524 – Learn the tips and tricks of Hollywood: Tom talks Beginning Videography

Episode 524 – Beginning Videography
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode five hundred and twenty four of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about beginning videography with Marc Bullard. And of course, I'm going to throw my two cents worth in because I believe I had my first video company before he was born. So I do have a lot to say about VIDEO, but he's he's full time guy who does this all the time professional at it. And you might want to check out his episode five twenty two we did last week where he talked about beginning video editing, not advanced video editing, because that's probably far out of what you want to get your fingers dirty in. But simple stuff can really help you go faster and get a lot more video done in a hurry. And if you hear any noise, we've got somebody working on my gutters here and and I've just I'm resisting very heavily to to not say something, but I'll probably say it anyway, because his name is Brandon. And so I want to say, Let's go, Brandon, you know, shut up. I'm done podcast. But I didn't say it. I didn't say it. The his name is really Brandon. He really messed up. He should have bought that domain name as soon as all that.

[00:01:39] Let's go, Brandon. Stuff came out. All right, so I hope you didn't miss episode five. Twenty three. That was social media strategy. It's my simple strategy, even after our social media person left. You know, I've got this down to simple strategy that will save you enormous amounts of time. You'll do less posting of higher quality and you'll concentrate on engagement. I had a little simple five step process, so you got to check out that episode five twenty three. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go screwthecommute.com slash and then the episode number. That's 523. All right, how'd you like me to send you big affiliate cheques or PayPal or gold bullion or crypto? If I knew how the heck what that was, how to do it. But if you refer our stuff, you can get big affiliate commissions. I mean, for certain kinds of speaking engagements, it can be in excess of $5000 for my school. It can be up to $3800 for, you know, and we have everything down to small ones for just e-books. But still, it adds up. So check that out by emailing me at Tom@screwthecommute.com if you're interested in hearing the details of that of how you can make money referring our programs. All right, make sure you pick up a copy of our automation e-book. This e-book has saved me, and I just I was just talking to the neighbor who's getting carpal tunnel surgery tomorrow, and I'm thinking to myself, I've been on the computer full time, seven days a week.

[00:03:13] For what is it, almost 30 years now and have no carpal tunnel because of the way I hold my hand and the way I work. But I know I've done way more keystrokes than most people on Earth at any rate. If you're worried about carpal tunnel, you got to download my e-book because it'll just save you millions of keystrokes and mouse clicks and everything because of the simple, free and cheap techniques that are in the book. We sell it for 27 bucks, but it's years free for listening to the show. So check it out. It's screwthecommute.com/automatefree while you're at it, pick up a copy of our podcast app. It's screwthecommute.com/app, and you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. Now, if you're really serious that you'd like to really jack up your video skills, we have a very unique thing called a VIP video weekend. It's it screwthecommute.com/videoweekend and we can do it for small groups up to four or five people. In fact, if you put together a group of yourself and for other people, you get to come free, how about how you like that? But you can come by yourself and we do a whole day in our studio and also teaching you what to do with the videos, basic video editing, how to use them on social media, all that stuff.

[00:04:44] And then the second day I take you out into the field and teach you how to do really exciting marketing videos wherever you happen to be. So instead of doing all talking head, which is kind of a boring channel, you can be out and about and Virginia Beach or anywhere you happen to be and show you how to make that situation fit your marketing message. And it's very cool and it's unique. So so nobody else does this for you. So check that out. It's screwthecommute.com/videoweekend. We don't have any actual one scheduled right now, but again we can schedule a small group, if you put it together or individuals. All right, let's get to the main event. We're talking about basic videography, in other words, how to shoot video so that you get the results that you need. So I'm going to bring on Marc. Marc is a long time VIDEO Professional went to school for it has been doing it full time ever since. And he has been working here for 150 years or something and does freelance stuff. Also written several books on YouTube marketing. So you will. He'll tell you about those two as we go, but marc you ready to screw? The commute?

[00:06:00] Yes.

[00:06:02] All right. He had to think about it there for a second. So, all right, so I'm going to turn it over to you and then I'm going to jump in with, you know, I have a lot of my own tips and tell them what you think they need to to get started to do in good video.

[00:06:17] Ok, great. Good video. Well, a lot of my tips today are going to be focusing on shooting and specifically shooting on a phone, iPhone or Android, because that's kind of the way things are leaning that way. So even if you're not shooting on a phone, these tips will cross over to a camera. But I might mention the word phone over and over, but it can go hand in hand with the word camera anyway. When we are shooting, we are we were presenting something on the screen. Usually that is going to either evoke an emotion or sell a product or provide information. And so what do we put on that screen? And actually, more importantly, what don't we put on that screen? Well, that is all down to the composition of your shot, and the composition is what is in the actual rectangular screen that people are going to be seeing. And actually, you're going to be watching as well when you are shooting and this is important for the phone. Most of the time you are going to be shooting in a horizontal position, so you're going to be holding the phone the long way. So it's going to be rectangular but long, like on the horror horizon horizontal. So keep that in mind. There are certain platforms that you do record and vertical mode, such as Tic TAC and other.

