Shooting the Video.

I have finally got my video entry finished for Alex’s competition and now have it posted on YouTube.

I have made videos before but i’ve not just stood in front of the camera and talked and it got me right out of my comfort zone, can’t say I enjoyed it too much but I guess it gets easier the more you do it.

I had no real problems deciding the format the video should take, I wanted to make a video about my PPP and hopefully drive some traffic to my blog and add some contacts to my mailing list.

I enjoyed writing the script and just brain dumped all my thoughts into a notepad file and then put them in some kind of order, discarded some ideas and expanded others, I was quite surprised to find once I was happy with the script it was going to make a video of about 3 minuets long.

I then turned my thoughts as to where I wanted to film the video, my first idea was to try filming in our garden so I wrote the key points of my script out on the inside of an opened out box and tied it to my tripod, the problem I found

with this was I missed bits of the script out, so then I printed the script out on three sheets of paper and stuck them to the card, this was better but I felt quite self consousious about standing in the middle of the lawn trying to talk quite loudly at the camera at least Hobbs our cat seemed to think the use of cardboard was a good idea, not what I had in mind at the design stage!

I then thought i’d try filming the video in the office (ok so its a converted spare bedroom!) and this time I would try using an autocue or teleprompter, I could copy the script from the notepad file and paste it in to the free to use telepromter at http://www.cuepromter.com this would scroll the text up the screen of my computer and I could control the size of the text and the speed it travelled.

I placed the video camera on a small tripod so it looked over the top of my computers monitor and off I went, the problem I found was I was not looking at the camera and it looked a bit odd in the video I shot, I also found I didn’t get along with the autocue very well, I guess it is something you get use to the more you use it.

I then swapped the camera and monitor around so the camera was in front of the monitor, my camera is a Sony Digital 8 Handycam I purchased off eBay secondhand about 18 months ago and is not as small as the new cameras you can get today, so I found I had to sit quite a long way from the desk in order to get my head and shoulders in shot. I think a camera like the Flip would work really well in this situation as it is so compact, perhaps I’ll ask Santa for one!

In the end I put the camera behind the monitor and had the printed script taped to the monitor, it does show in the video me looking at the script but overall I think its ok.

I used Windows Movie Maker to edit the video and add text and stuff, its a great program and I learn a little more about it the more I use it and the best bit is it’s free!

I have learnt loads whilst making this video and realise I need to be more relaxed in front of the camera, I feel I am quite serious in this video, i need to master the autocue and get a smaller video camera, yes The HD Flip PLEASE Santa.

I’d like to thank Rob Brooks for some useful tips about making videos I got from being on his email list, so check him out at http://www.marketingwithrob.com

I hope you like the video and would love it if you would leave me a comment or even download the free ebook.

Kind regards,
Guy.