In this section, Stockman offers more advice during the preproduction and production stages of creating a video. Some specific advice mentioned was creating a storyboard to visualize your video story, looking for the right people in your videos, choosing your location wisely, and taking short clips of video when at an event.
Some of these things I already do with photography, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to now translate to video. Specifically, storytelling and choosing your location wisely. Before I do any event coverage, I always see what buildings/terrain are in that location. I see what places I would be allowed to go and which places I wouldn’t. That helps me get a better picture of what angels I will have to work with. That also helps me visualize what moments I’d want to capture too. For example, if I’m covering a downtown farmers’ market, I would want people interacting with the booths and picking up produce or vegetables to buy. I would also probably be looking for a photo of a family together buying things too.
One thing I will need to keep in mind is keeping my video clips short. With photography, I definitely tend to overshoot. I’ll take a photo, and if I like it, I’ll keep working to see if I can make it better. With videography, you don’t need to do that. Once you get the B-roll footage you need, there is no need to keep shooting for more B-roll footage. It will just make the editing process take longer.
I also need to keep in mind camera shake when shooting video too. It’s not really something I worry about in photography, because if I’m shooting at a lower shutter speed, I’d just switch to a wider-angle lens to get rid of that shake. But in video, I can still get shaky footage even with a wide-angle lens, so having multiple contact points to the camera when doing handheld video is definitely a must.
The more I read about videography and then compare it to photography, the two disciplines have a lot in common. Except in photography, you are trying to capture one moment that can summarize everything, but in videography, you are using multiple moments put together to summarize the event.
Creativity-wise, right now, it’s difficult for me to think about capturing multiple moments when I’ve been so used to focusing on that one smile or that one expression that can encapsulate the story.
I definitely need to play around more with video creatively to see if I can tap into some of that passion and playfulness that I currently have with photography.
Mark Hoover JRN 