Filming Tips - Learnbase

Filming Q&A 9: Does it need to be scripted?

When we have a presenter who is not confident or skilled in public speaking situations then a script and an autocue / teleprompter is required. And to be honest they help get the job done fast even when the presenter is a skilled public speaker. When presenters write scripts they can tend to be a…

Filming Q&A 8: How do we frame the head?

This is key. For talking head situations, we make sure the top of the presenter’s head is very close to the top of the frame. Bigger hair can also be ‘cropped’ outside the frame. The tendency to frame the head vertically central can make the presenter look like they are too short to fit into…

Filming Q&A 7: So… shall we just use the camera’s mic?

For educational contexts especially, the audio is probably more key than the video. Good editing software can disguise a multitude of sins but it can only go so far so it’s vital that the source is a good as possible. While we can remove a distant phone ring or siren in post-production, even the best…

Filming Q&A 6: Do we actually need lights?

Lights. Yes we need them. And these days LED lights don’t break the budget. But we’ve learned to be minimal and careful of overkill as the presenter can end up looking washed out if we throw everything we have at them – especially if the background is lighter. We’ve also learned at our peril to…

Filming Q&A 5: Do we need a clapper board and everything?

We need the sound of the clap (or rather the spike on the wave form) for syncing external sound capture with the video. We rarely, if ever, have needed to match the external audio with a ‘visual’ clap i.e. the clapper being clapped in front of the camera with the scene and take refs. If…

Filming Q&A 4: Will splicing together too many clips look bad?

Ok. Promise you won’t admit this to your filmmaker buddies. For most online educational videos, if we film in 1080 definition we have a degree of wiggle room to ‘zoom’ in a little when editing stage when needed. That is if we need to splice a paragraph-worth of speech from one take with a paragraph…

Filming Q&A 3: How do you keep track of the production?

The Learning Designer / Director should keep brief detailed notes so that whoever needs to edit the all the pieces of the final video together has a clear idea of exactly what material to use. We use a table with the following headings: Video File | Audio File | Scene | Take | Quality |…

Filming Q&A 2: Just how small a crew can you get away with?

Once everything is set up, during the shoot, you’ll need to be juggling at least the following: 1. Camera 2. Sound 3. Autocue 4. Makeup 5. Keeping notes 6. The presenter 7. The script 8. The delivery While we had more people in the early days we generally just have a crew of two once…

Filming Q&A 1: One or two cameras?

If we are filming a panel discussion, live workshop or some other event, we need two cameras to ensure nothing is lost when swapping out batteries, memory cards or in case someone walks in front of one of the cameras. But for controlled talking-head situations when we can control when to roll and when to…