I have spent many years working in professional videography (ie taking videos with a camera, camcorder, cellphone, etc), and I'm astonished (and dismayed) at how many otherwise amazing videos are out there of human/animal interactions, ruined by unforgiveably bad camera work. So, for those interested in posting better than crap videos, here's a quick how-to for you!
First, some basics. Cameras are not like eyes. The eyes and brain compensate for many things you would not even be aware of, from motion blur to color balance. Cameras cannot do that - not even those touted with "Steady Shot" and "Auto White Balance", etc. Understanding this can make the difference between a garbage video - dark, shaky, sideways on, etc - and one worthy of Spielberg himself. You don't need professional equipment to get a good enough money shot - I took some worthwhile videos of lions having sex, under their tails, using an old Sony thingie with a primitive medium-focus lens, manual zoom, no auto white balance, and drive motors that whirred in the soundtrack. All you need is a suitable camera, possibly some other bits and pieces, and some knowledge.
Right - so here's the list!
1. Camera. It helps to have a camera if you want to take videos. I KNOW that sounds stupid, but - well, the things I've seen when I forgot to bring a camera! Obviously, a $12,000 beauty with the best possible lenses is going to be really, really good - but you can still do amazing stuff with a cellphone camera. BTW, don't be fooled into thinking a bigger megapixel number is ALWAYS better: megapixels tells you the size of the video element (the thing inside that does the actual converting light into electricity). True, a bigger element will give you higher resolution (finer grained) images, but will be useless if it's behind a tiny 6mm cellphone lens. Only megapixels and lens size TOGETHER give you a better image.
2. Lighting. This is tricky. It's not easy to explain to unknowing people why you're hauling 3,000 watts of redhead lamps plus a generator and a box of filters into your stable, barn, kennel, etc - but lighting is so important. Without light, there is no photography. I've done good looking shoots with just a couple of ordinary desk lamps with neutral-density filters to soften the glow, and a battery-powered halogen lamp on the camera, likewise filtered. The details of movie lighting are so complex they would fill several books, but essentially you want to light the overall subjects (humans, animals) reasonably evenly (no obvious dark patches or overlit patches), and for that juicy money shot between the legs, a small, low-powered spot with ND filter. This last should be positioned so the animal's tail doesn't get in the way - dogs wag their tails a lot, and so I've seen women getting mated by dogs where the under-the-tail shot goes dark and bright with each wag of the tail! Try to use incandescent (filament-type) bulbs rather than CFL or LED lamps - this will give a broader color spectrum, which looks more natural, and also avoids what we call alisasing error. This is when the CFL flickers at one rate and the camera shutter at another, causing horrible black bars sweeping up and down the screen when you see the video. Also, if possible use a bigger lens on the camera for darker images.
3. Stability. So many videos I've seen feature sudden crazy angles and blurry motions past what I think might be animal fur or human skin but it's so hard to tell. Usually accompanied by loud rattles and bangs in the soundtrack as the camera microphone gets shaken around. Shaky shots are useless! Okay, there are some professional movie directors out there who would reject the movie of the Hindenburg disaster because it wasn't shot from a tripod. You don't need to go to that extreme - but a tripod is useful, especially if you're the only one around taking a selfie of you and your lover. If you're handholding a camera, shooting a friend getting it off with a dog, horse, lion, etc, there are tips and tricks to getting a stable shot, and by that I don't mean shooting a video of your dick in the sweet sweet pussy of a lovely mare in a stable. Remember, again, that the eyes and brain have very advanced image stabilisers built in, so movement is rarely noticed in human vision, but every movement of the camera - every movement - will go down on tape or memory drive as exactly that. Movement. I often use what I call the Ninja pose: camera in both hands like a police pistol, elbows bent and held slightly outward, and knees slightly bent. If you want to pan (move the camera in the horizontal plane), swing your entire torso if you can - pretend you are a machine with smoothly running bearings. This will help you keep your hands as rock steady as possible while you hold the viewfinder to your eye. Breathe slowly and steadily, just like a sniper with his rifle, not an easy thing to do, I admit, when you're filming something exciting like a GSD mounting a pretty woman. If you want to suddenly get a shot of the under-tail action, walk slowly and smoothly to the right position for your shot, don't rush or fumble around with the camera. Aim it slowly and carefully like a gun.
