Basics of Smartphone Video

1. Class 2020 UPDATE!: Hey there, Skill share. Thanks for being interested in my class. The class here about toe watch I filmed a few years ago and I just updated it for 2020. I'd really love to share the new updated tips, tricks and examples that are in that brand new class that was just posted. So instead of watching Miss Class, just head to the about section right below the class video and check out the brand new, updated class entitled Crush Smartphone Video. How to do it right? I guarantee you're gonna enjoy that class and get so much more out of it now that it's completely fresh. And if you'd like to stick around and watch this class feel free. However, just remember, the new updated class has way more information and a lot better tips. Thanks again 2. Getting Started: Hey there, guys. My name is Storm and welcome to the class on smartphone video. How to do it right? We're going to cover a lot of things in this class. Gonna break it up into three parts. The first part is gonna be planning your videos. So you're gonna learn out of plan out what you want to do in your video. What the subject is gonna be as well is where you want to shoot and all of that stuff that you get it out of the way when it's time to shoot. Part number two is going to be about fill me. So you're gonna learn not only how to secure your camera Also hard to nail focus and exposure and how to light your seen correctly. Finally, in part number three, I'm gonna touch on how to edit. If you need to add background music, why would do that when you do that, And then a to end of part three. I'm gonna have you submit your own project to show what you've learned. So without any further ado, if you're in, let's get started 3. Planning Your Video: so welcome to the course in this part One we're gonna talk about how to plan your video. So, first of all, you do you think about what the content of your video is gonna be as well as the subject of your video. Now we're gonna focus on three types of smartphone video. First of all, would be a video block or of log, basically something like this. Where you just sitting in front of the camera talking to your audience and that can be done indoor or outdoor. The second time the video will be talking about is a time lapse. So that's where you sit down your phone. You can record a long video and then speeded up. So you get all that action in 10 or 15 seconds, and then third, we're gonna focus on some sort of video documentation. So that's either taking a video of someone in your house or someone outside doing something or whatever you're trying to accomplish. Their what I want you to do to focus on for this course is which one of those three categories air you're gonna want to make for your smartphone video project. So again, that's video block, time lapse or video documentation, you choose one. So at the end of this class, you'll know which one you want to submit as your project. 4. Choosing A Setting: So now that you've decided which category of video you want to shoot, either video blogged, a time lapse or a video documentation, it's time to figure out the setting for your video. Now, when it comes to video blog's like this one, for example, indoor is a great setting as long as you got some good lighting coming in and you know what you want to talk about. A video block could be done inside, but you can also do that outdoors. So treating that setting according to what your video is about her. How you're going to be speaking is very important. When it comes to a video block indoors, you can have that stationary. Or if it's outdoors, you could be walking around with the camera. So it's important to kind of plan that on your head so you know exactly what you're trying to accomplish when it comes to a time lapse. As far as the setting, you want to figure out where you want to shoot that time lapse. Is this the time lapse showing in downtown in your city, ISAT a time lapse showing movement from your dog or some family members playing you have to decide where that setting is going to be, and then finally, kind of self explanatory again for video documentation. You're just going to want to figure out where is your setting gonna be for this documentation? Is it gonna be inside showing how someone's cooking, or is it gonna be outside showing some creative things around your neighborhood, good or in the city? The whole goal here is to figure out what is the proper setting for your specific video. So as you're trying to make a project for this class, make sure you figure out what is your setting, indoor or outdoor? 5. Video Orientation: So now that we figured out the category of video, we're gonna make a swell as the setting where it's gonna be We're now going to talk about the orientation of your video. Now, this talks about basically hired holding the phone. So this is portrait. It kind of makes your video look up and down. Imagine the video in between my hands right here and then landscape is gonna be a long way . So if the video was inside my hands kind of like what you're seeing right now, But then there's also square. Now where you going to use these super types of orientations? And why is that important? Well, a lot of platforms on the Internet are going to use landscape, which is basically what revealing right here, kind of a longer video that only shows a rectangle in this direction. It's 16 by nine is the orientation. So if you're posting to YouTube to skill, share to you pretty much any video platform, it's going to use this orientation. So it's important to be mindful of that, because when you're when you're trying to shoot for a landscape video like this, you want to make sure you're filming indirect tingle format. Otherwise you're gonna be filming like this, which is portrait. But if your video is going up on a landscape platform, you're gonna miss out of a lot of content. If you're feeling like this on something like this, this is how it will look. So it's important to know where we're gonna be publishing the video and how it's gonna be viewed. It's important to know that a lot of the social media platforms use a square. Make sure what you want to shoot in. What you want to show is in the middle of your screen in square so that you know what you're gonna be putting up online. Shooting in portrait mode is okay, but only if you know that people viewing your video are gonna be viewing it like this. Orientation is crazy important. If you shooting the wrong orientation, your viewers might get distracted and they might not want to watch your video. So that's why it's extremely important to make sure you choose the right orientation for the right platform. So as a tip, when shooting for your project makes you shoot in landscape. So it's easier to not only edit later, but also for me to view the full picture 6. PART 2: Stabilize, Expose, Light & Audio: welcome to Part two in this video class about smartphone video. How to do it right. We're gonna talk about how to secure your camera, how to selectively expose and focus your camera using the stock camera app and also an app called hyper laps, which is free. And then finally, how toe light you're seeing correctly and even plug in an external mike for better audio one that you may have that you didn't even know about. So let's get right into it. 7. Securing Your Camera: So, first of all, securing your camera. Now, if you're doing a video vlog like something like I have right here, it's really easy to set this up without a tripod or anything. A simple way to do this is by stacking up some books, setting your smartphone on top of the books and then putting a book behind your smartphone . Not only can you if you want to, you use your front facing camera to see what you're filming, but also it's a stable way to simulate a tripod without having one. But if you do have a tripod, you can buy a $5 adapter on Amazon to connect your smartphone to your tripod head. And that way you can get stable video without a problem. Now, if you're shooting at time lapse, you're also gonna want to secure your camera to something unless it can just stand up where it needs to be. You'll need a tripod, or you'll need to squeeze it between something to make sure it doesn't. Securing your phone is going to be especially important for time lapses because the faster the video moves, every little movement will be seen. Now, if you're just shooting something outside of video documentation. It's good to use two hands to hold your phone because they usually have really good stabilizers inside them. But if you use two hands, that's going to get rid of a lot of the shape that's gonna happen with just one hand. Now, if you're doing a video blogger outside, it's good to have that tripod adapter because then you could hold the tripod up like this, and then it will give you a smoother image. So keep this in mind on how to secure your camera when it comes to your final project. 8. Exposure + Focus: Let's move on to nailing your focus and your exposure. The camera app that most phones come with already isn't very versatile, but what it does have usually is a tap to focus. Feature. An Attack to Expose feature for iPhone It's really easy to use if you open the iPhone camera up and you tap to focus on something and then hold your finger down, you'll notice that it will blink twice, which means that it's locked not only the focus but also your exposure. Now, once you've done that, you can expose brighter or darker by sliding your finger up or down the image. If for some reason your phone does not have that feature, there's a free app in the APP store, which is called hyper laps. Now, if you download an open hyper laps, you can do the exact same thing in high prolapse. Now, the reason you want to nail your focus and your exposure and why it's so important is because if you're out of focus, it's really distracting, and people want to see good visuals right. Making sure your exposure and focuses locked on perfectly is a good way to keep people interested 9. Lighting: welcome to the final lesson in part two, and this one is lighting. You can use the sun or artificial lighting. What I've got here is the sun coming in at the right of me. And then also, I have this light right here on the table next to me. So I'm mixing artificial lighting with a natural light. This is a really good way to make sure your images balanced because if you just use sunlight, half of your face is gonna be dark. Whereas if you have artificial light, it kind of lightens up the shadows just a tad. So that's really good to keep in line for a video block, know if you're using video documentation can get really creative, use whatever lighting you have inside. And it's generally a good idea to have a much light as you can in the scene with smartphones, because they generally can't capture the greatest life in low light situations. If you find that the lighting on you is way too harsh, it's a good idea to try to defuse your life. Now you can do that with a sheet or a slightly transparent piece of paper or something that will just make that light a little softer. Now, what a few outdoors. It can be hard to make sure your faces and over exposed or way too right away. To avoid that is to not shoot in direct sunlight. Now, if you're shooting directly towards the sun trying to make sure the sun isn't directly in frame because that will completely blow out your image, it's also important to choose the right day or time of day. When you're shooting your video. Some days are cloudy, which is gonna have nice even lighting across your scene, which isn't gonna have very harsh highlights or shadows. And normally early in the morning or late in the evening, around sunrise or sunset is golden out. You're gonna have some really nice light in there. 10. Tips & Tricks!: All right. Welcome to the tips and conclusion. Already you've learned how to choose your category. Your subject. You're setting your orientation and frame rate. You've learned filming how to secure your camera, how to selectively expose and focus and also had a light. This scene. So now it's time for some tips that will make your video even better and get you ready to post your project. 11. Conclusion: So, first of all, audio audio is the most important thing in your video matter how great your graphics are. If your audio is poor, people are going to now almost immediately. The best way to achieve good sounding audio with a smartphone is toe. Either film in a quiet place with the original smartphone microphone or plug in headphones . Now, most of the headphones that you get in your smart phone box when you buy it has a microphone. Now that microphone is extremely better than the smartphone cameras because it's closer to you, and it's tuned specifically to listening to your voice. So if you're making a video blogged like this one, plugging in a headphone and connecting that to your smartphone is a great way to get rid of any background in ways. But the other alternative is to just simply shoot in a quiet place. Try to find an area that doesn't have a lot of background noise, and then you can try and enhance it. Been editing if you really need to, you. So keep your audio in mind when shooting for your class project. Now we're gonna talk about editing. Now. Anything is pretty easy to do on smartphones these days because there's a lot of easy Absi can use that are free or included with your phone. Now, if you have an iPhone, a really good app to use his my movie because it'll spice clips together. You can trim, you can crop, and you can ask titles as well. That's really easy to do. You want IOS devices. If you have the device that's android. You can use another app like Adobe Premiere clip. It's a free app, which will allow you to edit your video together and publish the final product for free. If using allowed top, such as a Mac, it also includes editing software such as by movie. And if you search around, you can find some tutorials and classes online on how to use that and on Windows Windows. Moviemakers also included free, so you don't have to have the most extreme editing software to make a good video. As long as you have something that you can import into your computer and edit together quickly, you can be on your way. All right, so now let's move on to background music. Do you need background music for your video. Well, first of all, you have to decide what type of video are you making. If you're making a video blogged like this one, the longer the clip, the easier it is for people to two now. So the longer your video, you might want to add just a little bit about gun music. And when you're doing this caution, don't make it too loud, since you don't want the music to be distracting caution, don't make it too loud. Make sure the music is interesting enough, but not distracting for what you're saying. If you're making a time lapse, though, this is a great opportunity to get creative. If you have a black and white time ups per se and then you have some really interesting music in the background, it can make for a really cinematic feel. So only you can decide if you need background music in your scene and in your video. But it can be really useful and creative as a tool