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Video for Photographers Part 2

and I'm just going to summarise here so just what we said one eighty rule okay ready all those camera angles are cool because she'll be for example on the left hand side that's the senator left right this is what you do not want to do it changes where the person is so just keep that in mind for narrative if you're trying to have the same scene and continuity but if it's just random visuals for emotional impact forget it doesn't matter it's not a big deal uh color in tone so color has two main goals helps direct your eye for example like red lips don't you look right here or it sets the mood and that's that's the whole idea behind it so let's take a look at a couple of things that has uh emotional impact so this for example is the couple shoot that we did and you're going to actually see it in its entirety but what I'm doing is I'm shooting with a very very wide lens um some shooting with like an eighty five one four at like two point oh a monster and call the shoulder rig so if you get...

the same kind of the shaky feel of it it seems more like you're there by standard versus if it's ah a tripod and shy it seems more like a film this looks like you're peeking in but the pink there it's a romantic engagement shoot so dad setting the mood it works um okay so that would be color makes sense pretty obvious but how about contrast this is what I use in my work so you can use color for setting the mood but you can also use contrast to make something really starks this is a fashion a little piece of a fashion film that I did so it is one light on awaits like wall but it's high contrast black and white and so I don't need color I don't need a background I don't need anything because it's the contrast that makes the visual impact and notice we already broke one of the rules we discuss which was death right so she's just on a stark white wall so then it's what it's it's graphic so then it's a so yeah I think it's it's all art so by all means no the rules feel free to break them as long as they're applicable all right and we're going to space space in depth now going the opposite way I just did cause I had little depth to it so space is that you're just trying to make someone feel like they're there instead of like just looking at a still frame on that's a lot of photographers that I love and I connect with their work because there's depth feel like them there I feel like I'm emotionally connected so you do have things for like perspective so that's the same leading line example um and so this is uh was ah high school senior football player uh promo piece that we did movement okay so here's the difference right in photography it could be a still frame in video it'll look really awkward if there's no movement like so what you want to do is you want to try to involve movement in somewhere another and this is something that usually is based more on almost your I don't see personality but your ability to connect with their clients to make them feel comfortable moving and so not aware of the fact that you're clicking or filming but more just capturing moments of movement is another thing that attracts your eye so if there's a frame where everything's still with something's moving another compositional tool hands what we have it here in a composition section so looking at movement so this is from that same shoot and so notice how that actually gives steps so let's say that he were looking at him and he's running side to side there's no death but here since he is running towards the camera now there's a sense of depth in the scene so just keep something like that in mind like if you're looking in the action's going side by side it's flat if you could get someone to come towards you now there's death even to discuss like foreground middle ground background so he touches the foreground uh the grass moves up in the kind of middle ground and then he runs off into the background so there goes to grass falling down and he's in the background that's three different it's a funeral so just think of it like this when you're shooting in photography you have to frame it so that there's foreground middle ground of background in video your subjects movement can create the foreground battleground of background screwed so it's a difference between uh photography and video something to put on your little checklist to remember and then a frame within a frame another competition on tool another way this creature step this because obviously there's something in the foreground framing something in the background so this is part of the boudoir video that you guys will see later and she's being framed by the mirror of a vanity and so this is actually a piece that we'll be showing you a completeness a little bit later so question do you recommend using all of these all of these kind of tips in each video are you picking just wouldn't want you I would definitely won one strong emphasis in whatever whatever fits your style okay so if you're a photographer and you feel like your census down this complete color that's you and me that's partially herself very brown color yeah yeah it's a pig what in your video makes it have impact so that could be motion so for example you could have a girl with a flowy dress there's entire videos of girls just with flowy dresses flowing yes and absolute videos about and that's totally fine there's no narrative in its great or maybe it's all about pops of color for that video that I had where she was on a white background that's all about graphic so and so the the element there was contrast I say pick one that unifies instead of bouncing around unless it's trying to be storytelling the more you try to put on the on your plate the more you're bound to make a mistake so just focus on your strengths as much as possible so kick the elements that you like and use one of those yeah okay yeah and if you look at my videos each one varies you can tell which elements I picked wasn't contrast that time was it color wasn't death so the only one I have a question with for that is the framing one so say you picked framing are you goingto throughout the video frame