Transcripts
1. From Beginner To Complete Expert In Video: How's it going? You have no idea how to use a camera, how to even make videos and you're a complete beginner and you're overwhelmed by questions like, what video editing program do I need to use? How do I use a camera? What's the best gear and equipment and how do I even get started in videography? Or maybe you're just wanting, getting into video for fun, but you have no idea where to start. My name is Peter and I have made videos for small to large companies. Everything video related, whether that's their video content strategy to actually filming, editing and directing all of my companies and clients that I've worked with. But more importantly, I have made videos for myself. I'm completely self taught and I didn't go for school for any of these. What took me three to four to five years when it comes to learning things about cameras, videos and editing. All that, I'm going to show you, everything that I know in this overview course. Then you can decide whether or not, is a video the career right for you or simply you just want to learn how to make a video, but you have no idea where to start. Well, make sure you sign up for the Skillshare course and I'm going to show you everything I know from beginning to end, how you make a video. Let's get started and I'll see you in this course. Cheers.
2. What's the BEST Camera To Buy?: Before we even get into the actual video making, you need gear. Gear is the definition of things such as the camera that you're going to use, the lighting, and the sound. I know it can get a little overwhelming, but I'm going to try to break it down in the most simplest terms, whether you have $0 budget and you only work with such thing as your phone or you have more along the lines over $2,000 budget. I'm going to show you guys exactly what are the three types of categories so you can consider your gear. I know it can get overwhelming, but here are the brief overviews. School of thought number one is, if you don't have any budget, you can simply use your phone, because nowadays, people often forget that you can simply record videos through your phone. People often forget that your phone is more than capable of filming videos. The second category that you might want to consider, if you have a long line of over $500-1,000 budget, then you can simply pick up something along the lines of a point and shoot. What point and shoots are really good for is that you don't really need to worry about things like buying a lens, buying things like audio, because the thing about these point and shoots is that you can have external audio. You don't have to worry about focal lengths because they newly have 55 millimeter and can zoom in all the way till 70 millimeters. In other words, it can go from 24 millimeters to 70. That's a decent zoom range for our point and shoot camera. The third school of thought or category when it comes to actually using cameras, whether or not, let's say you have $1,000 plus budget, which is an awesome budget that can make awesome videos with is along lines of a DSLR. Yes, I know can get really specific and techie, but I would recommend things such as a Canon T7I or Nikon D5600. If you have along lines of even a more of a budget, then consider things such as the Sony Alpha 6500, as well as the 87S and anything above $4,000, I would say that you have more than enough budget to make videos, but a beginner course specifically is made for within those types of cameras. When it comes to focal length, focal length is essentially the lens that you put. Most cameras themselves have detachable lenses and the lens that I currently have right now is a Nikon D5200. But the lens itself is a Sigma 17-50. In other words, if I zoom in and zoom back out, that is the focal length of this camera. The focal length that I actually recommend for whether that's very versatile when it comes to having your shots is a decent zoom lens. Decent zoom lens range would go anywhere from, let's say 10-50 millimeters, so around, this is 17 and this is 50. I also recommend you pick up things such as a prime lens. Prime lenses are used in mirrorless or DSLRs. Prime lenses have a fixed focal length. In other words, what that means is that you can't change or zoom in and zoom out and it's stuck at a specific focal length and like, what's the point of that, is that most of these prime lenses have things like blurry backgrounds or give you the ability to have bokeh. What is bokeh? If I put my hands up like this and instead of focusing on my face, I can focus on my finger. As you can see, I'm not in focus and there's blurry. Having a solid prime lens gives you the ability to have things like more cinematic shots and you'll see this in movie making to even my own YouTube videos, to client videos, to give it more of the cinematic look. The point of this is to separate you, the talent, and the subject. It makes you, the watcher or whoever is watching the video separate themselves and it gives, who doesn't like blurry backgrounds and beautiful bokehlicious shots? Those are the three types of cameras that I would recommend, depending on your budget. Now that you have camera gear, the next part is I'm going to talk about is, what exactly types of lighting do you need for your videos?
