Making Real-Life Videos

By Matthew Williams

Getting a good home video is hit-or-miss. Plenty of times, they're dark and fuzzy and Aunt Myrna is washed out and Junior . . . do his eyes always look like that? This unique, accessible guide for living room and classroom provides step-by-step instructions with ten "assignments," plus ideas and information on everything from basic concepts to planning, shooting, and editing, Making Real-Life Videos frees the talents of anyone who has ever wanted to direct. Perfect for anyone with a video camera Step-by-step "assignments" plus tips that will improve results at every level

Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Allworth
• Release date: Sep 7, 2010
• ISBN: 9781581158458

Matthew Williams

In 1999 Matthew Williams began writing a novel; at the time it was no more than an exercise in developing his language and communication skills as he stepped into management in the field of Engineering.It wasn't until 2006 when he found and re-read the pages he had written, that he felt a deep desire to complete the story. The 4 chapters became 25 and after many months of editing and gaining feedback from his friends and family he finally had a manuscript worthy of publication.Writing has become his passion, and The Shady Corner is the first in what he hopes will be many!

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

TO THE

DOCUMENTARY

Chapter 1: What Is Video?

The question What is video? can be answered from many different angles. On my first day of teaching video production, I asked my students that question. They surprisingly responded with a rainbow of answers. Speaking figuratively, one student said, Video is imagination. It is what we want or don’t want something to be. Video is more than something you watch. Video shows us the future of the world. Another responded, I think video is making anything come true through your imagination. I mean, we know that you can’t fly or have powers, but we like to see that. Whether you take this question literally or figuratively, video has a major impact on our lives, both interactively and interpersonally.

When I use the word video, I am referring to a moving image that is either seen on television or in movie theaters. It is something we watch and hear, usually for entertainment, and it continues to amaze us. As video continues to evolve technologically, its quality improves and people create innovative methods with which to manipulate the medium. Filmmakers can use video to teach us about our society—our values and social codes. Video is like a reflection of how we see ourselves. It has a complex relationship to people, as the people who make videos influence us and at the same time are influenced by us. The saying Does life imitate art or does art imitate life? seems appropriate.

When we watch television shows, movies, music videos, documentaries, or commercials, we are being exposed to different types of people and characters, their lifestyles, and the choices they make. This is most evident in television commercials, which try to get us to buy advertised products. Whether we want to buy what we see on television or not is not the issue. These images can reinforce what is already popular. They can also introduce something new and different. One of your favorite singers could be wearing a jacket made by a designer whose commercial you saw. Those two media showings of that jacket could have a powerful effect on you and your friends—they might make you go out and buy that jacket! What we see on television creates a powerful language that we tune into, and it influences what we think or want.

On one of Oprah Winfrey’s shows, she wore a new brand of T-shirt. Some new company sent it to her and asked her to wear it on camera. So, there she was wearing the T-shirt. She explained why she was wearing the shirt and how comfortable it was. She then gave the name of the company. A week later, that company was selling its merchandise in all major department stores in the United States. The company’s business increased 3,000 percent in sales.

All TV shows will represent a certain gender, race, class, and/or sexual orientation in a specific way. These depictions, whether positive or negative, usually reinforce stereotypes that our society holds. Some are harmless and do not pose a threat. Some make fun of old stereotypes. Some music videos demean women. Many times, women are presented as sexual objects that are either indifferent or else content to serve men’s desires. To many women, this depiction is inappropriate and grossly offensive.

We see both positive and negative images on television and in movies. Unfortunately, the lessons learned from television are not always the life lessons we should adhere to, and that is why it is important to understand what it takes to make a video. I won’t try to tell you which values are good and bad, just that it is important to learn how to think for yourself when watching television. It is important to ask questions about the video, particularly about the characters and how they appear in it. Does this video represent reality and show people in a positive light? What is the relationship between the characters? What are the characters wearing or doing? What does the video imply about these characters? How does that implication affect you?

The Influence of Video

Today’s culture relies heavily on what we see. Television has become an integral part of our society. It continually broadcasts videos that we see everyday, from popular networks like FOX and ABC to cable channels like MTV and ESPN. It may reinforce or challenge how we see the world. You may watch the news, music videos, sports, situation comedies; whatever program it is, you are watching a type of video. Think of all the programs that you like to watch and consider how much or little you know about how they were made.

What do you know about video? How is it put together? Video can be understood as a particular kind of language with its own set of rules and grammar. It is carefully created, and the people who make video must decide what needs to be shown, what does not, from what point of view, and who it is geared toward. All of these questions and more must be considered. By working your way through this book, you will learn how one particular form of video—the documentary—is constructed.

