Videography

We have a professional videographer on board who is producing DVD’s of the cruise. He is preparing 3 DVD’s for each of the 4 segments. If you buy all 12, it costs $299.00, and you get an additional 3 DVD’s of individual locations.

They are well done, but I’m not sure whether or not we’ll buy them. It’s not just the cost, my other issue is whether we would actually view them much, or simply stuff them into some drawer.
However, the videographer gave a short lecture today. There are some very simple points that I took from his talk that could spruce up anyone’s amateur videos.

1) Use a tripod. This gives stability that you cannot get with handheld cameras. Even a baby 3-inch tripod can allow you to put a camera on the ground or on a chair, and it takes up only a tiny amount of space.

2) Don’t just shoot the same shot for many seconds. This looks like multiple identical still shots back-to-back. Instead start the sequence with a tight-in shot of a detail on the item (such as the decoration above a doorway) then zoom out at a constant rate as you film for 5-15 seconds to a view of the entire structure. This seems very simple, but when multiple images of this simple type are strung together, it looks quite professional and holds your interest.

3) If you are going to pan a panorama shot, do so from left to right, not right to left. This produces an image that is “read” the same as we read a book, so it is more comfortable for the viewer.

4) At places where there are lots of people or cars moving, place the camera at a fixed location and let it record for 5 to 10 minutes. When you later add this footage to your film, speed it up 5 times or so. It dramatizes the activity (such as pedestrians moving on the Great Wall, or downtown street traffic in Saigon, or a bustling marketplace).

5) If there is slight movement of something near you (such as gondola boats at dock in Venice), place the camera near the moving items, but with a good part of the frame showing the stable background. This makes a nice effect in real time or at some speed up frame rate.

6) Add local music to the background.

By doing these 6 things, I think you’d get about 90% of the benefit that this professional gets. He uses Adobe Final Cut software. He says that the “Express” (simplest version) of the software can be purchased for under $100. The full version with about 7 different specialty items (lighting, motion of text, extra sound track choices) can be $600 to $1,000.

The videographer shoots about 4 hours worth of film footage for each half hour of final DVD length.

I had some video editing software about 10 years ago that son Scott used quite a bit. It looks like the new software and the computer speeds and memory size have allowed for great improvements in what one can do.

One passenger said that you still need to buy a computer with the biggest memory and fastest processor if you want to be serious about video editing. Another passenger said that she prefers to stick to still photos, then use Pro Shop Gold to arrange them into a movie.