Improving Camera Movement in Your Next Video
Camera movement is one of those things that is becoming a ‘must-have’ in video. The rise of ‘cinematic’ business videos has gone from strength to strength in recent years - predominately driven by lighter cameras and the increasing availability of equipment which can assist in moving your camera smoothly.
In today’s episode of How to Shoot Video for Your Business, Head Beard Bruce discusses this drive towards movement and how you can improve its use within your videos.
History of Movement
Our drive as filmmakers to have movement in our films has always been around, but its been noticeably increasing and increasing over the last few years. And most of the time it’s been drive be more and more affordable equipment that allows us to move our cameras.
Probably around ten or so years ago the slider really was THE piece of gear to have. Suddenly we could use something that provided more movement than the tripod’s limited function of tilt or pan. Even when combined with a zoom, the tripod really was limited.
The slide allowed us to start putting movement into our shots and boy was it used. We could show depth to a shot, reveal something or just hold attention for longer.
From there we evolved our movement. And now we have a range of gimbals and other devices that allow us to pick up and move the camera without making our viewers feel like they needed to throw up, or that they were part of the ‘shaky-cam’ movement back in the early 2000s.
But this ease of camera movement has created some new and interesting issues.
But How Do I Improve?
Yes, sorry, you didn’t come for a history lesson - you came for hard facts on how to improve your own camera movement.
The truth is that often more is less.
We’re often too caught up in the movement, we try too hard to put movement in. And ultimately, because we’re able to pick up and move a camera, we think we must pick up a camera and move it.
The truth to having better moving footage, more cinematic footage - is to slow down.
A viewer should never be interrupted in their engagement with the video or film. By slowing we movement, we are allowing the viewer to be guided, they are able to enjoy the movement.
We need to start considering how to extend the ‘middle’ of our shot so that we have more to work with. We need to start thinking about ‘holding the shot’ so that we can let the shot tell its own story. And we must look to slow down our shooting.
