Build a Guerilla Sound Booth

One thing that is absolute in video production: whether you’re a hobbyist or a pro – the audience might accept weak video, but will not forgive poor audio.

Have you ever heard barking dogs or traffic noise in a professional voice-over? Of course not. Professional productions use recording studios with specially treated sound booths. This gives them full control and clean audio. But what about the rest of us? Sure, we could rent time in a studio, but that isn’t always practical or affordable. What if we applied the principles of guerilla filmmaking to our audio recording? If we told you there was a way to create a professional sounding voice recording space for less than the cost of one session at a big studio, would you be interested? Good. Let’s get started.
Parts List
9 – 10′ x 1″ Schedule 40 PVC plumbing pipe
12 – 1″ PVC Tee Couplers
6 – 1″ PVC 90-Degree Elbows
12 – 1″ PVC Pipe Caps
4 – 72″ x 60″ Mover’s Blankets
6 – Squeeze Hand Clamps (more if you prefer)
1 – Clamp Light
1 – CFL Bulb
The only tools needed are a tubing cutter or hacksaw, tape measure and a Sharpie. The entire booth can be built from scratch in less than an hour and future setups take only a few minutes.
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Top 10 Best Voice Over Tips

You’d love to hire some major market talent for voice over work but your budget won’t allow it. It looks like you’ll have to figure this one out by yourself. Don’t worry, you can do this.

If you can read and speak, you can do a voice over. With the right tools, technique and some practice, you can create functional voice overs for any project, stay within budget and deliver them on time. Whether this is your first time or your 25th, it never hurts to go through the fundamentals of creating good voice overs. Here are 10 tips to get you through.

1 – It Starts With the Script

Voice over scripts come in many forms and lengths. It may be as simple as a few lines peppered throughout the project or it could be nine pages of wall-to-wall text. It’s possible the client wrote it, either through an employee or a committee. Whenever possible, retain the right to edit the script for clarity. You don’t want to change the message, just the delivery. Make sure the script is easy for you or the voice over talent to read, easy to understand and moves easily from section to section. If there are any names, words or technical terms that you’re unsure of, check with the client for proper pronunciation. Spell them out phonetically if necessary. There’s nothing worse than mispronouncing someone’s name during your voice over recording and having to go back and fix it after the project is finished.

2 – The Right Software

The process of recording a good voice over requires a few tools. First on the list is recording and editing software. Adobe Audition, Sony Sound Forge and ProTools are the major players in this area, but there are many other options. Adobe, Sony and Digidesign each make ‘lite’ versions of their flagship products – all are worth investigating. Apple has Logic Studio, Soundtrack Pro and WavePad. You can even do some basic recording and editing in GarageBand. Reaper, Audacity and Nero’s Wave Editor are all worthy contenders, too. Find one that fits your budget and is easy to use. You’ll spend a lot of quality time with your software.

3 – The Setup

Once that’s established, you need your best microphone. In a perfect world, that would be a large diaphragm studio condenser mic, but any good, clean microphone will do. You also need a way to plug the mic into your computer – with either adapter cables or an audio interface – and a microphone stand. A good pair of headphones is critical for monitoring your recording. With the headphones on, you’ll hear every detail and make better performance decisions. Don’t forget the recording environment. Our article guerilla sound booth is a great way to go for a voice over studio, but any quiet area with minimal sound reflections works in a pinch.
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Whether you are lighting an interview or a scene for a movie, the background light must always be considered. How much light should you use? How many shadows need to be created? Should you apply a simple splash of color or something with more texture? When making these decisions it’s handy to have a variety of cookies to choose from.

A cookie, short for “cucoloris,” is a large board with a pattern or shape cut out of it. It’s placed in front of a spot light in order to throw a textured shadow or a silhouette onto the background. These shadows and silhouettes can include tree branches, blinds, or something a little more abstract. Cookies can bring additional ambiance to your scene and are not only easy to use, but also fairly easy to make.

To make your own cookie all you need is a large board, at least 24″ square and preferably 1/2-inch foam core board, though thin plywood, sheet metal or cardboard would work also. To help control the bounce from the light source, choose a board that is black on both sides. Next, use a sharp edge, such as an Xacto knife or box cutter, to cut out the pattern of your choice. Drawing your pattern on the board prior to cutting may help as a guide. Remember, if your desired effect is a silhouette, cut out the area around the shape, not the shape itself.

Cookies are a basic lighting accessory that will allow you to vary your lighting design. By learning how to make your own cookies you can create endless design possibilities while being able to be more adventurous with your choices.

Multi-camera Shooting

Most of us are probably “go it alone” videographers. When an event arises we show up with one camera and a bag on our back – but that’s not always the best option.

Videographers are not just storytellers, they’re also the keepers of our memories – which is an amazing responsibility. While a director producing a fictional piece can reshoot a scene again and again until it’s captured perfectly, real life doesn’t afford us the ability to go back and do it again. The garter toss that’s missed once, is missed forever.

For this reason, many videographers capture important events with multiple cameras – this not only ensures that if one camera misses some critical action, it will be caught by another, but it also makes for much more enjoyable viewing. After all, you wouldn’t watch a sitcom that had only one camera angle set to a wide shot of the entire set, so why should you watch a video of a school play that way?

