MYP Design Audio and Video Production Notes

Plan the Shots Before You Touch a Camera

1. A shot list is a numbered table of every shot you need, with the location, the framing, who is in it and roughly how long it runs.
2. A storyboard sketches each shot as a small drawing so you can see whether the sequence makes sense before you film anything.
3. Stick figures are fine, because the storyboard exists to settle framing and order, not to show off your drawing.
4. Write the script or voiceover first, since a 90 second video is only about 220 spoken words and that limit changes what you film.
5. Schedule the shoot by location rather than story order, so everything in the workshop is filmed in one visit.
6. Shoot two or three takes of every shot plus a few seconds of extra handle at each end, which gives you room to cut later.

Framing: Where the Camera Sits Tells the Story

1. A wide shot establishes the place, a mid shot shows a person from the waist up, and a close up fills the frame with one detail.
2. Cutting between different shot sizes keeps a sequence alive, while three mid shots in a row feels flat.
3. The rule of thirds puts the subject on a third line rather than dead centre, and most cameras will draw the grid for you.
4. Leave a small gap of headroom above the head and more space in front of a face than behind it, or the frame feels squashed.
5. Cross the 180 degree line between two shots of the same conversation and the two people appear to swap sides, which reads as a mistake.
6. A tripod, or even a stack of books, beats handheld, and a slow physical move beats a digital zoom, which only crops and softens the picture.

Light the Subject, Not the Wall

1. Three point lighting uses a bright key light at about 45 degrees to the subject, a softer fill on the other side to open the shadows, and a back light to lift them off the background.
2. Fill light does not need a lamp, and a sheet of white A3 card held at the right angle bounces plenty of it.
3. A large window on an overcast day is the best free soft light you will ever get.
4. Never put that window behind your subject, because the camera exposes for the bright background and turns the face into a silhouette.
5. Mixing daylight with warm indoor bulbs leaves one side of a face blue and the other orange, so switch the room lights off or close the curtains and commit to one source.
6. Big soft sources flatter faces, while a small bare bulb throws hard edged shadows that no amount of editing removes.

Bad Audio Kills a Good Video

1. Viewers forgive a slightly soft picture and click away within seconds of hissy, echoing sound.
2. The single biggest improvement is getting the microphone close, so a clip on lavalier at chest height beats the camera mic three metres away every time.
3. A shotgun mic on a boom just out of frame picks up what it points at and rejects most of what comes from the sides.
4. Record in a room with carpet and curtains, because a bare hall or a tiled space bounces sound into an echo no software removes cleanly.
5. Aim for peaks around minus 12 to minus 6 dBFS, which leaves headroom before the red zone where the signal clips.
6. Sample rate is how many times a second the sound is measured, 44.1 kHz for music and 48 kHz for video, while bit depth is how finely each measurement is stored, with 24 bit leaving more room to fix quiet recordings.
7. Wear headphones while recording, since a fridge hum or a collar rubbing the mic is obvious there and invisible on a quick glance at the meter.

Editing Is Choosing What to Cut

1. A timeline runs left to right in time, with video on the upper tracks and audio on the lower ones.
2. Trim each clip down to the part that earns its place, then close the gaps so nothing dead is left between shots.
3. A straight cut is the default and needs no reason, whereas every other transition needs one.
4. Cut on a movement or at the end of a sentence, because a cut in the middle of a gesture feels wrong even to a viewer who cannot say why.
5. A J cut brings the next clip's sound in early and an L cut holds the old sound over the new picture, which is what makes interviews flow.
6. Dissolves suggest time passing, so two or three in a short film is plenty and a star wipe is never the answer.
7. Titles need to be large, on screen long enough to read twice at normal speed, and kept inside the safe margins so nothing is cropped on another screen.

Export Settings That Match the Destination

1. Export at the resolution you filmed, usually 1920 by 1080, and never upscale 720p footage to 4K in the hope it looks better.
2. Keep the frame rate you shot at, because converting 25 fps footage to 30 fps makes steady motion stutter.
3. H.264 video in an MP4 container plays on everything from a phone to a classroom projector, so make it your default.
4. Bitrate is how much data each second of video gets, and 8 to 12 Mbps is plenty for 1080p at 25 fps.
5. Set the audio to AAC at 192 kbps, which sounds clean for speech and music alike.
6. Watch the exported file the whole way through on a different device before you hand it in, since a render can drop a clip without telling you.

Music You Are Actually Allowed to Use

1. Every commercial track is someone's copyright, and being popular is not the same as being free.
2. Royalty free means you pay once, or nothing, and then use the track under set terms, not that the music has no owner.
3. Creative Commons licences differ: CC BY needs a credit, CC BY-SA also requires you to share your work on the same terms, and CC BY-NC blocks commercial use.
4. CC0 and public domain need no permission, though naming the composer is still good manners.
5. Write down the track title, the composer, the source URL and the exact licence the moment you download it, because finding it again three weeks later is painful.
6. Sound effects, fonts and stock photographs all follow the same rules as music.
7. Using a track you are not licensed for is an academic honesty problem for your ePortfolio as well as a legal one.