{"id":658,"date":"2009-08-29T01:09:40","date_gmt":"2009-08-29T08:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/?p=658"},"modified":"2009-08-29T01:11:32","modified_gmt":"2009-08-29T08:11:32","slug":"how-to-not-shoot-a-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/2009\/08\/29\/how-to-not-shoot-a-video\/","title":{"rendered":"How to not shoot a video"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"580\" height=\"360\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/_q2xRk7xK0Q&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0&amp;border=1\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><embed type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"580\" height=\"360\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/_q2xRk7xK0Q&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0&amp;border=1\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p>There are quite a few things that I find wrong with this video, and TransLink&#8217;s approach here. I haven&#8217;t tried the machines myself; but, <a href=\"http:\/\/stephenrees.wordpress.com\/2009\/08\/25\/vancouver-commuters-cant-buy-a-ticket-to-ride-new-canada-line\/\">Stephen Rees has the best post on the yellow light and click<\/a>. So, I&#8217;m just going to rant about this pathetic video.<\/p>\n<h4>Admit that something is wrong<\/h4>\n<p>The first step &#8211; as with almost any kind of recovery\u00a0&#8211; is admitting that you have a problem.\u00a0 A video response is no different.\u00a0 Translink has introduced these\u00a0machines that have made their riders <em>very<\/em> angry. Clearly state the problem.<\/p>\n<h4>Sorry<\/h4>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re sorry that you&#8217;re having trouble but here&#8217;s how we&#8217;re going to get you through this&#8221;\u00a0 It&#8217;s very Canadian.\u00a0 Saying you&#8217;re sorry also means taking some of the blame.\u00a0 Watching the video and <a title=\"Canada Line not free even if machines not working\" href=\"http:\/\/www.vancouversun.com\/Canada+Line+free+even+machines+working\/1932240\/story.html\">reading some of the coverage<\/a>, I feel like they&#8217;re blaming me a bit for not being able to buy a ticket.<\/p>\n<h4>Getting to know you<\/h4>\n<p>Who&#8217;s in the video? Introduce them. They&#8217;re from TransLink. What&#8217;s their job title? The main speaker has a penchant for tossing in French phrases. Who are you? Two (non-mic-ed)\u00a0people are talking behind the camera. Who are they?\u00a0 But, they name the poor guy who designed the machines so he can get hate mail.<\/p>\n<h4>No pans, no zooms<\/h4>\n<p>I believe I first heard this advice from my friends who went to journalism school. Pans and zooms are hard to pull off. Just don&#8217;t do them. If you need to zoom in for detail, zoom then frame then focus <em>then<\/em> record.<\/p>\n<h4>Use a $%#@ing tripod<\/h4>\n<p>I don&#8217;t care what kind of image stabilization technology you might think your HD video camera has. Put it on a tripod.<\/p>\n<h4>Write a script<\/h4>\n<p>The people in this video seem to be fumbling-badly. If you want to show someone how to do something, script it so it looks easy. I know that they tried to get this out quickly. But, that&#8217;s not really a reason for winging it.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Hello, my name is ____ from Translink, we&#8217;ve heard from customers&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>We&#8217;re sorry<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s what&#8217;s been happening<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s what you need to do to avoid that<\/li>\n<li>Here&#8217;s what we&#8217;re going to do to make it easier for you in the future<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It writes itself!<\/p>\n<h4>Know what you&#8217;re talking about<\/h4>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The amber light is in the middle. There&#8217;s your green light. Your amber light flashes on &#8211; I don&#8217;t know what that one is. But, the amber light flashes on and as soon as that comes on out it comes&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h4>You are not Robert Altman<\/h4>\n<p>This isn&#8217;t that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Player\">seven minute tracking shot at the beginning of The Player<\/a>. When you&#8217;re writing a script, think about how you could break down the video into &#8220;scenes.&#8221; Cut these scenes together by &#8220;editing&#8221; it.<\/p>\n<h4>Don&#8217;t overlay white text over video<\/h4>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-659\" title=\"Single frame with illegible text\" src=\"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/whiteonwhitetimesfugly.png\" alt=\"Single frame with illegible text\" width=\"640\" height=\"357\" srcset=\"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/whiteonwhitetimesfugly.png 640w, http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/08\/whiteonwhitetimesfugly-300x167.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><br \/>\nScrolling white Times New Roman over a video with a white wall in the background. This is the attempt at step one: admit you have a problem. It&#8217;s scrolling, no one can read it.\u00a0 Only do text on a solid background and slowly enough that you can read it out loud.<\/p>\n<h4>No &#8220;secrets&#8221;<\/h4>\n<p>The\u00a0illegible white text, the\u00a0representative from the company and the nameless guy behind the camera all talk about the &#8220;secret&#8221; of the amber light. Aside from sounding like an intriguing\u00a0Nancy Drew novel, you&#8217;re making me feel stupid for not knowing it. There is nothing intuitive about a secret.<\/p>\n<h4>Caption it<\/h4>\n<p>Watch that video with the sound off. Does <em>any<\/em> of it make any sense at all? No. Do the deaf take transit and have debit cards? Yes.\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/t\/captions_about\">Is captioning a YouTube video easier than using your ticket machine?<\/a> Yes.<\/p>\n<p>Also, if you spent some time writing out the captions for the video, you might realize the need for writing a script in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Secret of the Amber Light &#8211; and other problems with Translink&#8217;s instructional video.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[118,119,116,117,69],"class_list":["post-658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-working","tag-accessibility","tag-transit","tag-translink","tag-usability","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":679,"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions\/679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}