Multi-camera shooting can be done in several ways, some complex and expensive, some easy and (relatively) cheap. We’ll look at a few different methods here.
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Multicam Editing for All

Multicam editing is becoming more popular as software programs adopt tools that make the process much easier. Now just about anyone with a prosumer level video editing suite can do accurate multicam edits with little stress.

Multicam editing is perfect for producing video at live events, such as wedding, sporting events, recitals, graduations, plays, etc. Wherever there’s an opportunity to shoot a lot of footage in one continuous flow, and the event is rather large, (thus the need of multiple cameras to get good coverage), or when you simply have more than one camera at your disposal, multicam editing is ideal. Multi-cam editing can save you a great amount of time by running through the video in real-time and making your edits as you go.

Accurate Color Is Key

Often times the footage you’re editing is shot on different cameras or perhaps there’s a slight difference in the colors between video footage from one camera compared to the other. White balance issues are very common. Usually you can spot this problem fairly quickly if the white balance is significantly off. Other times you may need to compare footage where, ideally a white object is in the frame, like a white tee shirt or even better a white bounce card. Compare the footage and see if the white object appears to be more blue or orange in either footage reels. This will tell you if the white balance is off between cameras. There are several remedies to fix the issue. For example if camera B’s footage has a blueish tint to it, you could use a color filter and drop the Blue level slightly until the blue tint is gone. The same technique would apply for footage that has a warm tone. Simply apply a color balance filter to the footage and drop down the Red level until the red tint disappears. Most video editing software suites have an RGB color balance filter that lets you adjust these values independently. Make sure to observe each camera’s footage carefully and ideally against the same object under the same lighting conditions (this is where running a few seconds of a white bounce board at the beginning of a shoot is especially helpful).
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The Perfect Plan: Storyboard and Shot List Creation

Script creation is a task that requires lots of time, work and planning. In fact, planning is probably the heart and soul of the production. The proper planning and legwork must be accomplished or even the best script will fall flat on its face.

There are many aspects to pre-production planning, but we’re just going to focus on two of them here: the storyboard and the shot list. If you’re working on a small production, then you might get to do everything yourself! If you have much of a budget, then some of this planning can be done in conjunction with other members of your crew.

Your first planning tool, the storyboard, is essentially a comic book of your production. It covers all the major shots, angles and action involved in the script. Think of it as shooting your movie on paper instead of tape. Shot by shot, you draw out the script and decide how to visually compose each scene.
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Who Owns Your Website? Unpleasant Surprise on the Internet

Often, we see people learning this lesson the hard way, when the web designer refuses to allow the web site to be copied or used as a template for another site. Or worse, sometimes the web designer attempts to extort you, the very party who paid him or her.

How can his happen? After all, you paid cash for the development. You may have entered into an agreement, prepared by the web designer, that spelled out your designer’s duties and obligations. It doesn’t seem logical and it certainly doesn’t seem fair that you, the principal, wouldn’t have complete ownership and the right to use the web site materials any way you wish. It may not be fair, but unfortunately, like certain other situations, it’s legal.

Our Founding Fathers included an important provision in the U.S. Constitution that went into effect in 1789. It stated that Congress had the power to secure for authors for limited times the exclusive right to their writings. This provision was to protect the individual artist from unfair copying of his or her creative work. The original Copyright Act was enacted in 1790.
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CS5 is among Adobe’s most significant upgrades to the Production Premium bundle ever.

The authors describe three components of viral marketing. The first component being “the social structure of the digital network through which the message is propagated” (Bampo, et al., 2008, p. 274).  The second is “the behavioral characteristics of its members that facilitate the propagation of the message” (Bampo, et al., 2008, p. 273). The third and final component being “a seeding strategy that initiates the process” (Bampo, et al., 2008, p. 273).

The article titled “Networking, ‘grassroots marketing” keys for new firms” highlights a small business owner who started a janitorial service and began marketing by going door to door of “offices in the hopes of getting a few minutes with the person in charge of making decisions” (Anjail, 2006, p.1). At times, this meant waiting several hours for a moment of a busy executive’s schedule to clear. These methods provided the owner with his first contacts and established additional referrals however, “real growth started when he joined a chamber of commerce, industry association and other networking groups. Those memberships gave him the building blocks to help him expand his Mt Clemens-based New Image Building Services Inc. into a company with $15 million in 2005 revenue, 800 employees, a customer base in Southeast Michigan and northeast Ohio, and led to the opening of a new office in Las Vegas” (Anjail, 2006, p.1).” (Anjail, 2006, p.1). According to Ezzo, the owner, “networking is one of the most effective ways for companies to spread the word about a new local entrepreneurs business” (Anjail, 2006, p.1). Ezzo, started at a Central Macomb Chamber and now belongs to the Detroit Regional Chamber. According to Ezzo, “networking events gave him a chance to meet potential clients and even other business owners who could refer their own clients to him” (Anjail, 2006, p.1). Ezzo recommends the best way to grow your business is through networking. Ezzo also comments that he “did not spend much money on yellow pages advertising” (Anjail, 2006, p.1). Read More