Essential videography skills
Most of the top filmmakers in London will know all the essential videography skills required to be one of the best videographers in the UK. Of course we like to go beyond the essentials but knowing the fundamentals is a great place to start your journey to becoming a sought after videographer.
3 essential videography skills
Here are my top three videography skills to help create incredible looking imagery that will amaze your clients.
Firstly is composition. How you frame an image part of the reason it looks right. Get this correct and it just flows nicely and feels correct to the eye. There are certain rules you can follow and these are of course important but I like to use my initiative. I ask myself the question, does this look right? If not, you’re not framed correctly. Sometimes you’ll have to move the subject or item to make this work. Experiment with tripod height, lens type and F-stop and see the huge difference changing these settings can make.
Second is lighting. If you have the right lighting you can create something spectacular. Experiment with hard and soft lights, move them closer or further away. you’ll soon see what a huge impact lighting can have. I always love to have a couple of very soft lights and addition diffusion filters in my bag but equally important I having a couple of hard lights to hand. You can always soften a light but you’ll face more of a challenge to make a light from soft to hard. Another tip is to play with colour to aid you in separating objects or people. I sometimes go for a slightly warmer hair light for instance to subtly make someone or something stand out.
Finally, my last tip is movement. Years ago achieving movement was difficult, timely and costly. There were some incredible innovators who experimented in moving the camera in feature movies. Now, however, we have access to a host of incredibly technologies that let us move the camera. Movement can be subtle and bring out certain feeling. Fast handheld motion could be used for more frantic feelings but something like a slow track is perfect for product videography.
I hope these tis are useful and good luck with creating some amazing videos!
