The importance of "B-roll" in video production. A hard lesson for me.

super A.D., Ben, grabs for all the "B-Roll" he can find!

The hardest thing of all in creating good video is not getting the color right or the footage sharp. Some would say the hardest part is always getting good sound. But for me the hardest part of the process is the edit. And the stumbling block for me is that I have a hard time understanding the vital importance (in the edit phase) of having lots of great "B-roll" to choose from. 

First of all, What the Hell is B-roll? Most of the video work I do involves shooting interviews. The interviews can be about new products, new processes or about something that the interviewee has done that is interesting. My somewhat linear mindset leads me to want to shoot the interview the same way I'd shoot a photographic portrait. My brain was programmed by years of still photography to compose a very nice frame, get my lighting as close to perfect as I can and to pay attention to the main event; the actual interview. 

But if you are creating video that's watchable you need to understand that having a person stare into (or near) the camera lens and talk can get pretty boring pretty quickly. Also, since we seem to be culturally evolving into a new species that learns almost exclusively by seeing, we need on screen images of the things our interviewee is talking about for the audience to better understand the content. Finally, we need scenes and associated imagery to cut away to in the event that we need to make an edit to the primary footage. After all, the way video works best is to get your audience into the story. Technical glitches are a quick way to pull them right back out of your story and move on to something else. 

In the video Ben and I are currently on for a healthcare client we have an interviewee who gave us a tremendous interview session. The technical problem is that she said great stuff but it was spread across different clips. We wanted to piece one very tight and coherent program out of these little gems of content but every time you make a cut from one clip to another there is a jarring difference in the overall continuity. The person's body might be in a different posture, hands in a different place, even the expression might be much different (if the light or sound is different; that's on you!). 

So, when we want to join different clips we need something else to cut away to to keep the audience from seeing the obvious visual hiccups. That's the primary role of B-roll. It is footage that gets inserted into your program either to show something that relates to what your narrator or interviewee is saying or to provide a way to disguise cuts between clips. The best situation is that B-roll will do both. 

Since my brain seems hard-wired to go straight for the obvious I end up running the "A" camera in most projects. I have a good, linear idea of the overall outline of the project and I'm off and running from point "A" to point "B". I'm busy following the map. But I am not incapable of learning. In solo projects I set up a second camera to run during interviews which gives me a different point of view to use in my edits and I try my best (with a meticulous shot list) to get as much footage that is relevant as I can. But if push comes to shove it's the direct interview that always takes precedence. 

Recently I was beaten over the head with just how useful and necessary good B-roll could be. My assistant director on our healthcare video project spent the shooting day with a Sony RX10iii camera in his hands. We set both the primary shooting camera and his camera to the same codec, the same white balance and fps to give us a fighting chance at mixing the footage in the edit. 

Everything I shot the A.D also shot, but from a different angle and different magnifications. He also shot details and close-ups and reverse angles. In all, he shot about twice as many clips as I did but, in my defense, my camera was running all the time on interviews...

When we got back to the studio my A.D. started editing the footage based on the outline we created. We had just done a Lynda.com refresher course to learn what was new in Final Cut Pro X 10.3 and were both excited to try using the "flow" transition tool to cut together the interview (which would serve as a primary narration track) from the jigsaw box full of clips we had at hand. The flow tool is a great transition tool where audio is involved. It seems to understand that we're piecing together two different clips of audio and automatically makes the transitions almost (audibly) invisible. 

As you may guess we had dozens and dozens of clips butted together and while the audio was more or less seamless the visual cuts were obvious. That's when my A.D. started diving into his treasure chest full of B-roll. Stuff I never thought about came out. A super close up of a stream of fresh, hot coffee filling up a coffee carafe in the kitchen. An ethereal shot of a bowl of lemons. Numerous shots of the products shot in an artsy way with a moving, handheld camera. Lots of angles of our main talent athletically piloting her wheel chair in a park, at a lake, at a restaurant, getting in and out of her car, having a meeting, etc., etc. 

