Great tips! As a former student and now mentor of the film crew aspect of FIRST, it's great to see more and more teams becoming concerned with taking videos and documenting their season more effectively.
One thing I'd like to comment on is this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Don Rotolo
4. #3 above, you cannot hand-hold a camera.
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I agree that teams should try to use a tripod as much as possible, as that provides a video that is far less shaky and jumpy. However, I don't think it is impossible to hand-hold a camera once a person has experience doing so. After practice, one can achieve a fairly steady hand, and capture even more moments by hand-holding a camera. This will also depend on the type of video equipment you have, I suppose, but I've had success with both higher-quality and lower-quality equipment.
#1 in the original post said "Videographer as a mentor." I *think* this meant that the person taking the video should be a mentor. (Although I could definitely be reading this the wrong way and apologize if that's the case.) I think that this part of the process should be more of a student and mentor collaborative project than solely mentor-based. If it wasn't for the mentors I had on my first FIRST team--who showed me how to do just about EVERYTHING in the media world-- I would never have acquired the knowledge or skills that I'm now passing down to the students I'm mentoring on my new team. Furthermore, as has been said before, there is a whole slew of students who might not be as interested in the science and engineering realm of robotics who would love to have an outlet such as this. I only speak from experience on this one. If it weren't for those mentors, I wouldn't have realized my affinity to media and wouldn't be where I am today. So I would recommend opening videography to students, and resort to a mentor-based video team only if you can't get students who are interested.
Just my .02.