All you need to make good videos

In everyday conversation, everyone relates stories of events that's recently occurred to them or they'd witnessed. You tell stories every day. Stories are everywhere around you just waiting to be recorded or retold. Simply transfer that to video and you have your short story!

I'm sure you must have hundreds of photos, both printed and in digital form. They can be easily re-grouped into a series of short stories. Read my blog about recording your family history.

Today, I will show you how little it costs to set up your own complete video production “studio”, using my own setup as an example. Mind you, as far as costs go, there is no upper limit. At the other end of the budget spectrum, you could look at buying up Fox Studios!

My complete setup for producing the videos shown on our site (detailed with each video) consists of the following

Camera:

Olympus VG120 pocket camera which I bought duty-free at Kuala Lumpur airport. This model isn't available in Sydney but I have seen a seemingly identical model called VG140 advertised in a top-end department store for only AUD$89. This camera does both stills and video and does them with very impressive results. The images are sharp (apart from camera shake) and its audio recording is crisp and clear. You can view a sampling of my videos at www.fcproductionscom.au/videos.html. I love the camera as it is so very easy to use and is very responsive. The speed with which a camera reacts to your press of the shoot button is of great importance and you should pay attention to this aspect when choosing your camera. You must be able to catch the fleeting moments, as they occur, at precisely the moment you want to capture them - not a long second later.

A camera that fits easily into my jeans pocket will be with me a great deal more often than a big SLR with multiple lenses or a seriously good video camera. For me, it is more valuable to have a very good all-rounder in my pocket and be there to capture those precious, unexpected moments. A disadvantage of all small cameras is camera shake. They are so light that the slightest movement caused by depressing the shoot button can easily cause you to lose sharpness. A high number of unsharp photos (I suffer that) are caused by less than steady hands. An SLR pressed against your face will produce sharper images than if you held it away from you to frame using its LCD display. One way to help reduce the effect of shake is to set your camera sensitivity to a higher ISO rating. Don't set it so high as to produce very grainy shots. A couple of steps up the ISO scale from your camera's default will help without noticeable increase in graininess.

If your budget allows, of course you will be able to do a great deal more with one of the latest SLR's especially from Canon whose range (as of December 2011) is well ahead of the other brands. Apart from the improved resolution, your ability, for instance, to control depth of field and the ability to move your point of focus within a scene alone will add an additional dimension to your work.

Software:

Just as you need a camera to get the shots, you need the software to make your video. Users of Windows 7 can download, for free, a very decent video editing software from Microsoft's site. However, I found that inadequate and bought Cyberlink's PowerDirector 10 for approximately AUD$60. It is a massive download - 3 files totaling nearly 2Gb! It's well worth every cent and has won PC Magazine's top award third year straight. You'll be even more amazed when you read further about the computer I am running this program on. Learning curve is not steep at all but do not expect to be able to produce your video with simply a click of the mouse. After all that's surely not what you want, is it? You want to be able to exercise control over how your story is told.

As with other video editing software, you can upload videos directly to YouTube and others. However, in order to serve the videos from our own site, I downloaded AVS Converter (approximately AUD$60) for the job of converting the various full HD formats created by PowerDirector to Flash, MOV and Mp4. It does that very well while providing me with the custom fine tuning I wanted. It also does the whole range of audio conversions.

Computer:

I wanted to do my creative work at times when I feel relaxed and creative which can be in the very early hours of the morning like 4am or when I feel restless in bed and go to my computer room at midnight. I need my ”studio” also when I am traveling to be able to speedily send back stories from abroad. I therefore need to have the software installed in a laptop, but not any laptop. It has to be small - not the common 15.6” ones. Saw the machine that fitted my requirements exactly at a stall in a shopping mall and bought it without hesitation - for AUD$195 second hand! It's a 14” Dell Latitude D420 with only 60Gb hard disk. You do not need a big super computer to produce short videos or even fairly long ones. Just make sure you have enough disk space.

We use pretty powerful systems in our digital press but they do not quite suit the way I work on video production. Sure, it is always better to have more power, but I find my little Dell to be more than adequate and extremely robust. I have put it through some very tough work over extended periods. The fact that I can process my videos very rapidly with this machine bears testimony to the power and speed of PowerDirector.

I carry my complete video production studio of camera, voice recorder, computer, external hard disk, headphones, cables and accessories in one small computer bag, with room for my eReader as well.

We have the means now to produce very good videos on a shoe string. All that's needed is creative input.

Have fun telling your stories.

Note: You're welcome to use our server to host your videos at no cost. Just write to me at francis@fcproductions.com.au

Francis Chuah
www.fcproductions.com.au