Essential Videography Basics for Beginners

In this video, I'm going to teach you 80% of the basics of videography in just 10 minutes. This is episode 2 of my Beginner's Guide series, which is a new series teaching creative skills for the new content creator. In episode 1, we covered 80% of the basics of photography, so with all of those skills in mind about things like shutter speed and aperture and ISO, we can build upon these skills and understand how to apply them in a video setting. Now this entire series doesn't have a sponsor but it is supported by the thousands of you wonderful people who get value out of all my courses, prints, presets and ebooks over at patkade.com so thank you so much for all of the continued support and it is because of you that I can continue to do free videos just like this one. Alright let's start at the top. Video is just like photography except it's many many frames taken within a second played back at a certain speed to make it look like things are moving. In the cinema, the industry standard is 24 frames a second or 24 FPS. Technically, it's actually 23.976 FPS. And that's the setting that I recommend that you use in your editing software. But let's just call it 24 FPS for short. This means that every single second, there are 24 images that are being shown to your eyes. And our eyes interpret all of those rapidly moving images as smooth video. There are many different kinds of FPS that we can use but the most important thing to understand here is that there is a playback frame rate like the 24fps that they use in cinema and then there is the frame rate that we capture the footage at. Our cameras nowadays can capture video at frame rates like 24fps of course but also at 60fps or 120fps lots and lots of frames in a single second. We can then play back these 60 or 120 frames per second at the normal 24 fps playback speed and we will have what's called slow motion. In the case of 60 fps because the capture was done at 60 frames per second but our playback is at 24 frames per second when we spread it out on the timeline it would take 2.5 seconds to play back one second of that 60 fps footage. That means on a 24p timeline 60 fps is 2.5 times slow motion. In the case of 120 FPS on a 24p timeline, that's five times slow motion because 120 divided by 24 is five. But what if instead we decided to have our timeline playback at 60 FPS? Well, if we recorded our footage at 60 FPS as well, then we would have a very neat one-to-one ratio and one second of our 60 FPS footage on a 60p timeline would play back in one second. Typically, I would encourage sticking to 24. P timelines when you're first starting to edit video as this is the cinematic standard and it's the best place to start learning for now. Now shutter speed works very similarly in concept to photography in that the longer your shutter is open for the more light is able to hit the sensor. However in video shutter speed is actually mostly responsible for motion blur and it has a relationship to your frame rate. Unlike in photography in video there is a cinematic standard here as well and it is called the 180 degree shutter rule. This rule makes the motion blur in your image look the most realistic to the human eye. To perform the 180 degree shutter rule it's pretty simple just adjust your shutter speed to be double of your capture frame rate. So if you're capturing at 24 fps then you would want to use a shutter speed at 1 over 48 of a second but most normal cameras don't do this specific shutter speed so 1 over 50 is close enough. Now the 180 degree shutter rule looks natural, but what does that actually look like? Well, if you were to slow down the shutter to say 1 25th of a second, your motion blur would increase and it wouldn't look as natural. Same thing is going too fast as well. If you shot 24 FPS using a one over 200th of a second shutter speed, the shutter is refreshing so many more times per second, which means less motion blur and a less natural looking image. Sometimes that actually might be what you're looking for. You know, when the camera is moving quickly or when there's a fast paced action scene, but that's a little bit more advanced than what we're trying to learn right now. Just remember, try to get as close to double your frame rate as you can. Now, because we are so limited in our shutter speeds when it comes to video, sometimes when we're out about and shooting with such low shutter speeds compared to what we do in photography, Plus, we want to keep our bokeh nice and creamy with our wide apertures. We might find that we are severely overexposed because of our locked-in shutter speed or aperture settings. And this is where ND filters come in. ND filters are dark pieces of glass you put over the front of your lens, darkening your exposure. They're like sunglasses for your camera, and you may have used them before for... photography for things like long exposures. It's the same kind of idea. If we have parameters that are locked in from a creative standpoint like our shutter speed or aperture and we're already as low as we can go with our ISO and there's lots of ambient light around and we need some other way to reduce our exposure but since we've run out of ways to do it in camera we then need to use an external piece of gear. Using ND filters keeps our exposures nice and even so that we can still have creative freedom over our motion blur and our depth of field. Now, a huge part of the video experience that is different to photography is that video has audio. And remember this well, people will put up with shaky video, but they won't forgive you for crappy audio. You may be capturing footage of someone talking and the footage might be shaky and overexposed and look like crap, but if the audio is crisp and clear, then it might still be savable. The inverse of that may not be as true. Now with audio, there are many, many different types of ways to capture it. A very common one is a shotgun mic, which is a mic that captures whatever is in front of it in a very narrow directional pattern. And you see these very commonly on the tops of cameras for people who vlog and such, but also in movies where, you know, those people hold those gigantically long poles over the talent. Those things are shotgun mics as well. There are other types of mics like lavalier mics which are great for on body or very close range voices while remaining hidden as well or dynamic mics that are great for rejecting ambient noise around or condenser mics which are great for recording voices and so on. Different kinds of mics have different uses and pickup patterns and audio in general is just a whole other world and really deserves its own video so definitely don't ignore it. It's very important. To get started, a simple shotgun mic like the Rode VideoMicro will be more than enough and set you back less than 50 bucks. Another unique thing about video is that not only are the shots required to be set up from a compositional perspective, just like in photography, but also the movement of the camera is important too. In videography, you have camera movements, patterns, which the camera moves over time. Some basic ones are the pan, which is when you move the camera horizontally left and right while keeping the vertical axis still. This is perhaps the most common one and is great for following your subject or revealing information. Tilt is the same as pan but up and down on the vertical axis instead of the horizontal. And then there's push in which moves the camera closer to the subject and emphasizes what's going on in the scene. There's pull out which is the inverse of that which is great for revealing a scene. There's tracking shots, there's trucking shots, there's Zooms, dollies, follow shots, and so many other different kinds of movement in a video that you can really get lost in it. And that's kind of the absolute basics of a video, but of course we are just scratching the surface here. Cinematography, storyboarding, lighting, post-production, graphics, and titles, and transition, the list goes on. There are so many wonderful things to learn, but I hope this video serves as a good primer and an introduction to the basics, and I hope it's good enough for you to get started in video because It is really fun. All right, that's it for this video. I'll see you in the next installment of the beginner series, which will be all about selecting your very first camera. So stay tuned for that. But until then, get out there and make something that matters. Peace.

