B-Roll for a newscast often involves capturing footage of live events and people doing everyday tasks. Shooting outdoors or at any location outside your studio brings a whole new set of challenges into your production, but don't worry. This part of the chapter will cover some helpful tips on how to capture great B-Roll and how to effectively use it in your news shows.

Use Manual Settings
The last thing you want is an important moment of your shot becoming unusable because the camera was adjusting exposure or white balance while recording in an automatic settings mode.

White Balance
What the camera determines as "White" will be a big deal when shooting B-Roll. For instructions on how you can manually adjust white balance, refer to your camera's user manual and Chapter 1 of this book. There should be an auto white balance feature that will lock in white balance for the camera until you change your location. A white piece of paper near the subject you are recording will be enough for the camera to adjust properly. If you do not have a white piece of paper handy at your location:

• Use "Daylight" or 5600K for outside during the day and indoors in fluorescent light.
• Use "Tungsten" or 3200k for yellow/orange light sources/incandescent light bulbs.

Expose
Brighter is always better than darker. Too much light will always be something the camera can automatically adjust to, and you can manually set the camera to expose properly. Without enough light, the camera will always struggle. It is important to have portable lights or shoot in a location with plenty of light for any shoot indoors or in the evening. If you are not able to see the subject clearly, neither will your camera or the viewers.

Get all the Angles - Wide, Medium, and Tight  

The first shot should be a wide establishing shot of the location for the story. Start wide with the full image with nothing out of frame, then get a medium shot (get physically closer and focus on an area), and then your close-up shot (a focused, tight shot on a detail). Details are important. Repeat this for every location, and on subjects, like athletes, the student body, etc. Reference the outline of the news story, and try to get footage of everything.

Create Moving Pictures  

Frame shots as if you were taking a photo. Then, take a moment to capture the image. You can do this with a tilt or pan into your subject, with a tripod, or you can move onto your subject from out-of-focus to in-focus. Editors will appreciate this effort, as it adds movement and pace to B-Roll for the news story. If it is a handheld shot, you can move your body slowly left to right, up or down, to create movement. If you start on one subject or part of a location and end up on another, make sure to practice the movement, and make sure the beginning and end of the shots would make for good pictures.

Use Focus

Shooting a blurry foreground or background helps the viewer focus on the subject. It may be hard to accomplish, but using focus to help direct the audience’s attention will be visually pleasing and more interesting to the audience.