Video Production and Photography

Types of video projects

For videos, an acceptable duration depends on the nature of your project and how refined the visuals are. A low-fidelity animatic could be quite long, and a fully animated high-fidelity video would likely be much shorter given the intense time and labor required for professional animation. It's generally better to have a really impressive 30 seconds than a mediocre 5 minutes.

Types of Photography Projects

For long term projects, you would likely be creating a series of photos, that could be collected in formats like:

  • Physical exhibition
  • Virtual exhibition
  • Digital/Print publication

Your photography could be journalistic, artistic, staged, or blended with other media.

Production requirements

Depending on the type of project, you may need more or fewer steps than what are listed here.

  1. Assess Hardware Needs

    For some projects, you may need access to professional video and audio equipment, though a lofi aesthetic or concept relted to everyday devices might work well with phone cameras. A smartphone camera limits you to very wide angle lens, but filmmakers like Stephen Soderbergh have shot feature films with them! But if you're interested in these producing this kind of media professionally, it is probably worth investing in some hardware.

    Student discounts are offered at B&H and Adorama and many manufacturers offer refurbished gear at slight discounts (as does B&H). You can also find kits that package the essential items together for a reduced price.

    Video Production Starter Kit

    • DSLR or Mirrorless Camera — offers greater depth of field and lens customization than a camcorder, and finer control of exposure, frame rate, and settings, than a smartphopne.
    • Tripod — Required for most professional video work.
    • Shotgun (Hypercardiod) Microphone — Best for directional recording if your subject is speaking; Rode makes good ones for DSLR cameras.
      • For recording sound effects or voiceovers, see the recommendations on the audio page.
    • Lighting: a reflector board or piece of white foamcore can reflect light towards your subject, but electric lights on stands are best for stationary indoor photography.

  2. Discover and Define

    • Brainstorm ideas and research relevant work or subject matter.
    • Collect inspiration images or clips to show the visual style you're aiming for.
    • Write a short synopsis of the video work.
    • Creating mood boards
    • InVision (collaborative inspiration board tool)

  3. Storyboarding

    Make a storyboard! (Even if you use stick figures). This helps you plan your shots and visualize things. Number your scenes and shots and check them off during production (e.g. you forgot to show the character putting on the hat—oops!).

    This is a great place to decide on your aspect ratio (traditionally 16:9 but it depends on your distribution format and creative goals).

    An optional step could be to create an animatic, in which you edit your storyboard images into a video that becomes a protype of your film. This can help discover issues with narrative clarity, pacing, and identify the needed length of each shot. For examples and resources about animatics, see the animation page.

  4. Script

    For scripted narrative work, obviously write a script. Experimental or documentary work might not include this step.

  5. Shooting There are very specific formatting and syntax rules for professional screenplays, but depending on your professional goals, you can write a script however you want...

  6. Sound recording

    The built-in mics on your phone and camera are terrible; do not use them—especially outdoors where you will record nothing but wind. Getting a good mic is one of the fastest ways to make your video seem more professional (see gear recommendations above).

    Sometimes you can plug a good mic directly into your camera, but it may also be useful to record audio separately on a portable audio recorder and sync the audio with the video while editing. Premiere and Final Cut have tools to automate this, but you can also have your subject clap their hands or use a clapper to manually sync audio.

    See the audio page for more.

  7. Scoring

    With some MIDI software, it's pretty easy to make some ominous synth tracks or arpeggiated melodies, but you can also find creative commons music to use in your projects with attribution.

    MIDI is a standard type of virtual instrument (i.e. digitally creating sounds on your computer); some audio programs are geared toward recording analog sound.

    • GarageBand — Simple MIDI instruments and editing.
    • Premiere Pro — Edit audio right in your video editor or export entire projects to Audition...
    • Adobe Audition (LinkedIn Essential Training) — Dedicated audio editor, record and mix, easily interface with Premiere (no MIDI instruments)
    • Ableton Live (LinkedIn Essential Training) — Great MIDI and recording suite, relatively cheap, great for electronic music.
    • Logic Pro — Record and mix, MIDI instruments (especially ones that sound like traditional strings, brass, etc.)
    • Pro Tools — Industry standard for recording and mixing; expensive.
    • Audacity — A free open-source audio editor. It's pretty simple, so use Adobe Audition if you can.

  8. Effects, editing, compositing, rendering

  9. Audio Editing and Mixing

    Editing refers to placing and layering sounds in your timeline, including sound effects, music, and vocals; mixing is the process of getting them all to sound good together (\now you can show off to your friends at the Oscars).

    You can do all of this in a video editor like Premiere, but you can do some fancy stuff like noise removal if you export clips or your entire timeline into Audition.

  10. Exporting

    It's a good idea to test your workflow entirely with a proof of concept (see below) to make sure the final product looks the way you expect it to. You don't want to spend two hours rendering your video at midnight and have it turn out all squished and weird looking.

    Video files include a container (a.k.a. file extension) and a codec (specific algorithm used to encode the frames of the video). Containers:

    • MOV and MP4 — Great, often what your video files are straight off the camera, and good for exporting high-quality master files.
    • WebM — For video on the web; use this to get really small file sizes if you need to put your video on a website without something like YouTube or Vimeo. MP4 can also be used for this. Websites like Converterpoint are your best bet for generating these files; they'll get smaller file sizes than Premiere.

    Codecs:

    • h.264 and h.265 — Lossy, compressed video; h.264 is the standard codec used by most cameras, phones, and web players. It's successor is newer and will get smaller filesizes relative to quality, but may not be supported in some contexts. This is probably fine for most contexts.
    • ProRes — Lossless, compressed video; this will give you better quality but potentially huge file sizes. Only use this for your main source copy of the project or potentially projecting in a theater. Not for online distribution. There are a few types of ProRes depending on your quality/filesize desires.

    Frame Rates:

    Typically stick with the frame rate of your source footage, though it is possible to mix frame rates within a single timeline.

    • 30fps or 29.9fps — Standard video frame rate; can give a slightly "day time television" look to things.
    • 24fps — The standard for film; use this for a slightly choppier, more cinematic look.

    Frame Size

    • 3840px x 2160px — 4K; probably overkill unless you have a 4K monitor or projector to display your work on. Useful if you want the freedom to crop shots without losing quality.
    • 1920px x 1080px — Standard HD
    • 1280px x 1920px — "720p" HD; sometimes nice for web uploads.
    • 640px x 480px — SD; hilariously small and to be avoided unless you're putting the video on the web.

Proof of concept

Demonstrate your filming or editing abilities with one of the following:

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