Pot TV Producer Info
Here you'll find some guidelines, information and tips on producing the best-quality videos for submission to Pot-TV. If you're submitting to Pot-TV for the first time, or even a first time video producer, this page will help you get your video accepted and published on Pot-TV. If you're already producing content for us, there's tips here to improve the quality of your videos to create tighter, more professional productions.Video Content and Subject Material
Pot-TV is primarily an activist network. Not all our shows are political or informative, but we at least try to dispell negative cannabis user stereotypes and provide our own media and our own voice. Pot-TV costs a lot of money to broadcast, so we have to keep in mind what kind of message we would like to share.
We love informative shows from cannabis cultures around the world, whether it's a video of a protest or action, or news from your region, or an introduction to a cannabis culture we haven't seen yet on Pot-TV. We like to see clever and entertaining videos if they relate to cannabis culture or the drug war. Not all videos have to be informative or educational, but we certainly want to promote positive pot stereotypes, while at the same time we like to reach out to new audiences. If you've got something we haven't seen yet, we'd like to see it.
Unless they're extremely well produced, people playing music, even if it's about pot, makes for boring video. Try to imagine how other people will view your video.
This may seem obvious, but it helps a lot to think about what you're going to say before you turn on the camera. Movie producers pay millions of dollars for good scrips, and good TV shows are often months in pre-production. You might be a witty, funny person, but if you want to show that to the world, it helps to plan out your show from beginning to end. You don't have to script every word, but you should have a good idea of the things you'll be saying.
Nonetheless, we're still suprised by show submissions all the time. Shows we think are terrible turn out to be extremely popular (actually, that's usually the case). Regardless of content, your chances of being on Pot-TV are increase greatly if you've got great video production . . .
Streaming Audio and Video, and Compression
Producing video for streaming over the internet is different than producing a video for VHS on TV, or even for playing back on your own computer. When we compress video for streaming, the compression will degrade the video in order to reduce the size, and certain techniques will help you maintain image and sound quality for a more efficient video and a better viewer experience.
Audio encoding tends to eliminate sounds that are least likely to be heard. This means that if you've got music and speech at the same time, or people speaking in a noisy place, there's a chance that the speech won't be heard at all, and you'll be left with a noisy video of someone moving their lips. If you're recording in a noisy place, try to use a microphone or get as close to the speaker as possible. Don't play music in the background while you're speaking, silence is best. If you're mixing in music while editing, keep the music and the speech seperate. Cut the music while people are talking. Many people forget how important audio is to a good video production.
Video encoding only encodes what's moving in the scene at any time. That means that the longer an image doesn't change, the clearer it gets, and the smaller the video filesize can be. Reality TV shows like "Cops" and movies like "Blair Witch" have popularized a very jiggly style of handheld camerawork that unfortunately does not translate well to streaming video. Handheld camerawork on the internet results in blurry, low-res video and large filesizes. Use a tripod as much as possible. Don't needlessly zoom around and in and out. Rather then aimlessly panning a scene, choose subjects to focus on, and move from one subject to the next. Again, use a tripod, particularly if you're filming from one position; a tripod makes a huge difference over a "steady hand" that isn't so steady. We realize that a lot of activist work will be handheld, on the scene videography, but even under these conditions some attention to good camerawork will produce better, sharper video.
Editing and Show Length
Editing is the hardest job in video production, and it often takes much longer than writing or filming a show. It's also a thankless job, since the best editing job is invisible. People mostly notice editing when it's badly done, when shots are too long, or the video doesn't flow.
People's attention is a valuable commidity, particularly on the internet, and they don't give it away easily. The average viewing time for video on the internet is less than 3 minutes, while on Pot-TV it's slightly longer, about 6 minutes. 6 minutes. Think about this when you want to submit a 40 minute show with slow shots of people walking from point a to b, or people not saying anything, or people saying "ummm". With internet video, we have the opportunity to give people the time they need to share their message, but it makes no difference if no one will see it. It's also more expensive for us to host longer videos, and for people to view them. We consider a 15 minute video to be long. Edit your videos tight and short. Keep only relevant material. Short cuts can be suprisingly effective at communicating a message -- look how many cuts are in a 30 second TV advertisement, and people catch them all.
Lighting
A lot of people simply use whatever lighting is in the room for their videos, but you can improve your results with a little light planning before you turn the camera on.
The standard lighting kit for all photography consists of 3 lights, a primary source, a key, and a fill; a typical example, you'll have the primary from the right, the key from the left, and the fill illuminates the background and prevents harsh background shadows. You don't need expensive light fixtures, either, even using moveable lights around the house will work wonders. Use daylight when possible, but remember, daylight is very bright, and can create harsh shadows. When filming outdoors, keep the location of the sun in mind when you film someone or something.
A lot of cameras have features that improve the video quality in low light conditions. If you're filming indoors, get to know the white balance function of your camera. Without it, indoor lighting can make your video look yellow. This is usually corrected by holding up a white card and pressing "white balance", but some cameras do this automatically. Sometimes you can turn up the exposure levels on the camera to make a dark scene seem brighter. Some cameras, like the one Dana used on his famous LSD trip, have special night vision features that allow you to film in the dark without using lighting at all, or where lighting would be otherwise intrusive in the dark.
Composition
Pay some attention to how the scene you're filming looks on video. Your first hand impression is very different than the one someone will get watching the scene on a screen. Are you cutting off people's heads? Is the scene well lit? It it clear what you're filming? It the scene pleasant to look at?
Text, Titles, Subtitles
Adding a text and video titles to your show can make it seem a lot more professional. If you're interviewing people, text with their name on the screen is a good idea. If you're talking to people on camera and their speech is incomprehensible, subtitles can help people understand what's going on. Placing text on the screen can also help viewers understand what their seeing in the video and make the video more interesting with context: people, places, dates and reasons. I've also seen subtitles used to add subtle (or not-so-subtle) humour to a video by adding an editor's commentary, or they can make something unintentional seem intentional. When LaSparka's guest was slurring his words in a recent show, the text "He's a little drunk" under the guest on the screen livened up an otherwise lame scene.
Video Formats and Show Delivery
We can deal with pretty much any video media and format you can get to us. In the studio we can play tapes in VHS, hi-8 and mini-DV. You can send us your show on CDroms, and we even had someone send us a hard drive. If you know your show is finished production, you can encode it in realplayer and/or quicktime, but it's best to send us something like MPEG1 (or MPEG2), or perhaps MPEG4 or DIVX. Uncompressed AVIs are very large files and hard to move around and work with. Keep in mind we encode shows at 320x240, 30fps, so higher quality video just makes for larger files and more work in getting it to us. A CDRom will store at least 30 minute MPEG1, which is plenty room for any show. You can drop off your show at our studios, you can mail it to us, or upload content over the internet. You can even host the video on your own servers and have us link it into our archives.
So, you still want your stuff on POT-TV?
Call us at POT-TV: (604)682 0039, or email:
info@pot-tv.net