Now this entire series doesn't have a sponsor but it is supported by the thousands of you wonderful people who get value out of all my courses, prints, presets and ebooks over at patkade.com so thank you so much for all of the continued support and it is because of you that I can continue to do free videos just like this one. Alright let's start at the top. Video is just like photography except it's many many frames taken within a second played back at a certain speed to make it look like things are moving. In the cinema, the industry standard is 24 frames a second or 24 FPS.

Technically, it's actually 23.976 FPS. And that's the setting that I recommend that you use in your editing software. But let's just call it 24 FPS for short. This means that every single second, there are 24 images that are being shown to your eyes. And our eyes interpret all of those rapidly moving images as smooth video.

There are many different kinds of FPS that we can use but the most important thing to understand here is that there is a playback frame rate like the 24fps that they use in cinema and then there is the frame rate that we capture the footage at. Our cameras nowadays can capture video at frame rates like 24fps of course but also at 60fps or 120fps lots and lots of frames in a single second. We can then play back these 60 or 120 frames per second at the normal 24 fps playback speed and we will have what's called slow motion. In the case of 60 fps because the capture was done at 60 frames per second but our playback is at 24 frames per second when we spread it out on the timeline it would take 2.5 seconds to play back one second of that 60 fps footage.

That means on a 24p timeline 60 fps is 2.5 times slow motion. In the case of 120 FPS on a 24p timeline, that's five times slow motion because 120 divided by 24 is five. But what if instead we decided to have our timeline playback at 60 FPS? Well, if we recorded our footage at 60 FPS as well, then we would have a very neat one-to-one ratio and one second of our 60 FPS footage on a 60p timeline would play back in one second. Typically, I would encourage sticking to 24. P timelines when you're first starting to edit video as this is the cinematic standard and it's the best place to start learning for now.