[00:07:39] But then that used to be taboo, that used to be like, Oh, you're an idiot, if you did that because you'd see YouTube videos with black bars on the side. Right. But now it's very common in these other platforms.

[00:07:52] It is, but it's not the majority. So for right now, I suggest starting out horizontally, it'll cover a lot of other platforms. So having said that, when you hold the phone horizontally and you look into your phone or your viewfinder, whatever is in that rectangular image is going to be what people are seeing on the screen. For the most part, it might be a person person's face or head or product. Whatever it is, you want to make sure that that is predominant and in the screen, and that does not always mean it has to be centered in the rectangular composition. A lot of the times you can have it off to the side a little bit and you can use a trick called the like the rule of thirds and you feel free to Google that rule of thirds. What that means is you're going to break your rectangular composition the screen into three sections and basically like slicing them into three vertical columns, as well as three horizontal columns.

[00:08:48] It kind of looks like a Tic Tac Toe board.

[00:08:51] Tic tac toe board. Exactly. And actually, some phones and or cameras will have like a grid that you can see in your viewfinder, and a lot of those are sort of broken down into parts of that third, the third. So you can use that as well. But yeah, it's broken down into sort of a grid. And where are these grids kind of intersect? That is a fantastic place to have your main subject. A lot of the times, let's say we're going to use a person for an example. A lot of the times you want the person's eyes to be in one of these horizontal lines, if not the end intersection of the vertical and horizontal third. And sometimes that is off to the side, and that looks good. It actually we are used to seeing that now. So and knowing this, if you actually go out and watch YouTube or even the news and stuff like that, you will start to notice that they focus on. If they're focusing on a person, their face is their eyes will be on either the top third of usually the top third of the screen and not the bottom third. And that kind of goes into another point rolls right into another point that you don't want too much empty space above the subject's head. That's headspace, anything that's just the background above the subject. Again, we're going to go with a person, anything about the background. It should not be the majority of the screen, it should not be two thirds. If we're still talking about these thirds, you want to reduce that. You want to focus on the person. So make sure they are in two thirds, if not more of the composition. And we aware of that head space. Now it is OK to have a little space about the person's head. You do want that, but you don't want it to be a majority of the screen. And sometimes that's a big telltale sign of an amateur is if you see that odd empty space above somebody's head. So let's keep that out of our shot.

[00:10:49] There's times on Zoom stuff where it looks like Where's Waldo? Because their head is clear at the bottom of the screen and it's just peeking up over the bottom of the screen.

[00:10:59] So if you want to go for that, that's funny, but it still does screen the amateur and like, you really don't know what you're doing. So it's a very easy thing to fix and adds professionalism to the shot and actually helps focus on the main thing. And so be aware of that. All right,

[00:11:14] Now you go on. I want to just tell them a goofy story here about once you start. Doing this and thinking in terms of what the viewfinder is seeing. You can have all kinds of stuff on the outside of the shot that the people watching the video will never see. And an example of this, I saw this guy on Instagram. He was, you know, pretending that he was at the beach. And so he was laying down in the sand, and he had his cell phone above his head, shooting a selfie down into the sand, right? Well, when you saw the whole shot, he was in a construction site and there was a pile of sand that was going to be used in the concrete. He just laid that in the sand and and held the selfie over his head and pretended like he was at the beach, right? So. So I don't want you doing fake stuff like that unless you're doing it funny. But but the idea is you'll you'll focus in on what the viewfinder sees, not the whole surroundings of.

[00:12:15] Take it away. Yeah, absolutely, and you would be surprised that even, you know, movies and what's going on right behind the scenes of fantastic shots because it's only what is in that composition. Ok, so more on that a little bit. Make sure that we have to keep things in focus. Ok, so if you've ever messed around with a camera or phone and gotten to the focus part, a lot of these will do an auto focus feature for you, especially on your phone. You can touch usually the screen and it will focus on that area, so it's very helpful. Be aware of that. Again, this kind of talks about the headspace. If there's an odd something in the background, a tree or something, an auto focusing camera or phone will sometimes pick up on that. And then your subject is out of focus, and hopefully you're aware of that. But how do you fix that? Well, you would tap it and then hopefully your phone will focus in on that. But be aware of that now. A good rule of thumb is to focus on the eyes, focus on the face, focus on the eyes if you can get that in focus. Usually you'll be OK with everything else and luckily, hopefully your phone will stay in focus.

