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How to shoot decent video with an iPhone

Posted by Beardy on May 15th, 2012

The people who set up video contests always want to get as many entries as possible.  Even if most of the entries aren’t very good, a ton of submissions just makes the contest look more successful.  So sponsors usually go out of their way to encourage people of all skill levels to submit videos.  And that’s why you’ll see a lot of contest announcements that include lines like this:

“You don’t need a big fancy camera to shoot an entry.  Just grab your flip cam or iphone and have fun!”

What the sponsors fail to mention is that if “production quality” is part of the judging criteria, the little video you shot with your cell phone probably won’t stand much chance against the slick entries that were shot with DSLRs or HD video cameras.  But as I learned from the video I’m about to post, you actually can get pretty decent footage out of an iphone if you follow a few simple steps.  This tutorial was shot for the youtube channel FilmRiot which is filled with lots of helpful how-to videos.  If you have an iPhone, this video is definitely worth checking out.  But take note: It does start with a lot of yelling and some cheesy but realistic gun play.  So you probably shouldn’t watch this one while at work or while babysitting.
 

 

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When is the best time to post vote requests on facebook?

Posted by Beardy on May 13th, 2012

Last Friday I shot, edited and submitted a video to Ecos’ “Get Washed” video contest and despite the quick production, I think it’s one of the best video contest entries ever done.  It’s simple but quirky and it features one of the best actresses I’ve ever worked with.  It’s also probably the greatest color correction job I’ve done, period.  (One of the tough things about filming in the woods is that the light is uneven and everything has a yellowish-green hue.)  The shooting and editing might have only taken a few hours but I had to put a surprising amount of pre-production work into this project.  Just picking up and dropping off the giant squirrel suit took about 5 hours! Because the whole commercial is basically just a monologue, I knew casting would be crucial.  After days of searching I finally found a fantastic actress and she just knocked it out of the park.

The top prizes in this contest are $10K and $5K and I think I might actually have a decent shot.  There is a public voting phase to determine the Top 25 videos though.  After the voting is done, judges alone will chose the top winners.  I didn’t think I’d really need to hustle for votes for this contest but Ecos wound up getting almost 90 entries!  So if you’ve got 5 seconds to spare, I’d appreciate it if you could click on this image and vote for my submission.  And if you’ve got 35 seconds to spare, you can even watch it if you’d like.

Click to view and/or vote!

Today is the first day of voting which happens to be a sunday.  And that’s kind of unusual because most contests start and finish their voting phases on week days.  When the voting went live this morning I posted a request for votes on my personal facebook page.  But then I stopped and thought about the timing of my request; how many people would actually see it?  How many people are even on facebook at 10AM on a Sunday?  I don’t like to bombard my facebook friends with a ton of video contest vote requests so I only ask for votes a few times each contest.  (If all your facebook posts are about contests, you’re friends are just going to get annoyed and block or limit your posts.  So a ton of requests can really backfire on you.  Plus like I said, it’s just annoying and not cool)

So if I’m only going to ask for votes 2 or 3 times, I want to make sure I post those requests at the right time.  But what is “the right time”?  Basically what I want to know is, when is facebook busiest?  Unfortunately, Facebook isn’t saying.  And that’s not surprising because if they actually came out announced the best time of day to post something, every company would start posting stuff at that time. But it seems that this question does have an answer.  A social Network Management company named Virtue conducted a study of facebook activity about a year and a half ago.  You can read a breakdown of the study here but it looks like the best time to post a vote request (or anything, really) on facebook probably is…

2:55PM on a Wednesday.

According to the study, facebook is constantly getting a ton of traffic.  But there is always a spike in activity around 3pm on weekdays.  You should try and post just before 3:00 because a lot of people sign in right at the top of the hour.  (Maybe that’s when the TV show they were watching ended or maybe that’s when their afternoon break begins.)  This spike happens every day but Wednesdays are usually facebook’s busiest day of the week.

According to the study, posts that are done in the morning actually get seen/liked/shared more than afternoon posts.  But a vote request isn’t a typical facebook post.  In the morning people are signing into facebook right at the start of the day.  9:00AM is not goof-off time…it’s a time to sign in really quick to check messages and skim the news feed.  By late afternoon, people are signing into facebook because they’re bored.  So you want to get your vote requests in front of people who have some time to kill.

Keep in mind that if you live LA but all your family and friends live back in Chicago, you should probably post your requests at 3:00PM Chicago time.  Oh and by the way, as it turns out the weekend really is a bad time to post anything to facebook.  These days, only about 30% of employers block facebook so most people spend time on the site while at work.  So you can post a vote request on a sunday morning (like I did today before I saw the Virtue study) but it won’t get you too many clicks.

