This segment we'll discuss some tips and a few tricks to make your life easier as a videographer. There are countless things that can unexpectedly come up that can sabotage a video shoot, and the more that you're prepared to deal with them, the easier Your life will be. First off, let's discuss the three things that every pro should have on him or herself at all times. If you don't have any of these three items on your person, and need to ask someone else on the crew for them That's a really bad thing. It's like a carpenter showing up for work and asking for a hammer or a plumber coming to work and needing to borrow a wrench. Number one is lens tissue, or a lens cloth.

If you're shooting and you don't have a means of cleaning your lens handy, you should just quit and do something else for the rest of your life. I always carry lens tissue and cloth along with a lens brush, liquid clear should your lens get seriously dirty. Let's take a minute and talk about how to clean the lens. What you don't want to do is just grind away at it with a dirty towel or your T shirt and want to make sure you have the items we just talked about. First look at the lens. See if there's any loose dirt, sand dust and use your brush to get rid of that gently wipe it away.

Now if you still see a bunch of smudges or Any kind of dirt that stuck to the lens The next thing you want to do is take your piece of lens tissue with just a drop of lens cleaning fluid on it and lightly clean the lens always go in the same direction I'm going to encounter or I'm sorry, I'm going clockwise right now. After you've got all your smudges off of there, then take another piece of drylands tissue and wipe off the rest of that lens cleaning fluid until it's nice and clean. Now if it's not all smudged up, what you can do is take either lens tissue, or a very clean lens cloth. And once again, very gently and going in the same direction lately. Clean your lens going clockwise. Just like that.

Always go the same direction. And that's how you clean your lens. Number two is a multi tool. You should carry a multi tool on your belt at all times. This tool should contain at least two flathead screwdrivers, a Phillips head screwdriver, pliers, scissors, in a knife of some kind. Keep in mind that if you're traveling to a shoot via airplane, you cannot carry this multi tool on board with you and it should be in checked baggage.

Number three is a flashlight. I don't care what kind of carry but it should be portable and discreet. You need this in dark situations to balance your tripod head scout for electrical outlets, connect cables in a dark backstage environment and a host of other reasons. One of the flashlights I carry in my kit is a super cheap LED flashlight. It costs about three bucks not only can I use it for the reasons previously mentioned, but I can also use it in a pinch to light an interview subject or other scenes. For that reason I taped a small piece of diffusion over just make sure you wipe balance accordingly.

Because this particular flashlights color temperatures daylight, okay, what I just talked about should be in your pockets or on your belt. Let's move on and talk about what you should keep in a kit bag that you bring with you on every shoot. This is my bag. Let's take a look at what's inside. I've got spare batteries for all my gear. Here's a spare camera battery and here are some double A batteries for my wireless system.

Speaking of which, I keep all my wireless transmitters, receivers and lavalieres in one case. Here's my hand mic and windscreen. I have spare windscreens and mic clips for everything. I've got my headphones and I've got some spare earbuds While we're on the subject of audio, I also have a supply of audio adapters in my kit. I have some quarter inch two XLR and some RCA to phone or two XLR adapters on hand, as well as a male and female XLR turnarounds. I also have a small role of gaffer tape in my kit.

I buy the gaffer tape that comes on a smaller diameter core as it takes up less space. Never use duct tape except as a last resort. gaffer tape is a special cloth tape that has good temporary adhesive qualities without leaving a sticky residue or damaging wallpaper or paint. It has a myriad of uses from Securing cables to the floor to attaching light control devices to your lighting fixtures to making temporary repairs to making marks on the floor for talent. I also carry a long and short XLR cable. My wireless fails, I can always hardwire my microphone directly into my camera.

You always need to think about what can go wrong on a shoot and then prepare how you can overcome. I also carry some video adapters. BNC connectors are the standard for video. I have various BNC adapters, female BNC RCA phono the fancy barrels to connect to BNC cables together. Here's my wide angle lens adapter which we've talked about in a previous segment. I have my special calibrated white balance card.

If that gets lost, I have this bleached white hand towel that will do in a pinch for white balance. doubles as a mopped, wipe my sweaty face or clean any nastiness that's on my hands by the end of the day. Okay, we've talked about audio and video. What else is in here I have a poncho in a large trash bag. If you're on location and it starts to rain, you need to have protection for your gear. I have this little Poncho I can use and if my cameras mounted on a tripod, I can protect it with this trash bag.

