Transcripts
1. Intro and Overview: Hey there, welcome to video. Made it easy. I'm Heather, your teacher. I've been making videos professionally for almost 20 years. I had a dad that shot a lot of home video, so I don't know, maybe it was just in my blood. But my passion for video started in my early teen years. Only smart phones had been around back then when I was starting, it would've been so much easier. But as it was, I had to gather professional route, had to learn how to make videos using clunky, heavy expensive gear. Learn how to edit on souped up computers with professional software, which is all great. But once smartphones came around and they continue to get better and better, I really just fell in love with this medium to make video. It's a camera, like a really pretty great camera that's in your pocket. You always have it. Anyone can make a cool video if they just know a few tips on how to. So I've been teaching people exactly that. How to make videos using their phones for the last couple of years. Enough about me though, let's talk specifically about this course. The goal is to teach you the basics you'll need to know to make great video using your phone. And here's a quick look at what you'll be learning, how to compose a shot. This is something that's applicable for video and photos filming techniques. This will cover camera movements and best practices. Then it will talk about some advanced additions like lighting, sounds, stability. These are all optional things to add to your filming, but they go a long way towards making your video look more professional. Then we'll talk about how to look and feel presentable on camera. And at this point, I'll ask you to go film, practice the skills we've covered so far. All right, ready to start? Let's go.
2. Why Use Video?: Hey, quick side note before we jump into why you should use video, there's one, I'll let you know that it's the middle of summer and my fireplaces on and I'm wearing long sleeves. This is because I think it looks cool to have a little motion and the background. So hence the fire. And I think I looked really good on this color. Hence, the long sleeves I'm burning up. Let's go more video content is uploaded in 30 days, then major US TV networks have created in 30 years. This dot is a couple of years old now, so I imagine it's even higher. But what this tells us is that there is just a crazy ton of videos being made and shared. Are they all good? No. Could they be better? Yes. Hints you taking this course right? Here's the next one. Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than those who don't. What this tells us is that video is simply an industry standard if you have any kind of business, be it in the form of social media presence or to showcase your products is just become a must. Online shoppers who viewed demo videos are almost two times more likely to purchase then non viewers. And I totally get this if I'm shopping online and there's a little demo video about a product, I'm very likely to click on it and check that product out. Then it's very likely that that will sell me the product. People spend on average 2.6 times more time on pages with video, which means people are watching these videos. It's not just me watching the demo of a product while I'm shopping online, including a video on your landing page can increase conversion by 80 percent. This is a website of a physical therapist practice here in Denver. The owner, Jamie, who took my course actually, he's got this nice little video on his landing page. This is a great idea. A potential customer can click Play and gets no a little bit about Jamie, a little bit about the practice. This brings me to my next point. Video is a good medium for connecting with people and speaking to your customers. People like seeing and hearing other people. Jamie also uses video and a personal way with clients. I was recently getting treatment from one of his therapist and I emailed in saying, Hey, I was feeling pretty good and I think I was ready to end my sessions. Jamie email me back and sent a video that he made specifically for me explaining his thoughts on what I needed to do for full recovery. Wanted to reach out SJ, but I wanted to talk to Laura, talk to you, just kinda see where she sought in your case was I thought this was an awesome way to answer my question. It was thoughtful, it was personal, and it just took them a minute or two to make. And finally, completely aside from marketing or moneymaking, but he was a great way to preserve your memories. I still love watching my home videos from when I was a kid and now I have a son myself, and I filmed him all the time. It's invaluable to me and I hope one day he'll think so too. So video, video, video, it's everywhere. Let's learn how to make it better.
3. What is Composition?: Composition is simply the placement or arrangement of elements in a frame. So if you're looking at a scene that you're about to shoot, whether it's video or photo. Pause for a few seconds and give it some thought. What am I viewers going to see? How are these elements arranged? Is it pleasing to the eye? Would a lot of people don't realize is that they have a lot of control over the composition of the shot. It's up to you, the person behind the camera, to decide what the viewer is going to see. To help you understand good composition, there are some guiding rules. I'm going to cover five that I think go a long way towards our goal of making good video. If this section particularly peaks your interest though, you can search rules of composition on the internet and get just tons of info on the subject.
4. Dominance and Filling the Frame: As the person behind the camera, you need to know a little secret. People are lazy, and I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just that when someone is watching your video or looking at your picture, they don't want to be tasked with figuring out what they're seeing. They want you to make it very, very clear what they're looking at. Don't make them do more work than they have to. With that in mind, let's talk about dominance. Our first roll, what I mean by this simply is what or who is the dominant subject? Take a look at this photo. What do you think is the dominant subject here? The arch and the clock structure? And here's the same scene, but the photographer has moved. Now what is the dominant subject? My eye is drawn to the volcano. Both shots are well composed, but with a shift up position, they have different subjects. So again, before you shoot, take a moment to decide what your dominant subject is. This leads right into the next rule, filling the frame. Once you've pinpointed your dominant subject, make it dominant by filling the frame with it. Here we've got a shot of what is obviously a wedding, but the dominant subject, the bride and groom, are not very dominant for looking at their backs. There's all this stuff going on in the background, all of which is kind of distracting me from what the subject should be. This photo doesn't make it easy for me as a viewer. On the other hand, this photo does I know exactly who the subject is. The couple is filling the frame nicely and the petals and the way people's hands are, they're all making minds towards the dominant subject. Here's a few more good examples. I like to use wedding photos to demonstrate these two roles because wedding photographer Xun, excellent job with them. Now we'll get into some more videos, specific stuff like camera movement and a little bit later lesson. But here's a shot of filling the frame with your dominant subject by moving toward them. Okay, so pick your dominant subject, fill the frame with them, and now let's move on to the rule of thirds. My friend and fellow video creator Jordan, than an intro is going to cover this rule for us.
5. The Rule of Thirds: Do you know what could make or break your video? Okay, a lot of things, but also framing, the rule of thirds is a basic framework that you need to know about framing. See what I did there. Basically, you take a frame and you draw four lines, horizontal to vertical, cutting the frame evenly into nine boxes. He's also create thirds, three horizontal, and three vertically. The idea of the rule of thirds is to use these lines to guide you into a better composition. For starters, you want to put points of interests where the lines intersect, and then you can use the full lines to place other important objects. Let's look at some examples, and I promise this will start to make sense. Instead of centering our main subject or our point of interests, it's on an intersection when you're taking pictures of nature and there's a horizon line, you want to put that horizon line on either the bottom third or the top third, depending on what you want the dominant subject to be. So let's talk about people on camera. This is what you don't want to do. Don't put their faces right in the middle of that box or any of the boxes. It look tiny here. There's all this negative space around them. But now if you move them up and put their eyes on or close to that top third, it looks way better. It could be in the middle or off to the side. Either way works. Just make sure their eyes are close to that top third line. You see the rule of thirds being used all the time, for example, on the office. This is how all their interviews were shot and they look great. You want to also consider camera angles with people. This is a well-framed shot that cameras right at the person's eye level. That means putting the camera right about there, face height. Now, if you move the camera down, their eyes are still on that top third line, but this is not a flattering angle. The only time you use this angle is to show power is someone needs to look big and mighty in fierce, but generally people don't like being shot at this angle. You also don't want to go too high with your camera. This looks better than the low angle a little bit, but it also just looks like a mistake, like you didn't have a tripod and the only places where the camera was on top of some high shelf or something. So remember shoe at a person's eye level, the rule of thirds is still a helpful tool when you're using different focal lengths, whether it's a medium shot, a long shot, or a close up. The same rules apply in the case that you're doing an off-camera interview. And by that I mean the subject is looking at an interviewer instead of at the lens. You wanna keep their eyes on the top third line, but you want to place them on a vertical third that gives them a little bit of space in front of their face. I like to think of it as like room for a speech bubble. The rule of thirds also still applies when you're shooting vertically for social media, here's what the rule of thirds looks like on a vertical 9 by 16 frame. It's still not equal boxes drawing her eyes to different PowerPoints and intersections. It's basically the 16 by 9 rule of thirds on its side, which makes sense, right? A lot of cameras and phones let you put rule of thirds guides on the screen while you're filming. Go ahead and try it. Start by going to your Settings. Scroll down to find your camera icon. Click on that and you'll see grid. Turn it on. Now, go to your camera and you'll see you've got a grid on your screen. Start by opening your camera app. Click on the Settings icon in the top-right. Scroll down to gridlines and then select three by three. Okay, I hope your mind was blown by this simple, yet extremely useful way to improve the composition of your videos.
6. Creating Depth: Creating depth. The fourth rule is not a must for every video you make, if you're just shooting a talking head and all you have is a plain background, a wall that they have to be right up against, then that's totally fine. Don't even worry about this rule. But if you have enough space to pull the subject away from the background, like this shot right now that you're seeing the end, then you've created depth. The background extends far behind me. I'm close to the camera, which creates step, and it gives the video a nice professional look. This rule can be applied if you're shooting out in nature to you. Here's a canyon. It looks like a big, vast canyon. But if you put someone near the camera in the foreground, you have more of a perspective of what you're actually seeing. It still looks like a big, vast canyon. But because you know about how big a person is, you've got a better sense of just how vast the Canaan is. Here's a picture of the little leak at Wash Park. It looks a bit flat here as is. But if I backup to add a foreground with the tree and the shore. Now the picture has depth and it's more interesting to look at. Here. We're looking at Sand Dunes, a decent picture, but let's put a person in the foreground. Again, we have depth now and the pitcher feels more alive.
7. Focus: The last rule composition we're going to go over is focus. This is really important. No one wants to stream through a blurry video to figure out what they're watching. Again, you want to make everything easy for your viewer. Luckily, our smartphones are pretty great, getting good auto-focus, but there are things you can do to set, check and lock your focus will get to those specifics in a later lesson. But as far as rules of composition go, you want your dominant subject to be in focus. And this photo, these badges that are being held up are in-focus and the girl's faces are out-of-focus. This tells me that the badges are the dominant subject in this photo, the woman is in-focus and the cameras out of focus. So we know that she is the subject. They also create as him cooled depth here by placing the camera in the foreground. When you're filming people, you really wanna make sure that their eyes are in focus. Out-of-focus eyes can really ruin a shot like this one. I am totally out of focus now. I'm a big blur. The background is in-focus. This ruins the video. You don't want to watch it anymore. This is rough total gets. It would be so much better if my eyes are in focus, right. Okay. You're welcome for getting the camera back and focus. That's the five big rules of composition. Always keep these in mind when you're shooting photos or videos. In the next section, we'll dive into video specific techniques. So let's go.
8. Aspect Ratio (how to hold your phone): By aspect ratio, I mean, how are you going
to hold your phone? I'm a big fan of everything
being shot 16 by nine, which means holding your
phone horizontally. This is still the industry
standard for TV and movies and lots of videos that live on the internet.
Throughout this course. Most of the examples
I'll show you had been videos that have
been shot horizontally. But there's now this
whole other beast called social media. And it's changed
things quite a bit. Vertical or nine by 16. And also four by five are extremely popular
formats and there are quickly moving from amateur formats to
industry standards. Jordan has some strong
thoughts on the subject. So let's hear from him. Onenote before you watch this, when he says one-by-one, he's referring to four by five, one-by-one or square
as it's called, used to be a Thing on Instagram, but that's been updated
to four by five. Short people will
badmouth vertical in one-by-one formats if they're feeling particularly elitist, but they are the future. It takes up way more
real estate on mobile, which happens to be
the primary platform that people consume
videos on these days. And they don't have to tilt or rotate their phone to
see the whole thing. The speaker is more of
the focus of the frame. It's simply a superior
framing for a simple person talking
to an audience. Just think about it.
People are vertical, the frame is vertical. If fits this perfectly with
standard 16 by nine frames, you have a ton of empty space that you have to
either fill it with interesting background or
at the very least make sure it's clear of
clutter and other people. He's got some good
points for sure. Just so you know, the
one-by-one or four by five format are not
something that you shoot in. You either shoot
horizontally or vertically. Those formats or
something you can edit your footage into. I used to tell people if
you're shooting video, you must hold your
phone horizontally. It's the only way to
look professional, but that's just not
the case anymore. The main thing you
want to consider is the final destination
of the video. If it's going straight to
tiktok, Instagram or Facebook, reals or stories, then
vertical is the way to go. If your text a video
to somebody like a current client or something,
then shoot vertically. If a video is going to
live on your website, go to YouTube or being a course
like this, go horizontal. Also, if something
you're shooting mike possibly wind up on TV. Horizontals still
the way to go there. One other note here, if you're editing multiple
clips into one video, try not to mix formats. That's going to
put black bars on the sides or the
top of the video. And it just doesn't look very
professional and it's a bit jarring for the viewer if
that's constantly changing. So think ahead and
shoot everything in the same format that
you're going to need for the same video.
9. Settings: Let me briefly
explain the settings that your camera should be on. Note, if you have an Android, your settings are in
your camera menu, not in your settings tab, but it should look
similar once you're in that menu for iPhones,
follow along here, go to your Settings menu, scroll down to camera, and then go to record video. So don't ever set it at 720 P, just forget this
exist ten ADP is the standard for phones
and TVs for playback. If you shoot something at 720
and it plays back at 1080, the quality will be degraded. Ten ADP is a good option since 1080 is the standard
for playback. Now we get into for k. For k is a higher-quality
setting than 1080. When you post the video,
it will downgrade to 1080, but being shot in for K will make it look
better in general. Do know though, that fork
makes you bigger files. So if space is an issue for you, 1080 might be a better choice to always just keep
your setting on. Okay, so what's the difference
in these frame rates? 24 frames per second is the
most cinematic setting. Most movies and TV shows or
shot at 24 frames per second, because it gives the
footage almost like a dreamy, almost slow-mo look. 30 frames per second is a
standard frame rate that looks very much like real life to
the viewer who's watching it. News is generally shot
at 30 frames per second. 60 frames per second is what you want to shoot
in if you're going to turn your footage into
slow-mo in the edit, but most likely you probably
won't use this setting very much if you don't totally understand all of
that, that's okay. Let me just give you
my recommendation on what you should set it at four K at 24 frames
per second is awesome. Just leave it there
all the time. That might not be an
option for you because of space or if you have
an older phone, it doesn't let you shoot 4k in the front-facing camera,
aka selfie mode. Instead, you can set
yours to ten ADP at 30 frames per second
shooting in 1080, it doesn't give
you the option to shoot at 24 frames per second. What you want to
avoid as a mixing 3024 frames per second
footage in the same edit. All of that to say if you are shooting selfie
footage at 1080th 30, then if you change
your setting to shoot on your back camera at 4k, make sure you set
that for k footage to 30 frames per second, not 24. Mixing 1084 k is totally fine, but mixing frame rates 3024, it can cause some
jittery footage. It won't ruin your video, but it's just something to
think about ahead of time. You can also easily
and quickly change your settings once you're
already in the camera app. So you don't have
to keep going back to the settings menu. In the top right corner, it will show you what
setting you're currently on and then you can
tap it to change it. Hd means ten ADP and then fork, of course, means fork.
10. Camera Distance: So when you're watching TV or a movie, you may or may not notice, or I'm sure you noticed, you might not think about it. There's a bunch of different shots. The camera is close to the subject, far away from the subject showing you different subject. Moving between all that stuff. There's all these varying distances and lengths that the camera is from. The subjects are the objects that are in the frame. So we'll go over kind of the basic main ones you see and talk about why you would use each of these. The first one is a wide shot. Wide shot is sometimes called an establishing shot to you. And this is just setting the scene. Oftentimes if you're watching TV, it you'll see the outside of a building. And then the next scene you see the person inside of that building. Building shot is in establishing or a wide shot. Feel a little bit closer. You've got a long shot sometimes called the full body shot. And this is basically if there's a person in the shot, you're seeing their whole body. If you kinda little bit closer, you're in a medium shot. It's about top of the head to between belly and sternum. And this is really commonly used because it's a really comfortable distance to be from somebody. So if you're talking to someone in the real-world, you're generally about a medium shot, distance away from them. So it feels like very natural to be looking at someone at this distance on camera, move in a little closer and then you've got a close-up shot. This is like top of the head to sternum or even tighter. A little bit more intimate shot here, showing more emotion this way or talking about something more personal. If you're this close to somebody in real life or your rate being very quiet and you need to be close together. And then you've got an extreme close-up or a detail shot. This is something that you don't see a whole lot unless unless there is a detail that needs to be shown here. Maybe you were talking about eyelashes or eyebrows, then you want to see that subject matter, the width these shots. And if you're talking about people on camera, you see BBM and close-ups a lot. So if you're watching an interview with somebody, oftentimes the cameras cut between medium, close-up, medium close-up. And those are both nice, comfortable distances also, if you're shooting a person with your phone and you're gonna get as close as you need to to frame them up. So you would be about a medium shot away or a close-up shot away. And that's going to pick up better sound to, it just makes your production more fun. I mean, it looks a little more professional with variety, but way to make something look really amateur is to always be the exact same distance from everything or shooting. So a lot of people will try to shoot something and just stay this comfortable distance away from the subject, like the whole time, you know, instead of getting some close-ups, getting further back, like that variety is going to go a really long way. Okay. Hi.
11. 11 Camera Movements: In the last lesson, we
talked about shop variety. And you watched an
example video of a kid's birthday party and you saw all that shot
variety in there. You also saw a lot of movements. So on this lesson, we're talking about that
specific thing, camera movement. This is another way to
really professionalize your work quite a bit. Again, when you're
watching TV or movies, the camera is moving a lot. It's not just static very often and definitely
not for very long. In the early days of film, the camera was static most of the time for minutes
and minutes on end, it would stay in one place on tripods while the
scene played out. It was really more like
watching a play back then, next time you watch
an old movie, if you ever do that, observe how little
movement or shop, right, either is, that's why
they're kind of boring. But through the decades,
things have changed a lot. Now the style is moving shots
and lots of variety to keep the viewer entertained and make them feel like they're
part of the action. I'll go over those
main movements that you see and that you'll
want to start using. The first one is a parent. This is simply moving left to right or right to
left, side-to-side. Here the camera's panning
to follow action. You can think of a pan being
like a panoramic picture. You can't quite get the
whole scene in one shot, so you have to
move the camera to reveal everything
you want to see. Here we see a graffiti wall. The camera pans to
reveal the crowd. So we're revealing to the viewer that
something is going on. Here, the camera pans so we see the beach and then
we see the ocean. Next up we've got a tilt, which is simply moving
your camera up or down. You use this for the
same reasons to reveal something that you can't
see with a static shot. Here we need to tilt up
to see the whole wall. Here. The cameras tilt them down so that we can see
the whole church. Then this is a diagonal tilt, which is totally cool too. It doesn't have to be
straight up or down. Additionally, you can change
the speed of your movements. So far all the examples have
been a kind of a very slow, steady pace, which looks great. But let's look at a fast one. The cameras pointed
at the ground and it whips up to reveal the action. That's called a whip tilt. You can also do whip pans. Next we have a dolly shot. Think of this as
zooming with your feet. This is simply moving toward
or away from a subject. Here the camera is dialing into the subject and then doling out. If you're following
somebody that's walking, then you're doing a dolly. Here. The camera starts close
on the wine glass and then dollies out to see
what else is happening. Who's getting the wine? Where are they? You can also combine movements. Here's a dolly that
turns into a tilt bonus. I created depth in this shot. The last movement we'll
discussed is zooming. I recommend not zooming
much, but darling, instead, of course, if you're at the
zoo and you want to see the tiger close-up but
can't get closer. By all means, Zoom
because you can't go into the tiger's cage
and Dolly towards it. But understand that
zooming can degrade the quality of your
video clip quite a bit. Only use your Zoom if you have a phone that has
more than one lens, you'll know by just looking
at the back of your phone if you see 12 or three lenses, these circles here, lenses. You can also open your camera
app and see if you have a little circle on the
screen that says one time, push it, and that makes your camera jump
to the other lens. If it says 0.5 times, that means your other
lens is a wide lens. If it says two times, then you have a telephoto lens
which is going to get you closer to the action
without losing that quality. If you swipe up on the button, you have a slider wheel
that lets you zoom in past the point
of good-quality. I recommend not using
this slider ever. It's hard to control and the quality loss is just
not really worth it. What you can do with your
Zoom that's pretty cool, is called a snap zoom. That means just
pushing the button and it jumps to
the other camera. And you do that while
you're recording. It quickly switches the
shot from lens to lens. And I personally loved the look. Here's some examples. To review. Shop movements, add variety to your video
and entertain your viewers. People get bored easily and not many people watch
the old films anymore. So they're used to seeing
video with a lot of movement and of course
a lot of shop variety. All those graffiti eclipse
that I showed you for, for a promo video for Denver graffiti tour
that my friends own. And I made a video
for them awhile back, shooting everything on
my phone, of course. But I want you to
watch this video and just call it the different
movements that you see. Pans, tilts, Dolly
and snaps zooms. Thanks for joining us today. Rna is Deborah graffiti and street art is just
becoming really popular.
12. Gear: Welcome to my favorite
section of the course. In this module, I'm
talking all about stuff, things you can add
to your phone to enhance your video even more. They make all of these
devices specifically for phone video and nothing here is very
expensive at all. So I highly recommend getting
a few things that are going to enhance your lighting,
sound, and stability. In each of the following videos, I'll talk about freeways to
enhance all of those things. But then I'll also go through a bunch of different
options that you have to get better lighting
sound instability. If you need to look at the gear suggestions,
I have a list. It's in the intro section. It's also in this section. Just click on that link
and you'll see all of this equipment plus more that you might be
interested in buying. Let's go.
13. Stability: Stability is really important
when you're shooting video. I'm sure you've seen
a tripod before. It's what camera goes on to keep the cameras
study like right now, the camera I'm using to shoot myself as
sitting on a tripod. That's why it's
not moving at all. I'm not holding it
so that it's shaky. If you don't have any
type of device at all, you can just hold
it really study. And I know that seems like Noda, of course I'm going to try
to hold my phone study, but I find that if you're really consciously thinking about it, you do a lot better job
than if you're just holding it and not giving any thought to stability at all. If you can use two hands, That's gonna be
steadier than one hand. Also, if you're near a surface and you can
set your elbows down, you can use your
arms as a tripod. So that helps. I'd highly recommend not holding it yourself
in a selfie video, but having somebody else shoot for you if you don't
have a tripod, that way they can concentrate
on holding the phone setting if you're moving
while you're shooting. So let's say you're
shooting some B-roll. You want to keep your
elbows close to your body. This is harder to
keep study than this. You also want to walk
really slow and steady with a little bit of a knee bend more so than you would
with a normal walk. That way your knees
are absorbing the bounce of your
body as you're moving towards an object or away from an object
or side-to-side. The first stability
device that we'll talk about is also the cheapest
is just a binder clip. The old binder clip trick. You can just put a binder
clip on your phone and set it on a table or whatever you want, of course wanted the phone
to be at, at eye level. So you're going to
have to bring it up using books or
something or a box. But this is going to keep your phone pretty study and it's gonna be a lot
better than you just holding it in front
of your face. If that's your other option, if you would like to purchase some things which
I would recommend, they make these things
called mini tripods. So it's just a little tripod that you can set on a surface similar to the
binder clip trick. And then you have
this holder for your phone that attaches
to the mini tripod. With all of this stuff, they all have the
same threading. So you can connect
this to this tripod, or you could connect a mini tripod to the
bottom of a selfie stick. And everything kind
of goes together, which is really nice
because you can mix and match if you have
a few different things. Another thing besides the mini
tripod is a selfie stick. If you've got one that
extends out pretty far, you can just extend
it all the way out. If you set it on the ground and then put your phone in here, you've got what's
called a mono pod, which means somebody still
has to hold it or it needs to be pushed up against
a wall to stay study. But like I said,
you could attach a mini tripod to
the bottom of it, set it on the ground, and
then you have a tripod. They make tripods
just for phones. This is what we have here. The cool thing about these
tripods is that the holder allows you to put the phone either vertical or horizontal. So you can shoot either way. Of course, it could be
in selfie mode or if somebody else's shooting or
you set it up ahead of time, then it doesn't have
to be in selfie mode. And you can shoot from the back camera is always going to be higher-quality than the
selfie camera, just FYI. But for Instagram stories or
real or something like that, selfie mode is fine. It doesn't have to be
incredibly high-quality for a video like that. One thing to note about selfie mode is that
you want to look at the lens of your camera, not at yourself on the screen. So you don't want to do this. You want to look up
at the little lens, which is sort of hard to do. If you're, you can
see your image. It's hard not to
look at yourself, but you really want to
avoid that and try to make eye contact with the viewer
which is through the lens. So one other note on the tripod. If you get one, you want to make sure it extends really tall. So I would say minimum
and 80 inch tripod is gonna be really great. It seems like they make a lot of phone tripods that
are 50 or 60 inches, which was about as tall
as that selfie stick was. Which if you're standing
up that's not tall enough for average size person. The one I recommend on the gear recommendation
list is an 80 inch tripod. So this thing goes way up if I need it to,
which is awesome. The other thing you feel
it is a ring, ring light. A lot of these come
with a tripod, so it's a little combo here. You have a light which we'll talk about in the next section. But you also can stick
your phone right there. Of course, you want
to make sure that you've got this at eye
level when you're shooting, use the rule of thirds always. You could do horizontal or
vertical here to a lot of these newer phone devices have this kind of vertical,
horizontal motion. Some of the older equipment, and this is several years old. You can't really shoot
vertically with it. You can only do at horizontal
because it doesn't, it just doesn't
extend that far so you can't fit your
phone vertically. So make sure if you are shooting
a lot of vertical video, you've got a tripod is stability device that lets
you shoot either way. Another option is
what's called a rig. I love this because a
it gives you handles. So if you are in
a handheld mode, you don't have a tripod, you might be moving around, so you don't want to
be stuck in one spot. Handles. Keep your phone a
lot more steady than just holding it
in your hand alone. You could also do horizontal
or vertical with this. And it's got that
same threading. So I could put the whole
entire rig on a tripod, mini tripod, whatever, whatever
I need it to attach to. Another really cool
thing about it is that you can attach
other things to the top. So here I have a
light attached to it. And we'll talk again more about these in the
lighting section, but that just slides right in. I can also attach a microphone
right to it as well. It acts as something to
hold your other equipment. If you have a lot of equipment, which after watching
through this section, you might decide that you
need a lot of equipment. My favorite stability
device is a gimbal. The brand I have
here is DJI Osmo. A gimbal is simply something, is a stability device that makes your camera,
or in this case, Phone move as though it's just a very smooth
cinematic thing, like it's going through
butter smooth movements. So a lot of the example videos
that you've seen so far. In this course, I'm using an
osmosis, the kid's birthday, this old version of osmo, you have to put your
phone in, turn it on. And it just takes takes over. The thing with this is that
you have to balance it first. I already had it balanced. So you'd have to do a
little bit of finagle with the arm to make sure the phone is balanced
before you turn it on. But once it's balanced, everything is super,
super smooth. It also comes with a base. It can also be a tripod
if you need that. The newer model, this is a four, there's actually another
one which is a five. This is cool though, because
you've just put this clip on your phone and simply put it right there
and it's a magnet, so it just attaches to the
phone and it balances itself. Turn it on. And then your phone is now
being run by the Osmo. This lets you shoot vertically or horizontally,
which is awesome. It has this little
tripod that you could use as a tripod to. You can also just an attach it if you don't want
the extra weight. So you can just move around. If you are shooting
a lot of stuff, a lot of B-roll, product videos, anything service-based,
like personal training, stuff like that,
where it's gonna be a lot of movements
showing stuff. I'd highly recommend an
Osmo is just go into really professionalize the look of all your footage like
the graffiti tour video, this was all shot on the
Osmo, but whatever you do, some sort of
stability is totally necessary when you're starting to shoot video with your phone.
14. Sound: Getting good sound is paramount
to making good video. If your viewer is struggling to hear the dominant
subjects speaking, they're not going to
want to watch the video. It's really important to pick up crystal-clear sound that people can just easily hear and enjoy listening to the freeway
to get better town with your phone is if you're
shooting somebody talking, you want to stand
right at a medium shot or close-up away from them
and not any further back. That's gonna pick
up decent sound. If you're like a long shot away, just that distance between
you and the speaker is going to pick up a
lot more room noise and background noise. And it's gonna be harder
for the person to hear. Another thing you can do if
you don't have a microphone is to get away from
noisy backgrounds. If you're at a party
shooting people talking, you don't want a bunch of music, it right behind them through a speaker or
something like that. You want to take
them into a hallway. How far away can you
get from all the noise? And then once your once you've removed some
of that background, still stand medium shot or
close-up away from them. Also make sure that
person is not yelling. A lot of times people
compensate if they're on video and just
talk really loud. And that actually sounds
worse because it'll peak the audio and make it really
unpleasant to listen to you. You want someone to just
talk at a normal volume, maybe just a little bit higher, but do not have them
yell at the camera. That is not going
to help anything. Trust me, I would highly
recommend if you have someone's speaking on camera a lot
to use a microphone. A low price option is to use your earbuds or AirPods when
you're speaking on camera. This is going to
pick up decent sound through the microphone. Same with the air the air pods. I don't have AirPods.
I'm probably the last person on
earth that doesn't. But the thing is, it
doesn't look good. I mean, you see
the thing hanging or you see it in their ear, that might not be a
look that you want. Also, it's gonna be better than nothing at all as far
as microphone goes, but it's not going
to pick up like a really great high-quality
sounding audio because that's not
what it's meant for. It's not meant to be a
microphone necessarily. My best recommendation
is to just buy a microphone and I've got a few different types
to show you here. This first one is a
lavalier microphone. Got a long chord. A microphone on one end, the other end would just plug
directly into your camera. You've got to have a converter. Of course, if you
have a newer iPhone, I've got this old iPhone here, so I'll just plug it
right in. This side. Goes under your shirts ideally so that you
hide the chord. Just more pleasant for viewing clips right about their
sternum or lower. You don't want to get it
too close to your mouth or the sound could get
distorted and B2 loud. So of course you want
to do a test before you record for real and make
sure that it sounds good. Wherever you place the mic, you want to keep it clear from jewelry or anything hitting it. Also, if somebody talks
with their hands a lot, sometimes they can hit the
microphone. Right now. You're listening to me
on another microphone. That's not pleasant. I
just hit my microphone. So you want to make
sure that nobody is hitting the microphone
while they talk. Hans, clear jewelry, clear
that you want that microphone. Just pick up the voice
really, really clearly. Let's watch a quick
example video of somebody using a microphone
and not using a microphone, a lavalier, and see what you
think about the difference. Okay, like Heather said, it's very important
to use a mic when you're recording
yourself on camera. I have this lavalier mic
turned on right now. Let's see what happens
when we unplug it. Alright, so the background
noise behind US, cars, dogs, people walking by, it
was probably a lot more apparent in my voice isn't
taking up nearly as well. Let's plug it back
in with his role. My voice should be
loud and clear again. The background noise
is drowning out. Alright, so I'm sure
you could tell that the lavalier sounded
1000 times better. So this is 1015 bucks on Amazon, highly recommend picking
one of these up. Another option is using a
directional microphone. If you went with a
rig for stability, this just attaches
right into it on the top along with your
lights, which is really fun. It's got a chord that we're
just plugged directly into your phone with a
converter if you need one. And your phone just knows
to pick up that audio. This is good if you're getting multiple speakers and you're kind of moving through
an environment like, Hey, what do you
think about this? What do you think about this? Directionally means
you want it's going to pick up sound based on
the direction it's pointing. So you want to point it
right at the person. Again, stay about
a medium shot or close up away from them
to pick up good sound. Another option is a little
directional microphone. So how cute is this? It's adorable, kind
of an older model, so it doesn't have
the new iPhone input, but I can just plug it
right into my old iPhone. Same idea. It's going to pick
up directionally wherever you're pointing it. So you want to point
right at the speaker, medium shot or close-up
away, have them talk. Directional mics
are gonna pick up a lot better sound
than no Mike at all. But again, I think my
top recommendation, if you have someone talking on camera at very often at all, pick up a lavalier mic.
15. Lighting: Okay, let's talk about lighting. The goal with lighting is to
light your dominant subject. So if that's the person talking, you want to make sure
you have a lot of light on their face so that it's crystal clear to the viewer what
they're looking at, who they're supposed to
be listening to, etc. I'm going to start by
going through what a professional three-point
lighting system is. This is not something
I'm telling you. You have to run out
and buy and utilize. But I think just
understanding what it looks like will help you understand
the principles of lighting. With the three-point
lighting system, you have a key light on
the side of the camera. This is the brightest light
towards your subject. You have a fill white on the
other side of the camera, which is filling in the
shadows from the key light. Then optional you
have a backlight, this is faced
towards the back of your subject head and this is gonna give them a
little hair glow, and it's also gonna separate them more from the background. I currently don't
have a backlight. I just have a key and fill white and I think it looks okay. I'm pretty far away from
my background as is. So I don't think I need
a lot more separation, but it is a nice look if you
want to do that backlight. Here's a few examples of what this professional lighting
setup looks like in practice. So assuming you
don't want to buy a three-point lighting
system right now, let's talk about some
other ways you can light. Let's talk about
the freeways first. You can use the sun if
you're shooting outside. There's a few things
to take note of. If you want to avoid
a front light. You can see here in
this picture that these guys are looking
towards this on it. So they're squinting, they have harsh shadows on their face. It's just not a
flattering light for them as opposed to
this other picture. These people are backlit. The sun is towards the
back of their head, so they have a nice hair glow. Their faces are evenly lit. They can open their eyes
all the way and it's a much more flattering
photo of them. So the sun can be
a great source. You just want to make
sure that you're using it in the right way. You can also use the sun
inside by using a window. This is what you want
to avoid though. This guy is backlit too much. He's silhouetted out here. You can't see him at all if the camera's switches
positions with the subject. Now you can see him really clearly and it
looks a lot better. You definitely want to lock
your exposure if you're using a window on
the person's face, I'll explain exactly
how to do that and why. Right now, let's talk about
exposure auto versus manual. Now, right now the
phones automatically exposing to what
it's pointed at. If I pan around the room, you see it sort of changes. The outside gets
exposed properly, looks good if I pan
over left here, Lorin gets exposed
properly, it looks good. If I want to lock that
exposure on her face, I'm going to tap it with my
finger and then hold it down. And you see a little
AEF walk come up. Now if I pan over
to the Windows, it's way blown out. It's not exposed
properly at all. If I come back to Lauren, she's still exposed properly
because I locked it on her. I'm going to reset it and
come over to the Windows, lock my exposure facing outside. Now if I come back to Lauren, she does not look good.
She's underexposed. But if I point the camera
out, that looks great. That's why it's
important to always lock the exposure on someone's face when you're shooting a person. It's a great practice to
get into to just always do your AEF lock before you
actually record anyone. And that not only will do the right exposure
lighting wise, but it's also going to do that auto-focus so that they stay in focus the
whole time you're shooting. Something to avoid with lights
is using overhead lights. In this example here, this guy is only
lit overhead from the ceiling and you
can see there's harsh shadows. He
doesn't look good. Here is not a flattering
light at all. If you can just completely turn off any overhead
light and light, the person from the sides
are behind the camera, that they're getting
a lot of light directly on their face. That's gonna be the
most flattering way to light a subject. Let's talk about things
you can buy to add light. First one is just this
little ring-like clip. This just goes right
on your phone. Turn it on few different
brightness levels. This is designed for like
a close-up selfie video. In vertical mode. I mean, you could do it horizontally, but it's gonna let
you more evenly if you're shooting vertically, a bigger ring light is a
really good option too. These are very popular now because of social media videos. So you just put your phone right here in the tripod,
which is great, that it comes with a tripod because you not only
have good light, but you have stability to, but you simply put your phone
in their frame yourself up. This can go horizontal
or vertical, which is also a great feature. This one has to be
plugged into USB source. I've got it plugged into
my computer over here. But you can also buy ring
lights that are cordless, which is a great idea, but I'm gonna cut to this camera so you can see the difference. This is made without
the ring light on, turn it on and you can see
it now I'm evenly lit. I am a little bit overlooked because I have
all this other light around me because
of the other camera that I'm actually shooting on. But you can tell
from here to here, it's quite a big difference. So bringing whites
are a great way to just light up a face. I highly recommend getting
one if you're shooting a lot of talking head videos. Finally, you can buy
little side lights. These are designed to go
just right on your phone. Are actually not on your phone. You have to have a cage is
stability device to use. So let's say you have a rig. These just click right on here, turn it on and then
you've got a nice light. This is really great if
you're walking around, getting a lot of different
people doing something. If you have action going on or people are talking
to the camera. So it's going to light evenly
and look, look really good. So all of this again is on
the gear recommendation list. If you're interested in getting
some lights, main point, light the face from behind
or the side of the camera.
16. How to Remove Glasses Glare: Is this situation
familiar to you? You're making video because you have to make video
to grow your business. So you buy a ring light because everyone says
you have to have a ring light to get
the best light on your face for videos like this. But then you have this problem because
you are glasses person. You want your glasses, but you don't want this
look, this reflection. So today we're gonna
go over three ways. You can still use a ring
light because he paid for it. You want to use it and get
rid of this reflection. Let's go. So all three of
these ways to get the glare out of your
glasses on the ring light. These all require
a separate tripod. You can see here I've got my phone on a
separate tripod now, the ring light is by itself. If you don't have one, they're very inexpensive on Amazon, just get a phone tripod. So the first way we're
going to do this is moving the ring light to the
side of you. Alright? Let me take my ring light. Watch myself here on the screen. I'm going to get it as
close to myself as I can, but getting that the glare to go as far over
as I need to go, turn the temperature down a little bit so it's
a little bright. I want to if I'm
talking to the camera, I wanted to try not to look that direction because
that'll catch the light. Also note that I
have a window over this way that's doing a little
bit of a fill light here. If that window wasn't open, it this side of my face
would be very dark. So if you do have a ring
light on one side of you, you've got to balance it out on the other side either
with a window, lamp, another light
like a box light. If you want to buy
something else, you don't want like
completely super bright, super dark unless you're going
for a very dramatic look, which could be the case. All right. The second way is to
move the ring light up. I'm going to bring it back to where it was behind the tripod. What we're gonna do
is raise it and then tilt it down to
angle towards me. I'm going to lift it up here. This ring light that I have, it's from Lume Cube. It's the 1800s. It goes really high. It's like 80 inches
or something. I can get it really
high, which is a great feature of this
particular ring light. I'm going to raise it up. If I step back, you can
see that you can't see the reflection unless I look up when you're actually
using the camera, you want to make sure you're not doing this a lot while you talk. You got to watch the angle of your chin
so you don't get there. I could probably raise
it up even more here and then do you want to these angled down a little bit so it's more directly on my face. I've got a nice even lighting. Again, careful not to look up, but not about book. The Third Way we're
gonna talk about is to turn the ring
light backwards. I loved this idea. I'm
going to lower it back down and tilt it. Then I'm actually going to
move my tripod back a little bit to kinda make
this work right? I'm going to turn the ring light the opposite
direction from me. As you can see here,
I'm lit pretty well. The light is reflecting off of that wall.
It's a little bright. Turn it down. I've got glare on my glasses, but it's just
normal light glare. It's not that crazy
ring half ring that you see with the ring light being
directly on your face. Bouncing light off of a wall
like this is a great option. Alright, I hope you
found this video helpful. All of you glasses. Whereas again, you can move
the ring light to the side. It just makes sure
you've got another light to balance that out. You can move your ring light up, tilt it down so you've got light directly on your face that way. Or what I'm doing right now. Turn the ring light backwards, bounce it off of a wall.
Thanks for watching.
17. Looking Your Best on Camera: These days and by that I mean tech heavy social media dominant, mostly remote working modern times that we live in, you've got to not only use video in your organization, but you often have to be in video for said organization. This hard truth may not jive well with those of you who are camera shy or cringe at the site of yourself and your daily Zoom meeting. But fears be Pasha exactly how to prepare yourself to look and feel your best before you hit record. Let's start with looking your best on camera. Because by nature we're all a little vein. There are certain things you want to avoid wearing on camera. Light pastel colors or beige can really watch you out. Bright white can confuse the camera as it will expose for your shirt if you're shooting in an auto mode and that won't make your face look its best and don't wear dark black. Yes, I know black is slimming and everyone loves wearing black, but it can add some unsightly shadows to your face and no one wants that. In addition to these bad color choices, you want to avoid really tight patterns. They sort of vibrate on camera or distracting logos, which can be well distracting to your viewer what you do want to wear. Our bright solid colors, look up jewel tones on Google and pick one of those. Or if you have a shirt that gets a ton of, Oh, wow, that color, it looks great on you every time you wear it. Then that's your shirt. Some subtle patterns are okay like this bird shirt that I'm wearing almost all my videos Speaking of that, you want to show off your style too. It's no secret that I love birds, hence my bird shirt. So don't be afraid to be you, or at least keep the viewer's space to view. And as far as jewelry goes, if that's your style than where it just avoid anything that's going to be really distracting like giant glittery earrings or anything that's going to be loud. If you have a necklace that's like always clinking going into your lavalier microphone. Sound is going to drive your viewers crazy. Finally, make up. You may think you need to go all out where a ton of makeup, but a more natural look is actually generally better. Think about how you look on a day-to-day basis and aim for that people want to see other real authentic people. A little powder can help men and women to cut down on some of the shine that's caused by the lights. But I don't actually where any I don't shine.
18. How to Prepare to be on Camera: Now that you've chosen your outfit and laid it out like it's the first day of ninth grade. Let's talk about prepping yourself to be on camera. First. You've got to know what you're going to say. No one wants to watch it. You stammer and stutter your way through your video. This doesn't have to be like a whole memorized script. At least write out the bullet points. You'll feel better about yourself if you prepare it and therefore you'll present better. Additionally, it'll keep your video shorter. You won't be repeating yourself, but rather you'd be getting right to the point. And viewers appreciate that kind of concise content because, you know, they got a lot of other videos to watch and their feed. Once you've got your content, practice, several runs in the mirror, given several runs in front of the mirror, or even better in front of a friend or a coworker. Ask for feedback, see if you can improve your content or your presentation. All right, So you're just your prep, it's Shoot time and the minutes before recording, take a second to loosen up. Dance, jump around, shake your arms and legs. Spastic Lee, laugh at yourself. If you're a bag of nerves, that's going to show up on camera. So shake those nerves out. The time has come, the time is now hit record and your presentation will forever be stamped on history. Just getting the cool thing about non live recording is you don't have to do it all in one take after your first take, just watch it back, but just anything you need to like lighting or microphone placement, give yourself some feedback and then do another take, or two or five, you'll likely get your best take near the end because you've practiced and you're relaxed and you're on a roll. And my final tip be in more videos. The more you do it, the easier it gets, and the more comfortable you'll appear and low behold, the more you'll enjoy the process.
