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102 P a r t I I Producing Your YouTube Videos

Tip

When you’re shooting yourself with a camcorder, swivel the LCD viewfinder
180° so that you can watch yourself from in front of the camera while
you’re recording. (But make sure you look into the lens when you’re record-
ing, not into the viewfinder!)

Informational Videos

Informational videos—YouTube news reports, in other words—look more profes-
sional, and thus more authoritative, when shot with a camcorder versus the less
professional look of a webcam video. You don’t have to venture into a professional
recording studio to record this type of video; you can record in any empty room or
office, as long you have the space and a good strong lock on the door.

Although you might think you need professional video production for this type of
video, complete with flattering lighting and a makeup person, the reality is that you
can achieve similar results with a well-conceived semi-pro production. The key
here is to act like it’s a professional production, which also helps to improve your
overall production values. Invest in some external lighting (which improves the
video’s look), hook up a wireless lavalier microphone (which improves the video’s
sound), and have an assistant dab some pancake on the newsreader’s shiny forehead
(which improves the subject’s look). Mount the camcorder on a tripod, have enough
staffers nearby to handle any contingencies, and use a laptop computer near the
camera lens as a teleprompter. The newsreader should feel pampered enough, and
the resulting video quality should be good enough, to please everyone involved.

Product Demonstrations and Overviews

You also don’t need a fancy video recording studio to shoot effective product
demonstrations. All you need is a quality consumer-grade camcorder, an adequate
lighting setup, a boom or lavalier mic, and the patience to shoot the same sequence
from multiple angles. The equipment should give you a quality video, and the mul-
tiple shots give you choices to use when you edit the video.

One of the common pitfalls of semi-pro product demonstrations is the sound. It’s
easy enough to get a quality picture (assuming that you’re not shooting under
straight room lighting), but the sound trips up a lot of inexperienced producers.
The mistake is to think the camcorder’s built-in microphone can do the job, which
it probably can’t; it captures all the sounds in the room, including the ancillary
sounds of the crew and of the product itself. You’ll get much better sound by using
multiple external microphones: a lavalier mic to isolate the demonstrator’s voice,