Here is my 2 pennies' worth to assist.
1. Before you try to produce
your video try to produce
a video. Use what you have – Imovie for example.
Work through their sample videos for example and you will see how good your camera is, how steady your hand is, how much footage you need, how footage looks when edited, how to edit background sound, how to incorporate stills, voiceover and annotations.
2. Look at it it with your, or someone else’s critical eye, sit back and think about it.
3. Who are you producing this for? If it is for you, it can be longer, less interesting, and include personal stuff. You have more patience and interest in your video than anyone else. If it is for someone else, who? Relatives who might want personal messages, the public? Each audience wants something different. Often I do a couple of cuts – one for me and one for other people.
4. You can’t take good movie without a good camera. In plenty of light most HD cameras will do, but in low or special light you will need something better. I like to use a camera with a variable focal length rather than fixed like a goPro as it gives more variety. Lots of identical footage (e.g. headcam shots) gets very boring. Software-wise, you don’t need anything more than Imovie for a long while.
5. Get good footage. You need what are known as rushes – footage that put the subject into perspective – stills and clips that explain where you are, what the
weather is like, what mood you want to convey. Stills can help, especially if combined with a Ken Burns effect that changes the focal point of the still over time
6. Tell a story. Show people what they don’t know. In the last SVDeLos movie they showed scraping the bottom and raising the
anchor. They had to
work to get the footage but in the process showed something you don’t normally see – a
scuba diver scraping the
hull and the journey of the
anchor as it is raised. Try getting different perspectives (i.e. getting higher or lower than eye-level to give people a fresh perspective. Use slow motion sometimes.
7. Challenge yourself to make it short. I do all of mine to a
single track of
music. A massive challenge but one that makes sure you are not wasting a second of the movie with something irrelevant.
8. Get plenty of RAM. Movies take up loads of space, and you will want to keep much of your raw footage in the early days for when you go back and re-edit your early videos!
9.
Music is very important. It should not be your favourite music – it should be music that matches the story you want to tell.
10. Sailing videos can be hard. Often things are far away, slow, and the view is always the same – from the
deck of the boat. You need to get some vertical and people into it. If your crew are not prepared to be in it or to help you commit the time it takes to make it interesting you will be restricted as to what you can produce. Be patient – the better the results and the better the reaction, the more motivated they will become to helping.
I hope this helps, good luck, enjoy and keep us posted.
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