Video Production Tips

Discover the Joys of Video Making! Learn how to make your own videos for fun or profit

HELP! My Video File is Broken!

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It can be every videomaker’s nightmare.   You click play on your masterpiece– you know, the one that took months and three tons of sweat to finish?  But instead of displaying your filmmaking genius, the video file sputters and dies. OMG, it won’t even play! Yes, digital video files can “break.”  They can become corrupted in […]

Ten Pro Tips for Spectacular Wildlife Photography

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Nature is full of gorgeous, colorful animals that can make you gasp in wonder. Capturing the majesty on film is not always an easy task but it is vastly rewarding. The first challenge a wildlife photographer faces is location. A wildlife photographer has to go into the habitat of the animals in order to capture […]

Visual Communication: Advancing a Story Using Pictures.

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Projects For The Beginning Film Maker. One of the skills you need to develop to create professional-quality videos is the ability to think visually. Instead of words, you communicate using pictures.  What visual cues can you as the film director give the viewer so he or she “gets” it? You have to first think of […]

An Introduction to Documentary Filmmaking

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Documentary filmmaking is a subcategory of film and video production where the production crew creates a work of journalism rather than a fictional movie. Instead of making up fictional characters and creating a world of make-believe, the documentary filmmaker’s job is to document real life and real people by accurately and fairly telling their stories.   Journalism […]

Character Marketing: Why So Many Advertisements Feature Branding Characters

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Take a look at these eight marketing characters used to advertise national brands.  How many of them do you recognize? Do you know what product they represent? Every single time I showed pictures of marketing characters like this to my media students, they instantly knew almost every single character  They knew both the character name […]

Let’s Make a TV Commercial!

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Now that you have studied character marketing, it is time to come up with a product, a character and a commercial! Guidelines for your TV Commercial Project Your assignment is to create and produce a TV commercial using at least one character. Your commercial will promote a product using your character.  Remember, your character should […]

How to Create Original Characters for Your Movie

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BUILDING CHARACTERS FOR A MOVIE When creating characters for a movie, consider the many different ways people behave, look and speak. Do you know anyone like this in real life? It always helps to follow the writer’s adage: “write what you know.” You can learn by imitating what has been done to create popular characters […]

Member Dashboard

Welcome to the Member Dashboard for The Academy @ Video Production Tips.  From this page, you can navigate to whatever info you want.  The left side bar on contains a navigation menu as well. Write to me anytime and let me know how I can help you. I’ve put information inside The Academy into twelve […]