All courses / Shooting, story and sound
Half of what looks like an editing problem was made on location
The edit is where the trouble shows up. The two shots that will not cut together, the interview with a window behind it, the sound that has a fridge in it. None of those are editing problems.
One or two days on shooting material that actually cuts. Getting off automatic, framing that gives the editor options, and microphone technique — because sound is where most video is lost, and no plugin fully gets it back.
- Length1–2 days
- FormatOn site only
- LanguageNorwegian or English
- CategoryShooting, story and sound
After the course you can
Camera and shooting technique
- Shoot manually, and know why every setting is where you put it
- Frame and cover a scene so it can actually be cut
- Get clean sound in a room that was not built for it
- Shoot an interview that looks deliberate rather than available
- Think like an editor while the camera is still rolling
What we cover
The program
Off automatic
- Exposure: aperture, shutter and ISO as three decisions, not one
- Shutter angle and frame rate, and what each one does to motion
- White balance, and why automatic ruins a cut
- Lenses, focal length and depth of field
- Recording formats and codecs — what you gain and what you throw away
- When automatic wins
Framing and coverage
- Composition that leaves room for graphics and captions
- Shot sizes, and covering a scene so it can be cut
- Axes and directions — the rule that keeps geography readable
- Movement: when to move the camera and when to stop
- Shooting for vertical and horizontal at the same time
Sound
- Microphone choice: which one for which situation
- Microphone placement, which matters more than the microphone
- Levels, monitoring, and never trusting the camera's meter alone
- Room tone and atmosphere, and why you record twenty seconds of nothing
Thinking like an editor
- What the edit will need that you cannot see on location
- Cutaways and B-roll that are actually useful
- Continuity, and the mistakes that only appear in the edit
- Logging on location so somebody can find it later
The honest bit
This course is deliberately equipment-agnostic, which means it will not tell you what to buy. If your kit is genuinely holding you back I will say so, but nine times out of ten the camera is fine and the microphone, the lighting or the framing is the problem.
Who it is for
Anyone who films for their own organization: communication staff, content producers, journalists, photographers moving from stills, and editors who are increasingly sent out to shoot.
Prerequisites
A camera. It does not matter what camera you use or how old it is.
Bring
Your own cameras, lenses, microphones and whatever accessories you already bought. This course is taught on your equipment because the menus differ and the techniques do not.
Open courses
Prefer a fixed date for one person?
Also runs as an open course at Qross Kurssenter — classroom in Oslo and live online on the same dates.
Questions
About this course
We use phones, not cameras. Should we book this or the smartphone course?
The smartphone course. The techniques overlap, but that one is built around what a phone can and cannot do, and around the accessories that make it viable.
Why is this on-site only?
Because you cannot hand somebody a microphone or fix their framing over a video call. This one needs us in the same room with the actual equipment.
One day or two?
One day covers the camera. Two days lets us shoot properly, look at the material together and shoot again, and that second pass is where it sticks.
Related courses
Related courses
1–2 daysLighting for video
A new camera costs a month's budget and improves your pictures slightly.
1–3 daysVideo on a smartphone
Modern phones shoot material that holds up on any platform you are likely to publish on.
2 daysStorytelling for social video and short formats
A good story never goes out of fashion, but the patience your audience arrives with has collapsed.
Want this for your team?
Tell me what goes wrong today and you get a written plan and a price back. Two sentences is enough.