“The Best Advice I Ever Got”
The advice for multimedia journalist Alex Dunbar WSTM-TV/Syracuse, NY came from a veteran photographer: Stay on a tripod until you actually know what you’re doing.
Alex says:
“When I was young and naive, handheld shots always seemed like such a good idea until I got back to the edit bay and realized how shaky and repetitive they really were.
As I got more experienced, I learned to differentiate between what would look better handheld and what I needed a tripod for. One shooting lesson I’ve learned the hard way: If you’re shooting something that isn’t moving and you aren’t moving, you should be on a tripod 99% of the time.
I always think of the quote by legendary photographer Robert Capa when I’m not loving the video I’ve shot: ‘If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.’
It’s not always true. Sometimes there’s nothing like a well framed extreme wide shot or a close-up taken from far way so you can have a really narrow depth of field, but it’s a great guideline.”
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What’s the best advice you ever received? Let us know in the Reply section below.
This entry was posted on Sunday, April 19th, 2009 at 9:25 pm and is filed under Multimedia Journalism, Power Tools for TV Journalists. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 21st, 2009 at 7:13 am
All of this from a cameraman who mentored me when I was a young news producer:
1-Unless it is for deliberate effect, never make the camera do what your eye does not do naturally. Your eye does not swish pan. It pulls out while it moves from one focal point to another and then moves in to the new focal point.
2-Don’t look for you next shot in the viewfinder. Come off the viewfinder and look around before making you next move. Otherwise you get a “search and destroy” experience.
3- No matter how good you get at making a move, if you can’t edit it into a 1:30 spot, it was a waste of time. Wides, mediums and tights are the basic tool kit. Moves are used to portray emotion and transition just as effects are in editing. Use them sparingly.