Yes!

To shoot good Web video, just do the exact opposite of what the Blair Witch Project filmmakers did. All that hand-held Hi8 shaky-cam shot in extremely low light may have generated millions of dollars, but it won't generate good Web video. Those hapless film students chose both the wrong equipment and the wrong techniques. If you have experience shooting professional video, then you already have the skills needed to shoot good Web video. The trick is knowing what not to do.

Lighting

Hard light is bad; soft light is good. That's the key concept. You don't want complex shadows, contrast, or hotspots All those glints and dark corners are details that increase image complexity and burden the compression algorithm. You want nice, smooth, even light. The more even the light, the better it will
compress. Think "Doris Day" rather than "Godfather." Your goal is to diffuse your light sources as much as possible. Outdoors, use bounce cards to minimize hard shadows. Indoors, use a soft light such as those from Chimera, Cool-Lux, and others. Avoid on-camera lights. They tend to create hotspots. If you must use an on-camera light, use some diffusion fabric on the light to help soften it. A typical three-point lighting kit with a soft light will be able to handle many situations. Web video lighting concepts are simple, but mastering them is complex.

Framing and backgrounds

Web video is small. It isn't a Cinemascope viewing experience. Therefore, sweeping panoramas-a la Laurence of Arabia-aren't going to work. Web video is viewed on at small size, so you'll want to shoot as many close-ups as possible.

Tight shots let viewers recognize the faces and objects they are being shown.So, in most of your shots, keep the camera tight on your subject. Because a Web video frame is so small, lower-third titles require a greater percentage of the screen's real estate. During shoots, make sure to frame your shot in such a way that there's room for big lower-thirds below your head shots. This requirement can make it hard to frame a shot the way you want to. But the alternative can potentially lead to a lower-third intrud-ing on your subject's face.
 
The best solution is to establish which shots need lower-thirds-and if these titles  will run outside the Web video frame-during preproduction. Along with framing  your shots, you need to consider your background. Again, detail is the enemy.  You want to avoid fancy lighting and extraneous detail on the background.

Sorry-no leafy trees blowing in the wind. But avoiding extra detail doesn't mean every background needs to be dull and plain. You can keep your backgrounds easy to compress but still interesting in other ways. The most useful is by throwing your background out of focus. A short depth of field and plenty of space between your subject and the background will result in smooth enough imagery  to allow for both a little style and good compression.

Motion

Extraneous motion is a main enemy to successful Web video shooting. While well-crafted camera motion can be a hallmark of good video production, it's the enemy of good Web video. With Web video, elaborate camera work will detract from, not enhance, the message being delivered. For the Web, you must eliminate all unnec-essary motion, both within your field of view and from the camera itself.
 
High-motion action, such as in sports or even while your subject is walking, causes each new frame of your video to hold significantly different information than previous frames. Your Web codec will waste valuable bits on keyframes describing all that motion, rather than spending them on improving details your care about. Try to keep your subject, whether human or inanimate, as stationary as possible. Keep your camera stationary, too. Don't zoom, pan, and tilt when a static shot can work as well. When Logan Kelsey shot an interview with mountain bike pioneer Joe Breeze, he taped a particular scene once with a slow zoom and again with a locked-down camera. When compressed for the Web, the locked-down shot yielded much higher image quality.

You need to find a balance between acceptable motion and decreased image quality. While too much hand-held, high-motion, Web video will result in poor content, endless, stationary, talking heads will result in dull content.

Use a tripod

A stable camera solves one-third of the problems associated with shooting Web video. Keep your camera mounted on a tripod for as many shots as possible. A locked-down camera helps make each frame as similar as possible to those before and after, thus minimizing the image degradation introduced by compression...

Content still rules

One of these days, we'll all have broadband Web access and Web video will be superior to NTSC and PAL. Then we'll be able to shoot for the Web with the same flexibility and creativity we can use when shooting for broadcast, film, or tape. For now, the Web is a more limited video beast. But despite Web video's limitations and potholes, if your content's compelling enough, your audience will forgive a few technical flaws.

Last update: 01:37 PM Sunday, February 4, 2007