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Documenting Our Stories! Where we come from and where we are going!Video Documenting 101Video cameras are the tool of we modern griots as we document our history for future generations. We encourage you to document your discoveries, interests and insights. The main stream media is money driven and rarely explores the REAL world we live in and care about. Minorities and minority interests get little coverage and what coverage they get is often derogatory and inaccurate. So it is up to us. Document your community! Document your trip to the motherland! Document your ancestor research! Document your spiritual journey! Document your view of the world. Document who you are and what draws your interest. Take that video camera and begin today! Do it in such a way that you can share it with others: family, friends, special interest groups, your spiritual community, public access television, public broadcasting and when you get really good or lucky sell it to commercial outlets. Why we document?We bought our first camcorder in 2001, a Sony digital High 8. (Today six years later you can get much better camcorders at a fraction of the price we paid.)We read some ‘How To’ books and by the beginning of 2002 we were ready to shoot our first documentary film. It was a 14-minute piece documenting our effort to organize the ‘Black History Month’ celebration in Sierra Vista, Arizona. This short film was broadcast on the local government channel. Our second year celebration generated some conflict and resulted in a one hour documentary focusing on institutional racism. Eventually we combined the two films into a DVD titled
“Two Februaries”.
Our interest focus on bridging the cultural and racial divides in our world. To date we have produced over 20 hours of DVD’s many of which are being shown on our local public access station. Most recently we submitted the DVD
“Priestess of Osun - My Practice”
to the Atlanta Independent Black Film Festival. It was gratifying to be accepted and to see it on the big screen.
It is a three-chip camera no longer in production and can be found for around $700. It produces excellent video and has the ability to produce 4MB still images. We came back with over 20 hours of video. We have used the footage to complete three documentaries “The Sister City Project”, 28 minutes, “Priestess of Osun; My Nigerian Initiation”, 58 minutes and "Chief Atanda on Ancestor Veneration" , 94 minutes. What do you need to document your interests?Today’s consumer digital camcorders are amazingly good. They are cheap, especially if you buy models that are a couple of years old. Do a little research on the Internet for reviews and prices. For reviews I often start here Camcorderinfo.com. Once I decide on a model that suits my needs I go to Nextag for prices. There are many informative sites on the web so read as much as you can stomach before you buy. Stay with reputable vendors (four stars or better). One of the most reputable Internet vendors is B & H . They are not the always the cheapest but you can trust them.
Before buying a camcorder read a little and decide what features may be important to you. We like the option of manual controls, large LCD screens help in focusing and composition, at least one external microphone input is a must in order to get decent audio. Poor audio mar’s most amateur productions and quite a few semi-pro efforts. That brings up the issue of in camera microphones. If you want good sound you will have to buy an external shot gun microphone. Consumer camcorders usually have miniplug (unbalanced) microphone inputs. We have a Sennheiser MKE 300 which currently lists for around $150 on the net. Unfortunately it is so sensitive to the camera zoom motor that we had to buy an additional shockmount for $150.
The Rode VideoMic may be a better buy; it comes with a shockmount and costs $150.
If you find yourself getting serious about this documentation process you may want to upgrade to a three chip “prosumer camcorder”. These camcorders are not quite professional but they get close. They are the camcorder of the professional low budget documentary and independent feature film makers. Our first prosumer camcorder was a Sony PD 150 and we recently added a Sony PD 170. Panasonic and JVC also make excellent three chip prosumer camcorders. Again older models are cheaper. For example our Sony PD 170 sold for nearly $4000 dollars when it first came out. We bought it for $2400 and it came with a free wide-angle lens converter.
Be aware that these camcorders usually have XLR microphone inputs and take advantage of higher quality microphones. Azden, makes reasonably priced quality microphones for the low budget professional. We have several microphones including a highly directional shotgun, Azden SGM-2X costing about $210 and
two wireless lavaliere microphones for interview work. The Samson UM1/77 sell for about $310. You will need a tripod with a fluid head.Hand holding the camera gives you great freedom of movement but most likely it will also give you a lot of footage that will make the viewer motion sick. Do your self a favor and buy the best tripod you can afford and it has to have a fluid head. Fluid head? What is that? It is where you attach the camera and it lets you smoothly pan and tilt.Good tripods are expensive. Really cheap ones are a waste of money. Monfrotto makes a wide range of reasonably priced tripods and fluid heads. Expect to spend at least $350.
Editing is next.Now you have this great footage and you need to get it on your computer so you can pull together the good stuff into a continuous story while delete the boring, shaky and embarrassing footage.Most recent computers have video editing tools as part of the operating system. Windows XP comes with ‘Windows Movie Maker’ and Apple has ‘i-Movie’ as editing systems. These programs will get you started. We are PC based and now use an advanced editing application (Adobe Production Studio, $1600.
There are many modestly priced editing suites that get the job done. The internet is full of ‘shareware’ and with a little research you may find a good program to meet your needs. A bit more upscale (about $350) are products like Ulead Media Studio Pro 8.0.
in which you can edit your video and audio, enhance it, and output it to tape or DVD. Many of these programs have a free trial version you can down load to see if it suits your needs. The learning curve on a full editing suit can be steep. You will probably want to buy a ‘How To’ book to help you find your sea legs. Amazon's video section is a good source for ‘How To’ books. So how do you get your video and audio into the computer?Firewire (Apple’ word). i.Link (Sony’s word) best known as IEEE 1394 interface. It is a little cable that goes from your camcorder to your computer and that is how your wonderful video ends up on your hard drive without any data loss. Many editing programs have the capacity to control your camera, once it is connected by IEEE1394. You just push buttons on your computer capture screen to tell your camera which segments (clips) of your raw footage you want to transfer onto your computer. The basics are fairly easy to learn. As you grow you will find most editing programs a goldmine of exciting possibilities. So have fun making the documentaries that you wish you could find on the commercial outlets. Post them on the internet so we can all enjoy and learn from them! Rainer Doost (c)2007 Production Economics - To learn more click here!
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