He seemed to have the perfect cutaway shot for every contingency and I marveled as the project grew from a barebones documentation to a full blown, visual narrative. Video is so much richer with images that bolster the "main" footage.

Since my current A.D. is "on loan" from his college I'll be looking for a new assistant director/editor to work with in February. First on my list of question for them will be, "tell me your ideas about shooting B-roll..."

It's good to figure out where my blindspots are so I can work on them. From now until it becomes second nature I'll be carrying a "B-roll" shot list with me on every assignment. Yikes. So much harder than the camera work. At least for me.

What sort of camera madness have I participated in today? Oh, I remember, I swam the masters workout and then headed to Precision Camera to buy a brand new camera. I really, really needed one. Hmmm.

The Nikon D750 with the reasonably good 24-120mm zoom lens.

August is a dangerous month. Fraught with all kinds of odd impulses. Way too hot for rational thought to prevail. What's a guy going to do? But let's set this up first and at least give me a chance to rationalize yet another zany and seemingly inexplicable camera purchase (full price, no special dispensation for brilliant blog writers...).

I've been playing diligently with video this year and I'm mixing with bad company. These video guys make photographers look like depression era shoppers. And when they add stuff to their "carts" the prices seem astronomical to me. According to them you can buy a Sony FS7, 4K super 35 video camera for a bit less than than $9,000 but in their opinions the camera requires another three or four thousand dollars invested in cages, follow focus stuff, monitors, memory cards and such before you can really, you know, use it. And then you'll need a lens. Or lenses.

These days all the video guys are excited and fidgety about the newest Sony camera, the A7R-2 and they are lining up only to be told that it's now effectively backordered. Amazon.com had them yesterday but today they are saying "deliverable in one to two months." But you know how those guys over at Precision Camera are always looking out for my best interests so they took it upon themselves to place me at the top of the pre-order list for the Sony A7R-2. Yesterday they called and let me know that they'd gotten a handful in and they had one with my name on the box. Did I

Past Due Reviews. The first in a series. The Nikon D610. Executive Summary. At $1295 it's a cheap and wonderful entry to full frame photography.

#Austin  #SXSW Downtown.

 I'm writing a review here on the Nikon D610 camera. I'm writing it not because I think you should run out and buy one or because it happens to be the best in any one category (it's not) but because it's an affable camera, I enjoy shooting it and, so far, it's been generating images that look really good to me. It's already been superseded by the D750 camera which is largely the same but in some ways "better." But it remains in the Nikon product line up and the price of the camera seems to have stabilized around $1495 which I think is a good value for the quality of the sensor and the particular feel of the camera. 

I shoot with several different cameras and I have reasons for every choice. I have a Nikon D810 when I am after perfect images with unassailable resolution and dynamic range. Lately I've been shooting the Olympus EM-5 camera more often since I discovered both how much I like the black and white setting (with the green filtration) and how nice video can look in black and white when you use the image stabilization offered by that camera in the video mode. But these days I grab the D610 as my personal shooting camera for portraits and street shooting. More and more I've come to value a camera that's a nice balance rather than a tool with which to pursue "perfection." 

Let's jump into the D610 and see why I enjoy using one. 

My belief that "getting started" trumps waiting until you are "ready."

Are we busy getting ready or should we just dive in???

Earlier today I posted a link to a video about the tyranny of choice. The idea of tyranny of choice is that when presented with more than a few choices we become paralyzed by having to choose rather than being joyfully enabled. But I want to talk about something else that seems to happen to most of us at one time or another and that is the overwhelming desire to become thoroughly prepared before starting something new. Now, let me be very clear that in many fields I agree with the need to be well prepared. 

I want the person who might be doing surgery on me to have studied and practiced (on someone else) many times and under much supervision before I place myself in their hands. I feel the same way about the engineers who design airplanes and the architects who design all of those high rise buildings. But, in the field of Art, a field in which few are killed or even inconvenienced by the artist's lack of preparation, I think being too well prepared before engaging in the process is very counterproductive for the artist. 

I learn more when I learn new lessons in a hands-on situation. My ability to learn well seems to correlate with how many new things I try and fail at much more so than how much stuff I read on the web, and try to digest, and add to, in anticipation of actually trying something real outside the virtual reality of the screen and the web.

Here is my example: A few weeks ago I became interested in a big, complex wall filled with graffiti. I photographed the wall but I felt like photographs weren't an immersive enough solution for such a big project. I decided I'd do a personal video project about it. I used my new Sony RX10 and filmed the whole project handheld. And in the process I failed at many, many aspects of the project. Really abject failure---

And I learned things through hands-on failure that burned the lessons into my brain in a way that just reading, watching videos and thinking about the process would never have accomplished. 

The first day I went out I tried doing a couple of interviews with a small, shoe-mounted, shotgun microphone. I presumed the microphone would work as required even though I intellectually knew of twenty or thirty theoretical reasons why it might not. I forgot to bring along a set of headphones. I shot two interviews and I was very excited about them because the people I interviewed were working on great art and they said stuff that sounded smart and original. When I got back home I checked the audio only to find that there was none. The culprit? A dead microphone battery. I could swear I changed it only a few weeks earlier.....

I learned this for all time: Bring extra batteries. Watch the sound level meters on the camera.  Check the sound as I go by using headphones. 

So, I went back and I put a new battery in the microphone (and a back up in my pocket)  and grabbed  a set of headphones and I tried again. This time I could tell that the mic in the hotshot was a non-starter after listening to a few interviews and even though I didn't have an assistant I wanted to get that little sucker off the camera and closer to the subject for better sound. I did that with a small cord. But when I got back to the studio I listened to the audio and there sure was a lot of background noise that I didn't like. I learned the hard way so that the next time out I would take a set of wireless lavaliere microphones and attach them to the person being interviewed for the best audio. Either that or I'd get a person with experience to come along with me and operate a shotgun microphone on a boom pole.  Part of learning the hard way is learning the lesson up front and then having it reinforced for you when you sit down with your inadequate results and try to edit something together....

So, back to the project and my next basket of mistakes. On my first foray I set the exposure the way I thought it should be and liked the way it looked on the tiny monitor but I didn't pay enough attention to the flashing "zebras" that were trying to tell me that my highlights were burning out. Looked pretty good on the monitor but back in the studio on the big monitor I cringed when I saw some of the shots.  Another lesson learned. Now I watch the zebras and stop trying to convince myself that some burn out will be okay. Which led me to another issue. I decided that I wanted to film at 24fps because that seems to be what all the cool kids on the web do. But the exposures were getting pretty hot on my second time out so I compromised and set the shutter speed to 1/125th instead of 1/60th of a second. I understood, intellectually, that the lack of blur in the frames would make the footage look jerky or choppy but I only understood it intellectually since I rarely shoot client footage in full sun....or even outdoors.

It looked okay on the tiny monitor on location but again, when I got back to the studio and started looking at the footage on a large screen I was horrified. When I go back and shoot again I'll set the camera for 60 fps and limit myself to 1/125th as a top speed. At 24 fps I should have limited myself to 1/50th of a second to prevent the "choppies." But really, until you've screwed up and seen it in the cool light of the editing software it all seems like opinions and theory. In messing up, profoundly, you learn a lesson that stays with you like a bad prison tattoo. 

Okay. So that's it. Right?  Nope, my hubris and stupidity knows no bounds and so we come to the whole idea of hand-holding the camera to get the footage. I'm guilty of reading many articles about just how great the IS is in current cameras (the Olympus OMD EM-1 being the current king) and I've read about just how good the IS is in the RX10. So I put it into the active mode and went for it, certain that the web learning would not fail me and that the camera would smooth out my trembling transitions. It did not. No camera can really do that, unaided, during takes that are longer than a few seconds. But I didn't believe that until I put my hands on the process and gave it a go. Now I know why we spend tons of money on tripods and sliders. And fluid heads and dollies.

I threw aways many, many minutes of unwatchable footage that flickered and slithered and bumped kinetically across my screen. And, for the most part I didn't subject my audience to much of it at all. Editing breeds humility, at some point. 

