Five Tips For Making An Author Video

Author videos are a great way for authors to find an audience online. While some publishers have the tools and resources to help you create an author video, if your publisher doesn’t offer this, the technology today is good enough to do it on your own. Get out your home video camera, grab a friend to help and get to work. Here are five tips to help make your video stand out: Good Lighting: Even if you don’t have access to a big studio, you can still make your picture look good. Choose a location with bright even lighting. Natural lighting or artificial lights will work. Do an auto white balance on your camera to get the right color (almost all consumer cameras have this feature). Make sure the lighting source is in front of your subject. If the only light is behind your subject, the subject will be dark. Good Sound: If you are going to do this often, you might want to invest in a microphone for your camera. (You can get a cheap shotgun mic for $100). But even without a mic, you can still get good sound with the camera mic by recording in a quiet environment. Turn off noisy appliances, phones and noisy neighbors. Good Content: You are a writer. Use your skills to write good, snappy content. Funny, scary, whatever your genre or style, keep it short, simple and to the point. People have short attention spans for online videos. Steady Image: Using a tripod will give you a steady image. If you don’t have a tripod, position your camera on a table or high counter to get a steady picture. If you are going for a hand held look, see if your camera has an image stabilization feature. Good Edits: This is the trickiest part but with programs like iMovie and Final Cut Express, editing is easier than it’s ever been. You can even edit video shot on your iPhone. To make it simple, try to get one good take of your shot, so that you only have to trim the beginning and the end of the shot. If you've got more tips or questions about any of these, please share them in the comments.

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Five Tips For Making An Author Video

Dianna Dilworth

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Dianna Dilworth