Transcripts
1. How to Vlog! Your Class Project: Hey, my name is Sarah Dhe. I live in New York City, and today I'm going to teach you how to vlog. I have a YouTube channel based around tech and creatively. I review the latest technology Walk my adventures, traveling and Working City, and also give tutorials on how to make. Typically, people associate this with blogging. It's basically picking out maybe a small camera and walking around and filming yourself. But it's so much more than that. It's telling a story. Maybe in a 10 minute video, posting it to YouTube for the world to see. Flog. It stands for video blood. So I'm going to teach you how to do that. I'm going to teach you what to shoot with how to shoot with it. How do you tell a compelling story? And then how do you edit your footage? How do you organize everything? Your class project is to create a vlog film with whatever you have, whether it's your phone or fancy camera. Take some of the tips and tricks that you got from this video posted on YouTube, and I'm gonna watch some of your blog's. I'm gonna critique. Um, I'm gonna let you know what's good. What's bad, maybe something to work on. But the most important thing is just creating it. People are looking at me. That's also another thing with blog's gotta be kind of shameless. You're never gonna see these people again in your life. I have added one of my latest blog's down Below, and make sure to add your water project to project Gallery here on skill share. I would love to give you feedback on your projects.
2. Filming: How to Use a Camera: I'm gonna talk about specific cameras. You can get really fancy with interchangeable lenses, but if you use a simple point and shoot camera like Rx 100 RG seven X, usually you can throw in the settings on auto, and it's going to do everything for you. So it's going to expose correctly so your face will be lit to the proper exposure. However, a lot of the times you want to throw your camera into manual mode, and you need to know the different settings how toe work them. So you have the ISO shutter an aperture. Those three things are a way to control how much light goes into the camera. So the aperture is basically how wide open your lenses. So this is going to be a low number aperture, and this is going to be a high number aperture. So that means the smaller the opening, the less light that is going to let it. This is the aperture at F eight, and then if we widen the aperture toe F five, you can see the image is getting brighter. Shutter speed has to do with motion blur. So when you're filming and video this is going to be how accurate the motion blur is. So my arms were flailing around right now, and it's going to look pretty accurate toe way. Your eyes are because I have the shutter speed Teoh double the amount of the frames per second I am shooting. It's right now shooting 24 frames per second. That is the frame rate that I recommend that you're finished. Timeline is in. So you want to shoot most of your video in that I have the shutter speed 1/50 and that way you're going to get the most natural motion blur. But if I have to brighten up the image, I can lower that number on the bottom. And then if I need to darker that image, I can make that number on the bottom bigger. So this is at 1/1 25. This is at 1/40. That's the typical rule when it comes to shutter speed. When shooting video, I'm going to get into France for second in a minute, and I S O. R. Eso is basically a way to add artificial light to your image when you're shuffling through your camera settings you're going to come across something F. P s that stands for frames per second. So when shooting video, just picture a moving image as 24 Still, pictures combined into one second. So that's essentially what a frame rate means. We're shooting video if you're shooting at 24 frames per second, which is a normal frame rate to shoot in. That means you're taking 24 still pictures, combining those stills into one second. And that's what makes up your video the majority of things that I shoot, especially when I'm just doing talking bits. It's in 24 frames per second, cause I'm not going to change that in editing The times when you want to change your FPs is when you want to shoot slow motion. Typical frame rates for slow motion are 60 frames per 2nd 120 frames per second and 200 and 40 frames per second. Depending on the capabilities of your camera. Will you have 60 frames per second footage. You slow it down to 40% in your video editor to conform it to a 24 frames per second time one and then when you have 240 frames for second. You're going to slow that down to 10% now. There's some soccer going on behind us. So I'm gonna give you an example of the different slow most that you can Dio. Right now, - let's talk about focal links. This has to do with the lenses that you put on a camera. So this is 16 millimeters, and then this This is 35 millimeters. Everything about focal length. Think about how zoomed in you are into a subject. So something with a smaller number like 16 millimeters will be a wider shot. These air, typically used for maybe establishment shots you wanna show where you are. You need that wide angle. The human eye is typically a 35 millimeter lens and then say you need to zoom in on something super far away. Then you would use something like a 70 millimeter or maybe even 200 millimeters. That's when you're gonna be able to stand right here and be able to shoot, like all the way over there. Like like turn around. You be able to see that white building in the distance. Can you see it? No, no, but with the 200 millimeter lens. So right now, we just changed to a 72 200 millimeter lens. This is that 70 we were previously shooting and 35. And this this is 200 millimeters. So you really get that length you get to zoom into the subject.