A trash bag it's also good to store cables and after nasty shoot. There's no location with more germs than a hospital. So if you're running cables on the ground, it's a good idea just to shove them into a trash bag at the end of the day. Same thing holds true if you're shooting in an animal shelter. Put on some gloves and put your cables into a bag. When you get home or back to your hotel.

Decontaminate your cables with alcohol or strong soap and water. Related to this is hand sanitizer. Keep the small container with you to clean your hands after working in a toxic environment. Another item that is cheap and can save a lot of time is a doormat. These are under 10 bucks at the home improvement store. And like we talked about in the lighting sequence will secure cables to the floor when crossing doorways.

No one trips and Susie's. Just run your cables through the mat over and taped down the doormat. You won't need it on every shoot but it's good to have a folding stepladder handy. You can use it to focus lights or shoot over the heads of other proper otzi lighting. We've already talked about lighting in good detail an earlier segment. In addition to your basic lighting kit we talked about.

I also keep an extra stand with a threaded top and an emergency I can unscrew the culture attachment on my led camera like mounted to the stand. Now I have an extra student Do light that's battery powered, I can use it as a key as a fill light or as a background light and move it wherever I want. If it's for an interview, I can use it as a key light and get it off center for my camera to add a little dimension to the subjects lighting. I can also use my reflector as a fill light, I mounted to a stand in anglet so it reflects light from my key light cats and filter my subjects face. Here's a lighting tip. We've already talked about the importance of having a portable fold up reflector for outdoor shooting and indoor shooting.

But if you don't have one in hand, say forgot to bring it or you're just starting out and you don't have the budget for one. You might have one in your car without even realizing it. Called a sunshade indoor it's just as good as a reflector. It's not as rigid, but you can angle it. You got plenty of Son on your subject. Back to the on camera light.

I like to mount it a little higher than what the supplied hot shoot attachment allows. If you just mount it to the top of your camera as is and you're on a tight situation with your subject, the light can cast a shadow of your camera's shotgun mic onto your subject. Also, it's a little more natural looking to have your light source a little higher than your subject. So I use a short articulated arm to mount my lights my camera to give me a few inches of more height. Extreme slow zoom. If you want to make a slow creeping zoom in or out and use the Zoom rocker as you normally use it for normal or fast.

So chances are there may be some stuttering or changes of speed during the zoom. That's because it's almost impossible to keep the same slight pressure on the rocker using your index and ring finger pressing down on the rocker technique. They can accomplish this using your index and thumb to pinch the end of the rocker to zoom in or out. This allows you to exert a minute amount of pressure and control it much better. Feel expedient low angle camera support. I have this beanbag I bring for shots I may want from ground level, it's better than trying to handhold your camera from the ground that will have some movement to it.

You can also use other items on hints to support your camera, firm pillow, or rolled up furniture blanket for example. Speaking of camera support if you do not have a tripod, look for stable platforms to put your camera on to shoot from to minimize movement. This may be a wall the back of the chair the hood of a car, look around you be creative. Field expedient dollies. One of the hallmarks of professional video is The use of actual camera movement. Steadicam and dollies immediately come to mind.

Here are some field expedient Dolly alternatives to actually renting the professional Dolly. The wheelchair Dolly will need an assistant and rehearse the dolly move. The camera operator sits on the wheelchair and they need a case to sit on to raise the camera level and shoot handheld as the assistant pushes or pulls the dolly the cart Dolly you will need cases and a soft bag or pillow on top to place your camera. It is possible to operate the doll yourself while shooting. In either case, make sure the ground is smooth enough to roll across without imparting any shaking to your camera. handheld tips the steadiest handheld camera technique is the camera on the shoulder.

If your camera doesn't permit this, look into buying a rig that transfers some of the cameras weight to your shoulder. Holding your camera out in front of you with just the support of your arms will result in a lot of shake and your arms will tire quickly. As mentioned in another segment, when your lenses at the widest focal length, your handheld shot will be steadier. As you zoom in, your shot will become increasingly less steady. If your lens has a steady shot feature, think about turning it on when shooting handheld. Shooting handheld you have a variety of moves and positions available that you cannot do when shooting from a tripod.

You can hold the camera at waist level, you can hold the camera at floor level. You can even place the camera on the ground. You can make twirling tilts from 90 degrees up that you can't do off a tripod. Experiment with different unique shots.