How to Create a Professional Product Video

1. Class Introduction: Want to utilize your video creation skills to make some money, consider looking into creating product showcase videos. These videos are generally shown as advertisements or quick guides on product pages, and they're actually not that difficult to create, if you know how. And that's what this course is all about. How to create a professional product video. Hi, my name is Scott Lou, and I'm a video creator on YouTube. Been creating videos of various types for about six years now, and I've been exploring more ways to make money with my video creation skills these recent years, which led me to product videos. So this course will contain all the knowledge and tips that I've learned based on my experience. So what will you learn exactly? Here's a quick outline. First, you'll learn about how to set up the environment for a product video and how to add lights to that environment to make it look more professional. Next, I'll guide you through how to find the right camera for the job and how to set it up. Also mention supplemental equipment that I find very useful for filming smooth and clean shots. After that, I'll discuss how to communicate with clients and how to approach the execution phase for the product video based on what they say. From there, I'll go over a quick guide on how to edit the footage to finalize and deliver your product video to your client. And to close things off, there will be a walk through section where I personally show you how I set up my equipment and film. Right. So that's the overview for this class. Who is this class for? I will say that I do go over some camera settings and camera terms quite fast. So this may not be the course for you if you're an absolute beginner with no experience at all. But if you know the basics like ISO, aperture, focal length, the difference between 24 SPS and 30 FPS and so on, you'll be able to keep up with no issues. I'll primarily be focusing on the product video aspects rather than the generic camera and editing tutorial stuff. So it's still very much beginner friendly in that regard. Just not very friendly to absolute beginners. With that said, anyone who's interested in creating product videos will likely learn something. The class project will be to follow along each lesson and create your own practice product video. There's also a worksheet available that outlines the class lessons and class resources, so be sure to download that. Creating videos has always been a fun hobby of mine. However, knowing that I'm also able to create videos for clients and make money from it is a nice bonus. So if you're ready to also have that skill set, I'll see you in the first lesson. 2. Set Up - Environment & Lighting: I lesson, we're going to cover how to set up the environment, as well as the lighting for the product showcase video. Let's get started. First things first. Let's talk about how to set up the environment for the video. For this course, I'll primarily be showing you guys how to achieve this all white background look that a lot of product showcases use. However, feel free to replace these with any other solid color or patterns that fit your product video more. The method that I'll show you guys requires two flat surfaces that are more or less the same shade of white. The first surface is what the product stands on, and the second is the background. Keep in mind that there are many ways that you can achieve this, but I'll show you my personal method. I do is I use a foldable table as the ground surface and place a white sheet on top of it. And then I use a five by seven foldable white screen as the background. Place both surfaces as close to each other as possible to create the best effect. Quite honestly, this is probably one of the most flexible elements in the setup. The foldable screen could have easily been replaced with another white sheet, but in any case, having some stands like these photography stands to hold the sheets or screen is very handy. Be sure to check out the worksheet in the class resources that will list the specific equipment that I have. Basically, a table, two white surfaces, and the stands are all we need to set up the environment. However, without any lighting, the surfaces don't exactly look the most professional. But once we place the lights in the right places, they'll look a lot better. So let's talk about lighting next. Lighting is probably one of the most difficult aspects about this whole setup. That's because it's highly dependent on what kind of product you're reviewing, how much you're able to spend on the amounts of lights, whether your camera is shooting in eight bit, ten bit, or raw, and what kind of shots you're going for and so on. I'll go over the most simple setup and some principles that will help guide you in how to approach it. Firstly, positioning of the lights. At the bare minimum, you will probably need two pretty strong lights. The first goal is to light up the background so that it is one stop away from pure white to the camera. Your camera's dynamic range is going to come into play here. My two main cameras at the moment are the Sony A 74 and the Sony E V one, which both have the capability of shooting in ten bit 422, which has a higher dynamic range compared to eight bit. Basically just means that the maximum brightness it can capture is higher before it clips into pure uneditable and unrecoverable white. I use a tool in the camera called Zebras in order to tell when something is clipping. Each camera will have different settings here, but for the Sony A 74, I set it to 94 plus while it is in the S log three picture profile mode. I also have the ISO set to the minimum value, and I have the shutter speed set to the 180 degree rule. I'll explain the camera settings a bit more in a different lesson. Now, this is all we need as a measurement for how bright the lights need to be. Next is the second goal, which is to light up the product so that there isn't a huge contrast in exposure between the background and the product. This light will ideally also light up some of the ground surface so that its exposure matches that of the background. This way, it'll look as if the two surfaces are seamless. To achieve both of these goals, I use an aperture marked two lights with a soft box placed to either the right, left or top of the camera so that the product doesn't create any harsh shadows. And I use a