Recently, Videomaker completed its first-ever Basic Production Techniques webinar and we couldn’t be more pleased with the turn-out. There were so many good questions, but, unfortunately, not enough time to answer them all. Here, at Videomaker, we value every question presented and aim to answer each one of them. One question we were unable to answer within the allotted time was regarding basic tips for composing, lighting, and shooting a talking-head corporate video.

Great composition is vital to any video production. Generally, you always want to observe the rule of thirds. If you divide your frame into three equal parts, both vertically and horizontally, you’ll end up with a basic guideline for good composition. The goal here is to place your subject, or points of interest, on one of the intersections within your imaginary grid. In the case of shooting a “talking-head,” you will want to place the subjects eyes on an intersection located in the upper-third of the grid. If you can’t fit your entire subject into the frame, be sure to crop the top of the head and not the chin.

Since corporate videos are pretty straightforward, you don’t need to create an extravagant lighting scheme. A basic 3-point lighting setup – a key light, fill light, and hair light – should do the trick.

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On the surface, it certainly seems like you could put anything onto your favorite video sharing site. It seems like we’ve seen just about everything that could possibly be seen on video sharing sites over the past few years. The primary demarcation point, when it comes down to it, is whether a video being posted is a one-off production of a remarkable event, or something episodic.

We got a very nice mention from ReadWriteWeb a while back from regarding our just-completed Basic Production Techniques webinar. They reminded us of a few of the flagship episodic videos out there, including the venerable Ask a Ninja and iJustine, though there are a few that we’d add a few to that list too. Video sharing sites, at that point, do their best work in that they serve as a springboard to encourage viewers to subscribe to feeds in a somewhat more convenient way (though you can certainly subscribe via the sharing site itself, and that is certainly easy.) But it also lets you find new, related videos as well. And as we see it, the biggest coup one could hope to accomplish is to have an episode of an episodic series go viral, exposing viewers to a goldmine of previous episodes which might result in the clicking of the big golden “Subscribe” button. And that could mean ad revenue sharing…

It’s true, though, that YouTube comments are some of the most brutal things on the internet, right up there with having a comment disemvoweled on Boing Boing or any number of things that might appear on any political web site…

We just got out of our Videomaker Lounge and conference room feeling the glow of our first webinar with our partnership with YouTube. We’ve watched webinars, but have never conducted one ourselves, so this was a new learning experience for us here at Videomaker. We feel everything went well, the only hitch was not enough time for the live Q&A session at the end of our seminar. But isn’t that always the case?!? Read the rest of this entry »

This is an announcement for a joint event we’re producing with YouTube. We’re reprinting the original post from YouTube’s blog as posted by Mia Quagliarello, YouTube’s Community Manager.

YouTube’s Creator’s Corner and Videomaker magazine are excited to bring you the first in a series of Webinars that explore the basics of video production and will help you take your videos to the next level. Videomaker offers intensive weekend courses here in Northern California, and they’ve generously offered to share their knowledge with the global YouTube community for free, as well as take your questions.

The first seminar will focus on “Basic Shooting Techniques” and it’s scheduled for October 27, 2009, at 2 p.m. PT / 5 p.m. ET. Click here to register.

Because we want these sessions to be really useful for you, we want you to help us set the agenda. Below is a list of topics the class could cover. Vote in the poll in the top right corner of this blog to tell us which topic(s) you most want to know about. You can also submit and vote on specific questions here. We’ll use the results of the poll and the most popular questions as a guide when structuring the Webinar. Again, here are the topics you can vote for: