How to Make a Video

Tim Carter from AsktheBuilder.com demonstrates the equipment and techniques you need to film a good video. Discover a wealth of secret tips while watching this informative and humorous video. Tim shares his eight years of network television experience to

Filming a video for the internet is the thing to do right now. I am Tim Carter at askthebuilder.com and you know what, you probably want to know what does it take to film an informative or an educational video. I am about to show you. To make a great video, you are going to need some equipment. I think that you are going to have absolutely a topnotch camera, a great tripod, no doubt you are going need some lights and absolutely a really good wireless microphone. Camera technology changes as fast as the fashion industry so make sure you buy a camera that is expensive as you can possibly afford. For example, the camera we are using today has got three separate color chips and it gives near perfect results. So, get a great camera. The tripod, it is the foundation of the filming system and you need a really good one. It is just like the foundation of a house. You want to make sure that that camera is rock solid when you are filming. You do not want be jiggling all over the place but you have to have a good tripod. Do not get a piece of crap like this one. This is the one I bought forty years ago for my 35 mm camera. You need to have a professional quality tripod that has a head on it, that actually has a controller that allows you to actually level the head of the tripod. It also needs to have a quick release lever so that you can get the camera off the tripod quickly. What a beautiful sunny day but you know what, you can always count on the sun being out and it might be too harsh so you probably going to have to buy artificial lighting like this to produce the color temperature and color range that the sun produces at high noon. This type of lights is not as expensive as you might think and you are absolutely going to need when you film indoor. Filming videos is hard work, believe me. Okay, we have got all of our equipment and you are probably wondering what does it take to film videos that people are actually going to enjoy and be engaged with but let me give you some tips, the things I have learned for filming videos for network television over the past eight years. Your video will be captivating if you make sure that it is made up of small little videos within the major video. What am I talking about? I am talking about little three to five second shots of different things. Imagine, watching television commercials, that is how they build those things. Every two to three seconds, you see a different image and it really makes a difference. I am serious and also another thing, you want to get some sweet different camera angles. It will make all the difference in the world. To make things interesting and easy, I would like to film my askthebuilder.com videos with me on camera at the beginning and at the end of the videos and then we fill the center of the video with shots of me doing the things I am talking about. The open and close professionally, they call that A roll but the inside shots that you do not see me on camera, that is called B-roll. You have got to make sure that your videos, shut the damn mower. See, you can not have outside mowers like that. It is crazy, man. It ruins every thing so you have got to be prepared when you are filming outdoors to get interrupted by stupid things like airplanes, helicopters and stupid land mowers. Hang on a second, you know that man can not multi test so just wait a minute. Okay, I am Tim Carter at Ask the Builder. You have got to need to have a script so that you can make sure that your video is going to flow right and more importantly that you are going to have the things that you need to film in your B-roll. Now, you do not have to memorize the whole script, how you do it is you are going to film those script lines in different cuts each time so you only have to memorize maybe one or two lines at most at a time. It is really not as hard as you think but the script forces you to make sure that you are going to have enough footage of other things happening so that you do not have to stand in front of the camera all the time like I am right now being a talking head because that is really, really boring. Do not let that happen on your videos. Okay, this script thing is really important and also you might be wondering about certain videos that you do not think it is possible to take. Here is why the scripts are important. Who would ever think that you could film a video about a mundane topic like how to read a measuring tape that is going to be as boring as possible and hard to film, let me show you how simple it really is. A tape measure is a very important tool, humps and cutter. I used my measuring tape on just about every single job I do but people frequently ask me how to read a tape measure and the majority of tape measures are marked out in feet and inches. The inch part of the tape is then usually broken down into fractions like one-half, one-quarter, one-eighth and one-sixteenth inches. Each of those divisions is represented by a smaller and smaller line with half inch mark being the largest. Most tape measures have color coding to show you quickly the dimension that indicates sixteen inches centers. You can a mistake when reading a tape measure up side down. Remember, take your time, measure twice so you only have to cut once. I am Tim Carter for experttooltips.com. Check out the pop color. We are going to talk a little bit right now about personal appearance and you know why because I do not want you to look like a golf ball or a nerd on your videos. Never wear a white shirt or a flashy shirt. Do not do this. Do not talk with your head perfectly still. It is really a bad idea. Here is what you are going to do. Smile, you are supposed to be having some fun. Make your videos fun, energetic and you are really going to be captivating on camera. I am serious. It is not hard and make sure you move your head a little bit. It really feels unnatural doing what I am doing right now but I am telling you if I do not bob my head around a little bit like this, here is what happens. If you start talking like this all the time, it looks really weird. I have got a really bad habit. If you are looking a lot of my videos, here is what I do all the time. I have got this bad habit with my hands and it can really be distracting if you are moving your hands round a lot. Here is what also can happen if you really get crazy, you are start hitting against the mike like that and all kinds of bad jujumagumbo goes wrong. Okay, so here is the way to prevent that. Use some props like choose something that is natural like it is natural maybe to holding a water bowl. Look how much better that is and I feel comfortable that I am holding this water bowl or in my case if I am doing askthe builder.com videos, what is better than the whole of a tool. For example, it looks perfectly normal to go ahead and have a frame of square. My hands are right here on position. You can see them but they are not flailing all over the place causing problems and never bring them up in front of your face like that. It is not a good idea. Do not be moving your hands. Frequently, you might be demonstrating something or you want to point to something or grab something in a shot. You have to be careful how you do that. It is really important. And let me give you an example, let us start talking about the actual label on this bottle and what makes a really good product label. I will show you how I would do that. For example, I would start to say you know you need to have a picture on the label on the bottle so say we are going to start point of that and watch how we do that in B-roll. One more thing that is really important. If you are going to be doing shots where you are pointing at things and you are getting close ups, you really have to pay attention to your fingers and your nails. I know it sounds crazy, make sure they are trimmed; make sure your fingernails are clean because it is going to look gross if they are not. Now, let me tell you if you need to trim your nails or file them, get a handy dandy wood rest just like this. It works wonders on fingernails. If you want your videos to be really interesting, you need to have lots of energy. I k