Ever wonder how a how-to video is made… by an amateur?
Previously I had created a home-made light box using
poster board, tissue paper, and tape. It
worked well for taking pictures of the cowls and yarn stash, but was a little
too tight to film in. After putting it away
in storage, some bugs found the tape far too interesting. So once recovered from being totally grossed
out, it ended in the trash.
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| Farewell lightbox |
First I set up my video space.
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| Video Space brought to you by the Lewchuk family kitchen table |
The recipe box sitting on top of the coasters is where I
place the camera.
I make sure I have all the materials I’ll need close at
hand. How many times did I click “record”
only to discover, I left my yarn needle over on my square of the sofa, which I
share with my knitting critic and film director, Puddles.
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| "Quiet on the set, take 20, woof (action)" |
I use a special kind of magic to make the back piece of
poster board stand erect…
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| My homemade recipe cookbook binders! |
Then I take a light-test picture… remembering to have the
camera set to picture, not video.
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| Failed, please try again. |
Now shhhh, don’t tell my mom or I’m dead!! It is time to adjust the ambient light.
Those pillows really come in handy, esp. when someone
decided only to put up ½ curtains!
A second light-test picture and we’re all set!
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| Good to go! |
Now the fun part of filming. I make sure to film when I’m home alone. There is nothing worse than being 4 minutes
15 seconds into a 5 minute clip when you hear, “Lindsay, can you…” being hollered
from the next room or worse, a door slam, dishwasher, washing machine/ dryer
groaning on.
For the Northern City Girl Cowl videos, I had to make one
exception. It was my second film day
attempt and Puddles was being such a good boy that when my director chose to get
up from the sofa, grab his toy, and mosey over to sit next to me, when I heard
the chew noises, I just left it. Some
background noise is too precious to get upset over.
Next comes post processing. I use Adobe Premier Pro to edit the clips together. Except for my camera deciding it didn’t want
to film the audio the first day of filming, it went pretty smoothly this
time. My trick is that I wait a 1 second
beat after a verbal mistake and the retake.
Then I can cut out the mistake without having to film from point
one. Visual mistakes a harder as I have
to remember my hand position. You’ll see
a few places where the work is suddenly different, but I do try to note my hand
position and reset to that position when starting the retake.
You can see the five videos I made for the City Girl
Cowls –
and this week’s new release,
on
You Tube.
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| City Girl Cowl |
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| Northern City Girl Cowl |
Thanks for sharing, it's really interesting and has given me some ideas X
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