Gdox light with the cone directed at the background surface. Take note that the placement of these lights will change depending on the product and angle that you want to capture. The rule of thumb is, you'll want to adjust the intensity and angle to avoid harsh shadows, reflections, and to achieve the maximum image quality. Also, if you're using a macro lens with a long focal length, you'll find that faster aperture settings will most of the time create too much depth of field because of the thin focus plane, especially when you want to take a very close up macro shot. So in order to make this look better and have more things in focus, you'll need to increase the aperture number, which also lets in less light. Meaning you'll need to increase the intensity of your lights if you want the same image quality. And again, this is why it's hard to follow just simple rules for what intensity your lights should be, because it's highly dependent on the shot itself and the product. It's better to have the scale set of understanding how altering certain camera settings and the positioning of lights can affect the final image. With that said, with these two lights, most of what I would want to shoot would look good. Note that sometimes when shooting at certain angles, the lights may not be enough to cover some creases if you're using a white sheet. In these cases, I use an iron to smooth out creases on the sheet. Now, if you have more lights, it could help to add them to the sides or place them in spots that can help with removing shadows. Depending on the look you're going for, you may want more or less shadows, but if you want to eliminate all shadows, having a really big soft box or a light coming from the top of the product would definitely help. Alright, the action step for this lesson is to go ahead and try setting up the two surfaces and the lighting. Trail different positions and intensities for the light to see what works for your camera and product. After that, I'll see you in the next lesson. 3. Set Up - Camera: Okay, in this lesson, we're going to cover the setup for the camera and the supplemental equipment. Firstly, let's discuss some essential specs for your camera when it comes to filming a product video. This will help you understand whether you already have a camera able to do the job well or whether you need an upgrade. So when it comes to filming a product showcase video, Clients tend to look for someone who can deliver them sharp in focus, stabilized four K footage that can highlight the details of a product. For me, the Sony A 74 checks these boxes. It has great auto focus, workable stabilization, great four K settings, and there are high quality sharp macro lenses available for Sony E Mount, that can honestly capture the tiniest details. These days, most mirrorless cameras have good auto focus and a good selection of lenses. For stabilization, you can use a fluid head tripod to film smoother shots, which is what I initially did at first. For this, I used a man froto heavyweight tripod, but I find that the shot can sometimes still lack smoothness or evenness due to shaking, and just overall human error or just me not being good at it. A solution to this problem is using a higher frame rate when you're filming, and then later slowing it down in your editing program. This is where a camera that has the setting of four K, 60 FPS or beyond can really help. However, there is another way of getting extremely smooth footage with absolutely no shakes. Use a gimbal. With a gimbal, you can basically use any tripod that's capable of holding it. And the next step is kind of special to the Gimbal brand that I have. The specific gimbal is the DGI RS three Mini. Can hold most mirrorless cameras with no issues. You simply need to balance it properly and then turn it on. And from there, you have the best stabilization you can possibly get. What I personally do is use the DJI nan app to control the gimble and create preset options so that there's no room for any handling error that causes shakes, creating the most professional pans and tilts possible. I'll go over some of these techniques in a later lesson. Now, let's talk about the final elements necessary when choosing what camera to film with. And that element is simply image quality. On paper, even if two cameras have the same exact specs with four K footage recording capabilities, it doesn't mean that they will produce the same results. Elements like dynamic range, megapixel count, and especially what lens you use will play a big role in image quality. The specific lens that I use for my product videos is the 90 millimeter Sony G macro lens that has an F stop number of 2.8. Is a very high quality lens that plays a huge role in why the image looks so good. I really can't stress enough how important it is to get the right lens. Finally, let's talk about dynamic range which was mentioned before. The Sony A 74 has ten bit capabilities and can record in S log three. This gives us more flexibility during the editing phase to adjust the contrast and colors. Order to turn on the setting, you need to navigate to the picture profiles selections, which I set as the trash can button, and adjust them to select S log three and essentially just copy these settings. After doing that once, I just need to click on S log three every single time. For me, I set this to Picture profile one. And then I also make sure that I'm recording in four K ten bit 422. For whether you're recording in 24 FPS or 30 FPS, that really depends on the project and what your client is looking for. 24 FPS is known as the very cinematic frame rate, and I view 30 FPS as more of a standard closer to life kind of look. I personally prefer recording in 30 FPS because it gives you the most flexibility for what you want to decide on later, since you can always slow down the footage to make it 24 FPS in the end. After deciding on the framemate, we are good to go. I'd say that overall, Tembe isn't absolutely necessary, but it is helpful when filming a white background. The end result will simply be a cleaner image overall since the sensor can take in more light, and that's pretty much everything for the setup. The action step for this lesson is to either set up your camera with your tripod and gimble or upgrade it to match the minimum standards of a product video. We'll discuss the execution in the next lesson. 4. The Execution: All right. Now that we have everything set up, it's time to execute and film the product video. Let's talk about how to approach this. Most likely, if you're filming a product video, your client will already have in mind what they want that video to look like. In the best case, they have a reference video that they want you to take inspiration from. In the worst case, ask them for a reference video before you accept the job. The reference video is extremely helpful in understanding what kind of video your client wants and what they expect from you. So working without one is kind of like working blind. Always be clear with your communication from the beginning and ask the client what they want exactly? Do they basically want the same angles and shots as the reference video, but with their product? Do they want a specific colored background? Do they want text to be added, and do they have a preference for what font they want to use? Are they able to create a storyboard for you of what they're imagining, or are they giving you creative freedom based on a script they have? Asking all of these questions can help clarify a lot of things to make the process a lot easier? Regardless of how your client answers, before you begin, you want to have a very clear shot list from beginning to end. Most product showcase videos are somewhere in between 30 seconds to 60 seconds, so this shouldn't be a hard test. Usually, the product showcase consists of talking points that show off the features of the product or the specs. The simplest way to approach this is to make a shot list that consists of filming multiple angles of the part of the product that represents the feature mentioned. Client was very clear with their storyboard or shot list, getting a few takes of the exact angle and closeness that they want is good enough. In other cases, if you don't have a very clear direction from your client, you'll want to take even more shots of the same feature just to have extra footage to work with in case your client doesn't like a certain angle or would have preferred that you took a closer up shot of a certain part of the product. I think a good rule of thumb is to at least do one full view shot. One medium close up shot of the parts of the product you're highlighting, and then one detailed close up of that same part. And depending on the product, you may want to get a few different angles as well for each distance. Of course, there's no magic formula for this, and I think part of what actually makes this fun is just trying different angles, trying to create Zoom effects in different ways or trying different gimble functions. If they're giving you creative freedom, then you have the freedom to be creative and have fun with it. Right. The action step for this lesson is to practice what it would be like to work with a client. Perhaps find a reference video of a product you like and try to create a similar video, but with a different product. Create a shotlist that's based around the features of the product and begin filming. 5. Gimbal Guide: In this lesson, I'll guide you through how I personally use the DJI RS three Mini and the DJI Ronan app to film product videos. Before we begin, I want to mention that even if you don't have a DGI gimble, I think watching this lesson will help offer some insights on how to approach achieving hyper smooth shots or perhaps convince you that it's worth investing in one if you want to create a lot of product videos. Right. So the DGI RS three Mini. The first step is to balance the DGI gimbal, which is done in pretty much the same way as any other gimbal. It takes just a little bit of time, but make sure not to skip this step because it's an important step to make sure everything runs smoothly for your gimbal. And one thing I really like about this specific one is that it has an indicator telling you whether or not something is off in the gimbal, and whether or not you need a correct After you finish balancing it, you can go into motor parameters either in the app or on the gimble itself and adjust the stiffness settings to your liking. I set everything to a pretty low number because I want smooth shots that feel like they're gliding. But feel free to adjust them as you like to see how each setting affects the look and movements of your shot. Now everything from here on will be in the DGI nan app. After you're connected, go ahead and click Create. You'll see some different options on how to basically control the Gimble using the app. As a demonstration, let's go ahead and go into the virtual joystick. This is what I use on occasion to control the Gimble freely without worrying about causing a shake by holding it. Of course, if you have very study hands, it's definitely possible to do this with the actual gimble itself without causing any shakes, but I do find that the virtual joystick can offer some advantages when it comes to fine motor controls. Also another option called Force Mobile, which is a setting that makes your Gimble follow your mobile phone. It's a pretty cool function that can be used more for complex shots, but I hardly use it at the current moment. Okay, F here, let's jump into track. This is the number one tool that I use the most. Basically, what you can do is create a preset path for the Gimbal to move on. We recenter it and start at the middle and reset the points. We can move the camera with the joystick to the left, create point number one, then move the camera with the joystick to the right, then create point number two. From there, you can hit the record button and it'll move the camera from 0.1 to 0.2, sort of like how keyframes work when you edit. You can also adjust the time and duration that it takes moving from 0.1 to 0.2 for an even smooer shot. And this function isn't just limited to two points. You can add pretty much as much as you want. As you can see, by using this tool, you can achieve any pan or tilt that a fluid head tripod would do without any of the shake caused by human error or an uneven ground or whatever, and you can do it with ultra precise timing and smoothness. That is pretty much all there is to how I use this gimble for my product videos. Of course, there's a lot more potential here than what I've shown you. Definitely have fun with it and try to be as creative as you can be. 6. Quick Editing Guide: Everything filmed, we move on to the editing phase. So for this lesson, I'll go over how I approach editing product videos. Before we begin, I