It’s been a busy start to the year – kicking off with a day filming in the studio with Peter Walters of Power Visual on his ‘Cash from your Camcorder’ DVD.
I’ve known Peter for more years than I care to remember (oh OK – for over 25-years) and have worked with him on various projects but mainly as a freelance cameraman on cart racing. Peter’s main area of specialisation though is everything equestrian and he is well known for his series of SIVs (Special Interest Videos) on dressage and dog training which have sold in their tens of thousands!
Having achieved so much success with his own SIVs, in 2006 Peter went on to produce a set of DVDs with resources disk entitled, ‘Cash from your Camcorder – How to make and market your own Special Interest and How-to DVDs’. Once again Peter had lots of success with this DVD set which was reviewed in the IOV’s Focus magazine in December of that year.
But, like everything else in life, things have changed a fair bit in the SIV market since then. Whilst some of the information in the original series is still relevant there are many, many more opportunities and tools available for SIV producers to market their DVDs these days – especially online. Peter therefore felt compelled to re-shoot the DVD and, at the same time, has been developing a new website (www.VideoProfitsClub.com) to provide SIV producers with a whole range of support information and advice. The new DVD and website are being launched in March – but we shot a short 1-minute teaser to whet your appetite in the meantime.
Planning the day filming in the studio
Peter approached me just after Christmas about filming in the studio here and within a couple of days we had the shoot scheduled in. Whilst it looked like a challenge to re-shoot the all the talking head content in 1-day (more than an hour’s worth of footage) the benefit of working with Peter is that he’s a natural in front of camera and knows his subject really well. He knows all the tricks of the trade when it comes to making and marketing an SIV so nearly every section was filmed in a single take.
Though we’d allowed a full-day to shoot this, with Peter’s expertise and a little bit of forethought by me, we had all the material in the can by mid afternoon. Peter was extremely pleased with the end result and commented, “I was impressed by the fact that you’d bothered to produce an image for the backdrop from separate images I’d provided; that you helped with the scripting when I was unclear on precisely what I needed to say and that you re-framed and re-focused quickly during shooting so that there was little by way of wasted time.”
With the filming in the studio in the can Peter is now in the process of creating screen-grab material for sections where he talks the viewer through things like Google Ads and the other online resources which are covered in the DVD. These will all be voiced separately using Peter’s own Editors Keys Vocal Booth Pro (reviewed here).
Kit used whilst filming in the studio
Those who have seen my Kev’s Shed reviews will recognise the set but I personalised it to Peter with a graphic on the edit suite monitor which also doubled up as a backlight for his talking head piece. All other lighting was provided by my two Lishuai LED panels – with audio being captured using my Sony radio tie clip mic.
This job also gave me a great opportunity to put the JVC GY-HM650 through its paces. As Peter was going to do the main post production himself on his laptop using Serif software, and also because the video will be launched on DVD, I set the camera to record in MPEG4 format at 1440×1080 50i. We shot a couple of test clips and downloaded them to Peter’s laptop just to make sure the workflow was going to go as planned.
Conclusion
I wish Peter every success with his new DVD and website. From the parts I’ve seen whilst filming in the studio it’s going to be extremely useful to anyone looking to tap into the profitable world of SIVs.
To anyone else who fancies some time filming in the studio please drop me a line. I’m sure we can tweak things around to make it look even more different and relevant to your subject.