My company wants to start doing video, help?
Asked by
metadog (
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March 14th, 2009
My company is looking to start doing some in-house video. The kind of thing where I will be buying a digital video camera, and the president of the company will talk for 30 seconds. Then I will have to clean it up a bit, maybe add some minor effects and throw it up on the web. I’m not a video guy, but they want me to deal with all of this myself. I can’t add staff or outsource.
What I was wondering, given my situation, can you make any recommendations? Camera, software, etc. Keeping in mind that I am a newbie and I will have to get this rolling with minimal training and I don’t have a huge budget for this either. I am also trying to get a feel for how long it will take for me to get from actually filming the head guy to posting on the web. Thanks!
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5 Answers
The most important thing to consider is a microphone. Most on-cam mics suck, and audio is I would say more important than the quality of the video (that is, even if your video looks awesome, if the audio sucks, the video ultimately sucks). You will want to invest money in a good lapel mic if it will only be the president talking, or a solid handheld mic if you’ll be doing interview style dialog.
The next thing is lighting. Wait till youv’e bought the camera, and then do tests to see what lighting conditions you can reproduce with the lights in your office, the locations, etc. Your goal is of course to make the president look great, and lights really are the key to this (well, that and a not busy background… but not a wall, that’s too boring). There are different types of lights out there which produce different effects, I’m not a lighting technician so I can’t help with this sadly.
In terms of production time, it really depends on your skills. 30 seconds is pretty short, but the shoot itself will likely take half an hour to an hour to set up, test lights, record many times (that’s the key to all recordings of any type, do multiple takes). There’s not a lot of video cleaning up one can do other than cuts etc, if anything it’s the audio that will need to be cleaned up to take away the breathing between phrases (or reduce it).
A 30 second production should be something one person can handle… but putting it onto someone with no actual training is a bit cruel of them to do. Sadly, video quality is somewhat proportional to your budget, so please let us know the exact dollar figure so we can make recommendations appropriate to you.
Get a tripod for the shooting. I always prefer shooting outdoors for the best lighting. Make SURE they let you take the camera home and read the instruction book before you do the real shoot.
On the editing side is obviously a Mac that comes with the excellent amateur iMovie software for free. It’s easy to use but can create productions that are fairly professional-looking.
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