Documentaries, like all videos, are constructed. The role of a filmmaker is like an architect who plans how a building will be constructed. The architect must answer several questions in helping to decide what kind of building will be made. A building with no windows would be very different from a building with glass walls. Each type of building may be appropriate for certain uses. A film works in the same way. A filmmaker must decide on many variables. Each variable will cause the film to look a certain way. Sometimes, we can get so absorbed by what we watch that we forget to think about who made the film, what it is trying to say, or infer what decisions were made by the filmmaker during the process. On TV, there are many different programs that use the documentary format. It is a great way to express yourself and communicate important information. Before we get into making video, it is important to first understand the medium itself.

A Brief History of Film and Video

Many books about video production can go into great detail about how the process works and it can get quite confusing. Steven Ascher and Edward Pincus’ The Filmmaker’s Handbook (Plume, 1999) provides a clear and useful explanation of how the technology works. It does, however, get into details that may be intimidating for a first-time filmmaker. Below is a brief and simplified explanation of the medium and how it works. Video tape (recently supplanted by digital video) is a relatively new phenomenon. It became popular in the 1970s, back when the first round of afros hit the mainstream, and digital technology was nothing but a dream. Before video, film was the only way to make motion pictures. Film was first invented in the late nineteenth century. It was used for photography, as the motion picture had not yet been invented.

Movies and documentaries are a type of motion picture. The term comes from the fact that movies consist of a series of still photographs that move past the projector light to create the illusion of motion. If a camera films an airplane flying through the sky, it takes a series of pictures that are all connected on a strip of film inside the camera. Each picture, or frame, must pass through the camera gate and is exposed to light, and the light is what creates the image on film. Film cameras usually operate at twenty-four frames per second (24 fps), which means that the camera is essentially taking twenty-four photographs every second. After the film runs through the gate, it gets developed, and can then be viewed using a projector. The projector plays the film, causing it to pass through a light source at the same speed that it was recorded. Because the human eye can retain images slightly longer than it is actually shown, it automatically perceives the two images as one continuous movement. Our eyes and brain are therefore tricked into thinking we actually see movement, when in fact we are watching a bunch of photographs flashing rapidly in front of our eyes. The illusion that is created by the film projector is called persistence of vision. The pictures move fast enough for each picture to change slightly from one to the next, very much like a flip book. When the pages are flipped at a fast speed, the pictures create the illusion of motion as well.

Video is a computer-generated version of film. The video camera does not take pictures the way a film camera does, but it creates a similar result. The technical aspects of a video camera are very complex. Similar to the way a piece of software on a computer records information, a video camera creates a coded message on a strip of magnetic tape. That code is then played back and read as a visual language. It looks like film, but if you were to hold it up to a light source, you would not see the tiny pictures that appear on a filmstrip.

Video cameras produce a similar result as film cameras, but the process is different. The features on a video camera are similar to a film camera. For instance, both types of cameras use lenses to bring in an image. However, video cameras do not focus the image on a strip of film. Instead, they focus the image on a light-sensitive computer chip, called the CCD (charge-coupled device), located inside the camera. The image is then divided into a fine grid of spots called pixels. Each pixel reads the brightness of light at that spot. A CCD chip, which is less than an inch across, can have millions of pixels. The CCD measures the voltage of every pixel multiple times per second. The video signal can then be recorded using a video recorder, which is built into all video cameras.

The Language of Video

Video has a specific language that is built into the medium. A frame is the elementary unit of film and video. It is one picture. While film contains 24 frames per second, in video there are usually 29.97 frames per second. That means that after shooting a second of video the camera has captured 30 frames of video images.

The two pictures above present two frames from one shot in a student video of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. In this shot, Romeo’s best friend, Isaac (the kid in the red shirt), sees him coming. He calls out his name while the other friend, Jose, turns around to see where Romeo is. The picture on the left represents the first frame taken from the shot. RJ2.jpg represents the last frame from the same shot. In between these two frames there are forty-three other frames. The shot is about 1.5 seconds long.

A shot is the next unit. It refers to the consecutive frames filmed or shown from a certain point of view, or camera angle. The pictures below show three consecutive shots taken from a scene in Romeo and Juliet.

