You may have heard that a hacker group calling themselves the Turkish Crime Family has threatened to lock 250 million users out of their Apple iCloud accounts if Apple doesn’t pay them $700,000 by April 7th. That’s scary! If you’re like me, you use your free iCloud account to sync addresses and notes between our devices. I don’t want anyone hacking into my account. Thankfully there are some simple precautions you can take to thwart any would be hackers.
change your password—especially if you use the same password for multiple accounts! —see the article for what makes a good password and an explanation of password managers.
set up Apple’s two-factor authentication. The article explains what it is and shows how to set it up.
There is some debate online as to whether or not these hackers can get to people’s iCloud accounts but either way it’s a good reminder that we can’t be complacent when it comes to passwords and the security of our accounts. We need to be proactive to ensure our accounts stay secure.
Story is KING! Without a story your video is just unrelated pretty pictures. All videos have to have some kind of story or theme that holds it together. Without a compelling story everything else in this post doesn’t matter.
Framing: Basic Shot Composition
Photographers and videographers refer to the Rule of Thirds as a cornerstone of taking good shots. Put simply, don’t place the subject of your photo directly in the middle of the frame. Have them one third into your frame from either side. Watch the video below for more info.
Lighting
Lighting will make or break a shot. There are two parts to great lighting. The first is to make sure your subject is well light. If you’re videoing people make sure their faces are well lit. This can be as easy as filming near a window or outside.
Once you’ve made sure your scene is well lit, think about using light for dramatic effect. Videographers and photographers talk about the golden hour. The golden hour is the first hour of daylight right around sunrise and the last hour right around sunset. Golden hour gives your shots a warm colour.
This video gives more detailed ideas for shooting at the golden hour.
Sound: Capturing Audio
Make sure you capture the best sound possible. People will watch less than perfect video but poor audio quality will have them clicking on to something else to watch very quickly. Here are some tips to ensure you capture good audio.
Film in a quiet place where you can control background noises. When you get to your filming location, stop and listen. Listen for noisy fans, humming refrigerators or barking dogs. If your location is noisy fix it.
Have your microphone up close to your talent. This may mean using a mic on a boom pole but it can be much simpler than that. It may be as simple as getting your camera closer to your subject. I once stuck my iPhone in my actor’s shirt pocket and used the Voice Memos App to record the audio as I filmed. It was a back up to a fancier audio recorder I was using. As it turned out the batteries in my audio recorder died so I used my iPhone’s audio for the last few minutes of the video. Nobody noticed.
Background music can be great but be purposeful when you use it. Your favorite song may not be the best music for your video.
Instrumental songs—songs without lyrics—are usually best because the brain can’t multitask. If people in your video are talking while there’s a song with lyrics playing in the background, the viewer’s brain tries to listen to both sets of words and it can’t. At least it can’t do it well. Scientifically, this is known as cognitive load.
So use music without lyrics but that’s not enough. It’s important that the volume of the background music is kept much lower than the actors speaking in your video. iMovie has a cool feature that lets you automatically drop the audio levels of the background music. It’s pretty handy. Use it but also check that it’s done it right by listening carefully to your entire movie. You may find that you have to make some further adjustments.
If you’re looking for more audio ideas Vid Authority has some more in depth tips for using background music in videos.
There you have it—Story, Shot Composition, Lighting and Sound. Control each of these elements and you’ll be on your way to your first Oscar!
Stories about and accusations of fake news are everywhere these days. The term fake news became popular after the US Presidential election though the meaning of the term has morphed since then. Regardless, it’s important to be able to spot inaccurate online information.
How NOT to Spot Fake News from PBS Idea Channel covers the topic of fake news while giving some good tips for spotting bogus news stories.
Additional Resources for Spotting Fake News
There’s not one guaranteed way to spot a fake news story but if you’re looking for some quick tips to help you spot one both FackCheck.org and the TedEd Blog have some good ideas.
Most of us have used Powerpoint for a long time, but using the animation features to create a video, may not be Powerpoint skills you have (neither did we, until recently!)
Here is a great way to make an animated typography (also referred to as kinetic typography) video to present information.
Here is a great tutorial to get you started, but then use your own creativity to share your content in style.
Podcasting is a pretty fun activity and GarageBand is a great tool for recording your podcasts. Here are three video tutorials to help you get started making a podcast using Garageband.
Garageband Settings
Quick Notes:
Create empty project
get rid of: 1234 (countdown and metranome), swap timer
Recording Tip
Quick Notes
If you make an error count 3 seconds and then go back to the beginning of the sentence with the error and keep going.
When you go to edit, look for the long gaps. Listen to the recording on either side of the gap to see if there’s an error to delete.
Make sure you have clicked “track” in the lower left hand corner to be able to select and delete sound bites.
You may have heard that a hacker group calling themselves the Turkish Crime Family has threatened to lock 250 million users out of their Apple iCloud accounts if Apple doesn’t pay them $700,000 by April 7th. That’s scary! If you’re like me, you use your free iCloud account to sync addresses and notes between our devices. I don’t want anyone hacking into my account. Thankfully there are some simple precautions you can take to thwart any would be hackers.
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