Quick ways to get champagne results on a beer budget.

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Grab a compact DV camcorder and laptop editing software. Suddenly you have all the tools for a movie studio and they fit in a briefcase. OK, maybe you need some lights, not to mention a small crew and actors, but no shortage there. What else is missing? What makes the Hollywood product look so slick? On today's "Call for Help" we'll show you a few things you can do to make any movie look dramatically better.

If you don't already have a camcorder and video editing software, consider investing for the long run.

The camera
When shooting Nicolas, the first high-definition (HD) movie shot in 24p (progressive frames per second), Shaner and his team used the Sony CineAlta camcorder. George Lucas used the same model camcorder a few months later on "Star Wars Episode II."

This year Panasonic started offering a moderately priced DV camcorder offering 24p (the frame rate of film). The AG-DVX100 is priced less than $4,000 and is so popular, Panasonic can't build them fast enough. Watch for competitors to follow suit and for prices to continue to fall.

Video editing software
Make sure your video editor includes film-look effects. Bob and weave, scratches and dust, film grain, cinema color, and letter-boxing can help you simulate 24p motion in post, even if you don't shoot in that mode.

Now here are a few things you should keep in mind while shooting your movies with any camera.

Disable automatic camcorder controls
  • Train yourself to shoot in Full Manual mode. To coordinate focus and zoom, zoom all the way in on the subject of your shot, and then adjust for sharp focus.
  • When setting exposure by f-stop, don't permit a difference of more than five stops between the brightest and the darkest objects in the frame.
  • Before every shot and whenever you change settings, point the camera at a white card filling the frame and press the manual white-balance button.
  • Turn off image stabilization and either mount the camera on a tripod or carry it cradled in your hands at waist level in front of you. Watch the flip-out LCD screen instead of the viewfinder.


Get static shots
  • Hold steady on your shot for at least a five-count before you move to get a nice, stable scene. Any movement (panning, tilting on the tripod, or walking as you hold the camera) should be slow, deliberate, and as smooth as possible.
  • Remember, shots with camera moves are harder to cut together to preserve continuity or logic flow on the screen -- unless you plan them carefully in advance.
  • To preserve continuity in your close-ups, take care not to cross the stage line, an imaginary line drawn between the two most important subjects in the scene (such as two people talking).


Use an external mic
  • If you use the built-in microphone on the camcorder, the audio in most scenes will lack perspective. In other words, the sound won't match the action in the shot; it'll seem far away. Built-in mics also pick up camera noise.
  • Hollywood crews generally use a boom mic, which is mounted on a pole held by an operator, to follow the action in a scene. This type of mic gives the best audio perspective in most situations, and the operator can adjust its position during the scene to favor one actor or another.
  • Pinning a lavalier mic to the subject is an alternative, and easier to manage if you're a one-person crew. It's best for interviews and other types of "talking-head" shots. Lavalier mics are the little black mics you see pinned to Cat, Roger, Brett, and Leo on "Call for Help."
  • Your objective when you're shooting should be to capture clean dialog. You can add sound effects and music in postproduction (editing).


Feature-filmmaker Pete Shaner wrote and directed the movie Nicolas. Gerald Everett Jones has a background in industrial film and computer graphics and is the author of more than 20 books, including How to Lie With Charts. Shaner and Jones co-authored Real World Digital Video.

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