Now shutter speed works very similarly in concept to photography in that the longer your shutter is open for the more light is able to hit the sensor. However in video shutter speed is actually mostly responsible for motion blur and it has a relationship to your frame rate. Unlike in photography in video there is a cinematic standard here as well and it is called the 180 degree shutter rule. This rule makes the motion blur in your image look the most realistic to the human eye. To perform the 180 degree shutter rule it's pretty simple just adjust your shutter speed to be double of your capture frame rate.

So if you're capturing at 24 fps then you would want to use a shutter speed at 1 over 48 of a second but most normal cameras don't do this specific shutter speed so 1 over 50 is close enough. Now the 180 degree shutter rule looks natural, but what does that actually look like? Well, if you were to slow down the shutter to say 1 25th of a second, your motion blur would increase and it wouldn't look as natural. Same thing is going too fast as well.

If you shot 24 FPS using a one over 200th of a second shutter speed, the shutter is refreshing so many more times per second, which means less motion blur and a less natural looking image. Sometimes that actually might be what you're looking for. You know, when the camera is moving quickly or when there's a fast paced action scene, but that's a little bit more advanced than what we're trying to learn right now. Just remember, try to get as close to double your frame rate as you can.

Now, because we are so limited in our shutter speeds when it comes to video, sometimes when we're out about and shooting with such low shutter speeds compared to what we do in photography, Plus, we want to keep our bokeh nice and creamy with our wide apertures. We might find that we are severely overexposed because of our locked-in shutter speed or aperture settings. And this is where ND filters come in. ND filters are dark pieces of glass you put over the front of your lens, darkening your exposure.

They're like sunglasses for your camera, and you may have used them before for... photography for things like long exposures. It's the same kind of idea.

If we have parameters that are locked in from a creative standpoint like our shutter speed or aperture and we're already as low as we can go with our ISO and there's lots of ambient light around and we need some other way to reduce our exposure but since we've run out of ways to do it in camera we then need to use an external piece of gear. Using ND filters keeps our exposures nice and even so that we can still have creative freedom over our motion blur and our depth of field. Now, a huge part of the video experience that is different to photography is that video has audio. And remember this well, people will put up with shaky video, but they won't forgive you for crappy audio. You may be capturing footage of someone talking and the footage might be shaky and overexposed and look like crap, but if the audio is crisp and clear, then it might still be savable.

The inverse of that may not be as true. Now with audio, there are many, many different types of ways to capture it. A very common one is a shotgun mic, which is a mic that captures whatever is in front of it in a very narrow directional pattern.

And you see these very commonly on the tops of cameras for people who vlog and such, but also in movies where, you know, those people hold those gigantically long poles over the talent. Those things are shotgun mics as well. There are other types of mics like lavalier mics which are great for on body or very close range voices while remaining hidden as well or dynamic mics that are great for rejecting ambient noise around or condenser mics which are great for recording voices and so on.

Different kinds of mics have different uses and pickup patterns and audio in general is just a whole other world and really deserves its own video so definitely don't ignore it. It's very important. To get started, a simple shotgun mic like the Rode VideoMicro will be more than enough and set you back less than 50 bucks. Another unique thing about video is that not only are the shots required to be set up from a compositional perspective, just like in photography, but also the movement of the camera is important too.

In videography, you have camera movements, patterns, which the camera moves over time. Some basic ones are the pan, which is when you move the camera horizontally left and right while keeping the vertical axis still. This is perhaps the most common one and is great for following your subject or revealing information.

Tilt is the same as pan but up and down on the vertical axis instead of the horizontal. And then there's push in which moves the camera closer to the subject and emphasizes what's going on in the scene. There's pull out which is the inverse of that which is great for revealing a scene.

There's tracking shots, there's trucking shots, there's Zooms, dollies, follow shots, and so many other different kinds of movement in a video that you can really get lost in it. And that's kind of the absolute basics of a video, but of course we are just scratching the surface here. Cinematography, storyboarding, lighting, post-production, graphics, and titles, and transition, the list goes on.

There are so many wonderful things to learn, but I hope this video serves as a good primer and an introduction to the basics, and I hope it's good enough for you to get started in video because It is really fun. All right, that's it for this video. I'll see you in the next installment of the beginner series, which will be all about selecting your very first camera.

So stay tuned for that. But until then, get out there and make something that matters. Peace.

Transcript for:Essential Videography Basics for Beginners

Transcript for:
Essential Videography Basics for Beginners