Make Bad Video Look Good
From Izzy Video Wiki
Everyone occasionally shoots bad video. I'm no different. The reason could be anything. Maybe I'm having difficulty getting the perfect composition, so I zoom too much. Maybe I forget to adjust the iris, so the depth of field is too shallow. Maybe I'm so focused on the picture, that I forget to monitor the audio, so I don't hear the motorcycle in the background! Things get really complicated when you add audio!
This article provides ideas on how to improve specific shooting errors. Because this is all inside a wiki, feel free to edit and revise, adding your own ideas.
Too Many Distracting Items in the Picture
Assuming you can't reshoot, I recommend a few different solutions.
- The first is to crop the video. If the distracting items are around the edges of the frame, sometimes you can eliminate them by cropping. It's especially convenient if the items are toward the top or bottom of the frame, because then you can crop the image to make it look widescreen, while simultaneously removing the distracting items.
- Blur portions of the video, leaving the subject in focus. This can be very effective. If you'd like to see an example of this, watch Izzy Video Episode 52.
- Magnify the image, so the subject is larger. When you magnify the image, anything around the borders falls out of the frame, and is therefore absent from the image. I use this technique more often than I'd care to admit.
These are just a portion of the techniques you can use. If you have more ideas, please take a moment to add them.
Bad Lighting
Bad Audio
Filtering: If you have a background noise, it might be of a different frequency than the noise you want to hear. By using a high-pass and/or low-pass audio filter, you might be able to reduce the background noise while keeping your foreground noise.
Room tone: It's useful to record 30 second of room tone to help fix audio later. Sometimes boosting the room tone can make background noise less distracting as long as it's more consistent. If you have background noise that is consistent but too loud, there are noise reduction filters which can use a sample of the room tone to selectively target the frequencies that make up the noise.
Subtitles: If your only concern is the legibility of what someone is saying, you may want to subtitle what they are saying. This is used in documentaries, while in fiction, the line would be re-recorded.
Re-recording: Sometimes you might want to replace the audio entirely with a new recording. Have someone listen to the recording of themselves, and then record them repeating each line. Assemble this with a track of the room tone to help make it match the other audio.
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