So many people are trying to start using video more in their business and marketing. They’re right to do it, too. Video is the fastest growing medium for marketing right now, and it’s not likely to slow down any time soon. So here’s what I tell people who are looking to get started in video production.

Watch the video for this article on YouTube.

I’m going to say something bold and possibly unexpected, but just hear me out, ok? What you need to get started in creating videos isn’t gear.

You need to start training your eyes to see like a video producer.

Look around right now. Do you see anything worth making a video about? No? Creatives are always seeing more in their surroundings. So video creators are going to see more than others.

Being a video creator is like being a great chef. Great chefs understand the basics of food and they are always thinking about how to combine ingredients and techniques to make something new or better. They just see things differently.

Like video creators, it’s not because they have magic eyes or super-human powers. They’ve actually trained themselves to look for certain things. The aren’t just using their eyes to keep from bumping into things. They use their eyes to see potential.

Video Ingredients – Potential

I once read an interview with the music artist Bjork. If you’ve ever listened to her music or seen one of her videos, you understand that, whether you like her music or not, she is incredibly creative.

In the interview, she said something like

Anyone who can’t walk into any library, open any book, point to any word in the book and write a song about it is a coward. – Bjork

I was challenged. She saw potential for songs everywhere and relentlessly (and bravely) plunged ahead.

If you want to get started in video production, you can do yourself a lot of favors by challenging yourself like that. Look around again. Pick one thing you can see and imagine a video telling its story.

FOR EXAMPLE:

I’m currently looking at a set of earbuds. I can think of the life of those earbuds. Starting out brand new, still in the store, waiting to be bought. Then being purchased and used. I can think of ways to instill the excitement of being freed from the packaging and hearing music for the first time.

The life of a set of earbuds in my home involves lots of time in pockets, some great tunes, some hard conversations. Eventually, earbuds get lost or broken. and their story ends.

Even while I was writing this, I was thinking of shot lists, plot-lines, tension and release, lighting, music, perspectives, and color.

That’s what video people do. They mix the ingredients to capture attention, provoke engagement, and tell stories.

If you weren’t doing that, it’s totally fine. It just means you need practice with the ingredients.

Video Ingredient – Perspective

There’s a memorable line from the animated movie Ratatouille. In it, food critic Anton Ego says something important about his work.

Mustafa: Do you know what you would like this evening, sir?
Ego: Yes, I think I do. After hearing a lot of over-heated puffery about your new cook, do you know what I’m craving? A little… perspective. That’s it. I’d like some fresh, clear, well-seasoned perspective. Can you suggest a good wine to go with that?

Perspective is a funny word. It means representing something accurately, like drawing two-dimensional objects from a specific place, but also it means giving your personal view of something.

What I’m talking about is the latter. How you see things is unique to you. When you add that to video production, it gives you an amazing tool. Your unique perspective will constantly inform your work.

Perspective also gives you something else because you can always change your perspective. If something isn’t interesting, all you really have to do it look at it in another way. Get closer, move up or down, change the angle. Do whatever it takes to make your subject stand out.

Bonus tip: go to the camera, don’t bring the camera to you.

A lot of people see something interesting, take out their phone and just start shooting. Using perspective means looking at life in new ways. So instead of bringing the phone up to your eyes, take your eyes up or down to where the phone is. Shoot from the hip, literally. Try looking at things from the ground up.

The point here is to change your perspective and find the best shot.

That’s how video producers train their eyes.

Video Ingredient – HSL Elements

Maybe you’ve played around with graphics software before and know what HSL is. If you haven’t, here’s a big help for learning new video ingredients. HSL stands for Hue, Saturation, and Luminance. Those are the most basic ingredients of video.

You can break everything we do down into a hue (how red, green, or blue it is), it’s saturation (how vibrant or muted the colors are), and its luminance (how light or dark it is). When you start playing with HSL you’ll learn how each of these ingredients effects visuals.

Some videos use bright colors to imply life and energy. Some videos use muted colors and shadows to create a more ominous feel. As a video creator, you get to decide what you want and how to get it into the camera.

It really is that simple. And, at the same time, it really is that complicated. But it doesn’t have to be that hard. Deciding what you want to do in your videos is the harder part of the work. Getting it ready to view is actually the easier part. That’s why video producers always make more than videographers.

I hope this has been helpful. My next post on How to Get Started in Video will dive into how to capture images and make all the technology work for you.

Staging and blocking aren’t just for big movie sets. You can up to perceived quality of you videos with just a couple of tips about staging. You can also use several blocking tricks to be more engaging with your audience. Here’s how.

First of all, let’s be clear about what I’m talking about. Staging is just everything in the background or midground of your video. You might have heard about staging from your realtor friends or on HGTV. Basically it’s where you place everything. And by where, I mean, some things need to be placed where no one can see them. So it’s also decluttering and cleaning. Staging makes a conscious decision about everything in your video.

Blocking is more about where the subject or subjects of you video are. It’s also where they move to if your to if your videos have movement in them. Blocking really becomes important when you start using it together with composition. More on that later.

