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…designed to help you use your abilityto create quality videos and stories for your nonprofit organization. we willbe starting the recording in just a moment. and we thank you for joining us today. welcometo the techsoup digital storytelling challenge. this is evonne haning,interactive producer for techsoup. for those of you who arenew to the techsoup world, techsoup is an international nonprofitorganization. we are based in san francisco with offices in over 30 countries aroundthe world. you will find us at techsoup.org. and if you are part of our global audience,you can also go to techsoupglobal.org to find an office inthe country near you.

for the last 25 years techsoup hasbeen providing technology resources including information, software, tools, andmany different types of educational resources including the digital storytelling challenge.during the month of february we are hosting the third annual techsoup digitalstorytelling challenge where we encourage you to make 1 minute videos or a five photo setthat helps tell the story of your organization. this can be some subset of your work. itcan be a program that you are proud of. it can be a tool for fundraising,advocacy, building volunteers, or whatever it is that your organization needs to accomplish.we are encouraging you to enter your videos and photo sets by february 29. andthe website for more information

is on your screen. it is tsdigs.org. and today we are happy to welcomedavid neff of lights camera help. i am going to bring up just a little bit ofinformation about david as we get started. you can see his lovely face there. david isthe creator and cofounder of lights camera help. he is an author. he is aspeaker, a network weaver, and he calls himself a social media scientist.he has been creating videos and stories with nonprofits for over 10 years includingwork with the american cancer society. and yes you can find him on twitter@daveiam.and you can find lights camera hel on twitter @npfilm. david i am going tobe passing the screen share on to you.

and thank you for joining us today. david: yeah, you bet. thanks forhaving me. that's such a bad photo, i need to update that on our website. evonne: well, we will let you make your ownstory. and there is actually a video of you on the tsdigs.org website as well.so you can see david in action if you are looking for informationabout the digital storytelling challenge. david, you were teaching ustoday about production, correct? david: that is correct. we are goingto walk through some basic steps on being able to go through. and ourfirst kind of session, rich vazquez

who is one of the cofounders of lightscamera help, and he is on our board currently, walked you guys through what to dobefore you ever picked up a camera. so today we will talk about whatto do once you pick up a camera or the iphone and startviewing yourselves. evonne: great. well, we are going to startout with a poll, and we wanted to find out just a little bit more information about who ouraudience is today, and what skill level we are at. so i am going to ask kyla to go aheadand share the poll with our audience. and then i am going to give you thescreen and let you take us through it. you will see the poll in front of you askingyou what is your video production skill level.

so let us know where you are at so that wecan help answer your questions in this hour. david, thank you, andthe floor is all yours. david: cool. thank you very much. socan you guys see the first slide there? kyla: we are actually still showing thepoll real quick, and i am going to close that in just a second david, just so youknow. i'm going to close the poll in about five, four, three, two, one. and really quicki'm going to go ahead and share those results just so everybody can see them. reallyquick, it looks like 40% say they have never created a video before.38% say they have created a few videos. 20% say they have created videos quite abit but are still learning. and 3% are ready

to teach other people how to make videos. soi'm going to close that and now it is all yours. david: i think that's perfect, kind of ourskill set, because what we are going for today is definitely that i have picked up a camera,or i am just now starting to pick up a camera. so i think we will be just perfect. so i will — are wechanging presenter right now? there we go, perfect. so i am going to take you through today. iwill first tell you guys a little bit about what is lights camera help. so lightscamera help was founded about four years ago, and we are the world's first organizationthat connects filmmakers and nonprofits,

nonprofits and filmmakers. and we are very bigbelievers in the fact that nonprofits, ngos, and cause driven organizationsshould be showing their message, not just talking about the message. so you canfind out more about us at lightscamerahelp.org or @npfilm on twitter. the hashtag of course, for this is #tsdigs, but we also have our own hash tagsthat we monitor at #lch and #npvideo. so the first thing we are going to talktoday is about putting your director's hat on. so kind of the idea as you areout doing film [indistinct…] working with volunteers, or the populationyou serve, or even with your internal staff, you have to have a differentmindset then what you normally have.

you have to have the ability to putyour director's hat on, and remember, and in fact embody all of thethings that we will talk about today. so i have here kind of the stereo typicalphoto of a director, very intense, wild hair, their headphones on to monitor theaudio, somebody behind him taking notes with their script in their hand. and maybeyou guys don't need to get that heavy, but you do need to remember to put yourdirector's hat on, because as a director, as a producer you are going to bedoing things you are uncomfortable with. and basically, you will also be doing stuffother people might be uncomfortable with. and this could be anythingfrom asking hard questions

all the way to asking your ceo to go changetheir shirt because it is not the right color. putting your director's hat on means a lot ofthings, but really it means having complete control of the situation as much as you can. so if yourceo messes up, you don't say hey, no worries. you say hey, we need to do that again. ifyou have a client that you are interviewing that is just not saying what you really need themto say, is figuring out what question to ask them to get that soundbite out of them. so thatis the main thing, and one of the main things that i wanted you guys to learn todayis putting that director's hat on when it comes to production. so we are going to go throughthe top five nonprofit video tips.