her in a hundred different you know what I mean like it will be the one that I think would be kinda I don't know great well so the reason it works great for boudoir framing is because it gives you a feel of being avoider because the persons always framed by something else which basically is communicating there's something in the way of you too which means you're the creeper looking at e on just continue just to do a voyeur lawyers and throughout the whole piece so when this feat you'll see this piece in its entirety when it starts it's a door opening up on you're peeking in crazy totally not e mean it's maybe except for we shot it to not look creepy on dh there's a part where you're les there's one where you're peeking past uh a lamp the lamps out of focus and choosing the background she kind of looks up at you so that was something and I picked I put the elements that I picked for this was lens flare as my consistency there's lens flair for lunch where throughout the entire piece and frame within a frame or boyar that was those were the two things that I picked and again going back to wei operate together this is technically her shoot she kind of just she likes voyeurism she likes the way that sounds weird he's my boyfriend now she likes the lens flare she likes all those things so it's mostly replicating her style s o the next piece of tissue in its entirety was ah high school senior portrait video now this is a whole other business discussion but what I think video is most important if you don't even plan on charging for it it's hugely important important for social media because people love videos and statistically people share videos more often than they do just a words and then maybe a photo doesn't hold them their attention for a long a lot of times video can have longer impact it just depends so let's say maybe you are high school senior portrait photographer and there's the kid that's the all american athlete or whatever it may be and he came to you for a senior portrait maybe you use this almost as a marketing piece you create something that everyone's going to share and be really excited about or maybe a local publication is going to run article about him and you see this is an opportunity you shoot that the publication will link to it direct to you so they're sending you traffic I'm always trying to figure out online content that I can create that someone else will redirect their entire audience too so if I'm shooting for a local wedding magazine which uh my background just to say I actually started in portrait in weddings which is why I like I can kind of shoot babies and I can shoot come on I can photograph weddings and everything like that because I did uh so that but what I would do is when I would say uh I was trying to get exposure for my wedding business I would try to do some kind of online content tohave there's central new york bride was a magazine and in a blogger I would try to create content whether it's video or photos or block post because then I would say look at this wonderful multimedia content I'm giving you for free then they link they put on their block and linked to me and now they're sending me my entire target audience just which is bright and there's another selling point too so if your if your thing is shooting senior portrait ce right seems very vain way like all about them they want to take facebook photos and their facebooks photos everywhere a lot of they want to show off to their friends they'll do a little music video they'll just lip sync to the whole thing could be another totally selling point for you guys if that's something you'd like to do and your thing is music incorporated by omens okay so here's the high school scene in portrait theo wait do you have an idea these aren't like multiday shoots or anything usually I would say on average typically it would be maybe what two and a half hours something like that for when we're doing like a longer piece if it's just meant to be like video is an extra than just built into the portrait session uh that one we took a little longer because we wanted to wait for the sun so we like shot early and then we waited a little bit but you should say about and a half to three hours if it's a video piece that we want to be two to three minutes and that just brings me the point people have very this is going to write down for your notes people I have very limited online attention span okay um average suggested length for a video you put online is two to two and a half minutes if you were over three it is way too long unless it wass a wedding video where you're showing the whole wedding but if it's meant to be like a little music video or a little feature on someone or boudoir video you start to get impatient around the two minute mark by three or you're gone people don't have attention span and so if you watch a lot of snippets that maybe photojournalist will create where it's it's visuals and photo and audio altogether it's about the two to two and a half minute mark unless it is a kind more feature length peace and to go back just quickly on that specific piece you want to play against you'll notice that in air that we did was a contrast itself the contrast is due to shooting in the sun rising so six o'clock in the morning to about eight o'clock in the morning when the sun is completely overhead because it's black and white it's really really noticeable if I would have if we were able to just do that in color it would've came out perfectly fine you can tell the difference in color so it's something I would have changed if I had to shoot that again I would say let's just shoot everything in color you can tell there's a giant difference in black and white so that goes back to color were you did you plan at the beginning to shoot that a black white and did you actually shoot it in black and white video and everyone's doing color first for whatever reason and then somewhere along the line we just like at let's just put him like a wait and see what it looks like and we liked it at first and looking back at it I wish I would've done color that makes any sense so you recommend definitely shooting in color and that it is absolutely so and judith is