For these last couple of weeks, my task has been to collect b-roll, or background roll. We use this footage to fill in the spaces in a video. Taking it is usually simple, you decide what you need and go film it. Or in certain cases, like mine, you film everything. This is so that when we need b-roll we’ll have some readily available to choose from. Frequently it features daily activities around the Georgia State University campus, for instance students walking. You’ll film for maybe 20 seconds at a time, but those 20 seconds could be valuable when putting a video together to show off the campus. Having a bunch of angles and times of day is important, as you never know what you will need in a video until editing it. When you do use the footage, however, you can no longer use it for any video. People would notice when watching multiple videos that the same clip is being played, hence the need for a lot of small clips. Background roll does not need to be people walking though. It could  be anything from a persons’s hand typing on a keyboard to a city skyline. The b-roll sets the mood of the video, and takes the place where a cut is made. It’s infinitely useful, and easy to get. You simply go to what you want to shoot and start recording. B-roll usually will be silenced in the video while something plays over it, so you need not worry about noise. Whatever you are shooting it for, it can add that little extra to your video.