obviously this is a lot more involved than thetop 5 list, or a top 10 list, or any amount. we actually teach about a six hourfilm and video class off-line to people. and a big part of that is this production,and actually having you guys go out, complete worksheets, actually go film eachother, edit it, have computers in front of you. but today because of the time andtechnology we don't have that. so i want to give you guys simple take a ways thatyou can take away from the folks at techsou and lights camera help around how to thinkand how to actually go out and produce video. so number one is think in frames. i'm sure a lotof you've taken a photography class in high school, or college, or maybe at the post college-level,but we talk a lot about in photography,

in film the rule of thirds. so what you see hereon the left, and what you see here on the right are basically the same photo but with differentprinciples of photography applied to them. on the left you see kind ofa very boring great way shot. on the right you see what we like to call the "ruleof thirds," the ability for us to break up a shot in two thirds. so you see in this photo thereare one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine squares. and thosenine squares are across everything whether you are shooting with a wide anglelens, whether you are shooting with your iphone, or your android phone, or whether youare shooting with one of the flip cameras offered by our friendsand partners at techsoup.

we want you to look at images and break themup in your mind in to the rule of thirds. and what makes the rule of thirds work is thatthings that are not in the center of the rule of thirds automatically become interestingphotos. and when you go and look at the artwork in your house, or you go and look at photosthat you take of your children or your dogs, or of artwork that you have hanging up inmuseums, you see the most interesting things in our society. and the way that our mindsare programmed is to have things off centered using the rule of thirds. and so think this way. never have yourexecutive director, or a client, or a volunteer, or a patient lined up in the middleof a shot. that can be easy to do,

but it is also one of the most boring andvisually uninteresting things you can do. and that is why when you see professionaldocumentaries they always have people to the left or to the right. if they are on theleft they have a vase of flowers on the right, or a piece of artwork on the right,something to offset them in the screen. for us, in this frame, the picturethat is more interesting is on the right because it uses the rule of thirds. it isoffset and you see the clouds in the background. you see the sand below the rock fixture.so that is what is interesting to us is framing these thingsusing the rule of thirds. the second thing we are goingto talk today about is head room.

so this is something that a lot of peoplehave problems with. you are filming in a hurry. you haven't given yourself enoughtime. your subject has to leave. you are in a crowded environment.there are thousand reasons for you guys to film something and not leaveenough head room. but what it does is it makes you look unprofessional,and it also makes it a lot harder for you to go back and actually edit the product.so at the end of the day, if you have someone with too little head room or too much headroom, your editor's going to try to fix that when you give it to them. or if you are the editoryou're going to have to try to fix that later. so why not take the extra time to lineup your shot using the the rule of thirds

which none of these are, and then alsogiving the appropriate amount of head room. so you see in the first photo aportrait of guitarist that demonstrates an excessive amount of head room withthe subjects nose centered in the frame, a common mistake. number two, a subtlelack of head room with the subjects eyes only 28% of the way down from thetop, not 33%. for the third photo, good composition with the subjects eyesone third of the distance down from the to of the frame, following — you guessed it —the rule of thirds. and then the last panel, for moving images the act of zooming in tofill the frame with the subject requires tilting of the camera shown by the red lines tomaintain the correct amount of head room.

conversely, zooming outrequires tilting down. so what that means in plain englishis that you can adjust the camera. you can adjust the person. you can adjust thecamera. but what is a total pain to do afterwards is to try to adjust it in the editing. now a lot of you when you are doingyour tsdigs story will probably be doing maybe a little short documentary piece, ormaybe an interview with someone interesting, or maybe an interview with one of your clientsor your patients, or an expert in your field. so you want to make sure that you are liningthem up correctly using the rule of thirds. and you want to make sure that you are givingthem the appropriate amount of head room.

and when you watch youtube videos you willsee that people mess this up all the time. they either cut off the top of theperson's head, or they cut off the bottom, or the left side of their face is wayoff to the right or way off to the left. and you will just see people go crazy withthis. but what you want is really the perfect amount of head room to have aclean professional looking video. so the top 5 nonprofit video tips, number3 that we are going to talk about today is worry about sound. and this comesdown to technology at the end of the day, but it also comes down to common sense.so some of the hard and fast rules around sound is that people will always watcha video that has bad video but good sound.