3. The Only Other 2 Equipment You Will Need: The next part of video making and videography is almost just as important as whether or not you have good lighting. Going back to the path module, if you have no budget, the best source of lighting when it comes to filming is natural lighting. What does that mean? It means the sun, sitting next to a window, because the sun itself is a natural source of lighting. So you stand or make videos in front of a really wide window and the sun is coming this way and the camera's pointing this way, then that is the best bang for your buck. If you don't have a budget. The other types of lighting would be using a ring light, which I'm using right now. As you can see, if I zoom out or pull my ring light forward. That is what is lighting me up right now, the cool thing about ring lights is that, it gives not only a halo effect in my eyes, but ring lights are perfect when it comes to talking head videos, and it gives you a really well lit frame as well as the video itself. But I would say when it comes to a traditional lighting and more advanced and we have a more of a higher end budget, let's say $2-$500 to even $1,000, is that you want to consider things like three-point lighting. What is three-point lighting? It is separated and broken down into things like having a key light, aka a light that is facing the talent, a back light or a fill light to take out the shadows, as well as a hair light on top, and those are your three standard film, pretty much explanatory of lighting. I would say the third trifecta of filming that you must need when it comes to equipment is audio. Audio is just as important. There is some background noise. I know, the irony, but having good audio when you're filming your clients or even your own projects is just as important because reality is most video cameras or DSLRs do not come with a decent mic, which is why most DSLRs or cameras have external outputs or mic outputs. Currently, what I recommend if you have talent and videos, is using something lungs of a lapel mic. Lapel mic, how that works is that I'm using a wireless transmitter and a receiver. So right now, this is a wireless transmitter. Sound is going through into this transmitter on top of another receiver, which looks like this, which is attached to the top of my camera, and it is going into the mic input jack within my camera. Meaning, I don't have to be right up front the camera to have good audio, and I can essentially just get up and walk away, and solid audio would still be recording on my camera. Alternative options when it comes to filming audio is that you want to consider something along the lines of a Shotgun mic. This one is by RODE, I'm not sponsored, but these are also good alternatives. This one uses a power battery, so then it has a condenser in it, and this one is just snow cat or a dead cat, and you essentially just put this on top of your DSLR camera. This goes into the mike input, and essentially that is a form of directional audio recording. Wherever you point your camera, the audio is going to be on top, and that is how you get your audio. Those are the two schools of thought when it comes to having good audio. When it comes to filming good videos, those are the three things you need. A decent camera, lot of people are very finicky. But honestly, if it Films 1080P, you can do wonders with it. You need good lighting, a light source. So your camera, your talent can actually see, and you can be actually seen on camera, and third is you need decent audio. If someone is talking in front of a camera and you want to make sure that they're being heard, as well as making sure you can record things like ambient sounds without relying on your internal audio in your camera, because that's not a good thing to do.