The frames above are from three separate shots in Romeo and Juliet. As mentioned above, the first shot has 45 frames (1.5 seconds), the second shot has 80 frames (2.7 seconds), and the third shot has 230 frames (7.7 seconds). The three shots together move fairly rapidly. Since the third shot has the most frames, it plays longer than the first and second shots. There are no rules for how many frames have to be in a shot. The reason why the third shot is longer is because Romeo walks up to his friends, gives them both handshakes, and then Jose begins talking. The next shot is still part of the same scene. It is a shot of Romeo’s face up close (close shot). He responds to Jose’s question. The length of a shot depends on what is happening during the shot. A shot could last two minutes (3,600 frames), or it could last half a second (15 frames).

A scene is a series of different shots (or it could be one shot) put together that take place in one location. A scene begins when the first shot from a new location is shown. The scene ends when a new scene begins. The frames above are all from one scene. There are six more shots in that scene, so the frames that represent each shot (shown above) are only a part of that scene. There are no rules for how many shots should be in a scene. There could be a hundred shots in a scene, or there could be one shot in a scene. (Chapters 8 and 10 provide more information on the different types of shots, camera angles, composition, framing, and movement).

A sequence consists of more than one scene. In a given sequence, an action usually links the scenes together. For example, a chase sequence in an action movie may involve more than one scene or location. The characters may begin inside a store and then run through several locations, such as an alley, a street corner, inside a building, etc. All of these scenes create a sequence.

Editing is the process of connecting all of the shots and scenes together to make the finished film or video. Editing consists of cutting or splicing the video or film (with video this process is done on a computer, but more on that later) and pasting the pieces together. This is a critical part of filmmaking, especially when it comes to adding special effects and making the impossible look possible, and above all real.

Video as a Representational Art

When watching film in a movie theater, people, places, and objects are merely representations of the real thing. We shouldn’t consider them real. We can see pictures very clearly, but the fact is that nothing is physically on the screen except for light. All we see is the light flashing from the projector and the film (moving pictures) moving past the flashing light at a rapid speed. The world in a film is two-dimensional. It only fits on a wall, without any depth of space. The images are carefully constructed using lights, makeup, costumes, and set decoration, and only part of what happens on film is presented to the audience. In reality, life is three-dimensional. We don’t have nearly as much control in real life as the movies we see on TV do.

Go outside and touch a tree. It is three-dimensional. The bark, leaves, and branches all have a certain texture and unique feel. Trees also have different smells. On a TV screen, a tree looks just like a real tree, but you cannot feel or smell it. What we see is a symbol or representation of a real tree, and that symbol can be altered or changed. What we see is the tree captured at a particular moment. That moment could seem exactly like any other moment, or it could be different. The sun may have been in a particular place in the sky, light hitting the tree in a particular way. A cloud may be covering a part of the sun so that a shadow is cast. That moment is captured and it is unique. The tree in that one instance can be made to look more perfect. The color can be changed. The leaves can appear to look greener and more vivid. The sky could be enhanced to look deep blue. Usually in TV and movies, people, places, and objects are made to look more perfect than they really are (more on that later).

What is important to understand for now is that what we see on TV and movies is not the same as what we see with our own senses. Everything is a picture that has been taken, and this is the basis for how movies work and the magic behind them.

Types of Videos

There are many different types of videos that we see everyday on television alone. They can be divided into many categories. Today, the line between documentary and fiction is becoming more difficult to distinguish. We see some reality television shows that use real people who play themselves instead of characters. However, in most shows, their situations and circumstances are not real; they are created by the writers and producers of the show. Therefore, a hybrid of documentary has emerged and is flourishing in today’s television programming.

Here is a list of the different types of videos that we see on television. Note that the term documentary is present in more than one category.

1.  Situation comedy

2.  Drama

3.  Crime fiction

4.  Docudrama

5.  Sports

6.  Reality TV

7.  Cartoon

8.  Biographies

9.  Movies

10.  Documentaries

11.  News programs

This book interprets the concept of documentary loosely so that it can explain how to make an array of videos. Some examples in this book are experimental, meaning they are not widely made or shown on television.

VIDEO PROJECT 2:

THE GAME OF TAG

Before each game, the kids crowd their feet together and pick who is it.

In the spring of 2002, I started working at Hudson Guild, a community center in Chelsea in Manhattan. The Guild is located in the middle of a group of housing projects. The center has several programs for young children, teens, and senior citizens. One of the classes that I taught was with a group of fourth-graders. I had never worked on a video project with such a young group. I did not have a lot of equipment, as they did at Jordan L. Mott Junior High in the South Bronx, New York, so that the children could work on separate projects. There was only one computer and two video cameras. The class consisted of fourteen students.