Staging For More Professional Videos

Like I wrote earlier, the biggest tip anyone will ever give you is to be intentional with your staging. Look at everything in your scene and ask yourself (or others) what does that communicate about your scene? If it doesn’t help you convey the meaning of the video or help you connect with your audience, get rid of it.

You should also ask yourself if there’s just too much going on. A cluttered set distracts viewers from the subject. So if there’s a lot of bric-à-brac in your shot, clear it out.

One more tip about staging and brands. If you’re building a personal brand or a new business brand, staging can help you imply values. If you’re brand is all about old school scotch, staging similar to something like Mad Men can’t go wrong. If you’re brand is focused on journals for women, staging it in a wood shop probably isn’t going to connect very well. This where knowing your audience and what they like will help.

Blocking For More Professional Videos

Blocking can be a simple or complicated as you can make it. A lot of people reading this make videos where the subject never moves. That’s probably ok. But you can add a lot more to your video making by thinking through blocking.

Again, blocking is just the placement of the people in your scene and any movement they have. Blocking can be affected in huge ways by combining it with composition and framing.

Suppose you have a shot where you want to show someone using their smartphone. You could just have them framed in the same way as the rest of the shot. However, a better way to shoot it might be to have them looking down at the phone with the camera just behind it. You might also do the same shot looking over their shoulder so you can see what they’re looking at. Watch about 10 seconds of this ad I made to get an idea of what I’m talking about.

Conclusion

Combining staging and blocking with composition will make your videos seem much more intentional and professional. With just a little bit of effort, you can up the quality of your videos and make them stand out among your competitors. It really isn’t difficult, and it gets easier the more you do it.

Check out the accompanying video here.

One of the easiest, most cost efficient ways to make your videos more professional is with simple composition. Composing a shot really isn’t all that simple though. But there are some tips that can help you start looking more professional right now.

There are a lot of ideas out there about composition. A beautifully composed shot is magic for conveying the vibe of your video. There’s actually a lot that goes into that shot. Where you place the subject or subjects of your videos is important. But also where they face (blocking), what surrounds them (staging), their perspective, how they’re framed, and even the size of their body in proportion to the rest of the shot.

Here are just a couple of tips that will save you from looking like an amateur.

Video Composition – Rule of Thirds

We’ve come a long way in the analysis of great art. The more ew’ve seen about great works of art, the more we realize a pattern in it. The subject is rarely centered in the shot. In fact, the point of interest in the shot is almost always in a third position of the shot. This started with the Phi Grid.

Anywhere along the red line is where our eye naturally travels. The focus is more and more clear as you spiral down into the corner where the horizontal and vertical thirds overlap. Like this.

Both of these examples use the lower right third as a point of interest, but you can use any of the thirds lines to create focus in your videos. And if you can frame your subject in the places those lines meet, you can create even more focus.

I could write several posts about this, and many people have. Just keep in mind as you shoot to know where your subject is in the frame and where you want your viewers eyes to focus.

Video Composition – Perspective

Great cinematographers have played with perspective in so many ways that their audiences rarely even notice anymore. In the movies you watch, can you remember a specific scene where the camera made it look like you’re looking down on the subject of the story? Probably not.

You can use this technique too for your videos. Most interview style videos will place the camera slightly about eye level of the subject of the interview. This makes several things happen.

First, the viewer relates to the person more easily because they see them as a peer or slightly below them. All those phrases about looking up to people or looking down on them – they aren’t just phrases. They represent very real situations in our physical lives, and they are seated in our psyche. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I’ve seen this use of perspective enough to believe that it works, even if only in our subconscious.

Second, placing the camera slightly above the subject makes them look up slightly creating more imposed interest on their part and minimizing of any sagging skin. Nothing’s worse than forcing someone to have a double chin because you put the camera too low and they’re having to look down. I see this a lot from people doing video from a webcam. Seriously, don’t do it.

Video Composition – Growths and Amputations

A lot of composition is simply looking out for unintended distractions. Enter growths and amputations.

A growth in when you have something that seems to grow out of a person. The worst is when it’s something obvious like a tree growing out of someone’s head. This is one of those composition tips that catches everyone off guard. You really have to watch out for it creeping into your shots.

This picture just doesn’t work on so many levels, but the biggest, by far, is the distraction of the small tree growing out of this guys head. What happens in a shot like this is the viewers eyes don’t know where to land. It’s obvious to our brain where we should look, but our eyes are distracted by the high contrast background. I’m sure this was probably a compromise shot, where the photographer was trying to get the subject out of the direct sunlight.

Luckily, this shot didn’t also fall victim to the second problem of amputation. This is where you cut off limbs at the joint, making it seem like the limb was amputated. I don’t want to create a gross picture in your head, so trust me, make the frame end in the middle of your subjects limbs, not at the joint.

Conclusion

There really is so much that could be written on composition. The best teacher will always be experience. You just need to get out there and shoot. But you can also shortcut that by analyzing your shots and other people’s too. Look at the ones you like and break apart their composition. Look at the ones you don’t like and ask yourself what’s wrong with it.

You can see the video for this post here.