Vimeo Video School is basically a curated and categorized directory of filmmaking tutorial videos on Vimeo, as well as original tutorial series by Vimeo themselves that take the form of both posts and videos.

The videos range from the very broad (“Shooting Basics“) which are geared more toward beginners, to the very specific (“Nighttime Shooting with a DSLR“). Some are very technical and professional, and some are oriented towards a much larger and less professional audience (like a post on how to make a great Christmas video).

In fact, one of the things we found really useful about this series is an entire series by Vimeo on DSLR filmmaking. They paired a DSLR expert with a DSLR newcomer which makes the videos much more watchable than having one person talk at you.

Vimeo put a lot of resources into creating a lot of tutorial videos as well as indexing a lot of the best tutorial videos on their site, which makes it a fantastic “first stop” if you are looking for a tutorial on a specific topic. It definitely beats searching for tutorials on YouTube.

What is Hiss?

Not to be confused with hum, hiss is a persistant noise on a recording that sounds like … well … hiss. Turn the sound up loud enough and you will almost always here some on your recording. A low levels, it isn’t much of a problem.

The problem is when you have hiss on a recording that is distracting – say from a bad microphone or from turning up low dialogue. You could also be trying to restore an old recording that has hiss on it. Wherever it comes from, however, it’s annoying and needs to be destroyed.

The Basic Method of Getting Rid of Hiss

Hiss removal involves a few similar steps no matter what software you are using. First of all, you need to find a sample of hiss just by itself. That way the audio program knows what the hiss actually sounds like isolated – before that, it could get hiss confused with other parts of your recording. After setting some parameters, your tool of choice will try to remove that hiss from the recording without damaging any other areas.

To illustrate, I am going to take a look at removing hiss from two programs: Audacity and iZotope RX.

Removing Hiss with Audacity

If you are not familiar, Audacity is a great (and free) audio tool for Mac and PC. You can get it here. To get started, open it up, and import a piece of audio.

After importing your track, look closely for a small chunk of audio where there is only noise. After you’ve found it, select that portion of audio.

Select Noise Removal… out of the drop down list of effects from the Effects menu. This will give you a little dialog box that presents a handy two step guide. The first, is to get a noise profile. Since we’ve selected our noise profile area, we can just click the “Get Noise Profile” button.

Once you have the noise profile, deselect the noise profile area, and get back to the two step panel. You can adjust the noise reduction amount, preview it, and hit okay. Play back your audio, and the hiss is now minimized or gone.

As we mention in our limitations section, your audio may be affected depending on the Noise Reduction level you’ve chosen. If you are getting audio that sounds like it was recorded underwater, it is time to go back and rethink your parameters.

Removing Hiss with iZotope RX

iZotope RX is a fantastic program that is well worth the fact that it is not free. You can get it at BHPhoto.com.

What does iZotope RX have that free solutions don’t have? Well first of all, it can do a lot more than take out hiss, but we are sticking to hiss in this article. One of my favorite features of iZotope RX is its Spectrogram information. It can be viewed right on top of the more conventional wave pattern:

This view allows you to see – in much greater detail – disturbances or irregularity in audio. For instance, hum can be observed as a single line shooting horizontally through a recording. Hiss appears as “noise” you can see in the background of the audio.

Removal works in a similar fashion to Audacity. Find a portion of the audio where just the hiss is present, click the Denoiser button and click Train. This will “train” the program in the audio noise profile of the recording.

As in Audacity, you have a Noise Reduction level and a Smoothing option. However, you also have a choice of several algorithms that might give different results. Some take longer to process, but it is worth it to see which one might fit your situation the best.

When using an advanced program like iZotope RX, it is a good idea to look through their documentation. In the case of iZotope RX, the documentation happens to be extremely helpful and thorough.

Limitations

Of course, there are limitations. Like we mentioned in our previous post, audio is like a bowl of soup. You are going to take out some things you want to leave in. Since every piece of audio is very different, you’ll need to do some experimenting with parameters to see what level of removal leaves your audio suitably in tact.

However, Atom.com prides itself in blending mainstream and indie media. One aspect that highlights this point may also be particularly useful to the DiY-Filmmaker, and that aspect is Atom’s World Famous Cash-Money Internet Comedy Tournament. The rules are simple, and best described by the site itself:

WHAT IS THE TOURNAMENT? The Tournament is a weekly competition beginning April 19, 2010 celebrating the funniest and most popular original comedy videos recently uploaded to Atom.com (“Atom”).

