Chapter 1 — Exercises

Video is a doing skill. Reading this chapter taught you a way of thinking; these exercises turn it into a habit. Do them with whatever camera you have — a phone is perfect for every one of them — and take the starred items seriously, because they build directly toward your three projects.

Exercises are graded by effort and depth:

• ⭐ Warm-up — a few minutes; locks in a concept.
• ⭐⭐ Core — the real practice; do as many of these as you can.
• ⭐⭐⭐ Stretch — deeper or more ambitious; where the biggest gains are.

Model solutions and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises are collected in Answers to Selected Exercises at the back of the book. Try each one before you read its answer — an attempt you got wrong teaches more than an answer you only read.

A. Seeing the craft (Eye & Ear Training)

These need no camera — just your attention. They train the eye and ear that the rest of the book depends on.

1. ⭐ The four-second test. Open any short-video feed. For the next ten videos, notice the exact moment you decide to keep watching or scroll past. Write down, for three of them, the specific thing in the first four seconds that hooked you or lost you. (Answer provided.)

2. ⭐ Sound off, sound on. Pick a video you like and watch thirty seconds with the sound off, then the same thirty seconds with the sound on. Write one sentence on what the sound was adding that you did not notice while watching it normally.

3. ⭐⭐ Name the stages. Choose a short video (an ad, a vlog, a music video). In three bullet points, reconstruct a decision that was probably made in each stage: one in pre-production, one in production, one in post. (Answer provided.)

4. ⭐⭐ Find the light. For one full day, whenever you are about to watch a video with a person in it, pause on any shot of their face and answer one question: where is the light coming from? (Left, right, above, behind, a window, a lamp?) Do this ten times. You are building the single most important reflex a shooter has.

5. ⭐⭐⭐ The reverse-engineer. Take one 15–30 second clip you admire and write a full Described Shot for its opening shot, using all seven fields (Frame, Move, Light, Sound, Cut, Effect, Lesson) from §1.5. You will not get every field right yet — guess. (Model answer provided.)

B. Reading Described Shots (Read the Sequence)

6. ⭐ Picture it. Re-read FIGURE 1.2 (the Café Scene). Without looking, sketch the frame as a simple box with the person and the window placed inside it. Compare to the description. Did you place the person small, as described, or large? Why does "small" serve the opening?

7. ⭐⭐ Diagnose the field. In FIGURE 1.2, THE MOVE is "locked off." Rewrite THE MOVE and THE EFFECT as if the camera instead pushed in slowly toward the door as the person entered. How would the meaning change? (Answer provided.)

8. ⭐⭐ The missing piece. Look again at FIGURE 1.3 (same three shots, two edits). Invent a fourth shot you could add that would change the meaning a third way, and say where you'd cut it in. (Answer provided.)

9. ⭐⭐⭐ Write your own. Watch a scene you love (30–60 seconds) and write a Described Sequence — a short table of its shots (# / shot / duration / audio / cut to next) plus a one-paragraph walkthrough of why it is cut the way it is. This is the exact skill Chapters 7 and 28 are built on; you are starting early.

C. Your first shoots (Shoot This)

This is the heart of the chapter. Make things.

10. ⭐ Twenty deliberate seconds. If you have not already done the 🎬 On Set assignment from §1.6, do it now: one ordinary 20-second action, horizontal, steady, facing the light, three takes, plus ten seconds of room tone. (Model self-critique provided.)

11. ⭐⭐ The one-sentence rule. Shoot three different 15-second clips, and before each one, write the single sentence of what it is "about." Afterward, watch them and judge: does each clip actually deliver its sentence? Where it doesn't, name what went wrong.

12. ⭐⭐ Five Ways: one action, five frames. Pick one simple action (pouring water, opening a door). Film it five times, changing exactly one thing each time: (a) wide, (b) close-up, (c) low angle, (d) high angle, (e) from behind. Watch all five back-to-back. Which best tells the story of the action, and why? (Answer discusses the trade-offs.)

13. ⭐⭐ Sound is half the picture. Film the same person saying the same sentence twice: once with the camera far away using its built-in mic, once with the camera (or a mic) close. Listen on headphones. Write down, in your own words, the difference. Keep this clip — it is the most persuasive argument for the rest of Part III.

14. ⭐⭐⭐ Cover a moment. Choose a 10-second real moment (someone making tea, a pet doing something). Shoot coverage: a wide, a medium, a close-up, and one detail insert — at least four shots. Do not edit yet; just confirm you captured pieces that could be cut together. You are practicing "shoot for the edit" before you can even edit.

D. Thinking like production (Fix the Shot & Settings Drill)

15. ⭐ Fix the plan. A friend says: "I'm going to film a testimonial for my business tomorrow. I'll just point my phone at myself at my desk and talk for a few minutes." List three pre-production decisions they are skipping that will hurt the result. (Answer provided.)

16. ⭐⭐ Fix the shoot. A described clip: a person is interviewed sitting with a bright window behind them; their face is a dark silhouette and the audio echoes because they are across a bare room. Name every problem and the specific fix for each, sorted by stage (pre / production). (Answer provided.)

17. ⭐⭐ The story is the boss. You are asked to make a 30-second video for a bakery. Write the one sentence of what it should be about — not "we sell bread," but a real story angle — and list the four or five shots that would tell it. (Model answer provided.)

18. ⭐⭐⭐ The impossible rescue. Explain, to someone who insists "we'll fix it in post," three specific things that the edit cannot fix if they were not captured on the shoot. Use examples from this chapter. (Answer provided.)

E. Starting the book's spine (Project & Frame Log)

19. ⭐ Start your Frame Log. Create the note (on your phone or on paper). Write today's first entry: one craft observation from something you watched, in one sentence. You will add to it every chapter.

20. ⭐⭐ Define Project 1. Complete the Production Checkpoint if you have not: write who is on camera in your 60-second talking-head, the single thing they will say, and the one sentence of why a stranger would watch to the end. (Model answer shows a strong vs weak version.)

21. ⭐⭐ Seed Projects 2 and 3. Write one rough idea each for your 3-minute documentary short and your 5-minute branded piece. They can change later. The point is that they exist so every future chapter has something real to attach to.

22. ⭐⭐⭐ The audience letter. For your Project 1, write three sentences as if from a viewer who just watched it and loved it: what did they feel, what did they learn, what did they do next? Designing the ending you want is the most professional possible way to begin.

F. A first taste of the edit (Cut This)

You do not need advanced skills to feel the power of editing. These use whatever free editor you have (DaVinci Resolve is the book's reference from Chapter 26 on, but any editor works).

23. ⭐⭐ Assemble your ritual. Take the coverage you shot in Exercise 14 (or the §1.6 shoot), drag it into an editor, pick the best take of each shot, and arrange them into a 15–20 second sequence. Do not add anything fancy — just choose, order, and trim. Notice how ordering the same clips differently changes the feel. (Guidance provided.)

24. ⭐⭐ The Kuleshov test. Film three shots: a neutral face, any object, and the same neutral face again. Cut them in the two orders shown in FIGURE 1.3. Show both to a friend without explaining, and ask what the person in the shot is "feeling" or "thinking." Their answers prove that the cut — not the footage — made the meaning. (Answer discusses what to expect.)

25. ⭐⭐⭐ Two cuts, one message. Using only the footage you already have, make two different 15-second edits of the same material that leave a viewer with two different impressions (e.g., "this is peaceful" vs "this is lonely"). Change only the order, pace, and which shots you keep. This is the whole art of editing in miniature.

G. Settings and scenarios (Settings Drill)

26. ⭐ Read the box. Re-read the Settings Box in Case Study 2. Without looking, list the six things it specifies (orientation, resolution/frame rate, stability, light, sound, lens). For each, say in one phrase why it matters. (Answer provided.)

27. ⭐⭐ Write the settings. For each scenario, write the basic starting choices (orientation, where to put the light, how to handle sound) you'd use, based only on this chapter: (a) a 60-second talking-head for a website; (b) a 20-second vertical clip of someone cooking; (c) an interview in a noisy café. You will refine all of these in later chapters — this is your first instinct. (Model answers provided.)

H. Synthesis

28. ⭐⭐⭐ Teach it back. In about 200 words, explain to an absolute beginner why "the video is not the footage." Use the three stages, one of the four craft elements (story/light/sound/edit), and one concrete example. Teaching a concept is the strongest test that you own it. (Model answer provided.)

29. ⭐⭐⭐ The self-audit. Watch the best video you have ever personally made (or, if this is your first, the §1.6 shoot). Grade it honestly on the four elements — story, light, sound, edit — from 1 to 5 each. Which scored lowest? That is precisely where the next few chapters will help you most. Write one sentence on what you would change. Keeping this baseline lets you measure real progress by Chapter 40.

30. ⭐⭐⭐ The Frame-Log habit, committed. Set a reminder to add one Frame Log entry every day for the next week — one craft observation per day from anything you watch. At week's end, read them back. You will notice you are already watching video differently. This single habit, sustained across the book, will do more for your eye than any piece of gear.

When you have done these — especially the shooting ones — you have already crossed the most important line in this book: from someone who watches video to someone who makes it. Everything after this is refinement. Move on to Chapter 2, where we open the camera up and take command of the four settings that build every image.