Technical: Video Technical Video Commentary will eventually go here. What are all those buttons on the camera? White Balance Focus Interlaced-huh? DV? Hi-Def? Framing the picture What're all these buttons on the camera? If you want to really make a documentary, you need to think of your camera as your friend. Your camera is never a god-like tool that can choose to bestow its various gifts on you. It is also not a loser that has nothing to offer. No, you have to get to know and understand your camera, appreciate what it can do, and be nice to it (you can also get into verbal arguments, but it generally gives the silent treatment when sworn at). Only then can the two of you work together and go on adventures. So, while this guide can help with some of the lingo and get you started, nothing can replace reading your manual (if only every friend came with a manual!) and playing around with your camera. What might you find? There is always an "on and off" switch, a lens, and usually some way to figure out what you are shooting. Let's assume you have a basic video camera. Your camera can also serve as a deck (think VCR) so that you can view your video after it has been shot. This means you might have a second set of buttons dedicated to this or that, in VCR mode, the buttons take on different tasks. Then you have a number of different ways to affect the light that comes into the camera: White Balance Essentially, video cameras forget what white is and either give the whole shot a bluish tint or blow out the reds. This can be fixed by setting your white balance. Just find a large enough white object near where you are filming and zoom in on it and reset your white balance. This can be a piece of paper, a t-shirt, or a screen. Note that if you're filming something a hundred feet away, you want to reset your white balance against something there (as opposed to putting a piece of paper in front of your camera) because you might have different light. Huh? Our eyes filter a lot of differences in light automatically: we have some night-vision, we can see on a sunny day, and everything in between. Another thing we filter is the different kinds of light, such as fluorescent versus sunlight. Your camera reacts differently depending on the source and this can mean a greenish tint or some strong flesh tones. Shutter speed How many pictures a second. The lower the number (e.g. 24 a second or 24/s), the less light needed for a brighter picture, but you get more blur. The higher the number (e.g. 250/s), you need more light, but blur is reduced. Blur isn't necessarily a bad thing: our brain uses the blur to help us deal with movement; a lot of action and not enough blur and our brains start to notice a slight strobe effect.