by John Eberhard
This article is an excerpt from our free ebook, The Business Owner’s Guide to Getting Your Video Produced.
Video quality has come up a lot in recent years. I recommend making videos in HD (high definition) format, which means the resolution of the video is 1920 pixels wide by 1080 tall.
There are plenty of good quality cameras out there that will produce HD video and won’t break the bank. The Canon T series is one example ($600 – $1,000). I do not recommend using a webcam camera, or a phone to shoot your video. The quality difference is really noticeable.
It’s important that your video be well lighted. You can often get away with shooting it in a brightly lit room, without any video lighting. But it is better to invest in some lights. There are some excellent videos on YouTube about 3 point lighting, such as this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_Sov3xmgwg
A ring light can get you pretty good results, but make sure it is not reflected in glasses if your subject wears glasses, which looks really dumb.
It makes a big difference to have lapel microphones to record the voices, not in the camera’s sound but in a separate system. They sell hand-held digital recorders you can use for this purpose. I have gotten into using Adobe Audition for recording the sound, then marry that sound track up with the video in editing. In most cases this will give you better quality sound than just recording the sound using the microphone in the camera.
