Video began being used in journalism almost 90 years ago. In the late 1930s, some channels began experimenting with the first broadcast tv news programs. By the 40s, tv news continued to grow and change, but had to be put on hold as staff was redirected to cover World War II. After the war, tvs began being mass produced, and almost every household owned one. By 1950, tv news was a mainstay.

Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine journalism without videography.

The Basics of Video

Video and photography are a huge part of all facets of journalism. Chapter 1 of The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video looks at cameras as essentially a mechanical version of our eyes. Similarly to our eyes, cameras use lenses to capture light. Then sensors in the camera turn that light into images, much like how the cells on the back of our eyes do the same for us. There are tons of settings on cameras that we can use to control what the image looks like, for example, exposure controls how much light enters the lens. White balance controls the temperature of the video, be it warm and orange toned, cool and blue toned or anything in between.

Different lenses can also have different effects, there’s normal lenses that essentially recreate what we see, wide lenses show more than our eyes can see, while telephoto lenses get us much closer to the subject. Lenses can also control the focus of a video– how blurry an image is, and what’s blurry in the image by changing the depth of field.

Montages

So this week, I’m in the planning stages of creating a montage about a local park with some historical roots. Chapter 6 of The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video calls a montage a series of related shots shown in a short amount of time to convey a mood or share information. The shots need to be similar, but not too similar, or else your montage will just look like a bunch of bad jump-cuts. Use a wide variety of angles, zoom lengths, or even throw in a dutch tilt to add some visual distinction.

Planning for a shoot

It’s kind of a hard thing to do for a news story, after all our stories can flip on a dime, but planning your shoots can really help to streamline the process, for yourself and your photog (or yourself in a photog hat). It’s something really emphasized in this pocketcreatives article.

Knowing your story and angle, or at least having an idea of one, is huge when it comes to knowing what to cover. Be flexible, because that always could change, but if you have an idea of where you want it to go, it’ll help you know what coverage you need to get.

It’s hard to plan things down to your props and location, but communicating with your contact for a story, or whoever owns the property you’re filming on could be a huge help, especially if you happen to be shooting somewhere where you need to have permission… you don’t want to get kicked out midway through your shoot…

Also double and triple check your equipment. There’s nothing worse than showing up to an interview missing a tripod plate, or finishing up a great interview just to realize your mic wasn’t picking up anything. Some of these preparations, or even having a full checklist of things, may feel unnecessary, but this is the kind of industry where we need to be prepared for anything.

Storyboarding

For longerform stories, maybe that you’re working on over a span of time, storyboarding could be a great way to plan your coverage, vision, vibe and structure. Amanda Athuraliya in this Creately article writes that creating a storyboard is the secret to filming a great video.

Similarly to the last article, she says planning out your goal and key message from the beginning will help guide your project. Then, you’ll start storyboarding by visualizing how your video will look and drawing it out. You add your script and other notes afterwards. There are tons of templates you can find online, or you can create your own.

Composition

When we’re shooting a photo or video, one of the main things we’re doing is choosing what the viewer will see. Composition can completely change the narrative, or your viewer’s understanding of your story, according to Chapter 2 of The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video. There are so many framing and composition techniques that can make our images appealing to the viewer. For example, rule of thirds places the subject of an image on one of four spots in a frame to add some visual uniqueness. Photos also need to be balanced, which mainly applies to people and other objects that need “lead room.” You can’t place subjects too close to the edge of the frame they’re facing, or it will look unbalanced, sometimes this is called “running off the page”. Balance can also apply to visual weight and color.

Choosing a different angle from head-on is also good to add depth to your image, making it feel more alive. You can even use unique angles or perspectives, like looking up at a subject or looking down on them, which will have different effects on the audience’s perception of that subject. You can also frame your subject with a “natural frame,” meaning you find an object that can go around your subject and shoot through it. It’ll make your shot more interesting and lead the viewers eye to your subject– similarly to leading lines. Leading lines utilize lines to draw the viewers eye to what we want them to look at. The most important thing is to experiment, because you never know what will look good until you shoot it.

Camera Movement

Static shots are the status quo for news packages, but adding the occasional moving shot can be a super easy way to add some intrigue to your story. A super simple one is a zoom, in which the camera either zooms in or out to reveal something outside the frame, or too small to be initially seen. This is very often used in standups I’ve found, like when a photog will pull out from the shot on their reporter to show something behind them. Similarly, pans and tilts can also be used to reveal new information, with pans moving the camera left or right, and tilts moving it up or down. It’s really important to keep these movements fluid and a good speed, so as to not confuse your audience… or make them nauseous.

Composition Techniques in the Wild

Balance in Pride and Prejudice

The 2005 production of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has to frame the shots carefully during dance scenes to keep them balanced. Take, for example, this scene of Lizzy’s first dance with Mr. Darcy. Now, there are moments when the rule of balance is broken, and the characters are facing offscreen without enough lead room. But you can tell there is an effort in the cinematography to keep the balance as much as possible, there are just limitations to how quickly they can pan the camera without disorienting the viewer. For the most part though, the characters are on one half of the screen while looking to the other half, giving them plenty of lead room.

Natural Framing in In the Mood for Love

For some background, Wong Kar-wai’s 2000 In the Mood for Love follows two neighbors, Su and Chow, as they learn their spouses are cheating on them with one another. They form a close bond, but swear to keep it platonic so as to not commit the same wrongs as their partners. In this scene, the door naturally frames all of the action, and I think it can be really symbolic. At the beginning, Su is sitting behind her husband, before essentially being told to move out of the way by Chow’s wife. The room is small, making It feel like the frame is literally “trapping” her in this relationship where she knows she’s being cheated on. Then, Chow tries to leave through the door, putting Chow and Su super close, but unable to touch in any way. The frame feels constricting and almost uncomfortable, but I think that’s the point of this scene.

Rule of Thirds in Kill Bill Vol. 1

This scene is really interesting, because it showcases a character rolling down a hill, and the camera operator manages to keep her body on the bottom right point for the whole scene. She begins there, when The Bride is taking her out of the trunk and throws her down the hill, and ends there when she reaches the hospital at the bottom. That takes really impressive camera work to keep her there the whole time.

Creating a Montage

So like I said earlier, this week I’m in the planning stages of creating a montage. Well, to do that, I scoped my location by shooting photos using these composition techniques. I love taking photos on walks, so this was fun, and a bit of a challenge to find some of these images. I’d say I had a bit of a hard time finding examples of leading lines. There were a lot of paths that could be “leading lines,” but they didn’t really lead to a subject. One of my favorite pictures was the natural framing photo I took. It was through a bench and just made for a super cool composition. I also loved taking photos of the dog to show balance. Her owner tossed a ball to make her run, which was super kind of him and led to great pictures.

I also created a pre-production planning document, with a script and storyboard. I chose to cover a historical park called Edgerton Park, which is a beautiful spot in between Hamden and New Haven, CT. I’m just a little worried about some of the coverage, because I do need to use historical photos, so hopefully I can find enough. Here’s a look at that document:

Keep an eye out for next week when I publish the montage!