By Ellen Seidler, Paul Grabowicz and Pamela Reynolds.

Referanced from Berkeley School of Journalism.  This University website has great content for starting to learn about Multimedia. The reason for us posting these tutorials on our site iinstead of linking to them is for the sole purpose of translation so that Asian photojournalists can understand them easier.

Shoot in Sequences

Shoot your video in sequences, where you take a general scene or an action and break it into various parts or segments and shoot each one, rather than doing it as one long shot.

This is especially true when shooting B-roll such as crowd scenes or nature shots, rather than a static shot of an interview with someone.

Remember that you will be determining what the viewer sees and how the story unfolds, so try to shoot discrete segments that you then can assemble into that story when you're editing.

Here's an example:

Think of different scenes, as in a movie. Each of those scenes is made up of sequences. In each sequence, you need to follow the action, and shoot wide, medium and close-up.

Say you want to capture a person arriving at work in the morning on her bicycle -- that's one sequence. It could be made up of the following shots: the person pulling up to the building, getting off the bicycle, chaining the bicycle to the bicycle stand, taking off gloves, taking off her helmet, tucking gloves into the helmet, and walking into the building. Every little detail is important. You can't shoot enough details.

In fact, a good ratio to shoot for (literally) is 50 percent closeups and extreme closeups, 25 percent medium shots, and 25 percent wide shots.

It might break down like this: a wide shot of her arriving. A medium shot of her getting off the bicycle. A close-up of her pushing the front wheel of the bike into the bike stand. A close-up of her chaining the bike to the stand. An extreme closeup of her taking off her gloves. An extreme close-up of her eyes as she looks at her hands while she's taking off her gloves. A close-up of her taking off her helmet and tucking the gloves into it. A close-up of her straightening her hair and looking at the building. A medium and wide shots of her walking into the building with the helmet tucked under her arm.

Change Angles and Perspectives

-Try to change point and/or angle of view after every shot. Look for interesting perspectives.
 
-Don't shoot everything from eye level - it's boring.
 
-Especially try shots where you hold your camera close to the ground and shoot up toward your subject.
 
-For example, if you're shooting a scene like people walking on a sidewalk, hold the camera low to show their feet moving, rather than straight-on shots of their faces.
 
-Or if you're shooting someone working at a computer terminal, take one shot from over their shoulder, then another that is a close-up of their hands and fingers using the keyboard and mouse, then a shot from over the person's other shoulder, then a low angle shot looking up at them and then a facial shot.
 
-Or hold your camera above your head to get a different perspective on a scene.
 
-Do a close up shot, because that often provides a more intimate view of a person. This is especially important with multimedia on the Web, because the video viewers use small windows and wide-angle shots won't display much detail.
 
-Don't just rely on zooms to get these different perspectives - move the camera closer or farther away.
 
-If you take shots from these different perspectives, when you edit your video you'll be able to put together a sequence of 4 or 5-second shots of your subject, rather than one from a single perspective.
 

Anticipate Action in Your Shots

-Anticipate action by trying to predict where the subject/action will go, and then be ready to shoot it when it moves into the frame of your shot. Think ahead and get positioned for the action that's to come.

-Let action happen within the frame. Don't constantly move the camera in an futile attempt to catch everything.

-And don't be afraid to allow your subject to move out of frame, rather than trying to follow them with your camera.

-This is especially important if you're taking a shot of a person who is walking and then later another shot of the person sitting down.

-If you follow the person while they walk with your first shot and always keep them in frame, and then cut to second shot of the person sitting down, it can create a mental disconnect for the viewer as to how the person got to the second position.

-If instead you show them walking out of the frame in the first shot, then it's logical to the viewer that the person would be seen in the next shot sitting somewhere else.