[00:13:28] Yeah, because sometimes you know, people get that result where the camera is searching, and so it's going in and out of focus very quickly. And then that's very unprofessional. And most professionals shoot in manual anyway, you know, especially when you have, you know, a good camcorders where you have lots of control over the stuff. But just be aware that you don't want stuff going in and out of focus continuously. You can do it theatrically called a rack focus where you focus on one thing and the other things blurry and then it switches. But that's pretty advanced stuff there. Yeah, tapping the screen a lot of times will will tell it where to focus, and you usually want to do it on somebody's face.

[00:14:09] Right. And yeah, Tom brought up a good point that, yes, you a lot of the times, if you really get into this, you're probably going to put it in manual focus and work on that. And actually, you can get some really nice shots, really nice effects with the manual focus. And that just takes some a little bit of playing around with your phone camera and learning some of those features. And also a YouTube video is fantastic. You can also find many of those on how to do that, probably with the exact same model of camera or phone that you have now with with what's going on in the shot. You can also kind of pay attention to or be wary of the angle of the shot. So for example, let's pretend you have a camera very low on the ground and it's leaning and just looking up at somebody. And so the person on the screen in the composition, it's going to maybe look huge and powerful and towering, maybe over. And that actually creates, you know, an emotion from just seeing that shot. And it gives the viewer and the impression of maybe power, maybe overbearing, maybe give scariness. And so be aware of that. Now, on the flip side of that, you can move the camera very high, like if it's on the ceiling and it's pointing down at a person. Usually that effect is the opposite. The person looks small, they look maybe belittled. There's, you know, some consciousness going on in there. And so be wary of that. A lot of product videos or information, even in those infomercials, they will focus mostly. Keep the center right there in the middle, not very high, not very low. And you know, the news does that as well, and a lot of videos do that, but you can use that to your advantage also. You can also think you're doing something cool and it can be to your disadvantage. So just be aware of the height of the camera and what it's doing.

[00:16:01] Yeah, yeah. And I got a story about that too when I go for it, but I really learned about that. I was one of the only independent pageant producers for Hawaiian Tropic. And so we're doing these big events where these girls are in bikinis and, you know, Hawaiian tropic contest. We always had the shoot the girls from just slightly low to high angle to make their boobs look bigger. That's the way it was when in the. That was the Hawaiian tropic kind of mandate there. So we always shot a little bit low to high. Not so that they look like thunder thighs, you know, but so there was a little bit high to make them more prominent. Now, one of the scenes I remember from it was a movie with Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro that might have been meet the parents or something like that, but they had a shot where they're in the getting fitted for tuxedos, and Robert De Niro thought that Ben Stiller was smoking dope when it was really his own son. And so Ben Stiller is sitting in there in the dressing room and Robert De Niro is standing over him. And so they have a real sharp angle down making Ben's. Look like really tiny and pitiful and weak. And that's an example of angle of shot what it does to the to the final product. All right, there's my boob story.

[00:17:29] That's great. Too bad they didn't do it in 3-D. Yeah, right. All right. Anyway, so let's start talking about since we were talking about angles, the camera can move and it can actually move while you're shooting and it can move from one angle to another. It can move from right to left. It can move as like a skew. Some a typical, very familiar common motion is called panning a pan. And that would be either turning the camera from left to right, nice, smooth from left to right, and you have to imagine what is going on in the screen at this point or in the composition. If you are moving from left to right, then what's going on in the screen is the the background or actually the whole entire shot is coming from the right side of the screen and moving left. All right. And so the same thing, a pan from the right to the left would make your shot scene appear to be coming in from the left hand side of the screen and move in towards the right. Now this is also great for, you know, really fantastic for showing landscapes or if you're selling a house or something large, you can use it to go from one subject to another subject. The news story well can sometimes go from the reporter right to the flaming house. You know, something like like stuff like that. It would turn right to it. Those are pans they are. I don't know if there's really too much subconsciousness going on, such as the high angle, the low angle, but it is noticeable. So sometimes people want the camera to be as minimal and kind of be like a fly on the wall be very barely moving, sort of like a play, almost. And then there's other times where the camera comes in. Maybe there's a fight scene and action scene panning will make you stay in one shot and make you seem like you're still there.

[00:19:19] So there are the watch the speed and you know, if you if you go too fast on that landscape, it's going to be blurry. If you go to usually a landscape, you know is slower so you can take it in. But if you're shooting your soccer kid at the soccer field, when they're going fast, you may have to even change the shutter speed on the camera because to try to follow the action, it'll be all blurry on you.

