This article is provided by ChurchTechArts.

 
Have you ever had this experience?

Someone hands you a tape that was shot on a missions trip, or student event, or other ministry outing.

You are requested to go through said tape and “make a video.” This happened to me some time ago. It was a student missions trip to New York City.

Since it was student ministries, we sent them off with a small, Digital-8 camcorder. As I scanned through the 2 hours of footage, looking for a shot (yup, a shot), I thought about the need for a tripod.

You see, all the footage was shot with the camera moving. It never stopped. Just watching it gave me vertigo. Out of 2 hours, I found less than 3 minutes of usable footage.

Now, this is not to pick on our intrepid camera man here, but let’s talk about how to avoid this.

Here’s the deal—watch some TV, or a few films and here’s what you’ll find (save the “reality shows”):

You’ll find well composed, static shots. Most of the time, the camera doesn’t move and if it does, it’s on a tripod, SteadiCam, dolly or crane. If and when it does move, it moves slowly and smoothly. Doing this takes practice and good equipment.

I previously wrote an article called, Being Excellent With Less.

In that article I suggested that if we don’t have the personnel or equipment to do a certain task, we should scale the task back to the point where we can achieve excellence.

Don’t have a $50,000 Chapman crane for your camera? Then put it on a tripod and work with what you have.

Don’t have a tripod? Get creative—the most usable footage we got from the students was when the camera was set on a table and the students shared their experiences.

If you don’t have a tripod, you really should get one. They’re not that expensive in the grand scheme of things, and I would suggest it will make the second biggest improvement in your videos (microphones are #1).

For a few hundred dollars you can pick up a tripod that will deliver excellent results with smaller DV and HDV cameras. Check out some of the lower-cost offerings from Manfrotto.

They’re not nearly as good as my favorite Vintens, but they’re a whole lot better than trying to handhold your shots.

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