want to mention that if you're looking for a more in depth editing guide on how to use Adobe Premiere Pro, I have a different course that covers how to do just that in blazing speeds. This will simply be an overview of what the process is like when I edit a product video. Also take note that for this, it doesn't really matter too much what your editing program is, as long as it can export four K footage and do some color grading. I'll be using Adobe Premiere Pro, but something like the free version of Da Vnci Resolve should be able to achieve the same results. Okay. After importing your footage, create a timeline and drag in all your footage. If you have a shot list created and you shot in chronological order, according to your shot list, you pretty much don't have to do any reorganization of your footage. All you need to do is look through them. Find the money shots and then trim it and either delete the rest or disable it on another layer to keep it there just in case you want to use it again. Basically, repeat this process until your timeline matches the shot list, and you're done with the cutting part. Also, while you're doing the cutting, you can add some effects as well. The simplest effect that you can add to most shots, especially static shots is to zoom in very slightly by using keyframes for scale. Go into the effect window and make sure that you're at the beginning of the clip that you want to add the zoom effect to and then hit the scale keyframe and then move the cursor to the end of the clip, and then increase the scale by a bit. I personally prefer a subtle zoom, so something like plus seven should work fine. Of course, this also depends on the length of the clip, so just be careful here. The shorter it is, the smaller the number you want it to be. Okay. After that's done, the next step is to color correct and color grade. Personally, I like using Luts. So I just pretty much drag and drop a preset ut that I've created. Again, my other course has a more detailed guide on how to do this for Adobe Premiere Pro. However, for this one, specifically to product videos, there are more steps that need to be done to make the footage look good. The reason being is because for this one, we're working with a white background, and sometimes that means we have to adjust the highlights and shadows of the image so that the darker parts don't look too washed out. Opening luer color and increasing contrast and decreasing the shadow sliders can help with that a lot. You can also adjust the whites, blacks, and highlights just to see how they change the image overall. The effects of this will definitely vary depending on your setup. For instance, for mine, if you decrease the highlights by a lot, you'll actually see the texture of the background, which is definitely not what we want. So adjust all of these accordingly to the vision of the video that you want. And another effect that you might want to adjust in the lumetri coolor panel is the vibrancy and saturation. This can help add an extra punch to your image depending on the needs of your client, as well as the products Niche. After color, the next step is to add text if your client is asking for it. For me, I use a tool called Premiere composer that has some preset made text animations. I found that sometimes my clients prefer simple fade ins and fade outs. So I was able to create a simple text graphic in Premiere Pro natively and simply copy and paste it to other places in the timeline. Sometimes something as simple as cross dissolve can do the job. If you're on a MAC, you can add the cross dissolve effect by hitting command D while highlighting the clips. Keep in mind that this part is really up to taste. I think a good rule of thumb is to not have too many variations in text size and to try keeping it looking consistent. Perhaps something like two sizes like a main header and a paragraph size, if smaller text is necessary. But usually, the less text, the better. The final step is to add music. There are a lot of royalty free music out there that you can find online, like from YouTube's music library. Another option is to sign up for one of the music licensing subscriptions or to just buy a single music license and add it to the cost for the client if they want a more professional sounding track. Usually categories and tags in each of those platforms, and sometimes they even state like corporate videos or inspiring music. And that is basically it. From there, it's just a process of exporting drafts to send to your client, letting them review it, and then adjusting things to their liking. Sometimes that even might mean reshooting some things, so just be prepared for that. Alright, so the final step is to take your practice footage and stitch it up together to create your own product video. Best of luck. 7. Walkthrough: Setting Up: All right, so we're about to begin the walk through section of this course. And for the walk through section, it's going to be a bit different of a style. It's not going to be really me talking to the camera like this. You're going to see me do it in real time. So it's going to be a bit slower and a bit more detailed compared to the summaries and explanations I've been giving you guys so far. Okay, so here we are starting from scratch. Right now, I'm going to go over basically the entire class entire course, and step by step, create what you have seen in the examples. So, let's go ahead and start off. I have everything scattered about, but the easiest thing to start off with is the table right here. I'll also have another camera recording, so it's not just this really, really wide view shot, so you can see some of the details. I'll go ahead and cut in between that and this so that you guys have a better idea of what I'm doing. Right now, I'm basically just going to unfold this table right here. And these ones are pretty cheap overall. I'll go ahead and describe in more detail, like what I'm using. So I found this table right here on Amazon. It's a pretty overall easy table to unfold and also stack back in to wherever storage space that you want it to be. It's not really a tutorial on how to unfold and unstack a table, but it's good to know exactly the resources that I'm using. Again, I'll link these in my worksheet so that you have access to it. And for this one, I'll go ahead and increase the height just a bit because it's going to be a little too short, the way it is right now. So a