so let me say that again. people willalways watch a video that has bad video but good sound. however, no one will watcha video that has good video but bad sound. so inversely that law is correct.you will want to make sure the sound in all of your video productions isas high-quality as you can make it. so that means putting your director's hat on.that means even though you schedule a meeting room on the left side of the hallway, when youget in there and you turn on the lights, and you hear that horriblehum from the fluorescents, and even though you scheduled it and youthought you were going to be in there, you have to put your director's hat on and belike, i know this is going to be a bad interview

because i can hear that fluorescent light hum.so we need to move. maybe we need to go outside. maybe we need to travel down thestreet to a quieter neighborhood. maybe we need to move insideif you planned to film outside. no matter how beautiful it isoutside you need to worry about sound. the worst thing that you can do is do anentire interview, watch it, play it back, and realize that the audio is messed up, orthe microphone level wasn't set high enough, or that you were too far away,or that you were to close. so you should alwaysbe worrying about sound. we are going to get to camerarecommendations in a second,

but we really encourage all of you to buycameras that have external microphones. so the ability to plug a microphone intoyour camera, and whether that is an android or an iphone or a kodak zi8 whichis a camera that we really like, you really want to go for a camerathat has the ability to buy a microphone and plug it into the side of it. now the flips are a little bit of an exceptionin that the flips have a really good audio quality and a good price. our friends attechsoup have been able to work with cisco to get those cameras back out tothe public. you see them on ebay. you guys probably might even see them at swapmeets and garage sales and things like that.

and those cameras have good audio,not as good as the next camera we are going to talk about. so what you guys see here is a really basicnice microphone by sony. it is the ecm ds70p. sony has absolutely horrible names for theirproducts. they are all a jumble of letters and numbers, but this is a greatmicrophone that you can find online. it's actually probably not as cheap aswhat you guys see here on google products, but you can find it used for aroundthis price. so for all the video shoots that lights camera help does whether we areinterviewing people who come to the film festival, whether we are interviewing each otherto do videos for the folks at techsoup,

or interviewing people at southby southwest, we use a kodak zi8 and then this sony ecm microphone,and that makes a great combo. but regardless of getting lost in therabbit hole of technology and microphones and how much to spend, acrossall cameras, across all models, whether you are spending $5000on a camera or $80 on a camera, you really want to look for one that you areable to actually plug an external microphone into. so number 4, buy (or hire) a good camera.so for the purpose of the tsdigs story you guys are doing really short videos. we reallywant to encourage you guys to film yourselves, or get people involved in your office, or yourvolunteers, or people that can help you with this.

but as you progress, as you begin to see thepower of video, you'll want to actually go out and hire people and find people who are good atshooting video in your neighborhood, in your city, in your town, and hire those local peopleor get them to volunteer. or find somebody at the local college who is looking to do avolunteer project as part of their service learning or an internship. and that is what lights camerahelp does. at our core we want to connect all of you on this phone call today with greatfilmmakers all across the united states and all across the world who make these causedriven nonprofit ngo focused type of films. so please, you guys can checkus out lightscamerahelp.org and then flash resources to see some of thegood local people we use in austin texas.

and then e-mail us forpeople all across the country who are good camerapeople to help you film. now in the case of tsdigs we arereally encouraging you guys to go out and do this on your own. so the camerasthat we love a little bit more than the fli although cisco makes a great product is theactual kodak zi8 which is what you see here. so the kodak zi8 is also not as cheap asthis. kodak i think last time i checked is either discontinuing it and has comeout with a new model. but we really love zi8 which you can find on ebay or craigslist, orget donated from people who are not using their's or whatever it might be. but the kodakzi8 we love because you can actually

put an sd card in the side of it. so you canstick an sd card in, fill it, pull it out. you can plug a microphone into theside of it. the battery life is great. it takes great 5.0 mega pixel still photosas well for those photography folks out there. and it records at 1080 p whichis just a great resolution. we love the flips too. flip has great hdresolution. the flip has good sound onboard, although you can't plug a microphoneinto it. and the flip actually has its own easy to use editing software which is a pluswhen it comes to you guys recording this. so cameras like this sub 200 cameras,sub $200 us cameras and things like that are a great price range for the types of videosthat we want you guys out and doing for tsdigs.

and the ability to pick up a camerathat weighs a couple of ounces, point it at your executive director and get a blogupdate, or point it at your director of fundraising and get a blog update, or walk down the halland interview somebody interacting with a patient or a client, or talk to somebody inthe field and have them record a video and send it back to your office topost as a blog is absolutely amazing and ties in perfectly to allyour social media channels. think of getting a camera like this, doinga 2 minute update about what you are up to and then being able to send that to facebook,twitter, all of your social media channels, updating it, putting it on youtube,google plus, is a phenomenal thing.

and it's technology that was notavailable even 2 to 3 years ago. so this is the flip. you see they use to have a flipspotlight program. we are all big fans of the flip. this is kind of a 'rest in peace' flip slideas it were. but our good friends at techsou have brought this back and are now able tooffer to you guys two one-hour flip video cameras and a tripod for $28 which isan absolutely phenomenal deal. and you can check that out attechsoup.org and actually go to the page. and like i said, we love these cameras. theywork perfectly on windows and macs as well. so the last thing we are going to talk about todayin kind of our high level overview of production and technique, is the abilityfor you guys to have good lighting

and for you guys to be able to have goodlighting when it comes to your video projects. so once again, some of you have neverpicked up a camera before. some of you have. some of you could be teaching thisclass right now according to our poll which i think is great. and some of youare probably professional film makers even dropping in. but we want youguys to come away with the idea that light is very, very important. so if you imagine what light lookslike in your office, if you are like me i am in a conference room right now. i'vegot one florescent light peering down at me, and i've got two fluorescent lights flippedupwards that are bouncing off the ceiling.