[00:19:49] Right. And actually, sometimes like if you watch it like in days of thunder racing movie or something, you want the actually the effect of speed you might want, that blur would pan very fast. So there are times before know both of those options. And yeah, Tom. You just touched on what I was going to get on a little bit later was changing your your shutter speed, shutter speed basically when you were recording VIDEO, when you're recording film and video, it is taking still images a bunch of time. And usually it's 30 of these images per second, but they call them frames, so it's 30 frames per second or 30. And that's usually what TVs were commonly showing as well. And, you know, VHS and videos and stuff like that. Now there's there's not now, but there's also sixty four LPs, which is obviously it's double the amount of frames taken. So what's that? The benefit of that is when you do have something fast moving it like that, you can get more motion, more shots in focus. And so it looks everything looks a lot smoother. It's easier to stay in focus. You don't get the blur and that's fantastic for sports and stuff like that.

[00:21:08] Having said that, when you do 60 frames per second, if it was maybe a person on stage and they're not moving, they're not dancing, maybe they're just behind like a ball pit or something, 30 frames per second. It's fine. It's absolutely fine because the 60 frames per second means that you might have a larger file on your computer and that can come into play, especially if you're, you know, it's a two hour or soccer game or something like that. You have to maybe consider that your phone camera might not be able to handle that. Nowadays, it's not that big of a deal, but it is something to consider. So that is a way to deal with the panning. But really, if you just pan it, especially at landscape of stuff, nice, smooth pace. I actually like to go slower is better because I could fix it in editing. If I needed to, I could speed it up. But if it's going too fast and it's blurry, if I slow it down, the blur would still be there and I'd look very weird. So in my opinion, slower is better.

[00:22:07] But anyway, and now also with the with the panning, especially when you're moving the camera and you're holding it in your hands. Yeah, a lot of these cameras have something called image stabilization, so if you jerk a little bit, it's going to cover it for you. But if you are really crazy and holding your hands way out in front of you and trying to go left and right, the picture is going to be all over the place. So one of the techniques is to hold your elbows into your sides to kind of brace the camera and then move your whole body slowly. Don't don't try to use your hands alone, and that'll smooth, smooth things out for you. And then while we were talking about frame rate telling about slow motion,

[00:22:48] Ok, in order to in order to do slow motion, we were just talking about 30 frames per second, 60 frames per second. But you can actually up the number of frames per second to say like two hundred, and that would actually take two hundred images per second. So you had a lot to work with. And then when you play that back, it plays it very slow. It's very slow and it actually looks like slow motion, but it's all in focus. So there's no blur and there's no it doesn't look. Everything in the shot is slow, so it doesn't look like it's acting. It's actually because of all of those extra frames. So it looks pretty cool. You can do that in the editing side of things as well. But I actually think the doing it on with the the shutter speed gives you kind of a nicer,

[00:23:33] Crisper yeah, because you have more information, you know, you've got two hundred shots per second instead of 60. So even it's just going to look better. And then the other side of that would be, well, I forget what it's called when they set a camera up, and then you can see the sunrise over three or four hours and it's all played behind last time lapse.

[00:23:54] Yeah, yep, yeah. And so there's they're taking images.

[00:23:58] It's almost still in frame per minute or something, you know, something like that.

[00:24:03] You edit all that together, play it at a regular speed or even speed it up in editing. And that's when you get those really cool. You know, like the stars are all spinning and stuff like that. It's really cool effect. And that's all frame rates now. Tom. You were also talking about using your like elbows to focus on the phone and keep it steady. Yeah, I was about to jump into that as well. We wanted to make sure that your camera phone is steady for these shots. One hand is not the way to go. Two hands is a whole lot better, and Tom was talking about digging on that, digging so much, but putting your elbows into your body and having those two hands on the phone and turning your whole body. If you want to do the panning, if you're doing a selfie, that's a whole different story. You know you're not going to use two hands. So that would be. It's just I love to watch somebody do that.

[00:24:46] That would look pretty funny. Yeah. Well, you have a selfie stick, and I was going to mention that the selfie stick is fantastic. It holds, holds the phone and sort of like a clamp and then you can hold the stick out. The phone is far enough away. You can, I think, can you control it as well?

[00:25:03] Well, yes, we have. They have a lot of them that come with little Bluetooth buttons that you can pair with your phone to turn it on and off so you don't have to do the like we talked about in the beginning. Videography, you know, trim the beginning and end where you're going up to the camera and back. However, if you're shooting vertical and it's tick tock or something like that, that's a common thing to walk up and back to the camera. So, you know, a lot of things have changed over the years that used to be taboo. But the one thing about selfie sticks is don't get the dollar, the one from the dollar store, which, by the way, is now the Dollar Twenty Five store. I just raise it up because of all this stuff. But you want to get us really solid one because the really cheap ones, you know, they they flex on you with the heavy phones and they they rattle a little bit. And so the one I have has a little tiny tripod at the bottom and it's like five feet. It'll go up to five feet so I can sit it on a, you know, a park bench. And it's like instead of carrying a full blown tripod and I can still use it as a selfie stick. So that's handy. But yeah, some of them have Bluetooth controllers, so you can turn the camera on and off with it.

[00:26:16] Yeah, they're pretty cool, and I have a pretty funny selfie stick story to tell you too. It just happened today. I don't know if you went on the air, but yeah, okay. Well, I don't know. Well, I'll let you get edit it anyway. Yeah. So oddly enough, today and this is a selfie stick story in a roundabout way. My little kid was on his Chromebook for school and this is important for school. He's on Google Earth and he's looking at his neighborhood, looking at grandma's neighborhood. He types in the Great Wall of China. And when it, you know, the Earth spins to it and you can like, go to Street View. So he goes to Street View and it takes you to a hotel and you start turning around in the hotel and there's a guy with a selfie stick standing in the middle of the hotel room and nothing else on. Oh, he's totally buck naked from head to toe, and you can see it if you move the 3-D view. And he's also holding a coke bottle. And that's it. And. And so the kids come and get me. They said, you got to see something inappropriate on the computer. I said, What? So I go over there and then, you know how like, the 3-D cameras are a little weird? Well, let's just say that his personal selfie stick was skewed from the movement. It was like almost like a 90 degree, anyway.

[00:27:37] Oh my god.

[00:27:38] So I said, OK, this is interesting. I said, How did you do that? So my son showed me how he did it. It did it again. So I said, Oh boy, so I contacted his teacher. And so they have. So now it's gone through the courses of it's now getting in contact with the Department of Technology, and they've also complained with Google. So we'll see what happens with that anyway. Okay, so there'll be six stories. And so along those lines of stabilizing your phone's camera are there's other options tripods have. There's many options of tripods, giant ones, small ones. They have ones that actually clamp to lamps. They have, you know, they actually just grip to certain things and your tree branches, they're very neat, very cheap. There's also gimbals. Gimbals are really cool because they are, they help steady your phone camera so you can get very dramatic theatrical shots. You can, and it's a very smooth

[00:28:35] And yeah, but it takes practice. Tell them about,

[00:28:38] You know, yes or Tom and me. Learn how to do one. And it's tricky because not only does it balance your phone, but you can. You can tilt angle, turn the phone while you're moving, and it can also be a tripod. It can also be a tripod and has software that can follow your face so I can tell it to follow me, and that goes back to that focus and all of that stuff. It's very neat, but it's it's got a learning practice. Yeah, yeah. But those tripods that I was talking about, they are fantastic. Amazon, you can get one for less than twenty dollars. It's a good thing in a pinch. It also works well if you want to clamp it to your computer. So instead of a webcam, you can use that and get a little bit nicer theatrical shot. So take a look at those. There's another option called a monopod, and it's pretty much it's the cousin of the just clap. Sorry, it's pretty much the cousin of a tripod. It's just one poll that you would study and it would hold your camera

[00:29:36] Like a walking stick. Almost, I mean, very similar to what you.

[00:29:39] Now one thing I wanted to say about the tripod Just resist if you have an old photographic tripod laying in your, you know, attic. Somewhere it's OK if it's totally still not going to move, but a video tripod is technically called a fluid head because if somebody standing behind it and there's movement, they can move it smoothly left right on an angle up and down everywhere. But a photographic tripod is usually only horizontal and vertical, and it won't move smoothly so. And there's various levels of fluid heads, from just friction to something that's actually got like the fancy one we have in the studio has got actual like, I don't know, like power steering fluid in it, you know, it's just so smooth, you know, so there's a levels of those, but there's all kinds of, you know, sometimes you want this shot to be totally still. But I've had two people work for me that were retired from Hollywood. And the one guy said, You know, I had 50 people would run, get me a cup of coffee. I had half a million dollars in lights and a million dollars in cameras.

[00:30:52] And he held his hand out with his cell phone and he said, You know, nowadays this is an acceptable shot. Sometimes the movement, if skillfully done, can add the excitement to your video, but that's getting a little advanced there. Most of the time. People that try that and don't know what they're doing, it's just so sloppy it won't. You couldn't use it. But a little bit of movement in the hands of a good editor can be can be good for you, but for the most part, try to keep calm with your camera. Oh, one other thing I want to say about shooting the shots is reduce or eliminate zooming during the shot. Most pros do not zoom. The only zooms you see are really slow, slow zooms where you know they're just honing in on somebody as the tear drops out of their eye in an interview or something. But if you zoom too much, it just makes people nauseous. So avoid avoid zooming. Ok, so what's your next topic there, Marc?