Be aware of which side of your camera is UP. Non-professional camcorders often look like small cubes, so it's hard to tell which way you're supposed to hold them - have a good look and find out first, before you get to actually working with it. I once saw an excellent video of a man making love to his bitch upside down on the bedroom ceiling! Cellphones are usually held vertically (the long edges at the sides) when making phone calls, so it's natural to hold it the same way when taking selfies of "me with the guys at a picnic" to show your friends on Twitter. But if you look at most TV screens, you'll see they have a different "aspect ratio" as it's called: the long edges are at top and bottom! Hold your cellphone like this instead when taking a video, the long edges at top and bottom, and you'll find the image fits on your TV screen a lot better.
4. Sound. A good soundtrack adds to even a sex movie - many of us like to hear the yelps and moans of a woman as her dog knots inside her pussy, or the loving deep breaths of a man fucking a mare. Don't ruin it by laying over a monotonous thudding music track, even if you happen to like rap or trance. Let the location sounds tell the story. Before using your camera or cellphone, make a note of exactly where the microphone(s) is. In cellphones, it's often a very small hole in an odd place or even the bit you talk into when ordering pizza to go. Then, when you use your camera for the shot, you know where NOT to put your thumb or finger lest you block the audio and make loud rustling/thumping noises in the video's soundtrack. Keep your fingers for your bitch or mare's vagina. BTW - be aware that human voices speaking on a soundtrack can be used as evidence in court.
5. The Story. You're not just taking a holiday shot, you're using a powerful medium to tell us a story. Yes, even animal sex videos have a story! Man takes off his clothes and climbs onto the bed to stroke and pat his beautiful Labrador bitch, he fingers and licks her, and she licks his burgeoning great cock, then they make love. You know how it works. If you are the third-party camera op, use your imagination to get tasteful shots as the action proceeds: her licking him, he licking her, a closeup of her wet puffy cookie, a long shot of the two on the bed, then a closeup of his penis. We see him enter her, but not too closeup otherwise it's just a confusing blur of skin and fur, cut to a long shot as he humps the labbie girl, a closeup between their legs, then a shot of her face as she enjoys being mated, another longshot. See how in this little script I'm alternating closeups with long shots (the entire scene on the bed) and head-and-shoulders shots (her head, his head and shoulders, etc). Variety is vital in a movie: I estimate 90% of dog-on-woman videos I've seen start with the dog mounting the pretty girl, then we move in for a tight closeup (usually so close and badly-lit it's just a dark blur and you see nothing interesting at all) and hold there for the next 14 minutes of dark blurry dog cock wriggling around in dark blurry muff, then end video. Use variety: a few seconds of the penis-in-pussy shot, then let's see the two of them in LS, the shaggy dog on her back panting as he cums, then the expression on her face, then back to the money shot.
6. Post production. This is the work you do after the penis has left the vagina and you've packed up your equipment and gone home. Almost any computer can run a cheap or free movie editing app. You load your camera's memory into the app, and cut the video up into useful bites. Remember what I said about telling the story above? This is where it can really be made to work. You cut out the bit where you jiggled the camera to get a closeup of his knot bulging inside her girl parts, so now you have a snappy cut from long shot of the ecstatic couple to a good, well-lit and stable view under the dog's swaying ballsack. This is how professional movies are made. Sometimes I take a lengthy long shot, then a lengthy closeup - then, in post-prod, I cut those two shots into segments and alternate between the two so it goes LS-CU-LS-CU. Don't cut your edits too short, otherwise you'll get a fast-paced couple of seconds under the tail, then a brief long shot of the two heaving on the bed, etc. This works for high action stuff like the police cruiser belting down Santa Monica Boulevard chasing the Dodge Charger on fire, but not for a love story, which is what you are telling here. BTW - always, always erase your work after editing on the computer - this again is evidence! Whoops!
More later - and comments welcome. Happy videos!
First, some basics. Cameras are not like eyes. The eyes and brain compensate for many things you would not even be aware of, from motion blur to color balance. Cameras cannot do that - not even those touted with "Steady Shot" and "Auto White Balance", etc. Understanding this can make the difference between a garbage video - dark, shaky, sideways on, etc - and one worthy of Spielberg himself. You don't need professional equipment to get a good enough money shot - I took some worthwhile videos of lions having sex, under their tails, using an old Sony thingie with a primitive medium-focus lens, manual zoom, no auto white balance, and drive motors that whirred in the soundtrack. All you need is a suitable camera, possibly some other bits and pieces, and some knowledge.
Right - so here's the list!
1. Camera. It helps to have a camera if you want to take videos. I KNOW that sounds stupid, but - well, the things I've seen when I forgot to bring a camera! Obviously, a $12,000 beauty with the best possible lenses is going to be really, really good - but you can still do amazing stuff with a cellphone camera. BTW, don't be fooled into thinking a bigger megapixel number is ALWAYS better: megapixels tells you the size of the video element (the thing inside that does the actual converting light into electricity). True, a bigger element will give you higher resolution (finer grained) images, but will be useless if it's behind a tiny 6mm cellphone lens. Only megapixels and lens size TOGETHER give you a better image.
2. Lighting. This is tricky. It's not easy to explain to unknowing people why you're hauling 3,000 watts of redhead lamps plus a generator and a box of filters into your stable, barn, kennel, etc - but lighting is so important. Without light, there is no photography. I've done good looking shoots with just a couple of ordinary desk lamps with neutral-density filters to soften the glow, and a battery-powered halogen lamp on the camera, likewise filtered. The details of movie lighting are so complex they would fill several books, but essentially you want to light the overall subjects (humans, animals) reasonably evenly (no obvious dark patches or overlit patches), and for that juicy money shot between the legs, a small, low-powered spot with ND filter. This last should be positioned so the animal's tail doesn't get in the way - dogs wag their tails a lot, and so I've seen women getting mated by dogs where the under-the-tail shot goes dark and bright with each wag of the tail! Try to use incandescent (filament-type) bulbs rather than CFL or LED lamps - this will give a broader color spectrum, which looks more natural, and also avoids what we call alisasing error. This is when the CFL flickers at one rate and the camera shutter at another, causing horrible black bars sweeping up and down the screen when you see the video. Also, if possible use a bigger lens on the camera for darker images.
3. Stability. So many videos I've seen feature sudden crazy angles and blurry motions past what I think might be animal fur or human skin but it's so hard to tell. Usually accompanied by loud rattles and bangs in the soundtrack as the camera microphone gets shaken around. Shaky shots are useless! Okay, there are some professional movie directors out there who would reject the movie of the Hindenburg disaster because it wasn't shot from a tripod. You don't need to go to that extreme - but a tripod is useful, especially if you're the only one around taking a selfie of you and your lover. If you're handholding a camera, shooting a friend getting it off with a dog, horse, lion, etc, there are tips and tricks to getting a stable shot, and by that I don't mean shooting a video of your dick in the sweet sweet pussy of a lovely mare in a stable. Remember, again, that the eyes and brain have very advanced image stabilisers built in, so movement is rarely noticed in human vision, but every movement of the camera - every movement - will go down on tape or memory drive as exactly that. Movement. I often use what I call the Ninja pose: camera in both hands like a police pistol, elbows bent and held slightly outward, and knees slightly bent. If you want to pan (move the camera in the horizontal plane), swing your entire torso if you can - pretend you are a machine with smoothly running bearings. This will help you keep your hands as rock steady as possible while you hold the viewfinder to your eye. Breathe slowly and steadily, just like a sniper with his rifle, not an easy thing to do, I admit, when you're filming something exciting like a GSD mounting a pretty woman. If you want to suddenly get a shot of the under-tail action, walk slowly and smoothly to the right position for your shot, don't rush or fumble around with the camera. Aim it slowly and carefully like a gun.
