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Essential: Field Manual
Essential: Field Manual
Essential
Video Journalism
Field Manual
By Backpack Journalist Bill Gentile
Second Edition
BillGentile.com
Bill Gentile’s Essential Video Journalism Field Manual
Not just “Chain Gang” but every visual story you see or tell uses the same visual
alphabet, or the ABCs of the visual language. Our written alphabet contains 26
letters. The visual alphabet contains about half that. We’ll get to how we use the
ABCs of the visual language during the production phase, but it’s useful here to get
a sense of what the alphabet looks like.
Please keep in mind that these definitions may differ somewhat from shop to shop,
from outlet to outlet. Just like slang words can mean one thing in one part of the
country and something different in another. But these are the fundamentals that are
fairly standard across outlets. And we’ll be using them throughout our relationship,
so you should learn them and make them part of your new vocabulary.
Close-Up (CU)
The next shot is the CU, which is pretty
much from the top of the head to the
%XTRA #LOSE
5P 8#5 BASE OF THE CHIN 9OU CAN TAKE OFF THE
top of the head, or the top of the hair,
but you can never take off the chin,
for two reasons. The first is that the
audience wants to read the subject’s
mouth and expression, which are critical
in deciphering whether a person is
telling the truth or not. The second
reason is that editors and producers
#LOSE
5P #5 might want to put the person’s name
under his/her face and you need the
space at the bottom of the frame so
as not to have lettering appear over
the subject’s mouth. We refer to this
lettering as title or lower third.
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Bill Gentile’s Essential Video Journalism Field Manual
1 2
3 4
5 6
The camera follows the subject across the scene.
In a pan, the subject doesn’t move but the camera moves across the scene.
When doing a pan or a tilt, it’s important to do the reverse movement as well.
Stated differently, if you pan left to right, make sure to pan back the other way.
In the editing suite you’ll be happy that you did, because this will give you the full
range of material to work with. If you do a pan without a tripod, make sure that
you are well braced on something like a table or a wall. Instead of just moving your
arms, you want to make sure you use your whole body. This will give you stability.
Also, make a decision about exactly where you want the pan to begin and where
you want it to end. In other words, decide what you want to say with it. Another
way to think of pans and tilts is that they act as “stitches” that connect pieces of
visual material. They connect hands to a face, for example.
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Bill Gentile’s Essential Video Journalism Field Manual
1
Zoom (ZM)
There are two kinds of zoom shots, one Camera starts with a extra wide shot, zooms into
is executed with the camera and the a wide shot, zooms back out to an extra wide
other is done with your legs. shot.
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