Lesson 9. Shooting With Hollywood-Style Techniques for Better Videos

Lesson Files	No files for this lesson
Tools	iMovie (optional), camcorder (optional)
Time	Approximately 45 minutes
Goals	Learn what kinds of events you can shoot for the best effect
	Get the best coverage in any shooting scenario
	Prepare for the most efficient and productive editing session following your shoot

Once you see how shooting and editing are related, you can see why you'll want to add different kinds of shots to round out your videos. There are also some shooting tricks you might try that facilitate your creating particularly cool results in iMovie. Not special effects, mind youjust simple concepts for gathering the right footage in order to give your videos a rather sophisticated style.

This lesson is really only half a lesson and must be approached with Lesson 10 in tandem: Shooting techniques can't stand alone and are realized only when it comes to editing with the shots they produce. In fact, even though there are no lesson files for this chapter, the illustrations that you'll see in this chapter come from the lesson files for Lesson 10.

Christopher gave you a quick taste of how shooting and editing work together in Lesson 7. At that time, you were introduced to the concept of coveragethat is, getting the material required to edit a scene. Now you will delve into more detail about coverage and how to get the best kind.

You don't need to prepare for a video shoot in advance, and you don't need to bring a lot of equipment to an event. But you do need to keep certain ideas in mindprimarily, you must know what pieces of video you need for editing and remember to get them during the event itself.

Now you will see how Christopher approaches shooting the birthday party in order to get the shots he thinks he might use. Getting the right shots now will make the time he spends editing much faster and more enjoyable.