Lighting Mistakes and Audience Retention

Top 10 Lighting Mistakes Beginners Make

Generally speaking most intro lighting tutorials cover the subject of one, two or three point lighting as a starting point.

Unfortunately most of them then immediately leap off into very high concepts of lighting without really offering much middle ground.

That’s why I am leading off his week’s Friday Roundup with the tutorial below.

Whilst it covers many concepts that I am sure a lot of you have seen before it also takes those basics one or two steps further to provide both understanding and context.

Even with the automation offered in your average high end smart phone these days your results go through the roof if you can work some extra magic with the lighting.


Viewpoint – How to Make Great Videos, Commercials, and Films

A great reminder this week from Basic Filmmaker on getting out of your own head and getting into the heads of your audience.

Honestly it seems to be a skill or even just a consideration that so many people fail to grasp.

If you are making videos for other people to watch and you want them to watch then you have to be making something THEY want to watch and not what YOU THINK they want to watch.

Someone once said that Steven Spielberg is not a great film maker, he is a great marketer who can nail down with incredible accuracy exactly what the public want to see in a movie at any given time.


How to Organize Your Timeline – Wondershare Filmora Tutorial

If there is one piece of editing advice that I always get from Pro editors regardless of what program they are using it is this:

ALWAYS get all of your assets into the library within a folder structure that makes sense to you and with a naming protocol that similarly makes sense to you.

I have worked with pro’s over the years and I have never seen one just bang some stuff on the timeline and start editing!

They ALL spend quite a bit of time getting organized first. In the video below you can see a simple process done in Filmora but it is basically the same for any video editing software and any project.


Simple Documentary Style Intro – PowerDirector

As is the case with most walk through videos like this one I am not all that interested in what is being produced or how it looks in the end.

What I DO look at carefully and you should too is the WAY the whole thing is created and the tools used to get there.


PowerDirector – Create a Dynamic Picture in Picture Segment

To be honest I am not all that enthused about the results in this video but the process of using different features of PowerDirector to achieve a result is worth the watch.


TikTok Dance Video Effects with AI Object Detection – PowerDirector Tutorial

I have been playing around with the new A.I. Object Detection module in PowerDirector and I have to say it really is pretty good.

Obviously there are limitations especially when the Objects are either moving a lot or are not well contrasted against other elements in the shot.

However this module will get better over time as it “learns” and CyberLink are pretty up front about what it can and cannot do.


Character Freeze Effect – VideoStudio

Ah, it’s the old freeze frame to introduce a character trick! The difference being that this time we are doing it in Corel VideoStudio .


Keyframing Text in Filmora 11.7

This is an updated explanation of keyframing text in Filmora 11.7.7.

Previously you could keyframe motion into text by either accessing the controls in the Customization panel or by directly selecting the title on the preview screen and changing it there.

That latter method has been removed so now you have to go into the Animation tab in the Customization panel to change anything.

I actually think the reason for this was that if you had inadvertently left the animation tab open or another tab like Color correction you could mistakenly change something you didn’t want to.

I know I have done this myself a few time where what I meant to do was adjust the size and position of a clip but ended up adding a keyframe when that’s not what I wanted.


How You Can Use End Screen Templates in Split Screen of Filmora 11.7.6

Filmora 11.7.something came out last week and although there was not much in the way of new features there certainly was a bunch of new content.

Chief among them was an expanded library of Split Screen Templates and in the video below you can see how to use some of these to make great looking End Screen sequences for YouTube videos.


Your Awful Video Titles Aren’t Getting Views (Let’s Fix That)

There are only a few little details you need to get right to “get the click” for any video on YouTube.

Of course the trick is getting your video presented to an audience in the first place and that is certainly a much bigger subject!

However even when your video IS presented then in all reality the only thing being “presented” is the thumbnail and title.

Those are the two little details.

Check the video below for an extended masterclass on getting those titles just right.