HOW DOES ONE ENTER THE TOURNAMENT? Entering the Tournament is simple. Just upload an original comedy video to Atom.com and in the process, agree to our User Content Submission Agreement, Terms of Use, and these Official Rules. Video specifications including video formats and file size limits are communicated during the upload process.

Readers of this blog know we aren’t the type to just tell you about an online comedy video tournament for no reason. What makes Atom’s World Famous Cash-Money Internet Comedy Tournament so great is not the prizes (though the prizes are kinda sweet), the real value of this tournament is the Creator’s Kit that Atom.com provides for contest participants.

Homemade Jib-Arm not included in Kit.

In this kit you will find a great fourm about the tournament, a short list of web resources for production, and best of all, a list of dozens of “free” production music provided exclusively for use in this contest. You read that right, Atom.com provides free production music to use in project submitted to their tournament. And this isn’t some crappy recycled loops like you get from a royalty-free music DVD, these are professionally made music trackes composed by Matt Messina, the composer of Juno and other films.

I entered the contest a year or 2 ago, not because I wanted to win anything (which I didn’t), but because I wanted to use the provided music to see what I could come up with. It turned out awful, but the music was perfect! So, I post my contribution here with the request that someone, anyone, make something better and link it in a comment at the bottom of this post.

So when I am doing something video related, I like to bring a checklist. You know why? Because checklists are simple. They are idiot proof as long as you actually look at them. Here’s a primer 101 on how checklists work:

1. The checklist has a list of things to do.

2. If you do a thing, you check it off.

3. You keep doing things on the checklist until they are all checked off.

4. When they are all checked off, you are done.

Check that out. Simple. Effective. Idiot Proof.

You might say, though – what if I am making a checklist and I forget to put something on the checklist, thereby defeating the purpose of a checklist?

Have no fear, because our crack team at DiY Filmmaking has scoured the internet for the best checklists we could find. Here are 5, in no particular order.

Pro tip: You might want to check off which ones you have checked out as you go along.

1. General Things to Think About For Your Production Checklist

From Red Pine Studios. Good list to help you think of some things you might have not thought to think about. Not really useful for going out in the field, but useful for pre-production and planning. Check it out here.

2. Comprehensive Shooting Checklist

From MediaEd. Great list for a shoot that includes both equipment/practical needs and other intangible considerations about what and how you are shooting. Check it out here.

3. Camera Equipment Checklist

From a user on Scribd. This list includes basically what you should need for your camera for a shoot. Should be adapted to your specific setup, of course, but a great basis to start with. Check it out here.

4. Before/After Shot Checklist (film only)

Didn’t think it could get this specific, eh? Well this one comes from the same Scribd user as #3 – a before/after shoot checklist for shooting on film. This is going to be a lot shorter for video, but the idea is correct – having a checklist to remind you to check your exposure and your audio is a great idea. Check it out here.

5. Simple Video Equipment Checklist

From uhh..some site. This may be the most useful checklist for the DiY Filmmaker – just a list of stuff you need to go out on a shoot, with some more practical items such as turning your cell phone off. Check it out here.

Have your own production checklists you like to use? Give us a shout in the comments or on Twitter (@diyfilmmaking)

Reccently I came across this video from TED of a talk by Marc Pachter, who did a series of interviews for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. The interviews were of people who had led extraordinary lives.

In this talk,Pachter talks about something you don’t hear a lot about – getting a good interview. A lot of people assume it’s easy – you sit down with someone and ask them questions – how hard can it be? However, Pachter gets much deeper into it – into the art of it – and comes up with some really fantastic advice.

Some of it is not applicable to documentarians, such as waiting until subjects are 50 and older, or battling for the audience’s attention on stage (the interviews were conducted in front of an audience), but give it a look, and you’ll find some fantastic bits of advice on how to approach your next interview.

According to the official About Us page, Xtranormal’s mission is:

to bring movie-making to the people. Everyone watches movies and we believe everyone can make movies. Movie-making, short and long, online and on-screen, private and public, will be the most important communications process of the 21st century.

Our revolutionary approach to movie-making builds on an almost universally held skill—typing. You type something; we turn it into a movie. On the web and on the desktop.

Basically, by providing pre-created characters, sets and camera angles, Xtranormal allows you to write your own script, set your own stage directions and frame your own shots without having to actually record any video or audio yourself… creating a great tool to help you lean some of what goes into shooting a movie, without having to actually shoot one.

Now, I know what you may be thinking: “This idea is fun to mess around with, but nothing with any substance can come from a movie made on xtranormal.com.” While it is true that the pre-defined characters, sets and actions (not to mention the computer generated voices) can hinder your creative process slightly, there is still the potential to make some pretty great stuff using nothing more than the tools provided by the site.

