spazeboy

Just the other day, Chris Pirillo published a post and video with tips from one of his readers about filming live performances. I think that the tips are just as applicable to filming political events.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

• Setup Get ready as quickly and smoothly as you can. Keep organized… and out of the way. If you’re a nuisance to the staff, they’re not going to let you film here. You must be respectful during setup and overall production.
• Setting When preparing to film something, you must think about the size of the stage, crowd area, or any place you might use for your video, whether its going to be filmed, or going to be filmed from. Always take into consideration the size of the crowd, the size of the talent, and the sound levels as well.

You can read the rest of the article at Chris Pirillo’s blog, and you can learn more about political videoblogging from gearing up to uploading at Spazeboy’s Guide to Political Videoblogging.

This isn’t the first time that I’ve posted about some videoblogging tips that I read over at Chris Pirillo’s site. Check out the video editing tips I posted earlier this year.

Woot! is one of those one day, one deal sites that sells one item each day until it sells out or it’s the next day–whichever comes first. Today they’ve got a pretty sweet looking Canon ZR830 for only $129.99 (+$5 shipping). It’s refurbished, but has a 60 day warranty from Canon and also meets all of the criteria from my guide to videoblogging.

Click here for the main page of Woot! which will have all the details of the Canon ZR830 (today only). Click here to read about the Canon ZR830 if you find yourself reading this post on or after 2/15/2008.

In my guide to videoblogging, I recommend getting yourself a tripod to keep your videos from being too shaky, but it looks like this elegant, portable and best of all cheap solution will work nearly as well.

The plus side of using a tripod is that you don’t have to hold the camera the whole time, and can even walk away if you expect the person/action it is focused on to continue for an extended period of time. A tripod also makes it easier to take notes.

It’s been a good long while since I’ve posted any updates to Spazeboy’s Guide to Videoblogging (though after about 6 months, I think it’s aged well), but I wanted to share these five tips that I picked up from Chris Pirillo’s blog. I’ll list the main points of the tips below, but you should click through for the elaboration:

• Tighten your edit
• Make text readable
• Turn down the music
• Cut out the “fillers”
• Don’t use wipes

There is plenty more about those tips here.

I made some similar points in my guide, emphasizing that shorter is better. Think about the videos you like to watch. For me, if there’s a long drawn out set-up, then the video had better deliver. If you get some good political video of Senator XYZ saying something outrageous, your video should cut to the chase. The Macaca video is a good example of this. It’s barely a minute long, and it provides enough context to make its point.

I’m sure that George Allen said at least four more minutes worth of stupid crap at that event, and even if just the dumb bits were strung together it would have been too long.

It also has some nice readable text right at the beginning of the video.

When it comes to turning down the music, I think the videos I made for the Jim Himes 4th Quarter Pub Quiz exemplify that quite well. You’ll notice that the background music is cut during the “video clips” portion of the trivia. This makes those portions of the video easier to hear and understand.

However, background music has a place. In the same pub quiz trivia videos, the question and intro portions of the video would have been quite bland and perhaps even make them seem longer than they really were.

The fillers tip is self-explanatory, but I think the tip about not using wipe transitions is a matter of personal preference. I happen to agree that transition effects (wipes, page curls, etc.) can be very easily abused, and I personally find them annoying. Use them sparingly, or at least ironically.

If you have any video tips, or video pet peeves and pitfalls that aspiring video editors should avoid, leave them in the comments.

It has been awhile since I’ve been able to update Spazeboy’s Guide to Political Videoblogging, but Gizmodo provides a pretty good list of 10 things to know when buying an HD Camcorder:

Looking for an HD camcorder? They’re proliferating like bunnies, but is it a good time to buy one yet? Not only are there lots more HDTV camcorders on the market now than there were last year at this time, the variety of HD camcorder recording methods has expanded as well. Sure, you can record on tape, but wouldn’t you really rather record to a hard drive, or better yet, a flash memory card? What about recording to DVDs, or even to Blu-ray discs? All these choices are available at prices that are oftentimes south of $1000. Here are 10 things you need to know before you plunk down your cash.

[...]

2. Know what do you want to do with the camcorder. Maybe HD is overkill. If you want to upload videos to YouTube, the easiest way to do it is using the video capabilities of a point-n-shoot still camera.

I don’t think the web is ready for streaming HD video just yet, considering how high the bandwidth requirements will be, so if your goal is to do some political videoblogging the likes of which I discuss in my guide, you might be better off steering clear of HD for now.

Just a quick post with some of the latest goings-on.

• I heard that Jim Wyskiewicz’ website has added functionality enabling you to electronically request delivery of a lawn sign or offer to host a house party for Jim. Guess what else? There’s a debate set for Oct. 16, a date on which I just so happen to be on break from Wes, and therefore plan to attend.
• Ned Lamont is gonna be at CCSU this afternoon:
  

  Central Connecticut State University will be hosting a forum at 4pm on Wednesday, September 26 to discuss: The War, The Surge, and Staying the Course in Iraq. The panel includes Brigadier General John Johns (Ret.) and Brookings Scholar Michael O’Hanlon. The forum will be moderated by former Democratic candidate for Senate Ned Lamont.
  [...]
  Where:
  1615 Stanley Street
  New Britain, CT
  06050
  When: 04:00 PM - 05:15 PM

  Kirby and I once interviewed Brigadier General John H. Johns, but the video was canned by YouTube along with my old account. Perhaps I can get it back online soon.

• CT Bob is kicking ass with his home-built teleprompter:
  

  While recently shooting a bunch of PSA-style videos of Democratic candidates, I was faced with the problem of getting them to look natural while reading their prepared statements. Cue cards didn’t look natural, so I decided to build a teleprompter so they could maintain “eye contact” with the camera.