I went to the library on Thursday. I never know what I am going to get at the library. I pick books randomly. I have one author that I try to read every book that e has written. His name is John Grisham. You have probably heard of him. Here is a list of some of his books. Many of these have been made into movies. The Rainmaker, A Time to Kill, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Frim, etc.

    I got four books this week. Tap Out- a book of modern day poetry. Cruel Shoes is a comedy book written by Steve Martin. ( I didn't get the jokes.) lol The third  book I picked out was An American Summer. It is a book written by a social worker telling stories about the danger of living in Chicago and stories about living in poverty and bad neighborhoods. The last one I picked was How to Shoot Video that doesn't Suck. 

     Why did I pick out that book? Someday I might want to shoot a music video of one of my songs. This book might have some info that I need to know.  Videos are more entertaining to watch that just listening to a song. I thought I knew enough to make a good video. Wrong! I learned so much. A lot of it is stuff that I know but really don't know. Here is an example- Keep your shots or scenes under ten seconds. 

     The point of watching a movie or a music video is to be entertained. To  be entertained we need variety. A music video would be boring if all we saw was Blake Shelton singing his song with one camera angle.  This is what I see when I go to a concert.  His video God's Country is definitely not boring. The song is 3 minutes and 27 seconds long. I counted the scene changes and it was 146 and I might have missed a few. Lets do the math. The song is 207 seconds long and has 146 scene changes. This average length of a scene was 1.4 seconds. Some scenes were a picture flashed on the screen. The longest on was about ten seconds as Blake sang the chorus. 

      I did a little more research on scenes. I watched part of the movie The Siege. A movie with Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis. The scene were short and changed often. None of them were longer than ten seconds. I noticed that if it was a long scene where two people were talking they would break it up by changing the camera angle. First it was on the guy in the scene. A close up of the girl. Different angles, Focusing on different people, items in the room, etc. I will not be able to watch a movie now without analyzing the scenes. 

       I like it when I learn something new. I learned to  keep my  scenes short and entertain your audience.