wondering whether you create all of your color intending effect in camera or in photo shop later it sounds like you recommend just in general shooting at natural and then being creative later is that exactly we're gonna talk about something called picture style so you guys may have seen on the back your camera that you have something for nikon it's which uh what's it called it's different picture styles I think it's like your profile pic sure proof also that it's the same thing basically sometimes you can change your setting so that you're shooting in black and white well when you're shooting raw it's not actually shooting in black and white like raw for stills uh it's still maintains the color and then later on you can switch it to black and white okay not true and video if you shoot in black and white it is black and white cannot get that color back so that's why you would absolutely shoot it with all the color and all the detail and when we talk about the picture styles later there are ways to shoot for settings where you have more dynamic range so for example shooting in a really high contrast thing like that I might shoot a different picture style so that I can hopefully get more of those highlights and shadow detail and then pick the contrast that I want later versus if I choose a different style I'm stuck so when you're shooting video it's more like shooting a jpeg well it's very much like shooting a j peg than raw like you do not have the flexibility that you would have shooting and photography with wrong and something else we will have more tools and discusses a little later and that specific instance using a neutral density filter is absolutely necessary because if you're shooting wide open outside you want to get that shallow depth of field you need something to cut all that light so something else that we learned from our mistakes that can we talk more about the time frame we kind of just about the two to three minutes rules are we going to get in more more into that later okay now so I mean for me personally I know if I'm if I'm distracted if I'm looking over here when I'm anyone home video that's probably a pretty good indication that it's too long or that scene is too long what about two short is there such a thing as too short can you do fifteen second videos that this is a really good question of depends of its purpose for example the shoe ad that was just a piece of the shoe and we actually had two cuts so we didn't cut that was a thirty second ads clip because that's how long an ad would be and a lot of times as tell whole stories and thirty seconds so that's not actually okay if that's what it's meant to feel like I would say if it's meant to feel like a whole piece for me I'm about one minute fifteen seconds I know that sounds weird that that's like my totally made up number but like one fifteen it felt like it was a whole piece when you're at thirty it's like okay that was meant to be an ad fifteen would be for me if it's meant to pop up on your website to introduce a brand or introduce a person what do you think I've done ten seconds before just annoy people that's like my favorite thing to do because it's like did it freeze that something happened but it kind of gets them like hey what happened and they're kind of trayvon what I'm doing but that's just marketing more so than anything so when I put it on I think your facebook just a quick tactic is that well it was it was actually to preview the full edit that was coming later on he did ten seconds and then what happened I was like you're gonna have to watch what yeah and you think it's harder to tell a more complete story in such in a shorter time frame you can absolutely tell a complete story in two minutes of narrative maybe three like if you're telling a story I've seen video shorts that are gorgeous like has a complete story emotion everything in five minutes and it was just a good if it would've been full length because it has higher impact it's packed in so I just said that the two two and a half minute mark is where I would aim in general when you're first starting out which I think makes it seem more manageable right you know you don't need to do five I'm going out for a college project we had to do thiss video thing for photo where had to be six minutes long and I wanted to shoot is awful and I was I was bored same thing and she said I was bored by simon marcus if you search you can actually find out online but please nobody do that way really really bad I had this to people like you talk a little bit about your shoot time in the fact that you know you have a little bit of time with your client does that mean that you've done a bunch of ideas ahead of time told him what to bring or you can kind of see what they show up with and let's make something happen well so I have a fashion photography background so I'm very good at pre production which means communicating what you're looking for instead of doing shot list okay so he actually this story morning so he'll write out the shots that he's looking for instead what I do is write down a shot list of what I think I need in order to feel to edit something together because if you have one angle with one lens the entire time it's not enough to get you to two minutes even you'd be surprised how many shots you need for when I was first learning video I was told that your shots shouldn't be up on the screen for any longer than two to three seconds unless you're meant tohave tension or a feeling of something building otherwise two seconds two seconds so if you can imagine how many clips you would need granted you could you know put the same shot up with something you know in between and spread it out that way but yeah it was fast so I shoot ah whole lunch of variety in order to be able to do that but it's also cut like storyboarding for may I do because it saves me time like it's same thing with a shot if I go in do what I need to do and I'm done I don't have to sit there and kind of be creative about it and figure out this is a lighting look good here there's lighting look good there and no more or less what I need to get shoot it and I'm done so it's just why I storyboard thanks but it's not necessary