so this room actually has pretty good light. thereare not five banks of fluorescents shining down at me turning everything green which isthe color that fluorescents naturally are when you look at them.it's kind of a greenish hue. and instead, i've got one kind of softlittle led light looking down in the room with some really good back lighting.no matter where you guys are right now, except some of you hot in cubes,look at the closest window to you and take a second to just observe thetype of light coming in from the window. is it soft? is it hard light? is itfiltered through the shade in front of it? do you have venetian blinds onit? what does that light look like?

think about it inyour mind for a second. now, next time you are ableto, especially after this call, get up and just stand in front of the window.put your arm out and look at the shadows that are cast from the light. wheni do this in this conference room, even though i have a soft led bulb, i havehard shadows. i can make out shadow puppets on the wall, or the outline of my hand, orthe outline of my hair even on the walls. that is an important characteristic oflight, is how bright of a light is it? and of course the key when filmingis to manipulate that light, right? when you do your video entry fortsdigs, be aware of the light.

sometimes you can be outside inwhat we like to call the 'magic hour' which is later in the afternoon right before thesun starts to go down and the light is gorgeous. there are orange hues in the sky. thereis red, and all sorts of different colors. and sometimes the light will be perfect.if you go outside and film at high noon you are going to get a very harshstaring down at you, long shadows, light. and if you film in the morning, that is anothergreat time where the light is a little bit softer, a little bit nicer. for those of you who gorunning, i love the light that shines in the morning when i get up and take a run in austin texasaround 7:00 am. it is just absolutely gorgeous. and all of this is interpreted differentlyby you and i's eyes and what the camera sees.

so we have to adjust for what our eyes see,but then we have to take out our camera, take out our iphone, take out our android phone,and if that is what we are using for filming what does the light look like through the lensof a camera? and that is something very important to remember. you can't justgo on what you see yourself. you have to go on what thedigital device sees as well. the reason this photo that you guyssee on the screen is so interesting is the way the light is coming through her hair.it is illuminating the right side of her face, not the left side of her face. it isactually reflecting off of her jewelry. you can see that curtain behind her.it actually absorbs some of the light.

and your shots don't have tolook like this for tsdigs, right? but what we want you to think about isnot having shadows on people's faces, not having to have them wearsunglasses because you put them outside and they are staring directly intothe sun, not filming things at night where there is not enough light. we wantyou guys to pick good lighting conditions in your videos and really highlightpeople. we think of light as something that can really highlight the scene. it issomething that gives your video maybe even an edge off the next video in the tsdigs competition.so we really want you guys to play with light and put your director hat on. if you setup a chair somewhere and you get there

and the person you are interviewing isrunning late, and by the time they get there the light is bad, hey, sorry.we've got to reschedule. or hey, we are going to have to move.we are going to take all this stuff and move and go to another room. now, if you are filming outside that is one thing.if you are filming inside in a conference room and you like the light, that is the good thing.but if you want to even have an extra edge on this, there is something in the business welike to call standard three point lighting. so there are three lights, and that could belights in the room, or that could be lights that you go buy at your local hardwarestore, or you order off amazon.

just really simple work lights do thetrick. and number one is the key light. number two is the fill light. andnumber three is the back light. so the back light can go anywhere youwant it to go. you see that object. you see number one is on the left. number twois on the right. and number three is on the back. now number three is at an angle. the objectwould be the person facing towards the camera with one lighting the left side of his or her face,two lighting the right side of his or her face, and the back light just givinga nice soft glow behind them. what you want to avoid if you get thiscomplicated in your tsdigs video, is shadows. you want to set up the lights to eliminate asmuch of a shadow off a person's face as possible.

unless you are trying to put a shadow ontheir face for some sort of artistic reason, or maybe it is an old film noir movie andyou're trying to make the person look good or bad depending on the shadows. a greatmovie that uses shadows a lot is any of the coen brother'sfilms, but especially fargo. i mean, light was its owncharacter in fargo. and who knows, maybe we will see the tsdigs fargoequivalent this year now that i've said that. but standard three pointlighting is really easy to use, especially when you areactually interviewing someone. but then again, that is kind of an advance thing,but it is something you guys can definitely try out,

experiment with, and actuallybuild into the storytelling process. so unfortunately we have way too manyof you for exercise time on this call, but i will give you guys a little bit ofhomework. what i would like all of you to do that are going to participate in thetsdigs challenge, or even if you are not, is to do this little bit of homework. that isto simply find a partner in your office, at home, one of your kids, your boss, whoever itmight be, and do a little video exercise. take your camera whether it is your iphone, ordigital still camera that has video capabilities, or a kodak, or a flip, and just ask themtheir name. ask them their position title, and have them give you their missionstatement. what is the mission statement

