Diploma in Digital Film

DDF 101 - Video and Audio Craft

101 Video and Audio craft

This paper covers the basics of shooting video and recording audio.

Here's an outline of what's in the course:

1. •Understanding your camera better – the controls to use and the ones to ignore.
   

2. •Composing shots – shot descriptions, the names for different shots, focal lengths
   

3. •Storyboarding and blocking a scene
   

4. •Continuity – sooting so that you don't end up with shots that don't cut together
   

5. •Choosing locations
   

6. •Basic lighting skills – getting good looking video without spending lots on lights
   

7. •Low budget special effects
   

8. •The basics of sound
   

9. •What recordings sound like when made in different rooms
   

10. •Choosing a microphone
    

11. •Working with actors
    

What are the assessments

There are quite a few minor tasks you need to complete, shooting video according to a brief such as getting a shot of someone standing with a bright window behind them, or a tracking shot of someone's feet as they walk, and there are tasks for storyboarding, location scouting, sound recording and so forth. The main assessments are three short scenes that you need to shoot. None of them need expensive resources, but all of them require some creativity and attention to detail.

I can't draw. How will I do the story boards?

Guess what – Martin Scorsese (and I) can't draw for peanuts either. You won't be assessed on the quality of your drawing, just on the ideas behind your artwork. And there's some good hints on how to do better boards for those who are not naturally gifted.

What gear do I need

You will need

A computer that can do basic video editing (iMovie is OK) and a video camera with a firewire (IEEE1394) socket to interface with your computer.

Cameras that record to DVDs or hard disks are NOT suitable (unless you have an expensive professional model). The camera will almost certainly use miniDV tape. Still cameras that have a video function are NOT suitable.

Here are a couple of sample pages from the course documents. These are just pages at random, but they’ll give you an idea of the course content.

101-3 page3.pdf

101-8 page4.pdf