3. What Kind of Camera Do You Need?: Now I'm going to talk about what cameras you guys need. So I break it up into three different categories. There is the action of venture camera, so that's similar to a GoPro. So they are very small in size and you can attach them to your person and they're typically waterproof. There is also the very prominent vlogging camera. This is just a point and shoot. So you're typically always gonna have a screens. You can see yourself, which is pretty key. When it comes to a blogging. You want to be able to frame a pure shot, see who's in the shot. So this is my go to for blogging. This is a Sony Rx 105 and then the fanciest, probably most expensive camera you can get is similar to a Sony A seven s to a canon 70 D or a D d. Or even a five d thes are DSL ours and Marylise cameras. These cameras, you can take lenses of different focal links. You can attach them to your cameras so you have those interchangeable lenses that you can use with a point and shoot. This lens is kind of what you get its equivalent to a 24 to 70. All that means is you can get a wide shot and then you consume in quite a bit when I'm not using my Sony Rx 100 which is this little guy Point shoot. Don't be fooled by the size. It is a great camera. I do use my Marylise camera A Sony A seven s, too. So I'm gonna grab this camera cause this is actually what I'm using right now and we're going to switch over to the Rx 100. Say hi to my friend Cody here. So he's no filming with the Sony Rx 100 this guy is the Sony 87 s to This is a great focal length of logging its a 16 to 35. That means it's very wide, but you get a fantastic image with this. What's different about a Sony A seven s? Yes, it is a fancy camera, but you have more diverse options When it comes to audio pro TEM alert. People are going to be able to forgive a subpar image, But very rarely can people watch a video with poor audio. With a camera like this, you can plug in audio. Like what I have right now is I have a laws, Mike underneath my shirt, and it's going directly into this camera body. So hopefully the audio is nice and crispy. Check 12 doesn't sound. This is sound good to you guys. This is a love Mike system. But another popular option is just a on camera, Mike. So what this does is you plug it into the camera at rest at the top, and it's very directional, So wherever you point this camera, it's gonna get good audio. All right, So I'm gonna hand this guy back back to Cody Here, I'll take take my Rx 100. I love this guy. This is my go to for blogging. The last two cameras I'm going to mention is a drone. So this is how you get some aerial shots. This is probably the most intimidating camera here, and, you know, you don't have to jump right into it and have tohave aerial footage. That's probably a more advanced thing toe have in the last camera is your phone. There are actually many classes on skill share that focus on iPhone and phone video are Murphy and photography. So I'm gonna leave that up to those guys on my iPhone eight iPhone 10. Any of the recent iPhones are my go to when it comes to the last minute camera. If I need to capture a moment without having my other cameras, another pro tip alert is to follow something I call the eight second rule. This is actually something I made up for myself cause when you're in the beginning, sometimes shooting out in public and especially shooting yourself, this is what blogging is associated with. I think a lot like shooting yourself out in public. Sometimes you just hit record and head it super fast, and then you're left with the three second clip. How are you going to put that in the video? So something I dio when filming B roll or maybe filming myself is I have to let the camera record for eight seconds. I have to, because a lot of times when I'm filming establishing shots of outside all film for four seconds and you're not left with a lot of stuff to edit, and especially with filming yourself, hit that record button, wait a few seconds and then hop into it. The last pro tip I have for you is in regards to filming steady footage. So one more time I'm going to borrow this camera. When you are shooting things and you want very steady footage or maybe have a lens with the higher focal length, you're going to be able to shoot further away. Well, the image stabilization isn't going to be as good. So I use the strap almost as a stabilizer in itself. So I kind of like pull it out where there's no slack. If you need less slack, even more room just kind of put it around that. And this way you can get like super study footage. You know, it's like when you're walk in, let's just take a walk around the unfinished studio here. It's just very steady footage. If you need to do any, like quick pans, do I look cool? Do I look cool, Cody? Yeah, yeah, but yeah, this just really helps me out when it comes toe taking shots that our study
4. Story is EVERYTHING: Now you have a good idea on what camera you should shoot with and how to shoot with that camera. But I'm gonna set aside the technicalities and why having the best camera in the world isn't the most important part of a vlog. Like anything, these story is the most important part of a video. Whether it is a feature length film or maybe a 50 minute documentary, think about blogging as making a 10 minute documentary of your life or you doing something fun for the day but condensed into a 10 minute time period that you want to then post onto social media people that you know. Yes, they're going to be watching these videos as you share them onto social, but also as your kind of gaining an audience. Other people you don't know are going to be watching, and they might stay on your video for just the 1st 30 seconds. So that means that you have to find a way to really grab your audience. Let them know that your video is worth watching within the first 10 seconds because you're posting online. People aren't sitting in a movie theater. They're not super engaged with it from the beginning, you have to make sure to grab the attention of your audience from the get go. Whether that is a super aesthetic shot, maybe you're thing. Was the videos making things look good? Maybe it's your personality when when people vlog, you want to see their life. You want to see their friends, you want to see their family. But most importantly, you want to see their perspective. That's what you bring to a vlog that is unique. Your perspective. Now I'm in a city like New York, so there are stories everywhere. But don't let the location of where you're living discourage you in terms of creating contents. That's one of the coolest things about posting videos. Online is you get to see different perspectives from all over the world, So whether you're gold of log is too grow and audience and eventually maybe sell off that audience to make a living from it, you should want to share your perspectives. You wanna post videos your family. You get to look back and reminisce on the home videos that are posted to the Internet for everyone to see. Flogging can be a very cool medium for those purposes. And another thing you just have to have a blog's is the fidget spinner. I'm kidding, Just kidding. Everyone is video in 2020 year, probably waters. What are those? What are fidget spinners, in addition to that, is very important to find your niche. People don't want to just see you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, but they wouldn't learn. They want to be entertained. They want to be inspired. So I would say that my niche is probably technology. I love to do tech videos and then living in New York City ads of extra Layer. This guy right here his name is John Hill. It is also a YouTube blogger. What is your it skateboarding? But I just look for a message to tell in each video, and I try to incorporate skateboarding somehow into that message. So usually like ah, life lesson or something that I've learned, or some sense of adventure that I'm going on that day and I bring along my board on. Then I sort of validate myself with skateboarding and then hopefully tell a good story at the same time. Do you have a lot of escape their do their dio. But then you insert. Yeah, I try to add a little filmmaking flavor and there to give myself some more credibility in that field. But I'm learning I'm learning By Sarah DJ Skill Share check now.
5. How to Edit: Adobe Premiere CC: you found a camera, you shot your vlog. And now it's time to take that footage from the SD card from the camera. Put it onto your computer, get organized and start at a insert your SD card and create a folder for your projects. You're gonna put your footage in here. So whether you're working off of your computer laptop, any kind or you have an external hard drive, I create one project and then put everything I'm using, including music, graphics, anything I need into this one folder. So I'm gonna open up this folder footage. But one of the SD card find my footage that I just shot. I'm going to grab that footage, drag it and drop it into my footage. Fuller. There are several different types of editing Softwares you can use. I personally use Adobe Premiere C C. C. C stands for Creative Club, and it includes a ton of APS, not just for video editing. Photoshopped Light room for picture editing as wealthy equivalent video editing software from Apple would be final Cut pro 10. If you want to just start with the basics on all Macs, I movie is included, so just start on my movie. It's a pretty simple drag and drop video editing software because I use from here I'm going to bring you into the software and show you how I had it in here. Give you the basic rundown of the act. I'm going to start a new project. We will title it first log ever. And then I'm gonna make sure this project file and everything I do when I'm working with my first log ever to be in the same folder titled Vlogs. I'm gonna create a premier folder where all of my premier assets are going to go. Gonna press, OK, and now we're in the video editing software Premier. The first step is to import the footage that you want to edit with. So I am going to find the footage and the vlog folder, click it, Command A to bring it all in. I'm gonna organize my footage in a bin so I'm going to drag and drop. Next step is to create a timeline. The timeline is where you're going to put all of your footage where you're going to make your final video. This is where you're gonna put the clips together the music, All my footage was shot in 1920 by 10. 80. That is just the resolution off the video. Of course, When you shoot four k, you have bigger dimensions to work with. So you're going to get more sharpness. But this one is in 10 80. So I'm going to title my sequence here first vlog ever press. Okay. And so here is the time line. I'm gonna double click the footage folder. I want to see it and some no format. So it's easier to see. Bring it on over here, organized by the order of clips. All right, so let's go ahead and just click on Clip that I shot in New York City out here. Say, this is our first clip off our first blawg ever. So I want some establishing shots of the city. I'm gonna press I to set an in point and then, oh, to set an out point that represents the part of the video that you want. You're gonna take that video and drag it down in to the timeline can expand the timeline by just clicking the plus button, and so you compress space for and play your movie that you have so far to preview the footage I want to see. I'm just double clicking here on all the footage that I shot. I compressed space for a preview and a quick pro tip is you can use thes shortcuts J K and L two Shuttle four backwards and to stop your footage. It's really easy way. So I'm gonna press l to go forward que to stop and then Jay to go back. Say I want to go through this British super quick. Well, you can double click on the L to go twice as fast. DoubleClick BJ to go twice as fast backwards shooting slo mo can really add some extra time to your montages, and I love to use it. So if that is what you did an easy way to organize it in premieres. Go ahead and put all of our footage and need list style you want organized by frame ring. Go ahead and highlight all of your flu mo clips. I know these air 60 friends for second. I'm going to right click and say label, we're gonna label it peak or magenta and then this is 100 20 France or second, even slower, slow. So I'm going toe label this mango. So now when we're browsing throughout the footage and we see maybe some of this walking and we drag it down to the timeline, we know because it is orange or mango, whatever that color is, we know that is 100 20 frames per second clip. We can go ahead and press command are and slow it down to 20%. And now you're going to get that super nice, buttery, slow Mom. So right now we have a talking clip to start us out, and then it goes into some slow mom. So you probably want some music at some point in the video, but you don't have to. That's the beauty about blogging. It's you sharing your experience or niche wherever you are. You could make it as artsy as cinematic as you want, or it could simply be just you and a camera. You go on about your day sharing your passion and Mitch. But I've loved out of music to my videos. So the way to add extra assets is you're gonna press command I to import again. But this time I'm going to go to my music library and pick something up. Okay, so we imported some vibe music here, double click to preview. All right, so I set my in and out points, and I'm just gonna go ahead and dragged us onto the audio timeline. All of these tracks above this line of the video tracks, all the tracks below are the audio tracks. So I'm going to line up my audio accordingly. I can click on the audio while pressing command to add a editing point. Click command in the audio that then I'm gonna bring that point or key frame down. And this is gonna add a fate to the music. So it will nicely fade into the song, maybe fade this out a little bit. So now we have the very, very beginning of a vlog. Those are the very basics and order on how to get started. But I'm going to pull up a finished product where I can kind of walk you through a finished vlog. This is also the vlog that I posted as an example. Something that you can follow along with, maybe take some notes for your own class project your own flog. This is an example of log that has all the kind of flavors that I like to include. It has technology, a new phone, unboxing. And then I also traveled to Los Angeles, California, to go to a conference. I covered that and then back to New York, where I documented some fun shenanigans running about a city. It is definitely fast pace and hopefully not boring at all. If you're wanting to grow a following on YouTube via blogging, you gotta be entertaining. It has two things kind of have to be constant, like performing on a stage. You have to give 150% of your energy to the camera so it comes off as normal in the video. This is how I have things organized in Premiere. I really only have my project window where I keep all of my stuff and then separate panels for all of the footage and then also any other cameras that I used, including my drone. Once, I've kind of formulated the story in my head. That's when I start dropping down clips. Now this might look kind of intimidating. It is a lot of stuff. It definitely takes me around five hours to edit a vlog like this where there are, ah lot of moving parts. I'm going to go through kind of the ends and out of this. So if I mentioned something that you don't understand like an adjustment layer, it gives you the term and you have the context. So maybe you can later go and google it, and you can figure out how to apply it to your video. So I started this video immediately getting right into the iPhone 10. I have some music playing underneath. And then after about a minute of talking, I jump into a montage, going to airport. I'm going to L. A. So here you have some examples of drone footage, time lapses, slow motion was really sets the establishment shots that I am in a new place. I'm in L. A. Here you can see these are slow motion clips. They are peaks of 60 frames per second. I slowed it down to 40%. Later on. We have some super slow mo. That's why I labeled it and mango. And so if we go into the settings here, command are you can see it's slow down to 20%. I like to use music a lot in my videos. I think it really moves the video along, but this is where you see my audio ducking. This is basically where you lower the audio when you're talking so you can actually hear the levels of your voice. You don't want full blasting music when you're talking. And so that's what you can visually see as I'm setting these key frames here, and I'm ducking when I'm talking. And then when it's time for a montage, I will bring that level back up to full after you mastering just dropping clips, adding music. Maybe you want to add a little bit extra flavor. And so that's where these extra video tracks come in, where you can layer things on top of it, something called an adjustment. Where is where you can add certain effects over all of the videos underneath, so it's a really easy way to not just apply affects individual clips that could become super redundant. You can add an adjustment where over and then cut it up. You can change the duration of it and really, this allows you to add those effects like color correcting to your clip. Here, I'm going to talk a little off. So basically what I've done to my image, just brighten it up a little bit and add some of the color tone that I like into it. So if you double click the adjustment layer, you go into affects controls and see how I color in things I used to plug in called film Convert prop. But another great way to color Correct your footage is something called Loom ITRI Color panel, where you can come in and change the exposure. If I need it brighter, you can change. The saturation is you can add in a lot more color. It's really up to you, and the possibilities are endless. So now you have the basics of editing. But what do you do after you complete your video?
6. Publishing Your Vlog to YouTube: your video is done, you're gonna want to export that file. So go ahead and go to the end of your video. You're going to press Oh, to set that outpoint command and to export it, you're gonna choose the format of H 264 and then typically, and video editors, you're going tohave a preset for YouTube at the resolution shot up. So that's 10 80 you're gonna press export. And and that's the file that you upload to YouTube. Why should you use YouTube to upload your vlogs? And hopefully I can offer a few tips and tricks. YouTube is very familiar to the general public. So when you tweet out a link to your YouTube channel or a YouTube video, hopefully this we will subscribe and wait for your regular content on the website because logging helps if you've logged on a consistent basis, maybe start with only uploading once a week and then to a week, and maybe even through a week, or even going daily what? It is important on YouTube. But I would say that posting a video every single day isn't as important as it used to be. There's something called the YouTube algorithm, which is what serves up new videos to people on the recommended feed. It allows for new creators to be discovered and for videos to kind of have that viral effect of people are clicking on it quick. And so there are certain strategies you can have on YouTube to grow first and foremost. The title and thumbnail of your video is almost everything when a new video pops on my recommended feed. Or maybe it's on the sidebar of a video on Are you watching? I get very intrigued by the titles and criminal isn't relevant to my life is a tough call with was going on in the world. I'm into tech, so better believe I watch all of the new phone on boxing's So find your niche. What are people posting about and try to kind of like hop on that bandwagon so maybe you will get served up into the algorithm. Number two is your video has to be good. Maybe it's not perfect quality or it's not super cinematic, but it's engaging. It's entertaining. You gotta give people are reason to stay once they click on your video. YouTube is such a massive platform, and there are so many hours of footage being upload every single day. So you have to find a way to stand out. Once people find your videos, how are they going to stay? Interviews. How are you going to grow your following? While the goal on YouTube and YouTube algorithm is always kind of a mystery, but I think at the end of the day, if your videos keep people on YouTube longer, if YouTube sees that you have engagement, you're probably going to be pushed to use the tools on YouTube To get people to stay, recommend some of your other videos. Make sure to use a certain annotations that you can use on YouTube and post on a consistent basis. You don't have to post five videos a week, maybe strife for one video week, or maybe one video every other week and then ramp it up from there. But at the heart of blogging should be fun. You have a unique perspective. Maybe you have something to teach or to inspire. People were just entertained, so it is definitely up to you, and it's a great launching pad to really learn how to use your video skills and really embrace them and share and document your life with the world at the same time.
7. Conclusion: So you have so much for hanging out with me here on skill share again. My name is Sarah Dhe. You can Google may find me on YouTube, Instagram or Twitter? Definitely. Go pick up a camera. Start blogging. Start documenting because it can be a ton off fun. Try to incorporate some of stuff that we talked about today in the class. Maybe you have been shooting and fully auto mode, and usually that's best when the camera is turned around this way, pointing at you because you don't have a lot of controls. But maybe try to shoot manual with your camera to take control over it and see what kind of shots you can get. If you never spiced up your videos before, maybe at some music at some slow mo. Maybe a time lapse to add to your story happy creating guys, and I will see you on the Internet. Go shoot that log
Sara Dietschy
