Surrey Border Film & Video Makers

An experimental page of hints and tips for those just starting filmmaking

Typical 'please help' email sent to the club:

I wonder if you can help me. I have arranged a reunion for people who participated in specific school plays at our grammar school in 19xx/yy. We have had great success at tracking people down after 40 years and have about 45 people attending, coming from all over the country and some from abroad. The event is being held at the xxxx Hotel, next Saturday xxx September, starting at 12 noon. The only thing planned is some speeches and messages from non-attendees, then the rest of the afternoon is just folk chatting together. 

We decided we would film the speeches. This sounds simple enough, I can borrow a camcorder, even two. But the more we thought about it the more we realised that it would be more difficult to get a pleasing result, as we are amateurs. At the very minimum we would need an external microphone for the speaker as the main camcorder would be behind the crowd and the results from the internal mic would be awful. Looking into this I see it is more involved, so I wonder if one of your members might help. This could be perhaps hiring a radio mic + associated equipment, or maybe even coming along and doing the filming for us. We would be prepared to pay a reasonable fee, but this is not a commercial event and we have not budgeted for this. But we could ask everyone for another pound or two on the day maybe.  We would be very grateful if someone could assist in some way.

Our Webmaster's response

I have circulated your email to the committee and asked if anyone would be interested. I wouldn't hold your breath as what people who are new to filming don't realise is that the major effort comes after the filming in
terms of editing. This can take many hours of work.

However. I can give you some tips as to how to get good original material and who knows maybe one of the attendees will be a keen film editor and take on the job! Firstly speeches filmed in their entirety are very dull whoever the speaker is! The editor should seriously reduce each speech maybe to as short as around 20 seconds of highlights. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't film the speeches in their entirety as the best parts will always come just after you turn the camcorder off! - guaranteed! Next I doubt the audience would mind having the camera person right at the front close to the speaker. This will get round some of the problems of not having an external microphone although the best would be an external directional microphone - but still as very close to the speaker as possible.

Another point is that everyone will want to see themselves and so the more interesting shots for your final film will be the reception after the speeches as people chat over a cup of tea or whatever. I suggest your camera
person wanders round the groups making sure that they capture EVERYONE. Now I don't mean meekly wandering around trying not to be noticed. I mean (1) take the group from nearby but then (2) intervene, enter the group, and then while sitting in the group ask the more talkative to tell the camera BRIEFLY something about themselves. Nice close ups are the 'in' thing on television these days and bring the film to life.

CUTAWAYS. What do I mean by cutaways? Well when the editor comes to reduce 2 hours of shots to 10 minutes of final film he/she will need to glue bits together. Take the speeches. 10 minutes of excruciating boredom can be cut down to a quite interesting 15 seconds - however, if you just take the odd 5 seconds from here and there and join them together the subject is seen to jump in a disturbing way at each join. If you have a real close up of the speaker's hands to put over the join the whole lot can come together quite naturally. This close up of hands used to join 2 clips is called a cutaway. Clearly you need a different cutaway for each join and hence the need for plenty. The cut away is most natural if it is a close up of something of interest that is in the 2 clips being joined.

OH - FINALLY - WHILE THE CAMERA IS ROLLING KEEP IT ABSOLUTELY STILL AND DON'T DON'T ZOOM. DON'T DON'T PAN ACROSS MORE THAN ONCE IN THE ENTIRE FILM!!!!! The zoom control on the camcorder is for framing the picture and can kill a film if used while filming. As the camera will be hand held most of the time don't zoom at all just bring the camera as close to the subject as possible otherwise you will get a shaky picture!

Have a great event,

Tutorials on the internet to help with filming

Lovely tutorials from izzyvideo

Digital Photography School A set of tutorials which concentrate on still photography but will be a great help with setting up your shots for filming as well.

The author of this Surrey Border site would welcome contributions to the above. You can email him via

Who are we in this film/movie/video club? We make films, videos and movies and meet on the first Friday of the month to answer members questions and to discuss ongoing club projects. Well known film makers, judges and film professionals are often our speakers for the evening. We welcome visitors and new members interested in film and video, and there is no need to own digital cameras or camcorders and no need for previous experience, as we happily provide mentors for beginners. Surrey Border meetings start at 7:45pm and end just after 10:00pm with a refreshment break at around 9:00pm. Visitors and new members are warmly welcomed to the monthly meetings which are on the first Friday of each month (and the first visit is free). Our meetings are held in our new contemporary hall in St Joan's Centre which is in the grounds of St Joan's church in Tilford Road, near the station in Farnham. The hall has a large car park and is within easy reach of Guildford, Farnborough, Fleet, Bordon etc. In Surrey and Hampshire. Read more about us here.