When I teach how to make a video, I first need to know what resources are available and make sure that the parameters for making the video can be met. There is nothing more frustrating than selecting a topic with a group of students and leading them to believe that it will be possible to make the film in a certain way and then finding out that it won’t be. For example, one time a group of students wanted to make a video that took place in a shoe store. They wrote the screenplay, but later found out that none of the shopkeepers in the neighborhood would allow them to film inside their stores. Disappointed, my students decided to film in one of the classrooms, but they lost interest when they saw how unrealistic the backdrop was.

At Hudson Guild, I knew that the community center was located near a park. My class was to be held after school during the middle of spring. I wanted my students to go through the entire process of making a video with the limited equipment available, and so I wanted them to make a documentary. They wouldn’t need to write a script and therefore could get to filming quickly. I was determined to do a documentary about something that they knew well, requiring little or no research. It was an after-school program, and I felt that they should work on a project that developed their communication skills more than their reading skills.

The first couple of classes were dedicated to informing them about video and documentaries. I basically introduced them to the first three chapters of this book so that they knew what format we would be working with. I showed them examples of documentaries that would be familiar to them, like Behind the Music or programs from the Discovery Channel. Perhaps they might have seen some of them on TV. We talked about what makes a documentary and the difference between them and other types of videos.

They realized that in order to make a documentary, they would need to know a lot about the topic. I told them that the filmmaker should know the topic really well or have people he can interview who know about the topic. The class felt that they did not know any topic really well, and therefore could not make a documentary about anything, but I asked them to make a list of things that they do everyday. The most prominent answer was play tag.

The chase.

The class decided to make a documentary about the game of tag. We tried to break down the game of tag so that we could decide what to include in the documentary. I was of no help because the version I remembered was not nearly as sophisticated as the one they tried to explain to me. They felt that the best way to explain the game was to go outside and play. So we went to the park to play tag!

As I watched them play, I immediately had so many questions. How is someone selected to be it? What if you get tired? How does the game end? We went back to the classroom and began writing the treatment. Since the class was working together to make one project, I decided to create the treatment on the chalkboard—as a group treatment. What is the intention of this documentary? The class wanted to inform the audience about the game of tag while giving a personal account of the experience as well.

The class took turns writing questions about the game on the board. The class decided that the documentary had to have interviews about the game as well as video footage of the children playing. We created a schedule for the next couple of weeks. We would first go out to film a couple of games to watch on video. Then we would conduct interviews in front of the camera.

During the next class, I picked a couple of students to film while the rest of the class got down and dirty in a heavily competitive game. After three games, a couple bruises, and a few tears, we went back to the video lab. We watched some of the footage. I asked my students if they could tell me what was missing. Based on the examples of documentaries that they had seen in previous classes, what did they think should be added to the film? As if I were at a chorus rehearsal, several of my students shouted at once, Interviews !

It is always wise to interview the best player and hear his point of view. Brandon was the maestro when it came to tag.

I read the list of questions that were already posed in the previous class, and asked if there were any other questions that needed to be asked based on what they had seen. I told my students to empty out their heads of all their knowledge about the game and think of questions that someone who knew nothing about the game would ask.

The next class, students volunteered and rotated around the different crew positions. They had the choice of being camera operator, boom operator, interviewer, subject (the person being interviewed), director, and producer. We first narrowed down the number of questions, picking the most engaging and interesting ones. We made sure that the same questions were asked to each subject so that we could get a variety of answers for the same question. I explained to the class that when we edited the interviews together, we could group together all of the responses for each question.

Usually a pattern emerges where the children all want to be the camera operator and no one wants to be the subject. It is important to establish strong rules. A rotation device is effective. I would always say that in order to be camera operator, you have to first be the subject of the interview. We decided to go outside to the playground to film the interviews. My students felt that the location of the game would be a good background for the interviews.

At the end of class, we would watch the dailies (the footage that was filmed that day of class) and comment on the content and technical issues. The class quickly noted that the sound was not very good. It was difficult to hear the interviews because we were outside and there was a lot of uncontrollable noise that we could hear in the background. We could hear cars driving, planes flying, construction workers drilling, people playing basketball. It was a mess. It is usually the job of the boom operator to tell the director that the background noise is an issue, but at the time, our sound person didn’t think it was a problem.

It is also good to hear from others. What is it like to play the game and always get picked to be it?

When watching the dailies, the class would also try to imagine what the sequences would look like. Where should this question go? Where should we put the tag footage? These ideas became more concrete as we continued. Sometimes, these conversations will help decide what direction the film should go in. After watching the interviews, one student felt that we should have a section about the rules. He felt that it was not clear in the interviews. The class agreed and wanted to draw a sign for each rule