Tips on Digital Video Recording
You do not have to have state-of-the-art equipment to make a decent digital video. Just follow these tips using whatever digital recording device you have and you should be okay.
- Make sure you have enough light to see faces clearly through the video lens. Remember that it takes about three times the amount of light to make a good video recording than a good photograph.
- Frame your shot. Make sure everyone is in frame and has a little room to move, lean back or lean forward without being cut off.
- If someone is willing, keep a person behind the camera to film. But try to make sure that everybody who is talking is visible, including the interviewer and interviewee.
- Make sure the camera is plugged in or has enough battery power to last the whole interview. Nothing is more heartbreaking than having an equipment failure during a great conversation and losing your recording .
- Make sure your digital recording device is recording in a compression format we support, or can be easily transferred to one of these formats. If you can, we prefer you record in H.264 (MPEG-4). For a complete list of formats which we accept click here.
- Make sure you have enough disk space or tape to record the duration of the interview. Even if you plan for an interview to be thirty minutes, you may end up talking for an hour. Make sure you are prepared to record more than you think you will.
- Unplug unnecessary appliances and devices in the immediate filming area. These can create background noise that interferes with a clear audio recording.
- Do a quick test recording and play it back once everybody is in place and well lit, this will help to insure that the equipment is working and that the audio quality is good.
- Do not feel as though you have to cut or edit the interview. We would rather have a recording with some dead space than no recording at all.
- As soon as you are done filming, check the recording to make sure that everything can be heard and seen and that the whole interview was captured, then save it to your computer right away.