Tag Archives: b-roll

How Long Does It Take to Make a Video?

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This question is the one I get most often from science professionals attending my workshops and seminars. Everyone is busy. I get it. You get it. People want to know how much of their valuable time is going to be diverted toward an activity that is not going to contribute to their h-index.

So I’m going to try to answer that question in this blog post.

The most honest answer is: it depends. People vary wildly in their abilities to craft a compelling story, to visualize how to tell it, and to operate the recording equipment and editing software. The actual amount of time you will spend will depend on your skill level at using the equipment and software required for making a video. If you’ve never used movie editing software, then it’s going to take you longer to edit your clips compared to someone who’s played around with iMovie, for example. The same goes for designing and filming.

Consequently, I’m going to give some ballpark estimates based on a relatively inexperienced person–someone who typically takes a video-making workshop.

In my workshops, I’ve found that people can generally design their video (overall story and how to tell it) in an hour or so, especially if they are given a template to follow. Filming can take a couple of hours or days, depending on your topic, length of the planned video, and where you need to film. Workshop participants, working in pairs and using smartphones or tablets, were able to film the main segments of their 3-minute video in two to three hours. Another hour might be spent shooting B-roll or searching the Internet for video clips, animations, photographs, maps, and illustrations to augment the filmed segments. After a brief tutorial, editing might take another couple of hours.

Based on these estimates, the total time required to produce a rough cut is six to seven hours. Another couple of hours will likely be needed to polish or reshoot problematic clips. In other words, plan on spending (at a minimum) the equivalent of an entire day making your video.

As you gain experience, though, you will find that you can use your phone to shoot and edit a video on the fly. For example, when you are conducting fieldwork, it’s easy to shoot brief clips that are immediately imported into an editing program such as iMovie. While waiting for your electrodes to equilibrate or for sample bottles to incubate, you can do some trimming and editing of those clips. I can take this approach while on a field trip and have one or more videos ready to upload by the end of the day. See this example that I filmed with my iPhone:

Before I went to the site, I spent some time searching the Internet for information about the mangroves growing in the region. Armed with that information, I began planning the video (in my head) during the drive to where this mangrove stand was located on Yakushima. I spent around two hours at the site filming various aspects of the mangrove stand and jotting down notes about some of the plant characteristics I observed. I started editing this video on my phone with the iMovie app for iOS while I was on site and could retake any clips that needed improvement (I had to reshoot the segment in which I spoke several times).

As the story began to crystalize, I walked around shooting B-roll to illustrate important points to be made. By the time I was ready to leave, I had a rough cut of the video finished and ready to polish. After returning to my hotel room, I added voice-over to the video and also some images of maps and other items that I had to download or modify using my computer. Making this video was fun and informative and made the excursion to see this unique stand more memorable.

How long does it take to make a video? For me, the answer doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that I’ve made a video and, in the process, learned something new.

What Is “B-roll” and Why Should I Care About It?

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Put simply, B-roll is the extra footage you need to shoot to support or augment what your subjects (or you) are talking about in the “A-roll”.  The idea is that you will be shooting primary (A-roll) footage of interviews, a laboratory method, or a field site.  However, you will need additional material to illustrate aspects of this primary footage.  This is the B-roll.  For you digital generation folks, a “roll” refers to the old type of photographic film that was wound around a spool.  The term has an interesting history, which you can read about here.

I routinely shoot a variety of secondary footage when I go out to capture my primary footage. These include both video and still images as well as sound effects that might come in handy during editing.  I always try to get footage of traveling to and from a field site, for example, to use during the title sequence and the credit sequence at the end of the video. Sometimes these clips are shot from a car, a boat, or a plane, and I try to frame the shot so that there is space for the text that I will insert during editing. Here’s a clip that illustrates what I mean:

I shot that footage during the airboat ride to and from the field site where I did interviews and captured other primary footage. I used those clips for both title and end sequence, which worked out well, I think.  The entire video can be seen here.

I usually spend some time at the location of the shoot filming various closeups of plants and animals as well as landscapes, waves breaking on the shoreline, rain, vehicles moving past, people, buildings, shadows, or whatever characterizes the location.  I additionally shoot still images, especially closeups of flowers, insects, or other items that I can use in a montage of scenes.  Once I’ve completed the interview, then I walk around and shoot video or still images of whatever the interview subject has mentioned.  Then, I can insert those images during editing so that a long interview is not just of a talking head, but has interesting images or clips interspersed with the interview footage. Here is an example from the same video as above:

If you are doing a video of a laboratory method, you will want to get various shots of equipment from different angles as well as people going about their work.  You will probably work out a lot of these shots beforehand, but it’s always a good idea to shoot extra scenes and even things that are not central to the subject.  These types of footage may turn out to be useful during the introduction to the video or as a transition between interviews.

I also capture sound effects that might be useful for a montage of still images, for example: sounds of dripping water, waves breaking, birds or crickets chirping, a crackling fire, lions roaring (got this sound effect on a trip to Botswana).

During my work as a researcher, I got into the habit of setting aside time during a field trip to take photographs for later use in presentations and journal articles. I would first make a list of items that I needed a photo of, and then go out and search for them.  Sometimes, I would spend an entire day (during a long field trip) just shooting photos.  So it was second nature for me to apply the same practice to shooting video.

Get into the habit of taking your camcorder or camera with you and shoot whatever you are doing–in the lab or in the field.  Believe me, it will be worth the time and effort when you sit down to edit your video.