Capturing footage with a mobile device
In her How Music Can Change Your Life MOOC Katrina Skewes McFerran wanted to show music therapy in practice in a variety of situations.
An example of this is a story about a Norwegien rock band. While it was not feasible to fly a crew to Bergen to film this rock band, it so happened that her Teaching Assistant, Elly Scrine, was doing a study tour of Europe at the time. Filming with her mobile phone and a voice recorder, Elly was able to capture some footage of the band for the MOOC.
Before capturing this footage, Elly attended a workshop on how to film using a mobile phone. The use of a phone allows for an aspect of citizen journalism to be added to the course. To add context and give the final video editor the creative opportunity to bring in other footage when needed, consider filming some ‘B-roll’ background footage.
Tip
While a professional video camera will usually give better results, most modern mobile phones now have inbuilt cameras that are reasonably high quality. Audio can be more of a challenge when using a mobile phone, so ideally use an external microphone or voice recorder and ensure and that the environment is relatively quiet. Modern editing software allows for easy synchronisation between audio captured by your phone and external voice recorders.