Screening and Discussion
We’ll listen to some of your radio stories and give feedback as a class.
BREAK
Practice Video Assignment
Five-shot sequence due on Monday.
The classic sequence that every budding videographer learns when starting out is the five-shot sequence.
- Close-up on the hands.
- Close-up on the face.
- Medium shot.
- Over the shoulder shot.
- One additional creative angle.
You won’t always edit things in this exact way when you do a sequence in the real world; sometimes it’ll only be three shots, or it might be ten, and they might be in a different order. But the five-shot sequence is a useful framework for thinking about depicting an activity clearly and engagingly with video.
Editing a Five-Shot Sequence
This can be a very short video: roughly 30 seconds.
Take a short clip of the interview you filmed, linger on the person’s face for about five seconds, add a lower third identifying the person, and layer your sequence of B-roll over the rest of it. You don’t need to include too much of each B-roll shot… but remember that it’s good practice to hold shots for at least 10-15 seconds when filming, even if a lot of the time you might only end up using five seconds of each clip.
Export (Format: H.264) and upload to YouTube or Vimeo, then post on the class blog. (Defaulting to “Match source-high bitrate” is fine; if you’re ever concerned about the file size being too big, the medium bitrate is a good option.)
Upcoming Dates
Monday, August 10: Production on video stories; one-on-one check-ins and feedback.
Wednesday, August 12: Videos due. Screening and feedback as a class.
Here are a couple of videos done by past students to serve as inspiration: