bridge, but this is Manhattan, this Brooklyn Bridge. So, that actually gives you more creative control. So, if you can, get the full picture. If you cannot and if you need to zoom and chop some unnecessary parts out of it, keep it steady as [inaudible] . Focus is huge. Something out of focus is considered as amateur in professional video world. Lock the focus, lock the aperture, or you can always unlock, adjust and focus again. Balance the exposure. So, what we mean by exposure is basically what's the level of light in a frame. Is it lit well, is it maybe too dark, maybe too bright? Finding the silver lining in between those and keep it in exactly in middle or in the acceptable area. Basically, keep it as close to what your eye sees on your camera. It's possible, and trust me, on the bigger screen, it's going to look right too. Keep your iPhone always horizontal. I know how spoiled we are with getting shots for Instagram or wine, et cetera. We are used to holding our device like this, because we text, we scroll, we browse this way. But for shooting purposes, when we are talking about aspect ratio 16 by nine, 16 horizontally and nine by vertically, that's what we see on our screens, our computers, even our iPhone screen is 16 by nine. So, we need to actually always consider actually keeping it horizontal and shooting only that way. That's the only way acceptable video content can be created. Try to get the full coverage, from beginning to end of the action. Plus, get a few extra seconds, just because editors who are working with this content that you create will actually need to have time to cut after action is completed. So, that extra second or two actually come in handy. Don't limit yourself in wide shots. Try to get same action, same subject matter in medium shots and in close-ups, where you move with your camera or video lens, zoom in and you get almost coverage of the subject matter or action you're capturing. Go closer, go further, go even extremely closer just to capture that details that might be missing from the wide shot that you essentially will be capturing. With iPhone, even though it's a great device to capture a video, there is always the problem with lighting. Finding the light source and capturing your content in as close to light as possible is the ideal situation, where you lose that graininess that comes with dark footage. Also, for means of submitting and monetizing your content that you'll be capturing, lighter the footage, the better chance of it getting accepted. Always look at the camera. Always see what it's capturing because what's going to end up on the screen on this big feature that you're content might actually be used is what you see on the screen not what your eye sees. Last tip that I had for today was import and export wisely. Capture the content, copy it on your internal or external hard drive and upload it. Make sure, if you need to adjust something, put it into any editing software you might be using. If it needs to be trimmed to have one continuous action and not cuts, do so. If you need to adjust light or color temperature, feel free to do that. Make sure that your shot is single shot from 5-30 seconds. It basically, doesn't have any cuts to it, doesn't have sequences. Make sure you are using the guidelines that 8.5 will provide, no matter if it's submitted elsewhere or at 8.5. Also, keep in mind that our curators are helpful when it comes to giving advice. So, if you upload something that you're not sure about, please include the notes with your content that you were wondering about something. Our curators are super educated, they know what they are doing with that. They're all video professionals and they can provide helpful tips 11. Project Example: So, for this class topic we basically came up with the key word passion that is kind of universal for individual, every individual out there. For me passion as a filmmaker is travel and different content that I can capture while travelling. New York is a great place to capture the content, and my passion is exploring Midtown, New York. First time when I moved from Europe to the United States, I actually did very similar project not with the iPhone but with similar device where I actually went and captured my passion, which was that time Midtown Manhattan and Times Square specifically. So, for this class purposes, I'm actually filming few shots in Times Square area, this time with my cell phone. You can see the examples of how passion keyword seems to work for me. For this class purposes, I'll basically film for you few shots in Times Square, and I'll be editing them as a quick demo real. There are a few main obstacles when we are shooting in crowded place like Times Square. Always lots of tourists moving around and it's always hard to find a proper frame to shoot. That's always a challenge as well as if we are shooting at night, even though Times Square is well lit. Sometimes we might get the grainy footage, and we're going to play with that now while we're shooting for this class. Sometimes the challenges come across when we are out filming, and if you're for example, excited about getting the sunny shot of the park and people playing in a park nearby you and suddenly it starts to rain, don't worry about it. That could be actually opportunity for another great content where you actually shoot something slightly different but still worthy of capturing. So, imagine people running out of the rain and this comical scene that you might be able to capture or doing it in slow motion for example, and where rain basically is falling down on trees, and capturing it in different conceptual way but still capturing it. So, don't be afraid of going there and getting the content that you think is interesting. Sometimes the ways we capture it can change and we can adjust to it. There's always something interesting out there that I personally suggest filming. So, happy shooting, I hope these tips came in handy, and I hope we'll see some of your work in Skillshare gallery as well as 1.5 very soon, and I hope you'll enjoy the journey in the video. 12. Final Thoughts: Just to recap, thanks again for watching, submit your content to Skillshare gallery as well as money for monetizing at 0.5. I'm really really look forward to see what you shoot, and would love to give you feedback. Happy shooting. We definitely hope to see your work very very soon. 13. More Creative Classes on Skillshare: