My Learnings on Video Creation and How AI and ML can help us in this Process!

We all need to accept that the pandemic has taught us many things starting from "The way we work" to "The way we learn", including creating some new hobbies.

So today, I thought to talk about one such hobby cum my last 2 months' journey towards learning and creating Videos, Some tips, and recommendations (if you also want to start over), and to speak about how I feel the AI and ML can make a difference to fast track the process of your creation. By video creation, here I am focusing on a specific type called Cinematography, and here is a short description -

Cinematography is the art of photography and visual storytelling in a motion picture to convay diffrent flaver of human emotions and feelings. Cinematography comprises all on-screen visual elements, including lighting, framing, composition, camera motion, camera angles, film selection, lens choices, depth of field, zoom, focus, color, exposure, and filtration.

Though Cinematography is one type of video creation that is a bit more process-oriented but even in all other flavors of video content, any creator follows these few common steps -

1. Scripting and Planning:

This is the most neglected but one of the most important steps that determine the overall quality of your video. This is kind of the Planning phase where you note down the Story which you want to convey + Camera Shots / Scenes + Angles + Music Selection (If needed), etc.

• Learnings / Tips - Over time I realized the importance of planning and scripting. More time I spent on this step, the less time I had to spend on all the other steps. As a beginner, I note down the High-level thoughts, some camera movements & angles and mainly I choose my music.
• Recommendations - I prefer writing down my thoughts in a physical notebook but there are many awesome professional script management softwares. one of such is - Script Side by studio binder.
• Role of AI and ML - So, where we feel Scripting is something very much personal to the creator and based on their thoughts but for any creator it's sometimes difficult to come up with new wordings and thoughts in their story. It's like you know the topic that you wanted to convey but not getting the correct wording to talk about. Well! This is a perfect use case for an AI-based writing assistant and Yes, they are already available in the market like - rytr.me. Just try it once and you will be surprised how intelligently and easily this can write something on a given Topic. Another is the speech-to-text conversion engines which are nowadays integrated with our mobile phones and can easily reduce your typing effort. Here is one of them but there are many other APIs and tools to do the same.

2. Casting (Optional):

If you are creating something that needs some acting, This is also an important step where you try to find out the suitable faces who can best convey your story. Though this is completely optional in case you are filming yourself or just shooting some object or nature.

• Learnings / Tips - For a novice creator like me, this is a tedious process to find perfect people but when you are in the learning phase - start with your friends, relatives, and colleagues whoever is interested, and tweak your script according to their appearance. This will not only boost your confidence to shoot others but also make those people happy when you are making something meaningful for them :)
• Recommendations - So once you get confidence in shooting known people. You can approach people for collaboration on your Social Media platforms whom you follow (Like - Instagram) for a sufficient amount of time and somewhat know them or you can even check some Facebook videography community.

3. Filming:

So this is the main step where you film according to the Script and Story. In my experience, the more time you spend in planning and scripting, the less time you spend in the Filming.

• Learnings / Tips - Well, frankly this is not a step that you can learn from somewhere until you practically execute them but to start with, you can definitely learn some basic tips on the Camera angle, Lens to use, Lighting, and even the process of filming. And in my experience for beginners like me, it becomes overwhelming if you try to learn everything in one go. So the best way I found, start with something simple and then improvise over time.
• Recommendations - I can recommend to you some training which I personally went through to step up my filming process. Here are two of them - Cinematography Course by Julian Melanson & Another by Dale McManus. Next, coming to the required gears and gadgets for filming - The obvious one is a Camera and I should also suggest getting a Gimble if you really want to level up. Here I don't want to recommend any specific Camera as that completely depends on your budget but if you have a good camera phone (Like Pixel or an iPhone) that is enough, to begin with. I personally use iPhone 13 Pro for shooting and my choice for a balanced professional camera is - Sony A7 III but again Camera can not teach you filming. It's just a tool to improvise your quality of Filming.
• Role of AI and ML - This is not a new thing where we have seen Robots carrying cameras and gear in the Filming and one such popular example is the Drone which is heavily used in modern-day filmmaking. Starting from Travel Bloggers to professional cinematographers use them. Another example is the Robotic Arms which are used to create extremely smooth video footages which are near to impossible for humans. If you want to read more on this topic- Here is one blog which I found really informative. Even our favorite tech YouTuber MKBHD uses one such robot called KIRA.

4. Voice Over and Recording (Optional):

So this step is optional if you already own a copyrighted track or use some Royalty-Free Music. But if you are creating or showcasing something from scratch like - Music, Story, Knowledge Sharing, etc. You also need to follow some steps for recording your Voice Over or Music to tell that story.

• Learnings / Tips - This is something I have not still gotten into but definitely trying to learn. So far, I have used the Royalty Free Musics and sometimes even some popular songs (Given proper credits though) which we all should avoid once we start growing. Because Music / Voice is copyrighted content like videos and as a creator, we should respect the creator community guidelines and ethics.
• Recommendations - First, if you want to record some good quality voice then that has a proper process and you can watch This Video by Ankit Bhatia as a reference. Next, if you are looking for some good quality Royalty-Free Musics then go for one of these platforms like - Epidemic Sound or Artist, Including many others in the market and you have to choose based on your use case. You can watch This Video as a guide for choosing one of these platforms. Now, last but not least if you really like any music by some other creator/artist from any platform which you want to use badly, then try to contact them over email with a request of approval or use the music while giving proper credits but this will be on your own risk as they can claim a copyright on your video even for using a small portion of their music. Try to completely avoid the last option if you choose to create something professionally!
• Role of AI and ML - Now voice or Music is something Machines may not able to create from scratch but if you need help to convert some text/scripts to speech then the machine can definitely help you. With the power of ML, AI, and NLP - Computers can create almost human-like Voices with proper punctuation and feelings. Some of those Bots are already well known. Like Alexa, Siri, Google Assistance Etc. But there are even better-sounding NLP engines on the market for enterprise-level text/scripts to speech. Check this by Wellsaidlabs and I am almost sure you will not be able to differentiate their Bot Voice from a human voice.