[00:31:54] Right, so, yeah, you're right, zooming brings sort of brings attention back to the camera. And so it can almost take you out of if it's a story or a scene or something could take you out of that. So yeah, to be very sparingly with the zooming. Well, let's talk about some lighting. Yeah, now you. Well, lighting doesn't have to be terribly difficult. There's a couple of things that you do want to be aware of. Avoid having a light right behind your subject, having a light, aiming toward you, even the sunlight. You want to try to get that thing behind the camera, not behind the subject. So if you're ever shooting, I say outside, you've got to look at where the Sun is and if you're the cameraman, put your back to it. Try to use that. Or off, you know, off to the side. But for the most part back, you do not want a setting sun behind somebody. And unless you're getting really dramatic and most of the time, avoid having light behind the person, it's just it's terrible. You will just get a silhouette. And so having said that, you do need some sort of light, usually in the front of the subject, not smack dab in the front of them, but something to at least illuminate them the subject and get the something in the composition that viewers can see. Now there are many books and lessons and classes on lighting. I would suggest a Google and look up three point lighting. That's one of the easiest, and that would be a main light right on the subject. And then it would also be sort of a side light that's not as bright but still on the subject. And then we have the we actually do have an interesting light. It is a it's a backlight, but it's not aimed at the camera. It's actually lighting up the back of the subject

[00:33:50] Anyway, and it's much less bright. So it doesn't, you know, it's not telling you about putting the light behind somebody. It's less bright and it's kind of sets you apart from the background to hit you in the back of the head and shoulders and stuff. And if I was going to give just a couple tips and we teach you all of the details in the in the VIP video weekend, but if the light is higher than the subject, that's better because what happens is that sometimes you can even see this on TV. These people making these mistakes the sense a lot of people are on Zoom nowadays on their interviews. But if the light is coming directly level with your eyes and you happen to wear glasses, the glasses just light up like you're a cyborg because the light is bouncing right back into the webcam. So if the light is high and hit you in your glasses, it bounces down away from the camera lens. So that's one thing if the light is higher, that's better for you. You can adjust the intensity of it by how close it is, how far away you can use natural light sometimes, but you can't depend on it. That's the problem. It's going to change during the course of an hour. A light that was beautiful could be gone now, and it's just because it's not hitting the window anymore. So there's another thing you probably want to look on YouTube called lighting with cookies and then put my name on it because there's more than one person that has done a lighting with cookies thing. But this is how you light up a background really cheaply to look really gorgeous. And so lighting with cookies. Cookies is short for a theatrical term called a cookie loris, which is a thing where you blow light through it and it makes these beautiful patterns. So I've got about an eight minute video teaching you how to do that for pennies. Making gorgeous backgrounds for your video.

[00:35:47] Ok, back to you. Ok, great, so right, and when Tom was talking about this kooky video, which is good VIDEO And he's talking about the background, don't get that confused with a backlight, even though it sounds similar. The backlight is on the subject, and that's the one that he's saying is high up usually, and it's usually a lower intensity. These are not all of the lights are the same intensity, and this one is a little bit lower, creating a glow on the subject. But then there is also a background like a wall or a sheet or the woods if it's outside. So don't get confused backlight and back ground. But take a look at any three point lighting and that lighting with the cookies, that one is really neat. And yes, it's very simple to do, and it makes a really nice effect. Ok, so well, we were talking about let's talking about shooting outside and talking about sunlight and a little bit lighting. Why don't we talk about wind? If you're going to be outside, you're going to have wind, and that kind of leads us right into one of the one of, if not the most important part of video, one of the most important parts of video.

[00:36:53] And that's audio. And I think we mentioned this in the editing video as well or in the editing podcast as well. That audio is very important, and nowadays there's many options for different mics. You can get mikes that are cordless or wireless. You can get mikes that have cords. You can get likes that clip on to somebody close. You can get a microphone that is handheld and you can get a microphone that's overhead like a boom. That's what they're called a boom microphone boom mic. We're actually the microphone is a shotgun like that is on a boom, however, so there's many options, but they all are towards the same goal. Good audio You can fix a bad shot if you have good audio, but you cannot fix bad audio. And if you have a good shot, so really focusing on some sort of microphone. And then also, if you're ever do anything outside with a microphone, you're going to come in contact with wind.

[00:37:49] Right before you tell them about wind. I just want to give everybody that they're on iPhones a warning. iPhones are very, very, very times 10 picky on getting a microphone through the Lightning port, so make sure you can return it if it doesn't work with your iPhone because a lot of them just won't and no matter what you do, so so make sure they they guarantee that it will and then try it out and be able to return it if it doesn't, because they're extremely picky compared to Android, right?

[00:38:22] And but it is. It's really important. It's so important.