4. The Secret To Using Any Camera Any Time: The next portion is coming down to how you can use any camera without even touching it and that is through understanding the exposure triangle. I actually put an image right here and break down exactly what each portion is. Basically you have three elements. You have your shutter speed, you have your aperture, and you have your ISO. What essentially shutter speed is, is that how fast the camera is recording movement. Right now I'm shooting at one over 50th. Most cameras, if you want film like, most people film at 24 frames per second and it can get super technical, but that's the frame rate that you want to stay at for movies and film, and you want to shoot at one over 50th. As you can see, if I bump up the shutter speed, we are now shooting one over 250th, realize that one, the higher the shutter speed goes up, you're going to lose brightness as well as you'd see this movement, it's very choppy, versus if I go back down to one over 50th, a camera itself gets brighter. I have to adjust my lighting. But now the movement is much more fluid and you get that natural motion blur and that's essentially how shutter speed or your shutter works. The next school of thought is going into your aperture. What aperture is, it is how light goes into your camera. Right now I'm shooting at F 2.8, which means that there is a blurry background. The higher your aperture goes, for example, I'm going to shoot at F 16. That means it's going to get really dark. Remember shutter speed and aperture, the higher the number is, the darker your video or image is going to get. But the thing is, the lower the aperture number, let's say F 1.8 or F 2.8, you're going to have more things out of focus. For example, if you shoot at F 16, the actual aperture of the camera is going to be this small, but everything is going to be in focus and you're not going to allow a lot of light into the camera. The third and last exposure triangle when it comes to using any camera, is that you want to understand ISO. ISO is the in body, your cameras ability for electronic brightness. In other words, it allows the higher the ISO goes, the more sensitive that camera body is to allow light so you can see and light up your subject electronically. Right now I'm shooting at ISO 160, and if I bump up my ISO all through the camera, you can see this is electronically. My camera is more sensitive to light now and I'm shooting at ISO 2500, which means that one, I am overblown. You don't want this because you can't see the details as well as the higher your ISO goes, the less image quality you're going to get within the camera and it's going to get very grainy when it comes to video. This is what people consider when they say, what is grainy video? What is video that's grainy? It's essentially having a lot of noise as you can see here in the video. Because you want your ISO lowest as possible, so you can have more crisper and cleaner videos or photos. I'm going to adjust my ISO back down to 200 and I'm going to turn my light source back on and that is the exposure triangle. You can use these things on any camera. It doesn't matter if it's a fancy 4K camera or even DSLR, or if you have a fancy phone like I do that has exposures, you can control it on there. All you need to know is these three things, how you change it on the specific camera that you use, and essentially you can pick up any camera and start filming right away as long as you know how to control your exposure.
5. How To Setup Your Shots?: Now you know how to use your camera, press "Record" and film videos. But you're like, what now? Well, the next part of this module is, I'm going to tell you how to properly frame your shot and there just like all the other modules and components is that, there's three things you need to know, there's three types of shots that you need to setup. There's what we like to call; these close-up, the medium and the wide shot and they're exactly what they sound like. So you have close-up shots, would be anything that's close up. This would be considered a close-up shot, as well as a medium shot, which is more along the lines of the body itself and you can see their shoulders and a wide shot, which is essentially what exactly it is and I would say, you can see the human or your talent around this big, or this big on camera. you'll see this in a lot of movies. If you actually look them, you actually see this in a lot of movies and establishing shots. So I'm going to break down each and why would you want to use each one of these shots? Close shots aren't used for whether that's product videos or close-ups to demonstrate some feeling, whether it's panning across the house or zooming in on a specific object to make the person watch that specific object or thing or person, or feel some emotion when they zoom into the eyes and you have your medium shots, which are the shots used for things like dialogue, as well as just having someone within this frame and very wide shots are used to establish scenes within a movie. For example, someone walking far away and then you see them going towards a house, that would be considered a wide establishing shot to establish what exactly is going on. Just those are the three traditional methods, but rules are meant to be broken within the creative scene and you don't have to go with the typical wide medium to close shot or close medium to wide shot to establishing your shots. So when it comes to filming and framing, those are the three types of shots, but as well as you want to consider things like head space. So right now, if I turn the camera like this, there would be way too much head space this blank space from the talent and the top of the frame. Depending on your style, you want one to two inches, if it was going to be a talking head video and if it's a talking head video, you want your subject to be dead in the middle. If it was something along lines of interview video, you would see this method everywhere, it's called the rule of thirds, you press your grid button on your camera and you can see that it's going to be broken up into thirds. So what the rule of thirds is, is you placing whatever you're focusing on the subject to be in the third of the camera. Pretend this was an interview video, I would place myself here and the chair will be there, here and I'd be looking this way or here and there will be a lot of blank space here. Or it can also place your subject here and this would also be in the rule of thirds. This also applies for things like videography and photography as well. The rule of thirds is almost notoriously known for all interview videos, but just like I said, you don't have to follow these exact rules but these are the things that you'll see used in almost all videos.