very simple table like this works very well. It's already white, so potentially it could work, but I like to add an even, like, sort of purer white on top of it because I think it looks better overall. So as you can see from the other shot, this is a folded white sheet, and there are indeed creases on it. But fortunately, when you do shine light on it, and film it using the camera. You don't really see the creases that much. But let's go ahead and see how it goes if it's necessary. If you know, if we can see the creases, we will need to use this iron and just iron it out a bit. It's very simple. You just put water, plug it in, and wait for it to heat a little bit, and literally just go over it. And then right after this is the back portion. Right now, I have I'm going to use is an e marked sort of stand. So these ones are very, very compact, which I like. Sometimes for the photography stands, you know, there's two of them, two stands, and then 1 bar in the middle. That one also works pretty well, but sometimes I like the more compactness of just one stand and just 1 bar. Because most of the time for product videos that I shoot, they're for smaller products, and I don't really need a huge white background. So One stand like this does pretty well. So basically, it just looks like that. We'll go ahead and center this table a little bit more. Then the next thing is this background right here in the second surface. So this thing is it looks small, but once you fold it out, and I got to be careful with this. It's actually pretty big when you fold it out. And let's go ahead and just get it over the table. Then luckily there are straps right here. This specific one is five by seven. The brand is from E Mart. And as you can see, the texture of this thing is not actually pure white, not as white as the table, the table cloth, but it still does the job well if you shine ar light on it. It's one thing to know is if you have the table like slightly away from this thing, you'll begin to see a lot of shadows casted right near the vertices where they touch. So that's just something to be careful of you. That is pretty much it for setting up the environment. Pretty quick, and the next step is lighting. I'm going to go ahead and use this sort of camera right here. Let's add, I'm going to add a stand right here. Okay, now that we have it here, we can use it as an example. Test out exposure, test out a lot of things, basically. And the next step is to add the light. Right now, I have it already on the stands. I have the aperture 120 d right here. This one I've had for a very long time, and it does the job quite well, and I have the mini on it, the aperture dome mini. I also have the much bigger version that I might take out later. And then this is the other one, the Go Doc V L 150. I actually don't really remember the names of some of the equipment that I have sometimes. I just use it, but I always do research beforehand, and this light, in particular is Pretty similar to the aperture 120 d two. But we'll go ahead and put this on the side right there, and this one needs to be shining on the background without hitting the product. So the best way to do that is to have it come in from the top. So this thing needs to increase in height by a lot. Still casting somewhat shadows, so we could center this a bit more, but for now, we'll leave it, since we will be using this light as well. So you can see that that thing is pretty high up, and it's shining down like that, and you can see the shadows. So let's see if we can fix that later. But for now, this light is here. And let's set up the camera so we can actually test the exposure. So right now, we're going to be moving around different steps because I'm going to just show you guys the camera stuff since we need to set it up right now. In the lesson order, it's slightly different. So let's go ahead and set it up on the table. Move this aside a little bit, and then you can see everything that I have right here for the equipment. So I'll go ahead and set up the gimble first. I have it out already. The nice thing about this gimble is that it can lock itself, and it's not just moving around. But in order to get it onto this gimble, attaching that to the tripod first makes more sense. So let's do that. So the tripod right here has a plate, and for the plate. What I like doing is because the tripod has or the Gimble has three by four screw right here. It's easy to just attach something like this onto it first. So this is like a quick release plate, basically. And everything that I have, I have as quick release at this point. It's just a nice touch. It's like every camera that I have, I have a quick release plate on it. Every tripod that I have usually already has this on it, but I took it off for recording purposes. But let's go ahead and tighten this. It's important that it doesn't fall off. So this one right here just goes on the plate right here. Got to make sure I'm doing this on the right side. Okay. That should be fine. I have a quick release right here. I can put this plate on, and from here on, I basically don't need to take the plate off. All I need to do is slide this in and tighten it. Just giving you guys a closer view. So the quick release plate right here is attached now to sort of like a different. So this is a quick release plate, yeah, but I'm putting a quick release a smaller one on another one. So that it's easier to just slide this on like this and just tighten it. Now it's ready to go. Normally, you would put this on the camera itself or put this attached to the gimble itself, but it kind of takes more time to do that. Okay, so from here, we can balance the gimble. And as you can see, I have the lens that I mentioned, which is the F 2.8 90 macro G lens from Sony. And again, this lens is a really, really great one. So in order to balance it, right now, I'm going to release all the locks. So that it can move. And let's position this as if I'm holding the gimble so that I don't get confused. And what you do is you slide it on. I already have the plate on the camera. It pretty much lives on this camera specifically. So that's easy. So, what am I actually going to do is lock the ones that I'm not trying to adjust at the moment. So this one seems okay. It's still moving, so I should adjust it a little bit. But honestly, sometimes, I don't mind having it just as long as it's not like full tilt going one way or the other. Having