You would think I've been confessional enough at this point but no. I want to talk about another mistake I made. I think you can hand hold stuff if you are willing to shoot wide and practice a great deal, and you are calmer than the Buddha. But it's doubly impossible to hold a camera steady when you insist on shooting at the telephoto end of your camera's lens. Yes, I know it magnifies every movement but it all sounds so theoretical until you actually come back and look at the long shots, handheld on the big screen. You may think you are steady in the moment but one look at a big monitor tells you that you've got all the stability of a car barreling down a bumpy road with no shock absorbers. 

Lastly, in a final guilty purging, I must admit that while I know I'm supposed to write a script or at least have a good idea of the story I'm going to tell with a video camera I ignored all that and considered the motion camera as just an extension of still photography and decided to shoot "interesting" opportunities as they presented themselves. And they didn't. Ever. 

What a waste of time? Hardly. 

Think of all the things I learned in a way that hardwires them into my brain. Everything I failed at was a valuable lesson learned indelibly. I won't make the same mistakes again. Not if I can help it. But the whole process of trying and failing had at least one very positive function. It got me up off my ass and into the field to experiment on my own dime with all the stuff I'd studied and read about. It got me to acknowledge the stuff I need to work on and the stuff I need to ask for help with. It got me energized about making video projects because for every failure I could see flares of fun and visual wonder in the footage. By pushing the "go" button I got past the resistance and inertia that holds us back by telling us that, "You are not ready yet."  

But the truth is that you are never "ready." All art is work in progress and it's important, if you really want to learn in an impactful way, to start now. To initiate. To stop warming up and get down to the business of actually running a few races. Because it is in the actual doing and failing and doing and learning that we start to understand what we really want from the process, from the medium, and we learn to make it our own. 

I have known people, smart and creative people, who are afraid to start without the full encyclopedia in their heads. They don't want to embarrass themselves. They are afraid to fail, especially publicly. They want their first project out of the gate to be a perfect project. But the cold reality is that they are paralyzed by their need to perfect their knowledge, or to acquire the gear they feel they need to use, until it's too late and so many opportunities for fun and growth have passed them by. They need to launch themselves and their projects now, today. And to fail means they'll learn better. 

When I started writing this I was still thinking about the idea of the paralysis of choice. And how our need to have the perfect gear is part of the intellectual process of research that keeps so many of us paralyzed and unable to get after the stuff we know we want to do. I could easily convince myself that 4k video is the future and anything I learn or do today in 2k is pointless. I can convince myself that I should wait for the Panasonic GH4 or the Black Magic 4K in order to do this right. But if I convince myself that this is true I'll just put off the necessary failures that lead to success until another time in the future. A time when I may not have the energy and resources to fail quite as profoundly and as well as I can today. 

I shared the Graffiti Wall video with you all not because I thought it was great art but to show where I was with the gear in hand. And with the idea of one man guerrilla video. But in truth I was also showing you my failures in order to start a conversation that culminates in some of us learning from people in the audience who know more, who've already made the same mistakes. The ones who know where the potholes in the road are. 

I got a lot of great feedback and most of it was from the shy folks who preferred to take the conversation offline. But I love that they spoke to me and poked (nicely but firmly) holes in my techniques and approach. Through failing so publicly I learned much more than I would have had I spent another thirty days watching instructional videos on Lynda.com (which were useful...) or on the various web forae having to do with digital video. Most of the stuff on the web (outside of Lynda and a few others) is really much better at teaching you (theoretically) about what additional gear you need in order to be successful and not so much about how great it is to fail. 

Now, on client projects when I don't know something I tend to hire the people who do. I am conservative when other people's money is involved and try not to learn in the same way on someone else's dime. I hire an editor. I hire a sound person. I use art directors. I work to a script. And maybe that's why failure is so important to me in my personal work. I get to try stuff that may not work and then figure out what I should have done...

I really do believe that if you don't start you'll never fail and if you never fail you'll never really learn.  So, with that written, I'm off to fail again with my little video camera. And some extra microphone batteries. And a fluid head tripod. And some headphones. And an outline. And.......