6. What's The Best Video Editing Program?: Now that you've recorded your video, you're like, "Okay. What's the next?" The next part is just as important and that is editing. Before you even begin editing, you need to figure out what program you want to use and there's two programs that I prefer you guys to use. That is either Final Cut for all you Mac and Apple users and Adobe Premier Pro. I know there's programs like After Effects, but I'm not going to get into that, but those are the two schools of thought. One is Final Cut. If you use an apple on your Mac and you prefer that interface, go ahead and use it. There's also Adobe Premiere, which is under Creative Cloud, which allows it's a subscription-based model which you can also use to click Photo-shop, Illustrator, and there isn't really one better than the other. It's more along the lines of preference. You will see these two programs being used anywhere. If I went up to another videographer and I talked about, what programs do they use? It's either Adobe Premiere or Final Cut, that is the most known and they essentially work the same. What you're doing when it comes to editing clips and programs is that you're taking your raw clips of video and you're picking out the moments that are perfect so you can line them up within a timeline but I'm going to talk about that in the next part of the basics of editing videos. You don't really need to get into specifics and really know the ins and outs but I have a full Skill Share course on how you actually edit in Adobe Premier cause it can get complicated and overwhelming. Yes, I know, but when it comes to any program whether that's Final Cut or Adobe Premiere is that you're just splicing and cutting video edits and clips and then you're putting them in a sequential order, chronologically and you're overlaying different footage on top and that is how video editing software is used. So when it comes to the videography in the film making world, there are essentially three types of schools that you want to consider when you make videos. One is narrative, meaning there's some kind of voice or some story within videos and you'll see this in all videos. Whether it's going from point A to point B, that is the narrative as well as you have your interview videos. Interview videos are essentially documentary or film type of videos where you have one person talking to another and the tale themselves is telling a story through getting asked questions. That is the second time. A third type is what I like to call the abstract or the fine art type of videos. This does not fall into either the first or second category and this is a long aligns in the space of it's own. Those are the three types of videos. You'll see this on online content and you'll be able to see, "This is a narrative type of video. This isn't an interview type of video." I will consider these types of videos, even Skill Share courses or these type of course videos are a narrative because I'm dictating the flow of the video. That is what a narrative is. You need to have story within video, which is why video and editing, story-boarding and preplanning in videos of what you're going to shoot, it's so important for video and videography.
7. The Only Way To Survive In Video/Film: I guarantee no other course on the internet talks about what I'm going to talk about in this segment of this videography course. That's about if you want to have a career which is going to be the next module of this course. But if you want your videos to get seen, you need to consider marketing in other words, how are people are going to see your videos if you are just a hobbyist and you want to just learn how to make videos. Skip this part, go to next part. But if you want, your videos get seen and if you're an artist and you want to make a living, well, you're going to lead to learn some sort of digital marketing. Because on one hand, yes, you can spend all the time using your skills and effort to be the best videographer out there, but the reality is you can be an okay videographer, but know a bunch of people and those will be the connections so that you can grow your own career and income-wise through marketing. That is the key to a successful filmmaker and take yourself from a complete beginner to an expert. When it comes to marketing, what exactly am I talking about. Well, there's multiple ways of how you can get your video scene. Whether that's, you're going to use organic search engine optimization. I have a course on that, as well as using your videos to promote businesses and somehow it think about it in the mindset of that. How can my videos help people? That is the basis of marketing. How can I use my videos to help an audience out there? Yes, I know this type of marketing can get when people throw out the word digital marketing. Marketing isn't as bad as it seems, especially for the digital filmmaker in this day and age, you need to learn how to put your videos out on the internet, as well as how are you going to distribute your videos? Because think about platforms like YouTube and Facebook. Millions of videos are being uploaded every minute. Yes, learn the basics of what it takes to film a video, to plan out a video, to learn the specific equipment, but also think and learn about how are you going to put your videos out there on the internet. Whether you want to do this for fun and you want to do as a side hobby, whether that's recording videos about your family travels and you want people to see it. Then think about things like organic search engine optimization, your titles and your metadata, and as well as how are you going to promote yourself? Let's get into the next part and that's going to be, should you consider a career in film making and videography?