it a little bit loose like that, it's okay. Like, I personally don't think it matters that much for a better gimble and for a lighter camera. The next step is this access, so let's slide it out. And I sort of already know where some of the numbers should be based on just experience. So the more that you do this, the more it's just going to feel easier. So it's definitely leaning towards the left side, meaning it needs to go to the right side more. Now it's going to the right side, I'm going to go back right side again. And sometimes adjusting it just a little bit causes it to change quite drastically, so that should be good enough. It's not perfect again, but it's good enough. We don't want to waste too much time just balancing the gimble. And for the most part, this other side won't really be needed too much because it's going to be kept straight. So I'm going to go ahead and turn it on. And you can see right here that it'll tell you whether or not it's balanced well enough. Right now, the icon is green, so there are no issues. So there we have it. That is the Gimble setup. And just from doing that, I'm going to go ahead and show you guys like what it already looks like. I didn't change any of the lights. I didn't change the positioning that much. I didn't adjust intensity. I didn't even adjust camera settings, but this is what it looks like right away. And to me, that already looks really good. 8. Walkthrough: Camera Settings: I'm going to do is also turn on my bluetooth on my camera right here. There's a Bluetooth function that you can look for inside the settings. This is a camera recording a camera, recording a camera. Well, actually a camera recording a camera recording a camera recording a camera. It's crazy. Here we go. So right now, as you can see, I have four K 30. There's also proxies turned on, 422 bit, 42210 bit, and then autofocus is currently on four Bluetooth settings right here. I created it and made it a favorite, but you can find it on the connectivity stuff. There it is Bluetooth. That's where you find Bluetooth function, and you can turn it on. That way, it connects to the gimble itself, and you can just press this record button right here. And theoretically, it should Yep. There you go. It should record it without me touching. Yeah. But that also means that we can access it through our phone. But we're not quite at that step yet. Let's go ahead and show you guys the Zebras. So right now, you can see that I made a custom zebra. It's lower limit right now. You can change the settings by going right and you can change like standard range or lower limit. I choose lower limit 94 plus. And let's actually change the ISO a bit. Since we're doing S log three on this camera, 800 is actually the base ISO. So we adjusted that. We're using F 2.8, and as you can see, picture profile, one is where I set S log three to be. I'll go ahead and go into it. You can see that the gamma is set to S log three, and then everything else remains pretty much the same color mode is s gamma three dot s, saturation 00. And the only thing that changed is detail is set to minus seven. So that's all you really need to do for that and hit picture profile one, and you have basically the highest dynamic range you can get out of this camera. So now you can also see on the histogram right here. Like, we're exposing to the right, like, maybe too much to the right. But at the moment, there's no zebras right now showing us that it's over exposed. Let's actually try to cause some zebras to happen. So I don't know why I'm holding this thing. I should just set it up so that I don't have to hold it. 1 second. Okay. And then we're just going to increase the intensity of this light. There you go. Now you can see the zebras. I've increased the intensity so much that it's visible, and I can adjust the light using this wheel right here. So let's go ahead and show you guys. 49% is right around and I can adjust up and down, and that is the Kelvin for what color the light is. So 49% is right about where we start seeing some zebras. And you can even see zebras on this camera as well. So they're definitely different levels. Your camera is going to be the one determining it. The dynamic range will be different. So this is the ZV one, ZV E one, and this is the Sony A 74, and they do have different dynamic range levels. Okay. So right around there should be good. Again, let's go ahead and show you guys what it looks like at a lower here. I'll just record, hit record, and now you guys can see what it looks like when I decrease the light. At that point, the background is no longer white, and closely, you can see more of the texture of the background. For the time being, let's move this a little bit back. So that we can see more of the product. But yeah, especially when you back up, you can see more of the texture. So let's go ahead and increase that light again. And even at a lower percentage, it already looks significantly better with the light versus without the light. Let's go ahead and turn off this light right here. And as you can see, some details are Well, at the moment, we actually have that light hitting both the product and the background. That's why without this light, it still looks pretty good. I also have a golden tins right here coming off of the dome, so you can sort of see it. And let's actually move the light so that it's where it should be, because so far we have just been doing camera demonstrations without actually optimizing the position of the light. So this way, it's more just on the background right here. And to be honest, it if we move it to this position, it doesn't need to be as high. So I've been having this record so you can sort of see the difference now. The background is much brighter. And we can go ahead and move this one in a little bit. Let's turn it on. One thing that's really hard about this is sometimes if you have it too direct next to the camera, it does cause reflections, depending on what the product is. So for something like this, it might be better to just angle it so that the light doesn't shine right back into the lens versus the let's go ahead. Actually film this so you can see it properly. So this is right here. You can sort of see more that the light is being reflected. And then the more that we go towards the left, you see that reflection being cut off, but we're still getting the product to have more light in the front. But overall, because it is