[00:38:25] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, if you're shooting and holding the camera in front of your face you, you probably don't need an external microphone. You can just the microphone is within, you know, foot of your your mouth and you get beautiful audio. But as soon as every foot away, it gets from you. The worse that's going to be. So, so keep that in mind. Yes, all right, so wind, yeah, do you remember the wind or wind thing? We were like an extreme extreme wind when we did the the photo shoot for the video shoot for fatso tennis. Marc's out there, I'm out there were freezing to death. The wind's blowing like crazy. We actually had to put toilet paper on the clip on microphone and put it under three layers of my clothes just to barely get the shot without get a good enough audio to use. That was about as bad as it gets. So tell them what you can do stuff to to watch out for the wind.

[00:39:27] Well, sure, definitely. And a lot of the times when you are shooting VIDEO When you first get to a location, you know and get things set up, do a little test, play it back and make sure you can hear how it sounds when you play it back because you don't want to be surprised when you get back and start editing. So definitely do a test. So yes, your

[00:39:46] Mind will play tricks on you because you're in the environment and you won't notice what the microphone notices and then you say, Oh my God, we did all this shoot for nothing because it's all crap,

[00:39:57] Right? Yeah. Sometimes you can still hear the person talking, like, if I'm the cameraman, I have headphones on. I can still hear the person talking in the room. And so sometimes that gets mixed, and I think it sounds great. But then I play it back and it's terrible. It's quiet or something, so I don't like to have to deal with that as it happens. But I try not. I try to avoid it. And so double check your audio before you start getting serious and even midway through. I like to do it a lot, so I'm safe. But we did have wind and there's some options for wind. And Tom even mentioned one rapping the microphone in like tissue paper, some of the cotton ball, maybe something that will help kind of absorb and muffle that that wind sound most good microphones have. Oh geez, what was it called?

[00:40:43] The little like they have a foam? Oh yeah. Yeah, a foam thing. But then an upgraded foam thing is actually called a dead cat, and it's a real, fuzzy looking thing that they can be very expensive on bigger microphones, for sure. But but the foam thing is what usually comes with your microphone that you don't need it indoors so much. But if you're outdoors, you definitely should put the little foam cover on. And then if it's a lot of wind, you buy yourself an external or extra dead cat and then keep in mind, even with the dead cat, you might have to stick it under your clothes if it's really bad or hide it in your hair or something like that.

[00:41:20] Yeah, there's a dead cat in your hair. Yeah, yes. And I think a windscreens. Oh, that's terrible that I don't know. That is right now. It's off the top of my head. But anyway, it's this little foam, little microphone thing that goes right over it. It works fantastic. So be aware of that if you're going to buy a mic. Hopefully it comes with that. And if not, you can. Maybe you're going to have to maybe move up to those other options. Ok, so we did when we did sunlight with lighting. I'm starting to run out of stuff.

[00:41:49] Well, one thing about shooting outside is the best time to shoot outside is an overcast day. Because one thing we didn't tell you about lighting was that diffused lighting looks nicer. Mean, if it's sharp, real harsh lighting that's like, you know, hospital, you know, emergency room. If it's really, really subdued lighting that's more theatrical diffusion is a pleasant looking shot. It's not real harsh shadows, and it's not it's not too dark, you know, more subdued. So it's kind of in the middle. But the biggest diffuser on Earth is an overcast sky. That's a beautiful time to shoot, but you can't always control that. So if you do have bright sunlight, there's some things you can do because bright sunlight causes more problems than you, really, because it makes people squint. That's one thing, and they hardly notice if they're squinting or they have to wear dark glasses, which means that you don't see their eyes and people like to see your eyes and it causes them to sweat. That's another thing. So a couple of things you can do is you could go to a park where they have pavilions.

[00:43:07] These are these, you know, places. People have picnics and they have a roof, but no walls. So you can get in the pavilion and shoot and have a beautiful background of trees that's like 100 yards away. Maybe that's really nice to be out of focus. That's a thing called Boca. Out of focus backgrounds is really is really a theatrical, beautiful shot. You can run into the gas station before they throw you out and the big overhang over the pumps. You could do a quick shot there, or you could if you had a helper bring. We have this giant white thing that's you can. It up into a small white thing, but it's a reflector and you just get somebody to hold it over the person's head that you're shooting to block the Sun during the shot, or you can put it on a stand or something. But bright sunlight can cause you just all kinds of trouble and harsh, harsh looking shots. So that's something to avoid if you get an overcast day. That's that's beautiful.