The perfect example of this is the series Howard & Leslie, created by Donald Glover. There is a total of 38 different shorts in the series, but here is the first 5 so you get an idea what it is all about (Warning: Explicit Content):

Now, it requires a lot of creativity to come of with some of the stuff found in Howard & Leslie, something Donald Glover has no shortage of. Donald Glover is a writer, actor, DiY-filmmaker, rapper and stand up comedian. The guy has creativity seeping from his pores. But, that is the point.

If your story is compelling, twisted, funny or simply interesting enough to hold someone’s attention, it doesn’t need to be shot on a RED camera or edited in Final Cut Pro; it can be made on a site with pre-created content and computer generated voices. After all, Howard & Leslie is a lot more creative than most of the films you will come across that use a PVC pipe dolly or homemade jib-arm. That’s because it isn’t “professional shots” or “cool camera tricks” that make Howard & Leslie great, it is the story. The twisted, violent, hilarious story.

Note: Xtranormal actually interviewed Donald about Howard & Leslie, so visit his blog if you want to check it out.

However, even if you vow to never post another one of your films to YouTube again, and have converted exclusively over to Vimeo, odds are you’ve still got a handful of videos that are already on YouTube and have been for quite some time. If this is true, then it’s just as likely that you’ve received plenty of feedback from fellow YouTubers on these videos, and that none of this feedback is particularly useful, helpful or encouraging. In fact, a lot of this feedback is probably cruel, hateful and often totally unrelated to the work itself.

As with any other place on the internet that give anonymous users the chance to voice their opinion, YouTube attracts people with problems. Seriously.

For example, here are a few comments found on this video:

LOL eww i just think your very FUCKING fay , ugly .bad dancing , got a penis, your a lesbian , you like fat cunt ,

does any one els think this fat fuck should become lez {if she alrady isent} because no boy will ever like her so u should just cut off one of ur rols of fat and kill urself wit it u suck and and ur fat and uglyyyyyyyyyyyyy

fat ass you suck big monster cock dont ever do this again

Bitch was asking for it.

OK, point made, YouTubers are cruel, time to move on, right? Wrong, because here are a few more comments from the exact same video:

You are amazing. YouTube needs more freakin awesome people like you. Keep it up, girl!!

your the best person on youtube.

you just officially made my dayy!! i love your videos!

Now, we all know this girl is not the best person on YouTube, nor should she kill herself, so what does this all mean? It means that YouTube comments are not representative of real life feedback. People say all kinds of crazy stuff online and most of it isn’t even worth the time it takes to read it.

Do you know why I used this video as an example? Because in just over a year, this video has received 623,398 views. Yes, you read that right, this video of a girl awkwardly dancing in her bedroom has well over half a million views… and this isn’t even her most popular video (she has one dancing video with nearly 6 million views!).

She really hits her stride with this one.

Some of the worst videos imaginable gain popularity on YouTube, and they make it difficult to gauge whether your video is successful or not. How are you supposed to feel if the short film that took you months to finish has a total of 78 views in the past year, while this guy gets millions and millions of views every time he posts a video. Every. Time.

I guess that shirt took a while to make.

It’s important to take everything on YouTube, or on the web in general, with a grain of salt. What qualifies as a successful video on YouTube does not necessarily mean it is going to be successful in any other place. YouTube has its own set of standards on quality, and it is not an adequate way to determine anything other than your worth on YouTube specifically. And while YouTube provides a lot of helpful insight on where your views are coming from, most of the user generated comments and ratings reflect very little on how your film may actually be received by people who matter (like people in the film industry, potential investors and film festival judges).

So, while YouTube can be a helpful tool in promoting and broadcasting yourself or your work, at the end of the day, your film is competing with a lot of stuff that isn’t even in the same category, and is being judged and critiqued by a lot of unqualified individuals.

However, if you are a Final Cut user, and you know you’re way around the program pretty well, check out the FCP Daily blog. I have been a Final Cut Pro user 6 years and found a ton of great tips that I am definitely putting to use. There are also a lot of great free resources you’d probably miss otherwise.

Be aware that this is not an ideal place to start for beginning Final Cut Pro users. We’ll be posting some basic tutorials in the coming few days for those interested in learning the ropes.

So Final Cut Pro power users, put this in your feed reader and starting impressing women with these sweet tips.