black, it doesn't seem to change that much for this occasion. Let's go ahead and try to add something that's a bit more shiny or not shiny, but just brighter in color. Now you can sort of see that, you can see the edge of the back background and the front one. The floor surface and the background surface. For this, it's not too bad. Like, you don't actually see much of the creases at all, and the shadows aren't really that bothersome, but we could adjust it accordingly. To make it to make the shadows less visible. So sometimes for each shot, you might have to reposition the light. Ideally, you do reposition the light so that it looks the best. So I moved the light over there so that it's casting less shadows on the fox. Let's actually lower the background a little bit. This is how it looks without any light, turning it on just a little bit. If you were to try to get out of the shot, without any editing, something like this actually works totally fine. And because I'm using a cone light, it's actually hitting the surface of the doll's face. So in a lot of ways, I could just use this light right now for this product in particular. But it depends again on what you're filming. This one's intensity is pretty high, so let's turn it down a bit, but you don't see too big of a difference. Looks pretty good. 9. Walkthrough: Gimbal: Okay, F here, what I'm going to do is use my DGI Run in app. I'll go ahead and record my phone as well. Okay, so I have the DGI Run in app. I'm going to click it, and it's going to connect automatically because I already set that up. And if you haven't done it yet, it should be pretty simple, as long as you have this gimble on and this thing right here. There's a way to adjust the stiffness of everything. So I'll go ahead and zoom in on this a little bit so that you can see it. But as you can see, it's green right here, so that means it's balanced well, and then you can record hitting this button right here. And if you click on the left side, you can either calibrate it or just hit stiffness right there, and you can change the settings as you like. So these are the settings that I have right now, but I may adjust them in my phone by clicking motor parameters right here. It's the same thing, basically. Then now we can click Create, and the first thing we're going to try is the virtual joystick. With the virtual joystick, you can see right here that I'm moving it and this thing is also moving. The gimble is also moving. You can also hit record from here. If you hit that button, it's now recording as long as you have all the bluetooth functions connected properly, and now I can get the shot that I want like that.'s also smoothness and speed that you can adjust. So if I were to increase the speed or lower the speed. I prefer lower speed because most things are not filmed like super fast. So something like let's try five. Something around five looks pretty good. And then for smoothness, everything being pretty high is solid. So these numbers right here. Let's go ahead and hit Stop recording. And we can also now go back to filming the camera and stand. So I'll do another example for the virtual joystick, and it's a shot where I'm simply panning upwards. And it's out of focus, unfortunately. Sometimes this can happen with this lens, especially, and when I move from one thing to another. So and the tilt speed is pretty slow, so let's turn it up, and there we go. I felt like that was a little fast, so I would need to do it again. But let's go ahead and do the other ones. Let's try force mobile now. Again, force mobile is a very, very interesting thing. So let's enable force mobile. What's going to happen now is that it follows what my phone is doing, which is actually really, really cool. So you can do some pretty cool things with that. It's unfortunate that it's very difficult to control. Like, it would be more useful if my hands were steadier basically. So I don't really use that mode too much, but it can be pretty cool for certain creative shots. Finally, the last thing is track, like I mentioned in my Tutorial. Okay, so first, I'm going to reset this. In order to do that, I have to click on my previous ones and click this trash button right here. I from there, the camera has basically recentered itself. I can move this with the joystick on my phone, but I'm going to just move the joystick right here. It completely out of the camera. Create a waypoint by clicking this plus button. I wanted to stop right there, so I'll hit another waypoint. And you can have, as you saw earlier, a lot of waypoints. There's also number two has a movement duration of 2 seconds. You can sort of preview it right right now, actually, but I'm going to hit the record button. And it does it on his own like that. And it also stops the recording, too, which is super cool. So that felt a little fast to me. So what I'm going to do is increase the seconds to 6 seconds instead. Hit one hit record. And there was some funny business with the focus, unfortunately. So let's do that one more time. Yeah. So it starts out of focus, and then it becomes in focus afterwards. So, I actually don't want that. Let's turn this into manual focus, and I want it to be I want it to be already in focus once we get there. So that's pretty much it right there. So now it's a manual focus, and we can just hit the record button. As you can see, now it looks a lot better. The focus isn't changing. Especially as important with this lens because this lens, it's very long and it's a macro lens. So it has a tendency to just focus on, if there's any depth whatsoever to the product, Like, there's going to be some changes in focus sometimes. So manual focus will be useful. I'll go ahead and change it back to auto focus, and that's pretty much it. Like, there are so many things you can do with this that you don't need to do anything with the tripod at all. So this right here is not very useful anymore. In fact, I am likely going to sell this tripod because it's very heavy. It's good for this actually if your gimble is really heavy, but this gimble is really light. So it's good for this method if your gimble is heavy. But for me, this gimble is really light. My camera is really light. So having a super heavy tripod is not necessary, like a normal tripod could also do the job 10. Walkthrough: Fluid head Tripod: Case you don't want to do this gimbal method. I'm going to just show you guys how I use this tripod on its