of your organization? and then set it up.go outside and film it. film it inside. go film it in the back room of youroffice. go film it in your backyard and see what all those different conditionslook like. and that is really going to help you get ready for when you do the tsdigsvideo. and then give that person the camera and have them film you in twoor three different conditions. and then at the end of this homework assignmentyou will have six tiny little videos of 30 seconds each that you can watch and see how the lightis different, see how the sound is different. see if you put your director's haton and asked good hard questions. and then something that when you learn fromaaron bramley who is coming up later this month

on how to edit, you'll actually have six or maybefour or five or even six little pieces of video that you can then practice editing withbefore you do your main tsdigs entry. so that's the main things that i am going to covertoday. and i know it is kind of complicated stuff, but it is all based on really simple ideas andconcepts, stuff that hopefully you guys can do without a big expensive camera, something thatyou can do by screwing in an extra light bulb, or turning the lights off in a room.sitting by a road, see how cars sound when they drive by. and it is all experimentalgetting you guys ready to do your first video. and with that being said, i willhand it back over and take questions. of course i am happy to answer questions ontwitter for those of you who are a little bit shy.

i know the folks from techsoupare happy to do that as well. evonne: thank you david. that is veryhelpful. we have a lot of questions coming in. some of them are more nuts and bolts.and first off i am going to answer just a few quick questions about thetechsoup digital storytelling challenge. we have people asking ifit is too late to enter? no, not at all. you can enter yourphoto or your photo sets or videos. that's a 1 minute video, upthrough february 29 at tsdigs.org. and we've had people ask if they cando both a photo set and a short film. and yes, you can enter one in eachcategory. we encourage you to do so.

these webinars are recordedand archived at tsdigs.org. you can go and find our previous events.last week's webinar with rich was fantastic on writing and preproduction. and this onewill also be archived along with next week's with aaron bramley. if you look inthe chat window you will see the link to next week's webinar next thursday at 11:00am. and we would love to have you join us on that one will be on postproduction and lookingat what happens after you do the recording. so the other questions that are comingin are little more nuts and bolts. there are a few people askingabout those microphones. and we've also had a number of peopleasking about lots of other things.

so question about an externalmicrophone, mare swallow asks, i have an ap 2020 that has a usb mic. ifi plug that in an use my onboard camera on my mac, will that work? david: good question. i havenot used that microphone before, but i think that would work great justdepending on the microphone quality. if you are happy with it, and youare happy with the camera on your mac. if you have a pro or an air, of coursethey have great built-in cameras. then i think you have a prettygood solution right there. evonne: yes. and that also can work for thoseof you who are struggling with the quality

of your camera. for instance, we did havesomeone who was struggling with the flip ultra sound quality. and so keep in mind thatyou can record sound on a secondary device even while using a videocamera like your flip ultra. david: definitely. and i think aaron willcover too, that you guys can actually go out and film something really cool on your iphone,and then go in and do a little bit of a voiceover describing where you were, what you wereseeing, or getting that one friend of yours who has that amazing voice to do thevoiceover and have you write it for them. so that is always an option. andone of the great parts about film and production is mixing and patching.

evonne: right. and dave while we are here, aretheir particular software that you recommend for audio capture? david: yeah, that's a good question. i am abig imovie fan. and imovie actually let's you do voice capture in it as well, if you are on themac platform. and then there are just various and sundry online websites that let you —probably they were designed for podcasts — but just let you do audio quality. andthen of course, going back to the macs, not to over hype our friends at apple, but garageband makes an excellent recording tool as well. evonne: right. and there are othertools from adobe that are very useful that i have used as well. you can get a fairlygood audio capture even off of an iphone.

and so think about like if you needto get audio in the moment with someone that you are not going to be able to bringinto the office, get them in a quiet room and record what you can. and then you may beable to do some mastering of that sound later. we have a similar question. can youdiscuss an extensive software for editing. these are people who have found that theyhave hit the limit on what they could do with the flip cam software. so besides imovieare there other tools that you can recommend? david: yeah, you've bet. the good part isthat besides imovie is premier. adobe premier is coming down in cost a lot. so adobe premieris something interesting for you guys to look at. lightbox, l-i-g-h-t-b-o-x makes an open sourcevideo editing program that is really robust.

it also has a difficult learning curve to it, sothat one is a little bit tricky to teach yourself, but there is a good community online aroundlightbox. but in reality, video editing software is usually pricy and has a bit of alearning curve, just because it can and because there are only certainpeople in that market making it. and no one yet has designed that just killervideo app. so for all you software people out there trying to think of your next big idea,a cloud based video editing software that is easy to use i'm sure would kill. evonne: absolutely. and keep in mind thatthere are now apps available for your ipad. so you could even shoot via your ipad or yoursmart phone and edit it in the device itself.

