When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, ‘No, I went to films’.
– Quentin Tarantino, American film producer
Being a content producer in this day and age, there’s more than meets the eye.
There’s a running joke within the community that the process of making a short video is simply summed up in three steps.
These are: shoot, edit and publish. Apparently, that is the understanding by most of the people.
They are not as technologically inclined nor do they have experience in fields of cinematography or video production.
And apparently, trying to explain to them the various levels of complexities would be futile.
I sometimes wish it is that easy. There are too many considerations that must be taken into account.
First, what are you shooting? What is it for? Where to shoot? How to shoot? Are there talents involved? Is there a script of some kind, or are we going to keep rolling à la one-take off-the-cuff sort of content?
Then there’s the question of what are you going to shoot it with? Is it a capable video recording device – a proper mirrorless or DSLR camera setup or are we shooting it with a smartphone?
If we’re using a smartphone, what model of a smartphone? Can it produce videos of acceptable quality? Or are we going to use a potato of a smartphone that was sold as a budget offering five or six years ago?
If we are using a proper camera setup, what will be framerate? 24fps, 30fps, 60fps? 24fps is touted to have a more of a cinema look and used primary for movies.
Are we instead going for the 30fps or 60fps framerate? The former is used for live TV broadcasts and the latter emphasising more on the smoothness and detail of the said video, having twice the number of frames per second.
Then, the question would be what sort of composition do we want? Say, we are recording a sit-down interview, what kind of framing would be preferred? Is it a wide shot or a tight shot?
A wide shot would be good if the environment tells a story. I recently shot an interview with a veteran artist on his front porch, where he had a number of memorabilia on display. It makes sense to incorporate such in the framing.
Or do we want to opt for the tight shot where it showcases more of the emotions of the subject? I mean, really get up close and observe what the other person is feeling when being asked about a particular matter.
There are creative considerations that must be taken into account.
Then the question becomes, how do we accomplish these shots? What kind of camera lens would you use? Is there ample light at the scene, is it indoor, outdoor or in changing light?
It affects whether a shot can be accomplished. If we are shooting indoors and we want to incorporate the scene, meaning less of a camera blur, we would have to add lights.
Because we would have to stop down the lens to a degree to incorporate the scene and we wouldn’t want to deal with a lot of noise in the footage due to cranking the ISO number.
Of course, there is also this school of thought of run-and-gun video shooting. Doesn’t matter how it looks like, doesn’t matter the potato quality, as long as we have the shot.
And this would be ideal for documentary or journalism purposes but then again, I argue, the shoddy and abhorrent quality of such could be the very reason why people disassociate themselves with these types of contents.
It is not as simple as waving around your smartphone or TV camera at a person’s face and getting the person to do what we want.
There are steps that must be taken to accomplish as such. We have to talk to the person and get them to trust us and make them comfortable enough and not feel nervous.
No matter how confident a person is, seeing a camera being stuck up their faces would be unnerving. That’s how you end up with gaffes — we don’t want that.
Then there’s the matter of editing the content. Of course, we can just upload a 40–50-minute video. My question is, who in their right mind would be interested to watch that?
There are a lot of considerations. I hope as we continue to consume contents, we gain more understanding as to the process of producing them.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
