You’re a progressive activists or organizer. You show up for events that teach people about your causes and confront officials who are not, generally speaking, asked to account for their actions. You learn things yourself that you didn’t know. You want to share what you’re learning at these events with your friends and everybody you know who you wish had been there but wasn’t.
So you pull out your camera phone or your DSLR or your camcorder and you start recording. You shoot a few minutes of one speaker and a few minutes of another and maybe get some crowd shots. At the end of the day you load it up to your Facebook page, your Twitter account, your Youtube channel and hope for the best.
It isn’t until you play the footage back that you realize that you were too far away from the speaker for your recording device to really get what they were saying. The conversation of the people standing next to you is pretty clear though. Or maybe the shot looked okay when you were shooting, but now that you’re looking at it, the African-American speaker’s face is pretty dark. The white folks standing next to her/him/they is fine though. Is there racism in the camera? Maybe. But it isn’t anything that can’t be overcome with a few good tips.
Understanding how to adjust the exposure settings on your so-called point and shoot device, making the best use of available light and placing the camera where the speaker not only looks good but can be heard are all techniques we’ll be teaching at Grassroots DC’s next Basic Videography Workshop.
There’s something to be said for sharing a few minutes of a good speaker at an event via social media. But if you want to make sure your video looks good, sounds good and maybe even includes a specific call to action, like, when is the next event? Who should they contact to join the cause? What specific policy should they ask their elected officials to support? Then this event is for you.
There will be food and young people are welcome. Contact liane@grassrootsdc.org for more information.