Oh and PS:  Happy Mother’s Day from VCN and Mark Wahlberg!

-

 

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JVC’s GY-HMQ10: The first prosumer 4K camcorder

Posted by Beardy on May 2nd, 2012

The GY-HMQ10

One of the biggest hits at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was a video camera from JVC called the GY-HMQ10.  JVC bills it as “the world’s first handheld 4K camcorder.”  That means the GY-HMQ10 “captures, records, and plays video images at four times the resolution of high definition television.” Four times the size of  a 1920 x 1080 HDTV means the images will be 3840 × 2160…and that’s pretty damn big.  4K cameras have been around for a while now and you’d be shocked at how many feature films are being shot with RED 4K cameras.  But the GY-HMQ10 is the first 4K camera that a normal human could buy.  The price is a measly $4,995 and it comes with a F2.8 10x Zoom Lens.  But what’s really amazing is that this is a “prosumer” device so you don’t have to be a rocket surgeon to operate one.  For instance, until now if you wanted to record in 4K you had to process the footage before you could actually view it.  But with this camera you can record something and play it back on the spot.

The GY-HMQ10 (it really needs a cool nickname, doesn’t it?) went on sale about two weeks ago.  So should you run out and get one of these things as soon as possible?  Naw.  4K is kind of overkill for video contests.  The videos that win most contests will never play anywhere other than a computer screen.  And on a computer, you won’t see a huge amount of difference between footage from this camera and footage from a top of the line DSLR.  However, footage from a GY-HMQ10 should look incredibly sharp on an HDTV or even a movie screen.  So if you plan on entering a contest where the goal is to create a commercial that might run on TV or in movie theaters (Mofilm ads sometimes run in theaters) then you might want to try and rent a GY-HMQ10 for the shoot.

I’m not really into cameras and at the moment I’m kind of overwhelmed by all the super high-quality prosumer cameras that are suddenly available.  If you own or have tried a fancy new videocamera or DSLR and you want to do a little guest review for us, that would be awesome.  For details e-mail Dan at videocontestnews@gmail.com.

 

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Via IndyMogul: How to find and win video contests

Posted by Beardy on April 24th, 2012

If I were a much lazier blogger, about 50% of my posts would just be embeds of How-To videos created by IndyMogul.  If you haven’t checked out their youtube channel before you should stop reading this and click here to subscribe right now.  If you poke around their page you’ll find about a hundred gazillion handy tips for low budget filmmakers.  But this week’s episode is especially relevant to the interests of video contest filmmakers since it’s about finding and winning video contests!
 

 
If you’re a hardcore video contester (I’m hoping that phrase will catch on) then this video won’t really tell you anything you don’t already know.  But if you’re new to the game, this video will give you a crash course on the basics.  Actually, the episode starts with some cool info about the new wave of prosumer cameras that were unveiled at the NAB show in Las Vegas last week.  So even if you’re a video contest super-genius you might want to check it out.
 

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Filmmakers can now license music for their Mofilm and Tongal entries for FREE thanks to AudioSocket

Posted by Beardy on April 11th, 2012

About a year ago, the CEO of Poptent was visiting Chicago and the company set up a dinner where he could meet some site members.  I got to go and the CEO was a super nice guy.  He went around and asked everybody what they thought about Poptent and he listened to everyone’s suggestions and ideas. My suggestion was that Poptent should team up with a website that licenses music for commercial use.  I had been licensing music for my Poptent submissions from a site named PremiumBeat.com and having professional music really made my entries seem a lot slicker.  I said maybe PremiumBeat would want to licensee tracks for free or at a discount if Poptent officially partnered up with them.  The CEO seemed pretty interested in the idea and I think we even exchanged e-mails about it later.

But I guess I was just ahead of my time!  Poptent never teamed up with a music site but yesterday I got a press release announcing a new partnership between Mofilm and the music licensing site AudioSocket.  The details of the arrangement are extraordinary; Filmmakers can now license music for use in their Mofilm entries for free.  When I first read about this I figured there might be 50 or 100 special tracks that AudioSocket set aside for Mofilm members.  But naw….there are more than 33,000 songs available in AudioSocket’s Mofilm Music Storefront.  All you have to do is pick your track and add it to your cart.  But don’t let words like “storefront” and “checkout” fool you.  When you go to check out, you don’t actually have to pay.  To peruse AudioSocket’s Mofilm catalog, head here.

And guess what else I just learned….the video contest site Tongal ALSO has partnered up with AudioSocket!  So filmmakers can also license music for free for their Tongal entries.  Here’s some more info about that:

Tongal has partnered with Audiosocket, a boutique music licensing agency representing more than 1,400 emerging bands, composers and record labels. Audiosocket tracks will be available to Tongal members at no charge solely for their incorporation into Tongal members’ submissions to the Nespresso project. Tongal members are encouraged to browse the Audiosocket catalog, available at http://audiosocket.com. If you are interested in using a track from the Audiosocket catalog, as described above, please email music@tongal.com for account and password info, which will allow for the download of up to three tracks.

