We (and by we, I mean mostly Bob) have started to shoot and edit product demo videos for the new equipment we have recently started to list. Each of these will be real quick - under 2 minute - summaries of a particular product. For instance we are finishing up the Pro Co IFace audio interface and the video will touch on the product’s features & benefits and some best practices for its use. We will create a video for each of the Pro Co “Tools of the Trade” products we are now selling as well as videos for Shure microphones, Whirlwind gear and Gator cases. American DJ has already produced a series of videos for their products and we have started to include links to these in many of our listings. We are also planning a series of informational videos with a broad audio, video, lighting theme – not so product specific, but more education. We have already scripted a bit on common wash lights and one on spotlights used in stage lighting.

I tell you all that to set up my real point – making decent looking and sounding video is hard. Hard probably is the wrong word. More like painstaking. It takes time, proper planning, decent equipment and technique to make a professional looking and sounding video. Unfortunately, in this YouTube age of video it seems that just about anything is acceptable. But we are old production guys that sell audio, video and lighting gear; so we have set the bar a little higher.

First we had to decide how we want these videos to look and feel. They need to be informational, short, conversational but not informal and in a repeatable format. So we spent some time just hashing through what they would look like, writing different scripts and laying out the story board. We had to decide where we would shoot them, what gear would be required, etc. After considering many options and playing around in front of the camera we decided that in most cases sitting would be better than standing. After watching some of the video, we came to the conclusion that middle aged man bellies are not very attractive in HD – and yes video does add weight, although how much depends on who is in front of the camera. If it is Bob, he says it appears that he is about five pounds heavier on video than in a mirror. Looking at me on camera and I say video adds at least twenty pounds…….

We decided to use the conference room with the whiteboard as a backdrop but the overhead lighting made the white background overwhelm the camera, so we bought a muslin backdrop. This helped a bunch with the background, but now we had to get foreground lighting right so we killed the overheads and added a couple of Lowel Omni-lights. After playing around with position of these, we ended up shooting one through a bounce umbrella with the black cover off and the other one we bounced off the white projection screen on the wall that is to the left of the backdrop. With a frost glass in front of each lamp, we now have a nice key and fill light. The backdrop gives enough bounce that we do not need any back light and we have placed a reflector on the table in front of the “talent” to bounce some light under his chin and into his deep set eye sockets So after plenty of experimentation, we ended up with only two lights and a couple of reflector / diffuser devices. We now have nice, warm video lighting. The process of getting the lighting was not too hard, but it was painstaking. We would set something up, shoot a little bit, go look at it on the edit system, make a decision, change it up and do it again until we found what looked good on that camera in that space.

Speaking of the camera, we are using a Canon Vixia HG-21 High Definition camcorder on a lightweight Bogen tripod. It is a little-bitty thing with a flip out LCD screen. It takes nice video, but the view screen in no way represents what you are shooting. You frame the shot on the camcorder and then it is a couple inches bigger on either side of the frame on the edit system. So after playing around with this for a while, we now know to compensate for this effect and block the shot accordingly. Again, this has not been hard but it is a little time consuming to get it right.

These are supposed to be short and informative videos, so staying on point is important. To help keep the person in front of the camera on track, we have created bullet point PPT slides with the information we want conveyed. We can edit out some of the bloopers and misfires, but it is easier just to get it right. To help in this effort we have placed a 19 inch monitor just under the camera lens. This low rent tele-prompter helps keep the “umms” and the editing time to a minimum. Audio has been the easiest part. We are using a Sony ECM-44B lav mic connected directly into the camcorder with a Shure A96F mic to line level transformer and XLR to mini jack adapter cable. The camera has an auto gain feature which works very well in this application.

So after spending the energy to get the lighting, camera image and audio correct, we don’t want to get lackadaisical in the editing process. For the finished product we (Bob) are using a PC based NLE system from Sony called Vegas Movie Studio 9. For less than one hundred bucks, it is feature loaded. It took several hours of reading and playing to figure it all out, but now we can upload from the camera, lay down multiple layers, key or picture in picture still photos and graphics, manipulate the audio and then render to YouTube fairly easily. All from the convenience of Bob’s desktop – pretty sweet. Once we have a couple in the can, it will get even easier. Many of the edit transitions will be the same and none of them are tricky. We will have the intro and the exit established and we will simply have to drop the middle content in place. This combined with us simply becoming more comfortable in the process should make each one a little better looking and less time consuming.

So next time you watch a well made video, think about all the elements that go into making it right. If they did a really good job, not only will it look good it will also look effortless. We should start posting ours in the next few weeks so please watch for them and let us know what you think. Hopefully our pre-production work will pay off and they won’t end on some blooper reel.