Tips for shooting your first product demo
Many first-time shooters often times don’t realize all the possibilities available to them when they have an editor available to them, or even if they decide to edit themselves. Here are some great ways to get a professional product the first time.
1. Lighting, lighting, and lighting. Lighting for a camera can be tricky and getting the right look takes practice and education. But your best bet is to keep it simple, not too bright so your shots aren’t washed out and not too dark so that details are lost. A professional editor can make your images crisper and more dynamic as long as your images aren’t too dark or too light.
2. Think dimensions! When you choose to edit your videos you don’t have to worry about getting it all in one straight shot. Think in multiple angles, think about showing every angle of your product, and don’t even worry if your promo host can’t get their lines down in one sitting. All that can be made into a great video. There are great ways to show progress or time or the multiple angles. Close-ups with voice overs, models using the product over testimonials, and then a beauty shot of the product on a nice well-lit stand, all possible. Just keep it in mind and don’t limit your possibilities.
3. Use the best lens you’ve got. Use the best camera available to you. If you’re using a camera like the one available on your cell phone, you shouldn’t expect to get a professional looking video. That being said, home video cameras have been getting exponentially better each generation. Just make sure to keep the lens clear.
4. Shoot more than you need. This is the general rule of thumb for every production. Within reason, always shoot more than you need to. It’s not a great feeling sitting in the editing room thinking, “Man, I wish I had that shot!”. Also, make sure you let the camera run for a few seconds before and after every shot you take. Don’t worry the extra 15 seconds of footage is only costing you less than 1 cent on Mini-DV tape, and worth it. Sometimes camera’s cut out too early or editing software gets picky and if your favorite shot accidentally gets overlapped by the next shot or is too close to the beginning or end of a tape, your editing program may not let you take in the entire shot.
5. Remember if you’re ever worried about how your shots may look, our best advice is to check it on a screen. BUT make sure that you keep an eye on where the tape is when you pop it back into the camera and start shooting again. You don’t want to overwrite good footage and you don’t want to start new timecode.
-Wait. What? What does start new timecode mean? Timecode is the numbers you often see in the upper-right hand corner or upper-left hand corner of your video camera. Editing systems like steady, continuous timecode. And you might like it too. Especially if you want to make notes for your editor. For example, “Editor, I like the shot at 01:05:21:00 not the one at 01:04:25:10.” This comment would become much more confusing if there were two 01:05:21:00, because the timecode restarted. This is where it helps to have that extra 15 seconds of nothing at the end of each shot. After watching the tape, scan to somewhere in that meaningless 15 seconds and your timecode stays steady.
Ok That’s it for now. I’m sure there will be more. If you have questions, jot them down and we’ll do our best to answer them. Better yet, PLEASE ask questions, let us know where we can tell you more. =)