[00:44:12] And on the when you're inside, if you don't have any lights, you can one cheap, easy way is Chinese paper lanterns and get them Amazon or if there's a pure one still around, I think they're out of business. But the Chinese paper lanterns diffuse the light a little bit. And then if you really want to go the next step beyond that, get a dimmer. You can maybe get a dimmer. That's pluggable, so you can plug that light into it. And if you dim down those lights from the Chinese paper later, you can really get some nice soft, diffuse lights and there's other tricks and techniques as well. I've seen people use toilet paper

[00:44:48] On one on one shoots we had to do, we had to run to something like Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart didn't exist back in those days, but we got a translucent shower curtain and we hung it on a clothesline and blew the light through it. And it was just beautiful light, you know? But it was a bunch of hoops to jump through, but you can get LED lights now for twenty five bucks. Little tiny things there, like the size of maybe two packs of playing cards, and they have their own set of diffusers and they have a, you know, different light gels. That's another thing we didn't tell them about is lighting. Gels can make the light different colors, especially background lights. That's nice for that, but there's just all kinds of tips and tricks, and we'd, you know, we'd love to teach them to you. We have a whole TV studio here. We've been running for 20 years over in the building next to the retreat center here in Virginia Beach. That's where the VIP video weekend is handled and Marc shoots you and we've had, I think the world's record is fifty three videos of two people did in one. One bit is that. Was that right?

[00:46:02] I think that is right.

[00:46:02] Yeah, 53. And we edit them for you. Put the graphics on and send them to you after you get home and then teach you all the stuff. That's how to use the videos, basic video editing, how to use them on social media. There's so many things you need to know about YouTube that Marc does a whole session on YouTube marketing, and then the next day we go out into the field and do that where we just anywhere you happen to be, you can shoot a marketing video and tie it into your marketing message, and that's what we teach you the whole day, the next day. And it's just amazing the kind of great shots you can get that nobody else is going to have. So that's the whole thing is we, you know, we do lots of talking head videos. Yeah, but these ones that are on location to tie into your message, boy. Very powerful. So you have us for two days to to really jump up your video expertise. That's pretty good there, Marc. We I think we got enough to have them shooting enough video to make themselves sick.

[00:47:11] I think so. But oh, one other really quick, really, really quick. And it's actually important, especially for these phone people, and it's probably been guilty of it myself. Clean your lens. And it can be easily forgotten, especially with phones. So be aware of that.

[00:47:29] Well, yeah, yeah, because people are shoving them in their pockets and all that stuff, they get pretty nasty, probably. And one other thing we should mention is how to get the videos the heck off of the camera to do something with them.

[00:47:42] Jeez, yes. I mean, there's, you know, multiple ways now. Sometimes if your camera's connected to a cloud device, it could go up to there. Then on whatever you want to do from there on your computer, you connect to the iCloud account and download it back onto the computer.

[00:47:56] That's the way I happen to do it. But some people upload directly to YouTube. I'm not sure that's the if that compresses it too much or see folks, because you can have a full blown video, but to do certain things with it, it has to be compressed and make it much smaller, which also reduces the quality. So I like mine automatically uploads to my cloud. Then I download it from the cloud and I edit off the iPhone because it's a much bigger screen, and so it's much easier for me to edit. But but it's important that you figure that out. You can use a cord or you can use the cloud. And a lot of times I think my phone has to be on Wi-Fi and plugged in. I can't remember. I don't think it has to be plugged in, but it has to be on WiFi for sure before it's going to upload it won't you really don't want to do it on your phone plan because it's, you know, using up enormous data. That's just something you have to pay attention to for your phone is getting the heck off of the phone and probably with a wire or to your cloud account on on your own good fast wi fi is probably the best idea. There we go. All right. Well, thanks a lot, Marc. Tell them about your books.

[00:49:12] Oh, yeah, the most recent one is the YouTube marketing manual, it was updated just last year and has most of the recent changes and updates on how to use YouTube and then how to use those features towards your marketing your business. And it's been I think this is version six right now. I'm not sure it's been around for a while, and so make sure you do get the most recent one if you take a look. And if you do, send me an email and I'll help you out to give you any. If you have any questions,

[00:49:41] Let me know. Yeah, it's Marc Bullard, and you won't believe the number of little details. I mean, most people get a YouTube account, shove a video up there and then pat themselves on the back. But no, there's so many little details of, you know, it's why you're hearing crickets chirping and nobody's seeing your videos because there's all these other things that you have to do with regard to the header graphics and the transcription and the keywords and the the regular description of the video and where to put your links in the in the description and all that stuff. You've got to do it right or, you know, just your your your you're losing a lot of potential views and potential customers from it. So Marc covers all that in the book. So all right. Well, so thanks, Marc. Appreciate it. And folks, check out the screwthecommute.com/videoweekend. If you have any interest in going and deep into this, we can either do it with you personally or if you put a group together, we can. We have to have at least four for group, and if you get four, you come free. So we can have as many as five is the maximum that we can handle for that weekend. So check it out and we will catch you on the next episode. See you later.

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