How I Plan Shots & Transitions | B ROLL 101

three two one wow okay let's do it without this big block but otherwise that was pretty good all right welcome back to another video today we're going to be talking about how i plan these shots in transitions that you see in my handheld b-roll style videos now quick disclaimer or warning the sequence we're going to be shooting today as an example for this tutorial is going to be a cliche it's been done a thousand times so i'm not encouraging you to go out and just copy exactly verbatim what we're doing but rather learn from these techniques and apply them to your future videos now in the past i have made other behind the scenes videos where i briefly talk about how i make a shot list and i prefer to do that over a storyboard but i've never gone in depth as to what that actually looks like and how i process and think about these shots before going into a shoot i'm the type of person who likes to write everything down with a piece of pen pen i like to use a piece of paper and a pencil so i can physically hold it in my hands and cross things out big shout out to limitless planner this is what i use for all of this sort of stuff step one is write down what objects or subjects depending on what you're shooting are going to appear in the video because we're making a food or product style video we can start by listing all of the ingredients as well as the tools we're going to be using to make this sequence we've got a blender blender cup a drinking cup jug of lemonade we also have the blender lid with the blades on top and of course we have a bag of frozen watermelon almost forgot metal straw okay so we've got our list of objects complete this is all the items and things that will appear in our sequence all written down on a piece of paper but the next step is to take these objects and associate them with actions we've got our drinking cup and our blender cup because they're both cups they can involve very similar actions so i'm just going to group them together we could roll we could flip or toss we could spin the idea is that right now we're just writing down all of our ideas and we can pick and choose narrow it down later now the frozen watermelon packaging i know it has a peelable seal at the top that you could sort of rip off so that could be an action so we'll write down peel we could even take the bag of watermelon and slam it down on the table let the chunks fly out of the bag we could even throw watermelon in the air probably not gonna do that because it's messy but it's an option but there it is that's our final list of all of our objects as well as our actions on one piece of paper now the next step step number three is to take those actions and turn them into a sequence or what i call a shot list what's great about a shot list or a shot sequence list is that there's no fixed storyboard this gives you room to get creative and adjust and try different things when you're shooting on location anyway we're gonna rip this out and we're gonna have it next to our notepad so we can now take those actions and turn them into actual shots when i'm beginning a sequence you want to introduce your first character in this case it's gonna be whatever tools we're using to make our smoothie all right shot number one we're gonna have this cup rolling into the frame you're gonna grab it stand it up right there okay it's upside down but let's just say this rolls into the frame in a certain direction and then sarah picks it up and places it down the next shot could also be a similar camera movement from left to right i'm thinking maybe opening the bag of watermelon so this rolls in place it down and then a hard cut or some kind of whip transition i'm not sure yet but same direction peeling the bag open so i think what i'm gonna do because we have that downward motion of the cup hitting the table the next shot will start with a subtle sort of downward motion with the camera and i'm pulling away from the bag as she'll be opening it peeling the packaging towards the camera ready [Music] our first shot as you saw is sarah rolling this cup across the table she picks it up and places it down on the table but the important thing here to realize is that as she's placing the cup on the table we have a tilt down motion with the camera you can see it goes down and that leads us into our next shot which also has that same downward motion right before she starts peeling open that bag if we play it back you'll see down down and that's why the two clips kind of tie together the thing is a lot of what you're seeing right now is actually achieved in editing because if we disable this adjustment that i made to the shot you can see right here i have a bunch of keyframes on the rotation and the scale of the clip so if i disable those the two shots don't actually tie in together as nicely this is less of a tilt down and more of a diagonal pan tilt which isn't what we want which is why i added that adjustment which makes it appear more like that tilt down motion so after peeling open that bag of watermelon the next logical thing to happen would be to somehow get the watermelon out of the bag i kind of like the idea of slamming the bag of watermelon down on the table and letting the chunks fly out too so like i already showed you she picks up the cup places it down takes us into this shot where she's peeling the bag open and then as it's pulling away we also have the pulling away movement in the next shot because it's pulling away from the bag as she hits it down and the watermelon flies out next step would be to get the watermelon into the cup i think what makes the most sense is to just have sarah drop the watermelon into the cup we could do that in slow motion and it would look pretty good when we're actually shooting this can totally change but this at least gives us an idea so that when we go to shoot i'm not standing there scratching my head wondering what to do so basically what i'm attempting to do is as she's dropping the watermelon and pulling the camera around and using the bag as some sort of mask to cut to the next shot and go [Music] so the watermelon chunks go into the cup the next thing that makes sense to me is that we add our lemonade so obviously that's going to be lemonade pouring into cup all right so we just ended off the last shot going into this bag of watermelon and the plan for this next shot is to start close up on the jug of lemonade and then fade those two clips together now of course after we add our ingredients to this cup we're going to put on the blender lid so that twists on we can write down twisting on the blender lid i'm going to start close on the jug pull out we see it pouring into the cup and then i'm gonna do a quick whip downward which will lead us into the next shot which will be screwing the lid of the blender onto the [Music] cup twist i think i'm gonna go down below after that what's the next shot so i think what i've decided is that to end the shot i'm gonna bring the camera below the table here and then i'll use that as a mask for our next shot [Music] so the blender lid goes on next thing we do is we blend okay after blending our ingredients and we have a smoothie we can of course pour the smoothie into our drinking cup so i'll just write down pouring smoothie is this a smoothie or a slushie [Music] slushy [Music] now we want our final hero shot our ending shot that could either be someone drinking the smoothie i personally like to end things off with a sort of pack shot so i'm thinking just glass with the smoothie on the table and adding the straw into the smoothie and then just calling it a day so we're gonna go placing straw in smoothie okay so this is our rough shot list completed it is quite short but remember we do have a list of actions that can be sprinkled and mixed into that sequence the point of the shot list is to keep us on track so that we're not wasting a ton of time while we're filming our video and it does serve as a reminder of the chronological order of our sequence so remember step one is to write down all of the objects the items that appear in your video step two is to write down the actions that you can do with said objects and step number three is to create a shot list around those actions that will serve as a rough guide now we're on to step number four which is the fun part and that is filming the video and getting those transitions a lot of it is done on the fly but this will hopefully make it a lot easier [Music] you

Channel: Daniel Schiffer

Views: 4,643,499

Keywords: epic b roll, epic handheld b roll, how to plan b roll, daniel schiffer b roll, filmmaking, how to plan shots, how to plan transitions, camera transitions, how to plan camera transitions, b roll, epic b roll tutorial, epic b roll daniel schiffer

Id: 3mZuJAWH1Ow

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 13 2020