I think these partnerships are a HUGE deal.  Every contest site should be doing something like this.  When you shoot a video on spec or for a contest you feel the sting of every dollar you spend because there’s a very good chance that you’re not going to make that money back.  Every time I license a track from PremiumBeat it costs me $30.  And that 30 bucks can be a factor in whether or not I actually shoot an entry for a video contest/assignment.  I usually try and keep my budgets around $150 so if licensing music is going to push a project over that number, I might just scrap the idea.  If filmmakers can gamble less money on their contest entries, they’ll probably wind up shooting more of them.  So in the long run, a partnership with a licensing company is going to pay off for site like Mofilm and Tongal in the long run.
 

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DSLR FRIDAY: Nikon’s D800 vs. Canon’s 5D Mark III

Posted by Beardy on March 30th, 2012

DSLR Friday was a feature I used to do from time to time but it just sort of petered out.  But March 2012 turned out to be a huge month for DSLR fans so I thought I’d ressurect it.  About a week ago, Nikon released their new D800 and Canon released the 5D mark III.  Both are being billed as the new top of the line DSLRs and both really do sound pretty amazing.  If you’re interested in learning the basic stats for these two cameras, a company named Pictureline made this video that compares them to each other.
 

 
I’ve seen a handful of mediocre videos on youtube that compare the video quality of the D800 and the Mark III but none of them are worth posting.  Like I said, both cameras were released about a week ago so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised there’s not more test footage online yet.  But if by chance you actually bought (or have access to) the D800 or the 5D Mark III let me know!  I’d love to feature a guest review of either camera.  For more info about doing a guest post, e-mail me at VideoContestNews@gmail.com.

Oh hey, I just noticed that the company that made the above video is doing a sweepstakes and the prize is a 5D Mark III.  It looks like you earn more entries by doing a bunch of dumb stuff on facebook.  I just entered but one entry is enough for me.  If you want a shot at the camera, head here.
 

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Kevin Allocca’s TED Talk: Why videos go Viral

Posted by Beardy on March 8th, 2012

If you’ve ever read the “create briefs” for video contests that are run on a site like Poptent, you’ll know that a lot of advertisers run contests because they are hoping to strike viral video gold.  Pretty much every contest brief says the same thing….advertisers want “viralness” or videos that have potential “pass-along qualities” to them.  What’s funny is that sometimes companies will straight up ask for “viral videos” as if such things can simply be created.

But you can’t just MAKE a viral video.  You have to make a great video and then you have to get lucky.  Here’s a great TED talk on this subject by Youtube’s Trends Manager Kevin Allocca.  He goes over the basic things that cause a video to explode in popularity.  It’s worth checking out, especially if you love the Nyan Cat….which I do.
 

 

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Fantastic tutorial about Cinematic Camera Movement

Posted by Beardy on February 21st, 2012

I’m sure I’ve said this here before but if you’re looking for tutorials, tips and information about low budget, DIY filmmaking, the best place to go on the web is IndyMogul.com.  Oh but wait, I guess that’s sort of no longer true. It looks like Indy Mogul’s website isn’t really being updated any more.  I’m guessing the IM team has turned their attention to facebook and youtube.  Fortunately, Indy Mogul’s youtube channel is still being updated a few times a week and it’s full of invaluable info.

Anyways, today I saw an IM video that was so good I had to post it.  It’s a tutorial about how you can use doly shots and other methods of camera movement to make your footage feel more cinematic.  Rather than blab on for 300 words about how a dolly can add production value to your low budget videos and how they can make your work look more commercial, I’m going to just assume you know all that and get right to the video.

The tutorial is great because it explains how and when you might want to use one of these things.  But the best part of the video comes at the end.  A homemade dolly just isn’t going to be as smooth as a professionally made one.  So the director explains how you can use After Effects to totally even out your dolly shots.  The method is so freaking effective that you can basically just shoot something hand held and then stabilize the footage so that it looks like it was shot with a dolly.  Watch and learn!
 

 
Here’s the tutorial that explains how to build the dolly that’s featured in this video. But I’m not actually crazy about that design. I think it’s overkill. That dolly includes a seat for the camera operator and I think having a heavy, living. moving person on a cheap, home made dolly isn’t a great idea. If you plan to use After Effects to stabilize your footage, you can get away with using something pretty simple. For instance, here’s a How-To for a incredibly easy, $15 dollar dolly. It won’t support a big ass professional camera but it would be perfect for your little DSLR.

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