there are a handful of apps that i have used.i can't say that i recommend one over the other, but there are different tutorials and websitesthat you can look at that will compare and contrast the different apps that are available. mostof them are under five dollars which is great. if you are looking for a low cost solutionthat is going to allow you or your volunteers to shoot on the fly, or out the field. we have a lot of questionscoming in around lighting. so i am going to gothrough a few of these here. the first one, can you talk a little moreabout lighting? a lot of our building is darker. any recommendations about whatlighting to use or where to purchase?

david: so leave your building; recommendation.you know, people should not be tied to spaces for any of these videos. if you have agreat story to tell, and you want to tell it in your community garden, or a park,or someone's house that is just perfect, then you should be able to go anddo that. so don't be tied to spaces. and if your building hasbad lighting, avoid it. evonne: that's very true. and otherswere asking about temperature of lighting. and this is something that we work with quitefrequently. i live and work in hollywood, and have a special effectscompany on the side as well. and you can use very simple and inexpensiveleds. but keep in mind that leds maybe too cool.

if it is a light leds it is goingto look a little bit bluish at times, and so you may look for something a littlebit warmer. there are warm white leds. and those are going to be a little bitkinder to skin tone versus a cooler white led. but you can get very low cost clip lights for $10to $15, and use that effectively in your office if you need to go ahead and do a shootin the office showing what you are doing. there are a lot of differentways to do low-cost lighting. i recommend clip lights becausethey are very easy to move around. david: and the only thing i would add to thatis if you are asking about color, temperatures, and lights, you are probably above and beyondsome of the stuff we talked about today.

but if you are actually looking to spendmoney and by lights, is always go led. led lights, although they cost more than atraditional lighting kits, make beautiful changes in color. i love the lights. you can actuallychange on the fly what color they are through gels, or its preprogrammed to turn red when youhit a button depending on the lights you need. and leds are going to be a lot better obviouslyfor your electricity bill, and for your health in that they are not burning hundredsof degrees, and can severely burned you if they break or explode, or ifyou touch them in the wrong way. so led lights are definitelythe wave of the future. evonne: yes. and we are seeing clip light,like you can get at your local hardware store.

a very simple clip light with a light bulb in it,they allow you to sort of attach it to different types of things, so that makes it easier toposition the light exactly where you need it to get the right light shining on your subjects.so thank you for those questions that are coming in. david: yeah. and the other tip and trick i wouldadd is ikea, the universal furniture company, at least here in the united states, and inother countries as well has a great desk light that clips on. so it is basically your standarddesk light that you have in any corporate setting, but it has a great clip on it.and it is maybe $18 at ikea. evonne: great. and it sounds like anumber of the questions that are coming in, some of them are around alternativeways to tell story beyond video.

and just a note, we had someone ask, doesit have to be video, or can it be photos that are put into basicallya one minute photomontage? and last year our tsdigs winner did exactlythis. they took their photos i believe into imovie or something similar, and itwas just photos with a voiceover. it was very simple but it was very effectivestorytelling. so do not feel limited to capturing video to create a video. you cancertainly use your photos and put them together in creative ways to createvideo out of your photo sets. we have a number of people asking about morequestions on the audio than anything else, the best and cheapest way to capture audio.are there any sort of on the fly solutions

that you would recommenddavid, that we haven't hit yet? david: evonne, i think you nailed thatone on the head when you said your iphone, or your android phone. theability to capture audio on the fly is definitely the realm of mobiledevices. so whether it is an app, whether it is something that is normally on yourphone, that always makes a cool tool to have. and even though i see a lot of directorswho do this when you are filming with your normal camera, you have aniphone on the table capturing audio. as long as your iphone is not ringing in the middleof the interview, that could be very beneficial to have a secondary stream.so go into mobile devices.

when i was at the american cancersociety about six or seven years ago, i remember i actually went out and boughtlittle audio recorders that were digital made by the folks at creative labs, ifyou remember the guys at creative labs. and we would take these andactually do podcasts from them. or if our ceo was giving a speech we wouldput one right up next to him on the podium. or while we were filming we would have thatsecondary source of audio from an mp3 player that was set on record. so definitelyget creative around the audio. nowadays of course it's a lot simpler thanit was back in my dinosaur ages of production in that you can just put your cellphonedown and fire up and have it record.

does evernote record audio as well? evonne: i haven't used evernotefor audio, but there may be others. we've had a couple people asking about ourfavorite apps for the iphone, or for the android for doing editing and also for capture. idon't know if you have any particular apps you would recommend. david: i don't. i am kind of old school inthat i love to do all my editing on the computer versus the mobile. so maybe somebodyelse on the call can throw that out there. evonne: yes. okay, so i am looking throughour questions to see which ones we have missed. for those of you who are wondering ifthese sessions are recorded, they are.

