In a recent study, it was estimated approximately 10% of the
Internet contains text; the other 90% is images. With the explosion of social media and all
the different ways we take and use pictures now, it is no surprise that
everyone wants to be the next YouTube star.
However, just like there is a difference between Dad and the old camcorder
and Steven Spielberg, your highly viewed YouTube videos are all professionally
done with top-notch equipment. That does
not mean, though, your child can’t make a good quality video.
The three key pieces of equipment is a good digital camera,
a voice recorder and directed lighting.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking a well-lit room will do the
trick. Natural lighting is always good
with the sun directly behind the camera.
Otherwise, a room with lots of windows and an afternoon sun is your
second choice. If you need to go with
artificial lighting, use a minimum three halogen floodlights or reflective
material around fluorescent lighting.
Make sure they are up high shining down on the studio.
Most people will shoot their videos with their phone or a
tablet. It doesn’t take long to figure
out who has done that. The resolution
will be low, the sound will have an echo, and the orientation will be
confusing. With a standard digital
camera and tripod, you will get good resolution and orientation. Finally, a voice recorder is a must. Put it in the person’s pocket or behind the
backdrop and record the entire thing.
With a proper movie editing program, you will get the audio you need to
make a truly great movie. Of course, you
can always just create a slide show and add some music to get the same effect.
As to the type of movie you make, most videos fall into a
few categories. You have your live
action movies, slide shows, animation, stop motion, green screen, performance,
and lecture. Most children seem to like
making live action, stop motion and green screen movies. One of the exciting things with these types
of movies is the assortment of characters you can use. A really neat movie I recently saw with my
son involved a Dad and two boys with a bunch of Nerf guns. To my 10 year old son, they are the coolest characters
going. Not the people, though, but
rather the guns. He loves the variety of
guns and names them all when he sees them in Walmart.
The key thing to remember, though, be prepared to shoot a
lot of video. Like anything else,
practice makes perfect. Your child will
inevitably get too close to the action with the camera and will need to learn
angles and lighting. I normally go
through the camera every month or so and delete out the weak videos with my
children after talking about what makes it good or not. Otherwise, you will use up your memory pretty
quickly.
Once you have a few good movie clips, it is time to start
putting them together. Every big
operating system has its own movie editing program and while I prefer Windows
Moviemaker with YouTube music, it is primarily due to just being used to
it. Apple has iMovie, YouTube has its
own program, and Google has Wevideo.
Each program has its own quirks and takes a little bit of work. Ultimately, though, I prefer storing the
videos on YouTube versus any other place.
Setup an account and you can put any length movie on there. I have posted up to 60 minute videos on
there. Just make sure you respect the
copyright laws associated with it. For
your personal videos, upload them into your channel and set it to private or
unlisted. Upload the video and then from
video manager, change it to private or unlisted. I prefer unlisted because I can then still
email the link of the video to any person.
While it is important to remember that it is only the top 1%
of professionals who actually become YouTube sensations or movie/TV stars, there
is lots of benefit in participating in digital cinematology. I am convinced going forward, storytellers
will be telling their stories in film not print. My grandparents used speeches to tell
stories, my parents used letter writing, I use my computer, but my children
will be using their cameras to tell their stories.
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