With your script and storyboard in hand, you’re now ready to start filming your video. You can use your smartphone, laptop or whatever camera, microphone and lighting equipment you can borrow. The UVic Library may have some additional equipment that is available to you.
Location
If location is relevant to the topic, think about what should be included in the shot to add interest. If the location is neutral, you may want to add props to add context or to make it look better.
When choosing your location, keep in mind that people are more willing to watch a video with bad visuals than with bad sound. Consider the background noise when choosing the location for your shoot:
- The easiest location to use is a quiet, indoor location.
- Computers, air conditioning, fans, other appliances, elevators, stairs, roadwork or construction – all of these can turn up in your audio recording. Remember to turn mobile devices off.
- Bigger rooms will have an echo and hard, flat surfaces reflect sound. Soft furnishings, carpets, pictures on the walls and curtains will soften sound.
- Recording outside will require a good microphone and a windjammer (a fuzzy cover for the microphone).
Lighting and Positioning
If the presenter is in front of a window, they’ll be a silhouette (backlit) or the background will be so bright it will just be white light behind the presenter. It’s usually best to have the presenter facing the window so that natural light can illuminate them evenly – not direct sunlight – this will create strong shadows and dazzle the presenter. If most of the light is coming from the side, you can complement the light with an added light source.
Have a look at How to Set Up Lighting for Video for more tips on lighting without using studio lights.
Be careful not to put the light behind the presenter or they will be a sillouette.
Or the background will be so bright (over exposed) that it will just be white light behind the presenter.
Usually, the best choice is to position the presenter facing the window, with the camera between the presenter and window. This allows the natural light from outside to illuminate the presenter evenly. However, you’ll need to make sure they are not in direct sunlight as this will create strong shadows and could dazzle them. If most of the light is coming from a window to the side of the presenter, then you can complement the light with an added light source.
Preparing your Footage
So, you have every shot from your storyboard captured, your editing software downloaded and ready to go, but how do you actually get your footage from your device and on to your computer?
If you’re using on-device editing tools such as iMovie or other tablet apps, you should be ready to go but, if not, actually getting your footage off your device can be tricky!
Everyone’s phones and cameras are slightly different, so we’re going to go through where you can find information on getting footage on to your computer ready for editing from the most common recording devices.
If you recorded your footage on a digital camera or digital video camera: Most cameras will appear as a storage device (just like a USB thumb drive) when you connect it to your computer using the USB cable that came with it. Once connected, you can open Explorer on a Windows PC or Finder on a Mac, find the device in the list of your devices, and copy or drag your footage from the camera to a folder on your computer.
If your camera doesn’t have a USB port, or you don’t have a cable for it, you may have to eject the memory card (usually an SD card) from the camera and put that into a card reader for your computer. You can use Google or another search engine to see if your camera needs any special software to connect to your computer.
If you recorded your footage on an iPhone or iPad and use a Windows PC, review the following information:
If you recorded your footage on an iPhone and use an Apple Computer, review the following information:
If you recorded your footage on an Android Phone (i.e. Samsung Galaxy, OnePlus, Google Pixel, etc.) and use a Windows PC, review the following information:
If you recorded your footage on an Android Phone (i.e. Samsung Galaxy, OnePlus, Google Pixel, etc.) and use an Apple Computer, review the following information:
Use the guidance relevant to your device and computer to identify how to get your video content transferred, and then move the files you need to your computer, so you are ready to start editing.
Editing
Include stock video and images to bring your story to life (watermarked sample content is fine for the purposes of this course – see list of sources below). Use stock video in 2-5 clips of 4-5 seconds each, unless there is something specific being demonstrated that takes longer. Avoid complex, text heavy graphics that are not accessible in video format.
iMovie
Platform: macOS, iOS, iPadOS
Created by Apple, iMovie has long been a go-to free software option for people starting out in video editing on a Mac or an Apple mobile device. It uses a simple drag-and-drop interface, which means you can easily cut up your raw footage into the chunks you need and quickly combine them together on the timeline.
There are also more advanced options if you want to dig deeper, such as adding transitions (for example, to fade between two different clips), stabilising any shaky footage, and performing colour correction.
While it’s not available on Windows computers, iMovie is available for iPad and iPhone for editing on the go, and your project can be synced across to the macOS version for finer polishing.
iMovie is available on the Mac App Store, as well as the iOS/iPadOS App Store. Find more information and links to download on Apple iMovie.
Shotcut
Platform: Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux
Shotcut is a free, open-source video editing application that runs across most operating systems, including Linux. New features are added to the software all the time due to its ongoing open-source development, so while it lacks some of the features of major paid-for software, you can find a lot of the same options.
It can be a little intimidating the first time you use it (possibly because it is always being worked on), but there’s a lot of very detailed, easy-to-follow guides available for Shotcut on their website.
You can find out more information on Shotcut, as well as links to tutorials on its use, on the Shotcut website.
Openly Licensed Content
There are lots of free open collections of stock footage, images, music and sound to add to your videos. Here are some useful websites worth bookmarking:
| Website | What it offers | Tips for searching |
|---|---|---|
| Mazwai | Stock videos. | Search by keyword or browse by category. |
| Media Hopper Create | University of Edinburgh media collection. | Select ‘Creative Commons’ at the top of the page to see a broad range of video and audio content available for download and re-use. Filter by channel to browse by topic or course title. |
| Openverse | Images and audio clips. | Use the dropdown menu to view all or filter by image or audio. |
| Pexels | Stock images and videos. | Search by keyword or browse by category. |
| Pixabay | Videos, images, illustrations, vector graphics, music and sound effects. | Use the dropdown menu when searching to filter by content type. |
| Unsplash | Stock photography. | Search by keyword or browse by category. |
| Videezy | Stock videos. | Search by keyword or browse by category. Filter by file type and format, licence type and resolution. |
| Videvo | Stock video, music, sound effects, video templates, motion graphics. | Search by keyword or browse their collections of different themes. |
Publishing Your Video
When your happy with the final edit, it’s time to share your video. The best format for compression and compatibility is usually .mp4 . If the video is small, you can upload it directly to your WordPress site but if it’s larger it will slow down the loading of your page and the playback will be interrupted for people with lower bandwidth.
If possible, it’s always best to publish your video on a streaming platform such as Youtube or Vimeo. The University of Victoria also uses Echo 360 (available in Brightspace) for streaming video. Streaming video will adapt to the bandwidth of your viewers, ensuring that there are no interruptions in the viewing experience. Also, linking out to these servers avoids slowing down the loading of your WordPress page.
References
Images and some content courtesy of How to Create Video for Online Learning from the University of Edinburgh. © University of Edinburgh, 2021, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
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