Transcripts
1. Welcome!: have you ever tried to film your lettering only to realize that it's not as easy as it looks. I've been there. People love lettering and art videos, but it can be hard if you don't know where to start. That's what this class is all about, specifically for lettering videos. But it can help with any our video that you may be sharing on instagram YouTube, all the social media and we are keeping it simple by doing it all on your phone. Hey, guys, I'm Sarah from inside and sites. I started littering almost two years ago, and I loved hand lettering videos, really wanted to start making my own. At first, I had my husband hold the phone for me. I soon realized they couldn't have him record every video that I wanted to make, so they soon figured out of fancy set up. I thought it was fancy at the time. Here's a picture of my first set up, but this didn't last long because he took way too much time to set up. I did finally come up with something that worked for me, and it worked for many others. I made a block post about it, and it was helpful at the time. I have since then taken down that block post because it needed to be updated. And now I have all the updated tools that I'm going to share with you in this class. We will go over everything from this set up behind the scenes to editing the video to make sure that it is high quality to share with your following. You'll be making high quality videos in no time.
2. What you'll need: All right, let's talk about what you'll need in this class. So first thing you want a phone, I'm using the iPhone. You can use any phone. The next thing you'll need is light. Natural light is the best, and it's free. If you don't have a nice window, I will show you what lamps you'll need. Next. You'll need something toe. Hold your phone so you can use both hands. I use this goose Nick tripod. There's lots of different kinds. Mine attaches to the wall so it doesn't shake while I am lettering. You could also use a little jar. I'm going to show you several options in this class, so you don't even have to buy anything. It could be something that you have just at home. Another good option is a standing tripod. This one has an attachment for my iPad, and that's how I filmed this class. So that's just gives you an idea. Next, you want to think about your background. If your desk is not a color that you like, you can get these poster boards. I always use a white posterboard because I really like a white background, but you could use any color background. If you are worried about getting good lighting in your video, using a different color background definitely helps. You may want to have some props. I mostly use my brush markers and watercolor supplies for props, but I have a few of these neutral colors so that they go well with my materials that I use . We don't talk about recording your voice in this class, but I do want to mention getting a microphone. This one is very inexpensive, and it could be very helpful. So this is normally what my set up looks like. And here is a good option for a lamp, this one. It's just a day light bulb. That's the key. This one sits on your desk. You can move it all around. Some people get two of them for their desk. This is $20 on Amazon. I used the's much bigger lights. It was $50 for the two of them. They do take up quite a bit of space, but because I create so many videos, they are so helpful and worth it to me. So I'll show you the difference in this class. You don't have to have these. I just want to make sure you know that you have options. Let's get started
3. Filming With a Tripod: the first thing that you want to think about when you are setting up your video is what angle do you want to see your lettering from? So right here. This is my goose neck tripod. And I'm going to show you what it would look like if I do a video from straight on. So I'm just clipping in my phone right here and how I'm filming with my iPad. I'm doing it straight on so that you can see everything down here. So let's turn on. I'm just using the light from my window right now. I am not using any extra light besides the window. So here's my piece of paper right here. And this is what I want to let her on so you can see it straight on consuming hand in there . And I may add some props to this. So here's a little tree. Maybe in the corner, right there, a little succulent, not a tree. And then I have these scissors. Maybe I'll place them right there, And if you are right handed, you want to make sure that whatever is on the right side is not going to be something that's too bulky that you have to move as your lettering because you can is going to go this way. If you're left handed, then you'll want to watch out for the left side. Maybe I'll have may gonna let her with many black white. But I could have a pen on this side. Okay, so it looks like my video. What you see in here is a lot darker just because the camera can't capture it all. So what I can do, though, to make this brighter is touch on the spot that I want to be bright. And if I touch and hold it says appear aee lock automatic exposure. And then when I condo's is raise or lower that exposure. So obviously you don't want it too high you about right there and another thing to remember . If you are using any kind of colors, you don't want to wash them out. So yellows are really, really hard to record. I also forgot to turn my video to the side. So now you can see in my camera and that this is the top. This is the bottom, all right. And then you just hit cord. I didn't notice until after I recorded this, that my tripod was set up wrong. And that's why this is shaking. I decided to leave it so you can see the difference because this happens all the time. It's really frustrating. My goose neck tripod is attached to the wall, so it was not shaking open stop so you can kind of see what that would look like. I normally don't do straight on unless it's something big, because when I'm lettering, something small I want my video to show the brush, stroke and the angle of the pen. So now I'm going to show you how to get that kind of look.
