Filming Your Strokes

Filming your Strokes is a four-part series written to help you improve your skills as a videographer. Of course, the ultimate goal is to produce a video of yourself hitting that is very usable – the camera settings are configured properly, the scene is lit, etc… so that you can analyze your own strokes and improve as a tennis player. The series is written in very plain, clear english; even though there are technical terms, I promise you will understand everything if you give it a read.

Part 1: Understanding Video Part one of this series introduces some of the key concepts of video such as frame rates and interlacing, and explains how understanding those concepts will help you produce a better tennis video.

Part 2: Shutter Speed and Aperture The shutter speed and aperture settings on your camera will have a large impact on the look, feel, and quality of your tennis video. The basic idea is that by working together, shutter speed and aperture determine how much light comes into your video camera, in other words how bright the picture is. We will first talk about shutter speed, then aperture, then examine how the two work together to determine the “exposure” of the final picture.

Part 3: Setting up the Shot Now that we have a more solid understanding of the way video cameras work, it’s time to talk about how to set up the shot so you get the best results possible. In this section we will discuss lighting and framing the shot properly, and using a tripod.

Part 4: So Which Camcorder do I Use? The choice of which camcorder to purchase or rent to film your strokes can be a difficult one. This section will be different from some of the others because here I will try to explain, in layman’s terms, some of the features of modern camcorders you may see advertised and how those features might relate to filming tennis strokes.