This is a more detailed guide for shooting web video. Here’s Part 1. If you are a citizen journalist and want to send something into the BBC World Service citizen journalism project – it could be used by the BBC on air or online. Please send me your video using the webform on the Your Story homepage – alternatively you can upload your video onto vimeo and make bbcyourstory your contact.

if you have trouble doing this, then let me know by posting your comment on this blog – thanks and I hope this is useful.

Before you start shooting – know what your story is and plan what you are going to do. It’s helpful to write this down and have in your mind what you are aiming to do. Also think safety. You must always make sure it is safe to film before you even think about pressing record.

z1Get your shots – there is a five shot rule – Shoot the person, the thing, then the person and the thing and then some extra shots. Film these shots in sequence. This allows you to piece it together at the end.

Keep the camera steady and film each shot without moving for about two – five minutes.

NO zoom shots – they look amateur.

How to operate your DV camera – if you are inexperienced then choose a camera where you can mainly operate on auto settings.  I usually use a Sony Z1.  A short “show and tell” video on how to operate it is coming up on Your Story so keep checking back on this blog – we’re planning on doing it in March 2009.

microphoneSound quality is so important – so make sure there is not too much noise. That there is no sound distortion – this happens when microphone levels are too high and the voice too loud. If levels are too low – this is also unusable. Always listen to the location and try to reduce unwanted background noise. Traffic, machine hum, music and door-slams can all spoil your soundtrack. Avoid echoey acoustics.

Background movement – as I said on the previous post – make sure there is not too much background movement – this is like trees moving or a busy road with many cars passing. This creates problems when the encoding process happens.

Using auto focus – “auto” is great at focusing, but terrible at knowing what to focus on. So you may have to use the manual focus. For an interview, zoom in only as far as you need to get your subject large in frame.

A well framed shot is a pleasure to look at and helps tell your story. Poor framing can distract the audience away from what’s important. The most useful ‘rule’ to remember is: “If it looks good, it is good – if it looks bad, it is bad!” An interviewer should be close to the camera lens, so the subject gazes just off-camera.

Set white balance – Our eyes perceive ambient light as white. But to a camera, daylight looks blue, most artificial light looks yellow, and fluorescent looks green. So you have to adjust white balance on the camera -

  • Point the camera at white paper lit with the same light as the subject.
  • Zoom in so that the paper fills the frame.
  • Do an auto exposure.
  • Press the white balance button (the paper should look white)

When you have recorded your interview and shots, you can pull them together using a simple programme like windows movie maker. Then upload your video to one of the video sharing sites.