own. Tripod usage is very, very simple. You basically just need to move this. But for this thing, a fluid head tripod, there's ways to loosen it and tighten it so that it's more fluid, it's more smooth. So let's bring the camera up a little bit and show you guys where I change the settings for this fluid head tripod. This one right here is the stiffness for the tilt. It's the same sort of idea as the gimbal. So tilt right here is going up and down, and the stiffer it is or the less stiff it is, the more I can, like, just move like that. The faster I can move. And the more stiff it is, I can move only this fast. I'm putting all the force I can on it, but it's moving slowly, basically. So, again, very pretty much the same as the gimble, but have to control it by tilting using this stick right here, which if I were to like stutter, like I would just like accidentally stop or not go the correct speed, you know, like, it would not look perfectly smooth. That's why using the remote control is so much better in my opinion, but let's go ahead and actually show an example of the techniques. Just going up like that. Okay. And I probably should not put my hand on the camera that adds more factor or room for error. Just like that. And that's the tilt right there. There's another way to adjust the camera and is the pen, so going left and right like that, and then loosening it so I can go even faster. So let's tighten it. Basically, for me, what I do is I keep it pretty tight so that we're getting the shots more in a smoother way. So let's try to replicate the shot that I was trying to get earlier. And it's pretty good. It's not bad. Like, I can get similar shots as with the Gimbal. There just might just be more tries involved. I might stutter sometime, so I'm like, Oh, I need to redo that. Whereas the Gimble, there's like zero room for error as long as you create the keypoints and use that preset method. But yeah, the lens right here is very, very important. It is the thing that does a lot of the job regarding image quality. And of course, the camera itself does a lot of work as well, A 74. 11. Walkthrough: Different Angles: This set up right here, I would just record that, perhaps adjust the height sometimes if I'm trying to get a specific part of the camera, like the back of it, need to go closer for close up shots. And this is another aspect to why I don't like heaviness in the camera. But for a shot like this, probably want to be facing the direction of the light just a little bit, so there's less reflections, and I can turn up this one because the background is higher. See, this is a situation where the light is closer to the lens. So it really depends on where you're shooting from the angles. You have to move the lights accordingly. I don't like the way this is tilted. So I'm gonna just adjust this a little bit. Right now, I'm using the tripod. So what I'm going to do is just put one finger on it and have it slide from left to right, and that is the shot. And then, like I said, in the example lessons, what you can do is get even closer for more detailed shots, especially if you have a macro lens. It's really cool to do. But it's hard to do sometimes because of the focus. So you might need to add extra light and turn this aperture down a bit to get more stuff in focus. But that also means increasing the intensity of the light so that you're not working with a shot that has a dirty image because you don't have enough light. So moving the light here, increasing the aperture, so more things are in focus, and even spilling a little bit of this cone light would help with that difference in aperture. So now my aperture is at 6.3, and more things are in focus in the shot. As you can see, I'm just moving it with my finger. And if I were to, for instance, change this to a sorry wrong. Lower aperture. You can see that a lot of things are no longer in focus compared to before. So the F N was in focus earlier. There you like that. 6.3. Yeah. So that's one thing to note. And that's actually a very, very important thing to note. The lighting will shift around as you're shooting different angles, and if you're shooting at an angle where you want more things to be in focus, you're going to need to increase the aperture of your lens, especially a macro lens, and especially if you're up close, shooting great detail. But yeah, I can go on with filming all of this and making a very, very long walk through, but I think you guys get the gist of it. So this is essentially how I personally shoot my product videos. I know from this angle, it looks kind of like not professional, but I think the only thing that really matters is the final video that you deliver to your client looks professional, not the setup itself. So this is sort of like using a very, very budget setup, not like a studio setting and still filming a good product video because everything here is other than the camera and the lens, relatively inexpensive. So hopefully this walk through can help you guys out. Looking into the process in more detail, compared to the lessons where most of the things were the essentials and the summary. Okay, that's pretty much it. 12. Conclusion: Congratulations on making it to the end of this course. Here's a summary of what you've learned. First, you learned about how to set up the environment for your product video and how to add lights to that environment to make it look more professional. Next, you learned about how to set up the camera and supplemental equipment properly, where I also threw in a quick guide on how to use a gimble for product videos. After that, we talked about how to communicate with clients and what the steps are for executing in the filming phase. From there, we quickly overviewed how to edit the video. And to close things off, I walked you through how I personally set things up and film in more or less real time. Hope you were also able to finish the class project by creating your own practice video while following along with the class. Feel free to post your finished project in the class projects section. Finally, I want to thank you for making it to the end of this course. If you feel like you've learned something useful or enjoyed the class, I really appreciate it if you give this class a review. And hit that follow button. It really does help a lot to get some feedback. And once again, thank you and best of luck with your projects. I hope to see you in the next class.