When shooting a video, whether for an indie film, a music video, a wedding video or for personal reasons, no matter how high end your gear and equipment may be, without the right video production techniques, it still wouldn’t look quite as good as a video shot with little to no resources but has technique in it.
Techniques are important in shooting a video, there are rules as well and in order for you to deviate from these rules, you first need to know and understand them. Shooting a video with a high end camera will definitely look a lot better when certain techniques are utilized as compared to just plain shooting without knowing what to really do.
Learning the basics
The basics of video production is just as important as having gear, you can never fully utilize the potential of your gear if you don’t know the basics. Framing and composition is one of the basic techniques which are very important in any scene, be it a video or a picture. Framing and composition of a scene will either make it appealing to the eyes or make it an eyesore. If ever you are in doubt about framing, you can always go back to using the rule of thirds wherein your subject occupies 1/3 of the frame.
Helpful techniques are helpful
There is also some techniques off-camera that can be very helpful in terms of saving time (and memory space) when shooting a video. It is always important to know the shots you need before even starting a video, while you might already have a few shots in mind, it can be more helpful to you if you write it down on paper since you might forget it. A storyboard is very useful on the day of the shoot since all the scenes are already there as well as the frame, the camera angles and the duration of the scene as well so you won’t need to do a million retakes of a certain scene until you are finally satisfied. Planning ahead of time can definitely be a real time saver.
All in all, the gears you might have won’t really matter much if you don’t have the technique to partner it with, since technique will always win over gears no matter how high end they may be. Knowing the different techniques when shooting a video will definitely complement the gears that you have and will make for a very promising and high quality output.