5. Editing:

So this is a Hot topic whenever we talk about any Video Creation and there are reasons for that. As this step is also called an assembling stage in your creative flow. So far whatever you have Filmed, and recorded everything needs to come together in a specific sequence to be able to tell the actual story or convey the feeling. Now, editing can take from a couple of hours to even a couple of days based on how and what you want to create. For example, if you want to create a simple informative video with some background music or voiceover that can be done easily. But if you want to create a travel video or a music video or an actual cinematic Film with some special effects and all, that can take lots of time considering you have many raw footage and music to arrange.

• Learnings / Tips - Editing has been my interest since I started photography. But when it comes to video editing, depending on what level and tools you want to master - it has a slight learning curve.
• Recommendations - For basics and to kick start, you can choose any Free video editing software (Like for Mobile - VN, InShot. For PC - Clipchamp, and for Mac - It's iMovie). Believe me, they are extremely easy to learn, you even don't need a tutorial. Just navigate through the app, and you will start understanding. Now, if you want to go further and looking for some professional-grade editing then you first need to choose one of the marker-leading tools and then start learning that tool slowly in bits and pieces. So two of the Most popular professional tools (Paid) are - Adobe Premiere Pro (For both Mac and PC) and the Final Cut Pro (For Mac Only). With these, if you want to go even one more step further, you can use Special Effect Tools on tops such as Adobe After Effects (For both Mac and PC) and Apple Motion (Only for Mac). I personally use Final Cut Pro X and VN (On Mobile) as my go-to editing tools whereas VN is for small casual editing and Final Cut when I am creating something cinematic. If you are interested in getting started with Final Cut Pro X, you can learn it Here on Udemy.
• Role of AI and ML - Editing is not an exception when creating perfect AI use cases. Once you are into editing, you will slowly realize there are so many repetitive and boring tasks that could be so easy if you can just train someone else to do those. For Example - Music Beat Sync, Special effects, Transitions, noise reduction, color grading, Masking, etc., etc. Yes, all these tools mentioned above are very well known to create your life easier via shortcuts and different techniques but sometime you may still think if that can be further reduced. And now a day's it's possible, whereas some are via Simple Software extensions which are created by some external (Like - Motionvfx) or native vendor as a feature within these editing tools that auto analyzes your video footage and applies color corrections, stabilization, 3D Special effects, etc. You can read This article to get more insight.

6. Publishing:

This step is not related to your Creation Process though. It's more of your post-production step when you choose a platform or rather platforms where you want to share your Final Video. Now, it's a subjective thing based on your creation objective and who is your audience. But this is important to share your creation with others to get continuous feedback as, like all other things - you learn this by continuous practice and improvise by hearing from others.

• Learnings / Tips - I started creating videos for fun as a side hobby and the best platform for me was YouTube and Instagram. Sometimes, we feel shy to share things with a thought that may not be good like other creators but my Tip is to keep sharing and hearing both positive and negative feedback. You may not be able to create something that will please everyone but that's completely fine! Just take their feedback and be clear in your learning objective and keep creating and trying all different flavors of Films/Editing!
• Recommendations - As mentioned before I personally prefer YouTube and Instagram which are the two most popular creator's platforms. Now creating videos for YouTube is definitely more time-consuming but if that's your final objective then you can keep working on your final YouTube video and in between can release small clips of your original video as Shots (on YouTube) or Reels on Instagram. In the end, it's completely your choice! In addition to this same context, there is one very important component while you are uploading videos to any of these platforms - Called Thumbnail?or Video Display Picture. This is so important because it's a Fast impression on your audience and act a major role to attract them to watch your video content. So to create Thumbnail, you can use any Photo Editing software. Like - Picsart, VN (For Mobile), or some of the online tools which can even help you with attractive templates like - Canva or Visme.
• Role of AI and ML - The process of publishing is always recommended to be done by humans to avoid any kind of Upload time errors/mistakes and the upload process doesn't take much time either. But on the Thumbnail?creation, I recently came across one video released by MKBHD which blew my mind. Have a look (DALL-E 2 is an AI) - it will equally surprise you!

That's All and Thank you if you have read it this far! I really hope - You got an idea on the basic steps needed in a standard video production process and if you put some effort into this, you can really master this! Just to motivate you here is a bonus - A Video (You're Not Talented - And That's A Good Thing) from one of my favorite Film makers Aidin Robbins.

One Bonus AI-based Tool if you are looking to create something very quick avoiding almost all the above steps, just to convey your script or thought in a visual way. Check out - lumen5. The use cases are mostly for content marketing, thought leadership, or just quick brand awareness.

Here are my Filming Platforms if you want to have a look :)

Films Page - Link

YouTube - Link

Instagram - Link

Disclaimer:

In a nutshell, This post is more about my Video Creation Journey and the learnings so far. The recommendations are completely based on my personal choice and what I found helpful at the time of learning. The AI and ML use cases are also based on my personal opinion and may not be suitable for every scenario. Take this from the eye of a learner as I am not an expert or professional in this game either.

Feel free to share / DM me your thoughts and queries! Happy Filming :)

Note - I might edit this article in the future if I find any further helpful/relevant information.