Filming tutorials

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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 must not raise your hopes too high as this is rather short notice. I am encouraged by your analysis of the situation and appreciation of the need for the right equipment. I will let you know whether we can help within the next couple of days.

In the mean time 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.br>
CCUTAWAYS. 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. 20 minutes of excruciating boredom can be cut down to a quite interesting 60 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 cutaway 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