Be aware of which side of your camera is UP. Non-professional camcorders often look like small cubes, so it's hard to tell which way you're supposed to hold them - have a good look and find out first, before you get to actually working with it. I once saw an excellent video of a man making love to his bitch upside down on the bedroom ceiling! Cellphones are usually held vertically (the long edges at the sides) when making phone calls, so it's natural to hold it the same way when taking selfies of "me with the guys at a picnic" to show your friends on Twitter. But if you look at most TV screens, you'll see they have a different "aspect ratio" as it's called: the long edges are at top and bottom! Hold your cellphone like this instead when taking a video, the long edges at top and bottom, and you'll find the image fits on your TV screen a lot better.
4. Sound. A good soundtrack adds to even a sex movie - many of us like to hear the yelps and moans of a woman as her dog knots inside her pussy, or the loving deep breaths of a man fucking a mare. Don't ruin it by laying over a monotonous thudding music track, even if you happen to like rap or trance. Let the location sounds tell the story. Before using your camera or cellphone, make a note of exactly where the microphone(s) is. In cellphones, it's often a very small hole in an odd place or even the bit you talk into when ordering pizza to go. Then, when you use your camera for the shot, you know where NOT to put your thumb or finger lest you block the audio and make loud rustling/thumping noises in the video's soundtrack. Keep your fingers for your bitch or mare's vagina. BTW - be aware that human voices speaking on a soundtrack can be used as evidence in court.
5. The Story. You're not just taking a holiday shot, you're using a powerful medium to tell us a story. Yes, even animal sex videos have a story! Man takes off his clothes and climbs onto the bed to stroke and pat his beautiful Labrador bitch, he fingers and licks her, and she licks his burgeoning great cock, then they make love. You know how it works. If you are the third-party camera op, use your imagination to get tasteful shots as the action proceeds: her licking him, he licking her, a closeup of her wet puffy cookie, a long shot of the two on the bed, then a closeup of his penis. We see him enter her, but not too closeup otherwise it's just a confusing blur of skin and fur, cut to a long shot as he humps the labbie girl, a closeup between their legs, then a shot of her face as she enjoys being mated, another longshot. See how in this little script I'm alternating closeups with long shots (the entire scene on the bed) and head-and-shoulders shots (her head, his head and shoulders, etc). Variety is vital in a movie: I estimate 90% of dog-on-woman videos I've seen start with the dog mounting the pretty girl, then we move in for a tight closeup (usually so close and badly-lit it's just a dark blur and you see nothing interesting at all) and hold there for the next 14 minutes of dark blurry dog cock wriggling around in dark blurry muff, then end video. Use variety: a few seconds of the penis-in-pussy shot, then let's see the two of them in LS, the shaggy dog on her back panting as he cums, then the expression on her face, then back to the money shot.
6. Post production. This is the work you do after the penis has left the vagina and you've packed up your equipment and gone home. Almost any computer can run a cheap or free movie editing app. You load your camera's memory into the app, and cut the video up into useful bites. Remember what I said about telling the story above? This is where it can really be made to work. You cut out the bit where you jiggled the camera to get a closeup of his knot bulging inside her girl parts, so now you have a snappy cut from long shot of the ecstatic couple to a good, well-lit and stable view under the dog's swaying ballsack. This is how professional movies are made. Sometimes I take a lengthy long shot, then a lengthy closeup - then, in post-prod, I cut those two shots into segments and alternate between the two so it goes LS-CU-LS-CU. Don't cut your edits too short, otherwise you'll get a fast-paced couple of seconds under the tail, then a brief long shot of the two heaving on the bed, etc. This works for high action stuff like the police cruiser belting down Santa Monica Boulevard chasing the Dodge Charger on fire, but not for a love story, which is what you are telling here. BTW - always, always erase your work after editing on the computer - this again is evidence! Whoops!
More later - and comments welcome. Happy videos!
