Transcript
Hey, everybody, it’s Craig Lillard, I have a tip for you for all of you trying to create video content out there trying to grow your audience, grow your influence with video, trying to increase your
know, like, and trust factor, and build your network online. And that tip is don’t try to fix it in a post so what do I mean by fixing it in a post?
The Production World
Well, if you’ve worked in the production world, you definitely know this term. So most people who have worked in production know that fixing it in post means fixing your video problems after they’ve already been created. Okay, so post stands for post-production, and post-production happens once the actual shooting has already occurred. And you have your video shots and you hand them over, usually to an editor. And at that point, the editor, you know is going to start editing the video. And if they’re special effects that need to be done, all these things happen, but the shooting is already finished. The video has already been acquired. The audio has already been acquired. The actors or whatever have gone home. And now if there are any problems that need to be fixed you know, the editor of the special effects person is gonna have to figure that out, or the audio engineer or whatever going to have to figure that out.
When I started creating videos…
So there is a tendency for those just starting to create video content to depend on the tools that you have at your disposal even as a newbie or an amateur. Maybe you have a video editor. Maybe you use an app that has some video editing in it. And you trust that to be able to solve these problems for you? And when I was first, started creating videos 20 years ago. Basically, I had all this gear and in this professional gear, but I didn’t know this term, and it wasn’t until I was into it a bit. That somebody, somebody had told me you don’t want to try to have to fix everything in post after the fact. And the reason for that is, is there are a lot of things that just aren’t easy to fix. And even though these video tools are pretty awesome, there are some things they can’t really do well, so what are some examples of that one? While you can pretty easily improve the volume of your audio. It’s hard to take audio that was recorded at too high of a level and bring it down. Okay, because you get distortion. You get clipping when you record your audio at too high of a level, and it’s hard to fix that. It’s like it’s been damaged. It’s hard to fix reverb or room noise. Okay, it’s hard to take that away. It’s hard to fix it if your video was overexposed, if that scene was too bright, maybe you’re outside and you’re shooting at, like 12 in the afternoon or whatever the sun is just making you glow. It’s hard to fix that now. On the converse. It’s pretty easy to amp up the brightness so there are some things that you can do but other things that are difficult to do, so the reason you want to avoid fixing it and post is that it’s just going to make your life so much easier.
Setting up to shoot your video
So how do you do that? When you’re setting up to shoot your video. Just take a few extra moments, get your mindset right and say to yourself, I don’t want to have to fix anything later. I would like this shoot to be as easy as possible so that when I go, I have to do a very little editing. I have to not fix the audio or not fix the lighting, so you just make sure it looks good. It sounds good. You do a couple of test runs, you play it back, in your camera and you watch it. You put on headphones and listen to it. Make sure it sounds good. Use an app that measures if you’re using a microphone, use an app that measures the audio rather than just, if you’re using your phone, just your record on your regular, camera app. That doesn’t really allow you to check the audio levels. All this stuff will make your life so much easier when you go back to process that video and send it out. To the world wide web and everybody in your audience, it would just make your life a heck of a lot easier so, don’t try to fix it in post and trust. Trust all these tools to solve your problems. Just do your best to try to nail it the first time and you’ll be glad that you did.
So, let me know if you have questions in the comments. Anything I can answer for you and this is Craig Lillard and I look forward to seeing you on another video.