19. How to get Camera BRAVE: You've watched those
last two videos about preparing to be on camera. And you've got your jewel
tone short picked out, and you've got your
bullet points, scripts so you know
what you want to say, but you're still feeling
just a bit camera shy or self-critical
if that's you, This lesson is for you learning how to be confident and have a great presence and delivery
on video is a skill. Not everyone is born
to the A-star and just rocks in front of
the camera from day one, you can learn to do that, but it does take
time and practice, so don't get too discouraged
as you're starting out. Try to be patient with yourself. I've got a few
actionable tips for you to work on it while
you're doing this. Number one, every
day for a week, record yourself talking
to your camera. You're not going to go
post this anywhere, so nobody's gonna see it, but I want you to
watch it back and just go to town
judging yourself. Oh man, that's how
my voice sounds. Little y or may
wrinkles so deep. Do my eyes really do that? Just go for it. Get all of your cringing out
of the way the next day, do the same exercise
and then repeat. By the end of the
week, you'll notice you don't have as
much to say about your hair and your
voice actually just sounds like a voice, etc. What this is doing is desensitizing you to
yourself on video. You'll probably
even find that you actually are pretty
good on camera. Once you're at that point, you can stop during
this exercise. Number two, stroke
your ego a little bit. You were an authority on your
specific niche or product. If you're getting on
video to talk about that, then that's something you can piece speak
about confidently. People want your knowledge
that you're sharing. No one's asking you to explain astrophysics or
anything like that. I mean, I can talk about
video like all day because it's a subject
that I know a lot about. Do I know the most about video out of
everyone in the world? No, definitely not. But I know a lot more than my target audience
and my clients, so I feel competent
talking about it. Knowing you are the subject
matter expert will help you, like speak and give
you more confidence. Three, when you're
actually ready to shoot, if you're in selfie
mode, which is fine. I mean, if you're
setting up alone, That's how you have to set
it up. It's totally fine. But you want to look in
the lens when you're recording and not at
yourself on the screen. Looking in the lens is like making eye contact
with the viewer, which is what you want if you're having
trouble not looking at yourself on screen after
you get your shot setup, cover the screen with a sticky note or something like that. This will not only help
you look into the lens, but you'll be less critical
if you can't see yourself. Number four, I want you
to imagine that lens is just your best friend and you're getting a
coffee together. Speak in a way that's
friendly and conversational. People watching your videos
are watching them alone. It really you're just having a one-on-one
conversation anyway. Make them feel comfortable by you feeling more comfortable. Try these tips out and
let me know how it goes. I'd love to hear
some success stories about you guys
getting camera brave.
20. Behind the Scenes: Shooting a Marketing Video: okay, some here with Warren today, and we're gonna make a video. So we have booked a conference room here, and I book to this room because it's got a good amount of natural light with these windows and some un interesting backgrounds. But then we've got this brick wall through the windows that looks pretty great. Born. I'll have you sit in this chair. I've got my mini tripod here and the rig for my iPhone. I'm gonna go ahead and assemble these things. This is a video for her company. That sort of thinks people when they sign up to get on her mailing list. So this is something that would go to clients after they've been to her website. So we brought that together, and I go ahead and turn on the camera app. So if we just said straight on the table a little low. So what, you can Dio if you've got a mini tripod, is prop it up with some books or some boxes or whatever you have. So we'll see how it looks this high following the rule of thirds giving her just enough head room, and I'm not gonna put it right in the center cause I like kind of the off centered look. So the next thing we want to do is Mike Lauren up. We we get decent sound going and say something, Warren. I mean, the camera would definitely pick her up with this distance, but it's gonna be a little echoey on, not just super clear. So now I'm gonna plug my mike in. Give this to Lauren. We want to hide this as much as we can. So what's go under your sweater and Lauren is going to just clip it to her bra strap there and we'll see how that sounds. So once you do that, your iPhone just from your camera app, it's gonna pick up that audio. Let's set our exposure. I'm just gonna touch the screen and see where the exposure is best. If I touch the screen on her actual face, it's a little too dark. But if I come to her sweater, it kind of Britain's everything up. So I'm gonna set my exposure lock there by touching the screen them I'm gonna have record and just Lauren, go ahead and read or say your first line or so. Hi there My name is Lauren. Cross do a little bit more after you Tech nerd and borderline great. Okay, I'm gonna stop that, and then we'll just unplugged. And Mike. Hi there. My name is Lauren. Cost. I am a dog, Mom. Yogi. Technology and borderline cool. So before the actual shoot here, you want to always make sure your phone is an airplane mode so it doesn't disrupt your recording. So let's just check Lauren first before we roll here. Sure, it looks good. And she's wearing her jewel tones. Your necklace is not is under your shirt. Do you want it out? You want to show it off? I like that. And if you could put your hair, just make sure you get in your eyes too much. So we see your face. Let's just have you take a few deep breaths. Stretch your arms up. Get loose. Okay. I think she's ready. Last thing I'm gonna dio just clean my lens right here from there. Really dirty. So you want to make sure that you've got a nice clean lens? OK, so I'm gonna set my locked my exposure again. And have you looked right at the camera start with a smile and whenever you're ready, just go for it. I'm worried. And the tot mom Acro Yogi Tech nerd Kind of a heavy. Those good that seemed really natural to me. Shouldn't overdo it. She wasn't like gesturing up like crazy and she wasn't really monotone or low energy. It was just like a good right in the middle of high and low energy, and it felt really authentic. So if I wasn't here and Lauren was doing this by herself, she totally could do that. We were just put the camera on selfie mode. Oh, hey, there's Jordan behind the scenes. She would just set it up herself, basically set the exposure herself, and then she would hit record this way. Give yourself a little second or two here, smile. Then she'd go. Hi, I'm Warren. The thing is, with selfie mode verse normal, some people find it helpful to watch themselves. Some people find it weird and distracting. How did you feel about it? Which one would you prefer? Yeah, it's still looked really good. You're good at it, but also, if you're in selfie mode, you know you want to be looking at the camera. And a lot of times you're looking at the screen instead and kind of looking at yourself so people can sort of see your eyes dart off. But if this is your only option, it looks It looks pretty good. So great. That's it. Let's watch this video. Hi, I'm Lauren Cross. I'm a dog mom, Acro Yogi Tech nerd, kind of a hippie. And I'm one of the co founders of 12. 12 is a platform that empowers small restaurant business owners to create and deliver engaging training and communication content. Thank you so much for taking some time to check out 12 on our website and sign up for our email. We promised to only send helpful and motivating emails, and if you have any questions at all, please reach out to me directly at Lauren at 12 dot com. Thanks
Heather Hukari, Video Coach, Social Video 101