8. What CAREERS Can I Pursue In Video?: You want to make money with your videos. There's three types of careers that you might want to consider. First career is working within an agency. In specifics, digital marketing agency, a film agency that makes videos for other clients. The benefit of this is that you don't have to worry about finding clients and businesses to make videos for. You work for an agency and they give you the clients and you make videos for them and you have things like a stable income, co-workers, and you don't have to worry about all the things and frustration when it comes to a business owner. That is career number 2 is working for yourself or being your own boss. That's freelancing. Freelancing means you're going to be working from multiple different agencies, companies, clients, other businesses, and you yourself are the sole contractor. Let's say you yourself, you're hiring me as a videographer. I'm going to charge you for my filming, the editing and if any marketing, if I decide to include that into my package. At the end of the day, I'm my own boss. I control what times I want to work in the day. I decide how much to price my clients, as well as whether or not clients come in and whether or not I have income, that is solely on me. That is the stressful part of being a freelancer. The third is hybrid. Everything that encompasses, why not do both? You can work, let's say at an agency part-time and you can freelance your part-time. When it comes to careers in videography, that is the way the digital trend is going when it comes to video. As well as an umbrella, it has its own category. That itself is working on film sets and film production and go working on big movies or indie movies. Yes, that is a way, but for me specifically, as a videographer, I chose digital marketing agency as well as creating my own content and courses for you guys on the Internet who want to do the same thing like I did. When it comes to careers in video, I would say much prefer you guys to go through things like agency and learn and figure it out. Try out all the things you want to try and to figure out, okay, I actually prefer working at home or I actually prefer working with people at an agency and I'm actually not good as a business person. You do this through trial and error, and if you want to go the other route, which is the film industry route, working on movie sets being a grip, being a production assistant, then I guess going to film school might help with that, knowing people and networking. Those are the careers. Today, going forward, 2020 and so forth, is the careers in videography and using videos as a medium to serve, craft, and be a service to the world out there.
9. The Reason Why Everyone Should Make Videos: So you made it to the end. I know that was a lot to take in, especially, if you're a complete beginner and you don't really know much about videos and Korea aspects. Let alone tried to even figure out how to use a camera. So yes, I know. I have other courses on Skillshare that goes more specifics like, how do I edit in the Premiere Pro? Because that itself can get complicated as well as things like SEO and creating a YouTube channel that you can upload your videos. So for this project, I want you guys two options. Outline your career and figure out, is video for me or am I just a hobbyist? Option two is upload your video on YouTube, unlisted or as a project below and share with other classmates the videos that you have made. Because when it comes down to video it is simple but a lot of people like to over-complicate things. Which is why for the sole purpose of this course, I tried to really simplify the basics of videography and filmmaking. Yes, I know this a lot each topic by a tugboat can go super in-depth. But truth is, in 2019, 2020, 2021 going forward, anyone with the power of their phone, whether that's in your own room or you're in an office or wherever you are, you can make videos and impact the world. That is the reason why I decided to choose my career in videos is that I can talk to a camera and impact the world. Whether, I'm talking directly to the camera, to people that I don't know and help people or I'm making some video with the message behind it that's impacting the world and through the medium of video. Because I really love video. My name is Peter and you're watching broke visionary collective productions. If you want more free tips, you can head over to my YouTube channel, BVCCO7. As well as, I really hope this course provided you some insights into video production. Because I know it can be overwhelming and very hard because when I started, no one taught me or talked about any of these things I had to really learn from the scratch and really figure out how to handle this video thing and whether or not, how do I make money from it? How do I make a living? Is video for me or should just be a hobbyist? These are the questions that you need to ask yourself, but I hoped I was able to give you some insights on my own video career and how I understand videos. So I took whatever information I knew and condensed it for you. So I hope you like this course and I'll see you guys in the next one. Cheers. Keep creating.
Peter BVCCO, Video Content Strategist
