How to Repair Cassettes
So my mother called me in a panic to say that her micro-cassette snapped. The content on that tape is invaluable full of research she’s conducted months ago.
She cannot recreate it and she can’t cut her losses… so what I do? Google it! Check what I found;
How to Repair Cassettes
I’ll let you know how it [...]
Tripod vs. Monopod
The Pros and Cons
In my experience, not having a tripod screams amateur. Consider this, if the camera is on a tripod, and the background never changes, you’ve just given yourself the opportunity to apply stellar transitions that look like the subject disappears into thin air without having to do any crazy post-production… a simply cross-fade [...]
The Rule of Thirds
Tic Tac Toe
When I was in high school, I took a video class that covered basic film theory, techniques, and processes. One of the most memorable lessons I learned was ‘the rule of thirds.’ Our teacher used the movie Golden Eye the James Bond movie with Pierce Brosnan as an example of maticulous cinematography that [...]
Synchronizing Camcorders
Match the Waveforms
I usually use 2 camcorders when filming a show and I try to place them within phase coherence to one another (refer to the “How to Record Sound for Video in Concert” posting in the production tips category for phase coherence), but there is one carnal rule that I live by to make [...]
Reduce The Size of Your Logic Pro Projects
So I was trying to make copies of some personal projects of mine to have another set of ears mix my tracks. The projects were huge with multiple takes of 8 microphones :p so I had to reduce the size of my projects to fit them on one DVD. I was Googling as I normally [...]
Standard Definition vs High Definition
The Pros and Cons
Podcasting videos wouldn’t even require Standard Definition broadcasting equipment let alone High Definition broadcasting equipment. However, I use Standard Definition equipment for the sake of colour. There is a very big different in the colour of a single chip consumer camcorder vs. a standard definition three chip camcorder (3CCD). The essential difference [...]
Select All Facebook Friends
Recently I’ve stumbled upon a javascript that allows me to select all of my friends in one shot and not have to click them one by one. I believe this code will even bypass the limit of 100 invites per send too.
Copy and paste the code below into the address bar when you see the [...]
Recording Sound for Video in Concert
Just One Room Mic
A lot of people ask me how I get such good live sound tracks in my raw video footage. I’ve seen a lot of “cinematographers” film shows with a clunky Cannon XL-1 or Sony DX-1000 and use a shotgun microphone strapped on top as their sound track. This can work if isolated [...]
Filming for Television
Mind the Safe Zones
When targeting the web, whatever you see in your camcorder’s viewfinder will be what you see online. However, when targeting television, i.e. film/dvd a good chunk of your video will be cropped out. That being said, be sure to give yourself enough space around the subject so as not to have the [...]
How to design C.R.A.P.
Colour Repetition Alignment Proximity
For all of you designers and artistic people out there, here’s a post that you can perhaps add to or learn from. Designing Crap is a bad thing but designing C.R.A.P. is a good thing. C.R.A.P. is a guideline I learned in school from my “Print Production” class. This guideline works for [...]
How to configure your listening point
30 to 60 Degrees
There are a number of items to consider when setting up your monitoring system. Various approaches exist and different configurations yield different results. This post will touch on some of the basic items for consideration when configuring your listening point for a stereo speaker setup.
Generally speaking, there are 2 configurations for a [...]
Cutting Video to Music Visually
Just Tap The Tempo
This blog will cover the technique I use when cutting video to music. This technique is just the tip of the iceberg. More “sync” techniques will released over the next few weeks so stay tuned if you’re a video editor.
Now this technique can be applied to any video. It is not going [...]