One post caught my eye that focuses on the DiY filmmaking “identity crisis”:

We’re not even DIY. God bless ya boys but we can’t relate. We immediately gloss over any blog posts involving money and/or budgets. Even the no-budget companies have budgets! Suggestions like “hire a cheap grip crew” or “barter with a catering company” fly straight out the window. You know our strategy? Ask a teenager from Mike’s landscaping crew if he wants to be a “sound engineer” and throw a couple bags of Doritos in the groceries for the week.

I agree with the sentiment. The term “DiY” is thrown around a lot in circles where a $6,000+ short is considered do-it-yourself, which is really misleading. $6,000 would cause Scrooge McDuck style money-swimming for most DiY filmmakers I know.

But what really defines do-it-yourself filmmaking? There has to be some sort of factor that we can zero in on.

I don’t think budget itself does it. Yes, it is impressive to create something with literally no money, but I’ve made shorts for $500 that I still think are do-it-yourself productions. You get a pizza for everyone, you buy a prop – you’re still doing it yourself.

But Vanish makes an important point – hiring a cheap grip crew is far for DiY, and bartering with a catering company is even further away. You’re in the realm of independent filmmaking at that point, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

A lot of people talk about how the technology is much more accessible and that is fueling the do-it-yourself movement. I really disagree. I think that the core of DiY filmmaking is taking the knowledge that is behind good filmmaking and bringing it to the community. If I wanted to embrace an internet cliche (which I will), the knowledge behind do-it-yourself is open sourced.

For instance, you’re making a short. You could hire a sound recordist, and you know your short will sound great. Obviously, a budget production would consider this – it’s a good investment, and you pay for the expertise and craftsmanship of that sound recordist.

If you are a DiY filmmaker, you turn to the community. If you’re lucky, you have a brain trust of like-minded people to draw on for your project. In my case, I am lucky to have a very talented brother who knows how to work a boom with the best of them. In other areas, I may have other people I can call on.

If you aren’t so lucky, you have a vast community online to turn to. You are always a few clicks away from tutorials, videos, and advice on things from how to record sound to how to blow up a condom taped to your chest. Maybe you record it yourself, but if you need to get a teenager from a landscaping crew, you’ll be able to give him a great run-down on how to stand with the boom and come out with a good result.

There are hundreds of jobs on a film from pre-production to post, and I think the difference is that when you are a DiY filmmaker, you can go down the list of those jobs and go through the same process of turning to the community to figure out how to get it done and get it done for as little as possible.

In other words, a well-funded filmmaker hires the expertise, and the do-it-yourself filmmaker turns to the community to gain that expertise and use it. That’s my take on the matter.

There are a lot of other elements I’m probably missing, but I think that gets to the heart of it. That’s a big reason we’re starting this blog, although it’s in its infancy – spreading the knowledge around for other DiY filmmakers looking for it.

While you may be able to staff your production days with some people, it’s much more likely that once you sit down in the editing room chair or start to go through a bag of receipts, you’ll be flying solo. Because of this, it may be a little tougher to drill down and get things done.

But never fear! There are some great simple tools and techniques out there to help you stop wasting time during post production and plow through what you need to get done.

1. The Pomodoro Technique

Sometimes you need some structure to get you going, and that’s what the Pomodoro technique excels at providing. Created by Francesco Cirillo, the idea is simple: 25 minute periods of absolute concentration, with 5 minute breaks in between. After four consecutive “pomodoros”, take a 15 minute break.

Give it a try for a few hours and you’ll find yourself making less excuses to check email or get a snack. You’ll soon find out you can get a lot done in 25 minutes, and the breaks help you refresh your mind. This technique is also ideal for writing and other production-related tasks you do on your own – I’ve used it for months and it’s part of the reason these blog posts get written!

You can get all the information you could possibly need on the technique at the Pomodoro Technique’s website including a free downloadable PDF of the Pomodoro Technique book.

2. Getting Things Done

A close cousin of the Pomodoro Technique, Getting Things Done, or GTD is a technique made popular by internet-evangelist Merlin Mann with his famous blog post on the subject.

It provides a very well structured and inspiring method of getting the stuff that is hanging in the air nailed down, identified, and done. It’s obviously a little more involved than that, but Merlin has got your back in that department with his post. Obviously, nothing has more “stuff” than a production, so using the method will help you get all that mess under control.

3. Zen Habits

Not everyone needs a technique – some just need a boost or advice every once in a while. To fill that need, nothing works better than Zen Habits, a blog about simplicity in how you work and live. Productions (the production part, and the other parts), tend to be hectic and cluttered. Zen Habits can help you keep things in order and remember above all to keep things simple.

That’s it! Check out these techniques and see if you can optimize your post production process.