This was an original post from a couple years ago. This is something we teach our Highlands College students still to this day. I decided to repost and add some more to it. Feel free to leave a comment and tell us some of your tips! If you don’t know, b-roll is video footage of something that is shown while the talent is speaking.

GROW is a resource partnership, training process and support system with Church of the Highlands. We hold an intensive each year where we invite churches to come and learn principles that have helped us reach people. 

There are a couple of really key elements when it comes to editing video. One of those is feel. As a video editor, my job is to take whatever broll, interviews, pictures etc., and turn it into the best thing someone has ever seen ;) Ok... not really, but my job is to make the best product I can with what I have. 

So you shot something awesome and dropped it in your timeline only to find out it is a tad bit shaky, ok maybe a lot bit shaky. Don't panic! We all do it from time to time and if you've got After Effects CC you're covered. In this post I'm going to quickly show you how to stabilize those shots that have a case of the shakes. 

Interviewing people is an art form, and it's a continual learning process. Everyone is different, and when you interview one person, they may react to a set of questions differently than another person would. All this to say that the "rules of interviewing people" is a constantly changing list and i'm sure amendments could be added every time you interview someone new. That being said, here are a few rules that we follow that has helped us out throughout the process of capturing and telling someone's story.

Some of our favorite video projects are the ones we get to create for our big events. Often we'll create a handful of videos that will play during each session of a conference. It can be a real challenge to continue to come up with fresh ideas for events that repeat each year -- so occasionally, we'll take the Hollywood approach and create the sequel!

Storytelling is the heart of what we do on the video team. Storytelling is used in testimonies, highlight videos and creative promos. Here are a few tips on storytelling from Pixar's own, Emma Coats.

Music is a critically important part in producing videos. It completely sets the tone and mood for the video. Music brings energy and makes you feel something. Sound must be taken seriously when being selected in videos.

For interview and testimony videos, we like to use a two camera setup with a traditional 3-point lighting rig. In this post I will go over how and where we place our cameras, lights and microphone. Wherever we shoot, we use this system, and it works for just about every condition.

Stuff looks awesome in slow motion right? Most people have seen shows like Time Warp that really slow things down, almost to a stop, that make something ordinary, look amazing! But did you know that many times, you are watching slow motion and you don't even know it? 

At Highlands, we try to have at least two to three people, if not more, on a shoot. We've learned that more eyes and ears you have on set the less likely you are to make a mistake, however there are still situations that arise when everyone on the team finds themselves shooting solo.

There is a saying that goes something like this: “People are sheep.” In other words, people tend to go in the direction a good leader, or Shepherd, takes them and I think this same principle applies to coordinating talent for a video shoot. When each person on camera understands clearly what is expected of him or her and their time, then they are much more willing to agree to put themselves in what is, for many, an uncomfortable position: appearing on camera. Over the past few years I have picked up on a few tips that have worked for us. I hope these prove to be beneficial for your shoots as well!

Something that we are very careful about here is making sure that we don't put the "creative" that's in us as a team over the message of the content we're delivering. It's easy to forget about the end goal of what you're producing when your primary focus is on making something "cool". 

Sometime ago, I heard that Walt Disney had a revelation. The philosophy for their parks, rides, and video environments would be...

If you are using Illustrator or Photoshop to lay out text intensive print pieces then this is for you

No matter what your priorities for lighting your stage, you should always make sure that you are doing a few key things.

Disney's Animation Department developed certain principles that they would incorporate to make their characters look not only natural, but larger-than-life. Today these principles are not only the foundation of Disney and Pixar's films, but of motion graphics as well. 

The most common way to get your designs on t-shirts is through the process of screen printing. Knowledge of the fundamentals of screen printing is helpful when designing for them. There are several areas to consider that will affect your design and cost.