Giving every camera angle a job

You bought the second camera, possibly the third. They all point at you, they are all slightly different, and when you sit down to edit you find yourself cutting between them on a rhythm rather than for a reason, because none of them has anything the others do not.

The fix is to stop thinking about positions and start thinking about questions. At any moment the viewer wants to know one of three things: where we are, who is talking, or what the hands are doing. Give each question to one camera. Any camera left over gets a question of its own or it stays in the bag.

What question is each angle answering?

Three of them come up in almost every teaching video, and they arrive in roughly this order.

Where are we? Asked once at the start, and again whenever the viewer has been looking at a close-up long enough to lose their bearings.

Who is talking? Asked whenever the words matter more than the object. An explanation, an aside, a warning about the bit people get wrong.

What are the hands doing? Asked the moment the lesson turns physical, and never once answered by a shot of your face, however well lit it is.

The three standard jobs

The wide: where we are

Far enough back to hold you and your working surface in the same frame. Almost nobody watches it for long, and it is still the shot that makes the video feel like it happens somewhere. Use it to open, and use it to reset when a sequence of close-ups has left the viewer floating.

The close: who is talking

Head and shoulders, with a little space above your head and more space in the direction you are facing than behind you. This is the only angle where your face is doing the teaching, so it carries the explanations and the warnings. Light it properly first.

The detail: what the hands are doing

Pointed at the thing rather than the person, tight enough that the object fills the frame. Frame it for the action rather than for the object sitting still, because a hand entering the shot needs somewhere to enter from. A frame cropped perfectly around a motionless bowl becomes useless the moment somebody reaches into it.

Angles by trade

In a kitchen

Face for the explanation, a shot across the counter for the preparation, a shot into the pan for the moment heat is involved. In a kitchen the composition that tends to hold is two angles on the person, one on the counter, and b-roll filling the joins. The person angles handle the talking, the counter angle handles the doing, and nothing gets filmed that is not answering something.

Teaching a physical skill

Face, an overhead angle on the hands, and one from the side. The overhead answers what are the hands doing. The side answers how is the body arranged, which is a separate question and the reason a straight-on face shot has never taught anybody to sit correctly at an instrument.

At a workbench

Face, a wide that includes the bench and where the tools live, and a close on the work. The wide does more here than it does in a kitchen, because in a workshop the arrangement of the space is part of the instruction rather than the backdrop to it.

How do you write a job down?

One sentence per angle, written before the shoot, in the same place you keep everything else.

Write the job in a sentence: the viewer can see the hands on the keys, the edit has a clean alternative during speech, or this shot changes the emphasis. Variety can be a reason when it serves the piece rather than a habit.

If an angle mostly duplicates another, check whether it adds useful coverage, a different emphasis or a backup. Keep it when that benefit justifies the work.

What does an angle with no job cost?

More than nothing, which is the part that gets missed.

It has to be charged and formatted before the shoot. Framed and focused on the day. Offloaded from its card afterwards, lined up with the others so the sound matches the picture, colour matched so it does not look like it was shot on a different afternoon, then backed up and stored for as long as you keep anything. All of that happens whether or not it appears in the finished video.

An extra camera adds capture, sync, grading and storage work. If it adds no useful coverage or backup, leaving it out makes the shoot and edit simpler.

The over-the-shoulder angle

Most people who film themselves teaching add angles to themselves. The one usually missing is the one showing what the viewer would see if they were standing where you are standing: over your shoulder, looking down at the work, from your own eyeline rather than from across the room.

It is the closest a video gets to handing somebody the thing and letting them try it, and it costs one phone on a cheap arm. Before the next shoot, write the three questions on a piece of paper and put a camera name beside each. Any camera left without a question either gets one or gets left in the bag, and the second of those is the shorter afternoon.

Sources and evidence

Our method. Writing one sentence per angle before a shoot, naming the single question it answers, is this studio's working discipline for deciding what earns a place in the edit, not a formula that fits every setup.