Seenit Academy - Learning about B-Roll, recording audio, and more!

So what is B-Roll footage?

B-Roll is the extra footage that supplements the main action in your video. Cutting away to this kind of supplementary footage is a technique that not only makes your video more visually interesting but also gives you flexibility when editing, so it is important to keep it in mind when planning your shot list.

So what do you do with your B-Roll?

B-Roll lets you cut away from the A-Roll footage, this can smooth out transitions between scenes, cover up the deletion of unwanted material or break up long takes making the scene more interesting for the audience. It can even add meaningful detail to the scene, enhancing a scenes drama or adding a punch of comedy.

Top tips for B-Roll

• Keep it relevant. Don’t just film something because it’s pretty or convenient, B-Roll is there to enhance your video!
• Get creative. Test out interesting techniques and shoot the same thing more than one way to give yourself options when editing.
• Don’t let your B-Roll overtake your A-Roll. B-Roll footage is there to give context and support, it is not the main action.

Recording Better Audio on Your Smartphone

When filming it’s easy to forget just how crucial clear audio can be. When audio is unclear it can make dialogue difficult to understand and the video hard to follow. Bad audio can make video clips unusable in the final edit even if they are strong visually. This unwanted background noise can be very difficult to edit out so it is essential to get it right when shooting.

So here are a few tips and tricks on how to capture great audio when using your smartphone.

Check your location

The microphone on your phone can very easily capture winds and other noises and can overpower what you are trying to record. Look out for busy streets, windy tunnels and rooms with an echo. You might want to do a test record in the location of your shoot to see if it creates any unwanted noise.

Cup your hands

This is an easy way to improve audio when shooting on a smartphone. Simply cup your hand around the microphone on the smartphone and point it towards the audio source. Your hands should block out most of the unwanted audio, creating a clearer sound.

Allow for room on each side of the clip

This is a pretty big one. Make sure that the dialogue hasn’t started before you hit record and has finished before you stop the recording. To be safe, allow for three seconds on either side of the recording.

Upgrade your kit

It might not always be possible to get close to your subject or be in a quiet environment. Adding an external microphone can improve the quality of the audio when the location you are filming in is quite loud.

You can also take a more DIY approach and try placing a bit of tape over the microphone to reduce the audio peaking, so you don’t hear the distortion.

Play it back

Finally always playback your video to make sure the audio is clear from beginning to end.

Following these simple tips will help you create high quality video straight from your phone.

And did you know that all of our Seenit Academy episodes are filmed using Seenit? Now, who says footage filmed with a phone can’t be good quality?

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