Prepare a checklist: Be sure to itemize the gear you need to bring as well as the things to check when setting up. A typical checklist will include cameras, lenses, lighting equipment, tripods, microphones, headphones, batteries (both for the camera and AA batteries for external devices), memory cards and possibly even a laptop for backing up footage while you shoot.

Setting up can be fast-paced with many interruptions that make it easy to forget small but important details; your pre-shooting checklist will help you avoid unfortunate oversights. (We once lost ten minutes of excellent footage because we forgot to move the microphone switch from external to internal.)

Prepare a storyboard: Before you hit the road, make a list of the shots you will need for your final video. As experienced videographers Jordan and Chris say they often wing it, but they advise anyone new to video production to create a "storyboard" before heading out to capture video.

The more angles and cuts your video has the more interesting it will be, so take time to visualize your video as you make your storyboard and build in a variety of shots that you can use in post. (Tip: if possible, it helps to have a second camera or "B-roll" camera where you can show someone talking from different angles.)

Prepare yourself and your talent: It's also important to get used to being on-camera. Jordan recommends that you shoot a handful of videos that you don't intend to publish, just to get comfortable.

This extends to others as well. Unless you have hired professional actors, you will likely need to give your talent time to relax and work through any jitters. Douglas Spotted Eagle, a videographer and Grammy-winning musician based out of California, says he will do a simple breathing exercise with his talent before he begins to film.

"I'm not comfortable in front of the camera, Chris is," says Jordan. "So you've got to find someone who is going to appear natural, appear confident, because nothing is going to look worse than the owner of a small business who looks overwhelmed on camera. You've really got to be comfortable with that whole process."

5. Go manual when doing your white balance

While it can be tempting to let the camera control your video settings, this can lead to very disappointing footage, something we learned from our own hands-on experience.

At first, setting the white balance seemed like a daunting task. But with a small time investment we came to realize that this adjustment is actually pretty easy, and it had a phenomenal impact on the quality of our final footage.

Different light sources will add a tint to your video footage and unless the white balance is adjusted properly, this can add a yellow, red or blue cast to your footage that can be very difficult to correct in post.

A custom white balance will correct this, something that fully automatic modes have not done adequately in our experience.

To set a custom white balance you first select the type of light you are shooting in, which ranges from three options with most camcorders (daylight, tungsten and kelvin) to over seven options in most DSLR cameras (daylight, shade, cloudy, tungsten, white fluorescent, flash, custom and kelvin).

With a DSLR camera, if you have opted for one of the pre-sets you don't have to do anything else. With a camcorder, after you have selected the type of light you need to place a white card in front of the subject you are shooting and hold down the white balance button on your camera. (Check your manual for exact instructions or to learn how to do a custom white balance on your DSLR.)

If you want to shoot great video, spend half an hour with your camera learning how to use this feature. If you do a search for "white balance video" you will find numerous resources that can help. (You will probably find, as we did, that after discovering how easy this is you will be motivated to learn more about other custom settings as well.)

6. Monitor the audio, lighting and footage while shooting

No matter how well prepared you are, the final step to recording great video footage is to monitor your audio and picture quality during the shoot.

Audio: monitor the sound levels with headphones to ensure that your audio is clean. Common problems include wind noise and background sounds like a truck rumbling by or machine starting up. Jordan notes that his headphones are always on when shooting their videos.

Lighting: make sure that you have enough light, but not too much light so that your image is being overexposed or "blown out". Watch for tints in the video as well that would indicate your white balance is off. It is extremely difficult, and in many cases impossible, to fix lighting that is too dark or bright in post-production without having your video look extremely grainy and unprofessional.

Jordan suggests that small businesses starting out use on-camera indicators that will warn them about things like the highlights in your videos being blown out. Keeping things simple, especially at first, will help you feel confident about producing more videos.

Focus: Jordan points out that blurry video is almost impossible to fix in post, so you will want to monitor your video to make sure it stays sharp. One problem we have found with autofocus on our camcorders is that it will sometimes focus on everything around the subject, leaving the person we interviewed just slightly out of focus compared to the background. This can be very difficult to see on the camcorder's small LCD screen, especially if you are shooting in bright daylight. Video pros will often use a second external monitor to review their footage while they shoot, but a simpler option is to check the clips you've taken on a laptop in field before you move on to the next shot.

Disk space: It's pretty frustrating to have a great shot cut short because you've run out of memory or had a battery die at a critical moment. Keep an eye on both and arrange to switch memory cards or change batteries at a time that is the least disruptive to your recording and learn how to change these things quickly before you go to a shoot. (We once lost several minutes of a speech because we were using a brand new camera and didn't realize that it would not record unless both memory card bays were closed. Troubleshooting under pressure can be very stressful and slow down your ability to figure out what's wrong.)

7. Invest in good editing software

You've collected your footage, now comes the fun - though surprisingly demanding part - putting it all together into a final production.

There are many manufacturers of video editing software, but three in particular are regularly recommended by other videographers on forums: Sony Vegas, Adobe Premiere and Final Cut.

Each is described below along with a link to its free trial. Before making a final purchase decision, take time to experiment with the trial version and then answer these questions:

• Can the software import and edit the footage from the camera and/or a camera I'm planning to buy? (Some trials may limit your ability to import video from some cameras until you've purchased the full version.)
• Try the software: how easy and intuitive do I find it to use?
• For the times when I get footage that is less than ideal, how easy will it be for me to fix poor quality video and/or audio clips using this software?
• Does it have the things I need (music clips, video transitions, backgrounds, editing effects)?
• Overall, how does this product compare to the others that I tried?

Keeping that in mind, here are some really good, low-cost video editing software programs that you can use to get started:

Sony Vegas (PC / Windows only)
Retailing from $45-125 USD, Sony Vegas provides a lot of great tools that can help you quickly adjust and polish your videos. This program is great for non-pro users, because it simplifies the process of doing things like white balance adjustments, adding titles, transitions, slow motion, colour effects and music into your final videos.
Try before you buy: you can download a free trial of Sony Vegas from the Sony website.

Adobe Premiere Elements / Premiere Pro (Mac & PC)
Retailing at $100 USD, Premiere Elements is designed to make the tasks of movie editing easy, taking care of many of the things a pro would do for you. For example, the SmartSound feature will automatically adjust the length of a music clip to fit your movie while SmartFix will adjust shaky video, colour and lighting.
Try before you buy: you can download a free trial of Premiere Elements from the Adobe website.

On the Pro end of the spectrum, Adobe offers both Premiere Pro and its Production Suite, which includes Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator and more. While very powerful — this is what we use to produce all our videos at CanadaOne — using this software takes a time commitment to learn how to use the tools.

Final Cut Pro (Mac only)
Apple has discontinued the Express version of Final Cut, which used to sit between iMovie (a free Mac OS X only application bundled in the iLife suite) and its Pro product which competes with programs like Adobe Premiere Pro. While offering a rich feature set when compared to the consumer versions of the Sony and Adobe products, some pro users have complained that the new version of Final Cut Pro are not "pro enough".
Final Cut Pro retails for $299 USD and also has a free trial available from the Apple website.

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