Video Production Tips - Framing Your Shots

David Rotan: Hi! I am David Rotan, Video Production Manager with monkeysee.

com and I am showing you how to produce the perfect user generated video, to upload to our website. Right now we are going to talk about some basic camera framing techniques, that will help you frame and shoot the perfect shot for your video.

There are three basic shots, for shooting a video. There is a wide shot or also known as a master shot, where you can see a little bit more of the action, it's wide you can see around the room, you can see most of the expert, the person that is subject in the shot and what they are doing. Then there is a medium shot, which might be a little tighter and then there is a close-up shot, which would be, for instance, a close-up of what my hands are doing as I am making the sandwich in this shot, that would be a close-up. A close-up could also, of course, be on my face, just from about shoulders up.

So keep these three shots, wide shot, medium and close-up in mind when you are shooting your video, so that when you get into the editing process, you can cut between them, you can cut from the wide shot of the expert, explaining what they are doing, to the close up of their hands as they are actually demonstrating what they are making or building.

You want to pay attention to the headroom. Now, headroom refers to exactly that, the amount of room above the head of your expert, your subject matter, as they are speaking to the camera, and you want to avoid putting their head directly in the middle of your frame, it just looks really weird with all this dead empty space above their head, it's just not very professional. You want to try to leave just the minimum amount of space, just the top of their head and maybe about an inch or two, to properly frame it up. It just looks a lot more professional and it doesn't distract the viewer and draw their eye to all this dead empty space above them. So that's the concept of headroom and basic framing. Wide shots, medium shots, and close-ups.

Next we are going to talk about a very important point, lighting.