[Paul F]

It's not that hard to make a good looking video. There are some fundamental things that the inexperienced person doesn't pay attention to that make or break good quality. You can go from amateur to good looking with these basic things.

The camera - Lineslinger talks about broadcast quality. Today that is 1080P with I don't know how many lines of resolution. The real question is, can we see what your talking about clearly. Consumer cameras cheat with the way they record color and it can smear. The resolution is lower. That's ok. So long as you do some nice closeups and we can see or read whatever it is your showing us, mission accomplished. The better the lines of resolution of the camera, the better the final results. It's that simple. But use what you have. I assume you don't have $5000 to spend on a prosumer camera, so don't worry about the camera. Get the best you can and go with it.

You can shoot your video with one or multiple cameras. If you want live-action, shot in real time, then you need two and preferably 3 cameras. You cannot shoot a decent live-action video with one camera. However, you can shoot a great video with one camera of your not trying to capture live-action. Just set up shots, and get wide and close ups one at a time. Takes more time, but that's what's needed for a good video.

1. lighting - for video, good lighting is easy. You just need a LOT of diffused light. The more light the better. All video cameras work better with LOTS of light. That's why studios are so bright. The colors are better, the noise is less. Go get a bunch of cheap 500w flood lights from the hardware store. Soften the light with some thin white material on a wire frame. Or just bounce the light off the walls and ceiling if they are white. Very simple. Very cheap, reasonably good.

Audio - You have basic audio sources. The sound recorded during shooting and the sound recorded after shooting in post-production. The sound recorded during shooting is difficult to get good without expensive equipment. Notice that camera crews either have a microphone on the people talking or they have a person with a boom mic holding it just out of frame. Your probably not going to do either. If you do need to record sound during shooting, do get one or more wireless mics and put them on the people that are talking. Otherwise the sound is poor.

Sound recorded after shooting is in a nice quiet room with the microphone close to the speaker. Videos don't do this, but for movies, virtually all of the actors lines are re-recorded in post-production. You can do the same. That's a pain and takes time. Better is to just have someone narrate the video. Now you have really good control over sound, sound effects (wrench and engine sounds), and music.

Camera blocking - The worst thing you can do is run one continuous shot of what you are doing. Nobody wants to watch you walk up to the engine bay and move the camera into the carburetor. Take a wide shot of the engine bay. Take a shot of the carburetor, then edit it together. Nice. Yes, tripod shots are good. But handheld is acceptable if your not wobbling all around. The name of the game is 'coverage'. Think of the story you are working on and provide plenty of shots to make that story. Shoot wide. Shoot close. Don't zoom too much or not at all. Use close ups and cut them in if you feel the need to zoom in for detail. The basic idea is to establish a shot, such as someone pointing to something in a wide shot, and then shoot a separate closeup so we can see what he is talking about. When doing the closeups, get that 500 watt light in there with the camera for lots of diffused light.

Framing - Framing errors are quite common. Don't look at the subject. Look at the whole frame. What's in the frame that is distracting. When shooting a subject that is looking to the right, put them more towards the left part of the frame. This looks more natural. Watch your headroom. Don't cut their head off. Spend some time setting up shots instead of just doing one shot of the whole step, event, or whatever it is. 3-5 minutes of one take is hard to take. But then we don't need music video 3 cuts/second either.

If you pay attention to these basic things, you will have a nice video.