the slides along with the recordingwill be available on our website soon, and we will be sure to send afollow-up not only for this week, but also encouraging you to registerfor next week's webinar with aaron where we will be talking aboutpostproduction, and getting into deeper on how to do the editing side, andthen how to handle distribution as well. we have a mention here around imotion as apotential app to look at. i am testing one called blurb mobile right now on my ipad whichallows you to weave together photos, videos, and audio capture into one's story. and thereare some really interesting apps been developed right now for bringing together differenttypes of media into creating rich stories

that are available and that can be pushed toyoutube and to your other social sites as well. we have a few more questions around howto deal with those of us who have cameras with the microphone inside, is there a way to stillshoot with a device with the microphone inside? how close do we have to be in order to get goodsound quality? and you give us in tips on that? david: good question. and our goodfriend michael delong says yes, evernote does record audio. so forthose evernote addicts out there which i have recently become one, that isa good source for audio as well is evernote. and then on the video, it's true. you want to be2 to 3 feet away from someone to get good audio, not more than that. i mean, it is hard,it is definitely hard with anything

that has an internal microphone to rely on it. andlike i said you know, people are correct to worry about audio, because people willflip away if there is bad audio. but the good thing is that you put your director'shat on. you film it and then you say hey thanks. can you hang around a second while i previewthis. and then you play the entire thing back while they are there. they can get to sit thereawkwardly and make small talk while you listen. and then you see if it's good. and if itis good you call it a wrap. you're done. but if it is bad, you move closer or youmove farther away because they talk loud. so good audio versus bad audioreally comes down to the person. and we like to blame technology, butin reality it is up to us as producers

and directors to put that hat onand re-do it if it is not good. evonne: and we also have some questionsaround how to deal with motion. let's say you are out in the fieldwith your smart phone or your flip cam and you don't have a tripod. arethere any tips to keeping it steady? david: yeah, good question. just hold your armback and keep your arm as close to your body as possible. so you will seeprofessional photographers do that. you will see professional video folks dothat. even the guy who shoots your local news keeps that camera on their shoulder or asclose as possible as they can to their body to keep it still. so that is a big, big taperight there, is just to keep that arm close,

and keep it as close as you can intoyour body to keep that camera image still. and plus, you know, we are very lucky nowdays. we are spoiled by image stabilization that is built into everything from oursmart phones, to the kodak, to the flip. so that is always goingto help you as well. evonne: great. this has been extremelyhelpful. i hope we are getting to as many of these questions as possible. we'vehad a couple of questions around people wanting to use dslrs that have good videocapability, people who are journalists and need a camera, but want onethat will do both stills and video. do you have anyparticular recommendations?

david: gosh. i mean, that is its own sub fieldof what we do for a living, and entire classes are taught on dslrs. so if you have the moneyto go out and spend 3k on a canon 7d, or a ti, or a 2, or all those beautiful, beautifulcameras out there, by all means, go do it. i think that's a little above andbeyond most nonprofit's folks' resources. but a digital slr that shootsvideo, especially nice hd video, i have just seen absolutely amazingshot on those. so if you have the money and you have the budget, definitelyby one. i think they are great. and i especially lovethe canon products. evonne: yes, yes, i agree. the canon'shave great lenses. some of the sonys

with the zeiss lens are quite good. and youcan even find dslrs that will shoot in 3-d which the fujis are really fascinatingif you are looking to do something unique, and possibly appropriatefor 3-d as well. we have a couple morequestions — go ahead. david: i was going to say evonne, are you readyfor your first 3-d film in tsdigs this year? evonne: i would love to see 3-d film intsdigs, and i would love to see more nonprofits able to get their 3-d films into the marketplace, because there are media producers and distributors hungry for good 3-d contentright now. there are more 3-d channels than there are content. so we havean opportunity therefore nonprofits

to think about how to tell their story andnew ways, especially if you can take people into places that they haven't been before,if you are giving them an opportunity to see a perspective that they arenever otherwise going to get to, that can be an extraordinarystorytelling tool. david: yes. i am absolutelyready to screen our first 3-d film at the lights camera help filmfestival this year. so bring it on guys. evonne: great, great. we have someother questions coming in around other types of software like corel, videosstudio x4. i've also used final cut express. these are tools that you may be ableto get sure hands on fairly affordably

depending on your educationallicensing and those sorts of things. some libraries have access tothose quite affordably as well. so whatever video editing tool you can getyour hands on and feel capable to learn and use would be an appropriate tool for you.but if it feels like it is too much, or if it feels like it is going to take youtoo long to learn it, go for a simpler tool. something like imovie is very intuitive. yesterdaywe also talked about some of the online tools like wevideo and stroome that allow you todo it online with your collaborative teams, and not necessarily need to learnthe nuts and bolts of video editing. so we have just a few more questions.any recommendations for framing

regarding subtitling and subheadings?does that change your frame? david: good question. it usually isgoing to always be the lower thirds, so it shouldn't change your framing if you haveyour interview subject on the left-hand side. you have something visually interesting onthe right-hand of the screen such as a piece of artwork, or flowers, or a candle, nothingthat is alive and moving. avoid cats, dogs, animals in your frame whichcan be very, very distracting unless you are an animal rescueorganization, then that makes sense. but the titles in that case would either beat the bottom left, so underneath your subject, or the bottom right underneath yourvisually interesting artwork or flowers.

