Yup – Just do it!
Nike nailed it. It doesn’t matter if it’s blogging, podcasting, running a Facebook Page, or twitter. It could be writing a novel, or beginning a new career in photography or running a marathon. None of it happens if you don’t first START.
As it pertains to this topic (getting started in video) the people I see generally fall into one of three categories.
I’m UGLY and I’ll never start doing video
No matter what, this group will always feel they don’t look good enough on camera, they don’t like the way they sound, they don’t know what to say or how to say it. Video to them is an obstacle too big to go up over or around. Overcoming their personal lack of self confidence is way too far over my head (I wasn’t a psych major).
They really are not ugly and their voice? Never noticed it before. My answer to them? Just go off camera. Do video but start doing video without you. Have you heard of RealEstateShows? You don’t need to use it for real estate. And who knows… down the road maybe you’ll just might start getting a little more comfortable in front of the camera.
Let’s go! Push that Red Button!
These people will fire up the camera and figure it out as they go. Jump in with both feet. Instruction manual – what’s that? They are not afraid of making mistakes. Down the road they’ll learn what works and what doesn’t work. They’ll generally put out some crappy stuff but by trial and error they’ll improve.
When it comes to making it happen, they do – no matter what. They are astute watchers. They’ll see something and say “Why don’t we do that?” and guess what? They will. They don’t know the how or the what (yet) but that doesn’t slow them down. When it comes to knowledge – they acquire the street smarts via the school of hard knocks.
There’s a downside to this approach. When things go wrong, and they will, what happened? Without a true understanding of the technical aspects it’s impossible to fix what’s broken.
I need to Learn a Bunch first…
These are the peeps who will spend a huge amount of time trying to educate themselves on the topic. They’ll read every blog post, view endless hours of tutorials on YouTube, subscribe to newsletters, buy books. They’ll hit up the experts and ask every question they can think of.
They can carry on high level conversations about the topic way before they ever pick up their first camera. I think of this as book smart and there’s something to be said for it. There’s those that’ll want to point out the flip side – the lack of practical knowledge. I’m not going there right now.
There’s another downside to this approach. Failure to Launch. How do you know when you are ready enough to shoot your first video? There’s always going to be another new tutorial or post to read. This leads to a paralysis of sorts. And even IF they manage to shoot their first video – it wasn’t perfect was it? It’s back to the books and blogs and tutorials and as you might guess they never get around to shooting the second.
But that’s NOT me!
Chances are you don’t fit exactly into a single group and that’s ok, it was a gross generalization. The truth is we all are a little in each group, some more than others. The other truth is that no matter where we fall, we could all use a little more knowledge, right?
I want to reshare an incredible video series I found on YouTube. Corey is Canadian (some of the coolest people are), he’s funny, he’s smart and he’s entertaining. The series will walk you through MORE than you ever need to know about shooting your first video no matter what group you fall into. What will you learn? The fundamentals of White Balance, ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture. There’s 31 different videos in this series and yes you should watch each of them. You start with the one I have below.
Photo Credits: Hamed Saber, ralph and jenny , and James Cridland
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