Or some things to try and avoid to separate your camera work from the amateur herd.

Steadying your shot
Panning and Zooming
Interviews
Changing your shot
Other Ideas

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This list is mainly a list of things not to do but please do not look at this and feel that I am picking on you! If you avoid some common pitfalls your camera work will look and feel better. In all cases I have also tried to explain why you should avoid whatever it is instead of just saying "do not do that". Please get in touch, details on the contact page, if you have suggestions to add or questions to ask.

 

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Steadying your shot

One of the easiest ways to make your camera work less distracting is to keep the camera still. Small vibrations from your hand will translate into a noticeably shifting screen and with a full zoom for a far away shot the effect is magnified considerably.

To get rid of this you can use a tripod, a monopod or a pile of books on a table.

Method	Advantages	Disadvantages
Pile of books or equivalent	Can be made anywhere from whatever comes to hand Costs nothing and you can not forget it and leave it behind	Not portable in the sense that you can not pick it up and drop it 3 meters away to get a better shot without a lot of effort Difficult to use viewfinder if there is a table in the way Might not be very steady, depending on the table, the books, or whatever
Monopod	More movable than a tripod and does not take up as much space, particularly useful if your are filming from a cramped space - like in the middle of an orchestra	Can not be left alone, it needs someone to hold onto it
Tripod	Can be left standing without taking up the time of an operator	Can be awkward to shift from one shot to another, folding and resetting legs might not be easy

A side advantage of a monopod or a tripod is you can set the camera recording and lift it up, holding onto the bottom of it thus doubling your height. This is especially useful with the style of cameras that have a flip out screen that you can rotate downwards so you can still see the shot it is getting 5 feet above your head.

Another advantage of having a still camera is that the background does not move around, this is particularly relevant if you are editing the footage. If your subject is not the best at getting to the point and for every question you ask they say something relevant then witter on about random things for a few minutes and then say something else important then you will want to cut out the middle section. To do this you would want to find a frame at the end of the first point very similar to one at the start of the next point so that you could cut right from one answer to the the next, or you could fade between the two points. This is a lot less distracting when the background has not moved so it is just the subject that you are worrying about, not the whole shot.

 

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Pan and Zoom

Zooming is almost addictive, we do not seem to be able to help ourselves. However, if you look at professional productions they very rarely use zooms. Instead they film, stop filming,. zoom closer to find the shot they want and then start filming again. If they do use zooming there is a reason for it and they generally start and end with holding a shot - it is a lot easier to smoothly go from one shot to another. Another reason to zoom quickly from one extreme to the other is to deliberately try to induce motion sickness in whoever is watching.

Panning is rotating the camera while recording, (panning is horizontal rotation, vertical rotation is sometimes called tilting). This is generally used to give a sense of scale to a shot - covering things that are too big for one lens-full, or following moving objects. Professionals mostly pan from left to right (the way people read) unless they are trying to get a deliberately dislocated feel and they also only pan for a reason. It is an often misused technique for people to pan backwards and forwards whenever they get distracted. If you think about how you watch a speaker, you look at them and only find your eyes wandering around when you are distracted or thinking about other things - by panning round a room you are forcing people not to look at the primary thing going on.

 

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Interview technique

With any interview you do the choice of location is arguably the third most important part. (The most important being making sure that there is film in the camera and charge in your battery!) If you put insightful questions to a fascination subject but film the responses next to a building site then your interview will not come out.
Try and find somewhere with a low amount of background noise with few distractions. It is also worth noting that even quite weak wind will make noise on a non-protected microphone.

Another good tip is to have the questions asked by a person who is not doing the filming. The reason for this is if you have the camera next to your face your voice will be come over as very loud and very rumbly in comparison to the answers you get back. Also try not to speak over the responses to your questions. Verbal habits like going "hmm, yes" are something we all do but you might obscure the answer completely.

Something that documentary makers and news interviews will do is film the questions and answers separately and then cut between them, some even go as far as filming themselves nodding in response to a question. Different people have different opinions as to the effectiveness of this. Sometimes you can use this to chop bits out of your interview and sometimes interviewers use these clips because they like to see themselves on screen (or am I being to cynical?). Our advice would be to look at interviews on television with an eye for stealing ideas and try out things yourself.

 

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Change between two shots

This is not really a camera work technique but since we do not (yet) have a basics of outputting film section we have popped it in here. It applies when you have two or more cameras recording the same event. It is a great temptation to cut between them repeatedly. The general rule of thumb applies here again: "do it as long as you know why you are doing it." If you are doing it because you went to all that effort to get two cameras and your camera person will be terribly offended if you do not use their footage then you might want to think twice.

Two cameras filming the same shot can be very useful - you can get the best shot from either one of them. For example, if someone giving a lecture decides to pick up the book the were quoting from and wave their other hand in emphasis you can use the shot that shows their face and not the one that has a book in the way. Or a well known youth worker we were doing live camera work with would hold his radio mic in his right hand and this would make him turn slightly to the right. Filming from his left side meant that we got an open shot of him whereas filming from his right meant we got his back (but not his bald spot - no - he had a full head of hair!) Also if you are filming a game and the presenter or leader happens to stand in the way then you have another camera to clearly see the action.

When you have a shot you are happy with it might be more appropriate and less distracting to stick with it instead of jumping between two shots. This is especially true when the thing you are filming is static and reasonably paced - like a talk, saving your jumping style for a time that lends itself to it - like a rock band.

 

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Other thoughts

Just a couple of final thoughts. You camcorder may have the ability to record the date and time directly onto your tape - this is very useful as a reference when picking between tapes but is very distracting if you leave it on all the time and is an instant flag to the fact that you did this yourself.

In a similar vein, some cameras let you do automated transitions and filters. They can fade out, or cover the screen in black or pixelate or turn the shot into a negative. Our advice is the same as always "use these things if you know why you are using these things". Use an effect to create an effect, not just because you had been flicking through the manual and thought it was worth a go. This is particularly relevant if you are handing the source footage on to be edited. I do not think there is an in-camera transition or filter that can not be replicated by a halfway decent editing system - many can be totally out classed so if you film the shot straight, with no effects then you can add them later but if you film them with the effect turned on then it can be very difficult and sometimes impossible to remove them if you think it is not quite what you wanted.

To end, it is best to return to the start and say that we do not know everything and are always willing to be wrong about things. This is not a list to say "never do that" just an encouragement to say "why did you do that?". If you think we are completely wrong, tell us, then we will be able to see if we have laid out our thoughts in a way that does not really say what we meant or include your point of view in future updates but please let us know what you think. Contact details are on the contact page.

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