so i am not too worried about that, becausethat is always going to be in the lower thirds of your shots. so don't worry aboutthat too much. but yes, the more tsdigs we saw that had nice titlescoming across the bottom, and had that kind of professionalshine, i think the better. evonne: yes, absolutely, and especially aswe are thinking about international audiences and being able to have our globalstories be understood, subtitles. and yesterday also talked about a toolcalled dot sub that can be very helpful for getting your stories out into multiplelanguages as well. so we encourage you to go ahead and think about subtitling, not only foraccessibility, but for international audiences.

we have had a number of questionscoming in about the flip cams and whether there will be more in stock. wewill do our best to get more information on that, and get back to you as a community in ourfollow-up e-mails. i know that there have been flip cams, and i know that they have beenvery quickly flying through the techsoup stock. so we will do our very best to findout more of a product update on that. and let me see, there were some questionsaround whether audacity for windows would do the sound editing. ibelieve that would work fine. i have not used audacity, have you dave? david: i have used audacity. it has been probablytwo years. but i really did like audacity.

i used it for a lot of podcasting back in the day.so i am sure if it has maintained its product level, that would be great. evonne: yes. and for those of youasking about youtube and google plus, we will be talking more about distributionnext week. so if you want to tune in to our tweetchat on tuesday, on socialamplification. that will be tuesday at 11:00 am. also, you can check in and for our nextwebinar as well, and that will be next thursday with aaron your colleague. you can see that onthe screen right now, the tweetchat on the 14th is on amplification and helping to getyour story shared, where google plus and youtube come in very handy. and thenwe are going to talk more postproduction

with aaron on thursday at the same time. you will also see on your screenright now to the tsdigs google group. if you have more questions and wantto speak to others in the challenge, you can join the google group. and you canget your questions answered in our forums. and dave, and aaron, and many of ourpros have been hopping in there to answer your questions regularly. so we encourage youto go ahead and use these resources as well if you didn't get your questionsanswered during this particular session. and as a reminder, you do have until february29, so now is not too late to start creating your stories and get them up and running. wewould like to see your photo sets or your videos.

david: 20 days left. that's veryexciting for everybody out there. evonne: yes. i have some reallyfascinating questions coming in. and thank you to our audience todayfor giving us so many different options. again, those of you who want to dothe five pictures set of the video, you may want to try something likeanimoto for a very quick version of that. otherwise you may want to do that inimovie to put in audio track or a voiceover on top of your five photos. that can bea much more effective storytelling method for some people. it helps set the tone, andit also makes it available in different ways. okay, interesting. we had some questionsaround color to suggest for a one-on-one video.

i am not sure if there is one color oranother that would set a tone appropriate. but dave, any suggestions? i knowi tell people never to wear patterns on camera because thatcan be really trippy. david: i am a big fan of blues and greens. avoidthe purples and the reds and things like that. i don't know. it goes back and forth. i seepeople wearing earth tones and they look like they melt into the couch behind them. but iguess that all depends on the color of the couch as well. but yeah, evonne is right. avoidpatterns, and wild stripes, and big hats that cover people's faces. if youare outside i know a lot of people want put people in sunglasses, but unless youare going for that miami vice cool hipster look,

try to avoid sunglasses. peoplelike to see people's eyes. evonne: very true, very true. and for thoseof you who can't possibly show your subject for one reason or another, whether it is asafety concern or a need to retain anonymity, think about finding different ways. you canuse silhouettes. instead of showing their faces you can show their hands while you haveaudio of them. hands are very personal and allow you to feel connected to the personwithout necessarily showing their full body or their face. so thereare ways to feature them. david: yeah. and another good thing on that,evonne is absolutely right on the hands. but you know, you can show the backs of people,so if it is kids, the backs of kids playing

on a playground. maybe it's a softer focusso you can't really see what's going on, but you know people are there laughinghaving a good time on a playground. another thing is feet. i always love, if you areshowing an event just showing hundreds of feet walking towards the camera, or peoplerunning if it is a running event, or if it is a concert the same thing, thatkind of just low to the ground interesting shot of people walking or running ordancing is always a very cool shot. evonne: yes, thank you david for helpingus figure out how to be both personable and personal in the way we tell our stories.thank you for the tips on lighting, and framing, and sound quality. and also, thank you toall of our participants and guests today

who have been asking great questions. if you did not get your question answered, pleasego to the forums. that is bit.ly/tsdigsforum again, for that url. and we wouldlove to answer your questions there. from all of us at techsoup this is evonne haning,interactive producer. i am joined by kyla hunt our webinar producer, and davidneff of lights camera help. thank you so much david for joining us today. david: yeah. and i just want to thanksusan, evonne, christy, michael, kyla, and everyone who has just beenamazing at techsoup for having us, and letting us be apartner in tsdigs this year.

evonne: well thank you for powering us. and wewill let you go for today, and thank you again for joining us next week for thenext webinar and the next tweetchat. have a great day everyone. and we willrecord this and archive this section for you. thank you for joining us at techsoup.