4. Filming WITHOUT a Tripod: All right. So I have moved away my goose neck, tripod. And let's make thes aside, I'm going to use this jar. This is quite alleged are to give you another idea. I have balance my phone in between two spoons and on a jar in this one. I balanced it on a little basket on top of another thing so that I can change the height depending on what it's on. Lots of ideas. What I'm showing you here. You take some kind of pen, you're going to rested, and this is what is going to give the angle. It's gonna give me a nice view of the site of the breast pen. And if you're left handed, you're just want to make the angle from the other side. So your hand is not blocking you. So my camera is on the left side of my hand because I'm going toe, let her to the right like this. If you're left handed, then you'd want it to be this way so that you can let her like this. Okay, so you can do this with your goose neck tripod to change it to any angle. If you don't have a goose neck tripod. This is showing you that you don't need one. You can find ways to do this with stuff that you have just at home. All right, so now I'm positioning. This just gonna right? Right underneath this first. Hello. And it looks like only the A e Lakhan brakes in that exposure just a little bit. And the other thing that you want to look for If you are making this for a YouTube video, then you're going to use the whole with of the screen. If you are using this for Instagram, you can use the whole screen. But you might want to think about where your square will be. So sometimes I will use a square piece of paper or I will mentally look at my design so that it can fit in a square. So for this video, when I look in my screen right here, I'm just going to be using this center area so that I know I can make it into a square. You can also look at your Ingle. So right now this is filming from behind. If you want it directly at the side, you can go right there. I like to do it The this way at a angle, but still a little bit behind. That way, people are still reading it from top to bottom. It's not like they're reading it, looking at it sideways. It's just a slight angle so that they can still see my pen. And my hand is not blocking the breast strokes from them. Great. So I'm gonna press record and press stop, and I like to lay down my pen after, so it's kind of like the end of the video. They know it's over. They can as they scroll through their instagram feed or whatever. Um, you don't have to do that. You could come up with your own thing, and then I'm gonna show you now how to do this with a smaller jar. So I'm gonna take this jar out of here, and we're going to use this little one. This one is a yogurt. Are the we yogurt? You could use a mug any kind of our and see, I'm just balancing in between two pens. If I want the angle to be different, I would just switch the pens. I'm gonna take that eraser out actually, so you can see how this in the screen This is a lot more close up, and once again I'm gonna make sure that I only use the middle of my screens and then I'll be able to crop it to a square and then remember, have to decide what angle. So do I want them to read it from the side. Like I said, I kind of like it. So it's in a little bit of a diagonal. One thing no, that's important is when you touch and hold your phone and also focuses on the area. So especially when you're doing something really close like this, your word might be out of focused. If you're 80 lakh is on somewhere. So focusing it on my finger press record and then stop. Another thing you might want to think about is, how are you starting your video? Do you want your pent already being it? Do you want everything to be out and then you start and your pen comes in? Do you want your hand already to be right there, ready to go and then start? There's no right or wrong. It's just what you like and some people, we'll have all of their pens ready. So let's think about depends in here depends, and they're going to use. And then the video starts may split from away and then start using. So that's a fun thing to do to. Okay, so now we're gonna move this juror out of the way, and I'm going to show you what it would look like if we're going to use a different app to record like hyper laps.
5. Filming with Hyperlapse: Okay, so I'm back with my goose neck tripod. You can see that now. I can make it. It's on an angle can change this anyway, that I want gonna open up hyper laps. If you are an android user, I would recommend Microsoft hyper lapse. It is possibly better than apple hyper laps because you can change the speed to 32 times instead of just 12 times. And also, you can upload videos that you've already recorded Maybe just in your camera app. And then you can speed those up a swell and like, that angle right there. Once again, I'm gonna make sure that I just let her in a square. Something that I can crop later. And with hyper laps, you can do a lock. So if I touch right here, you see little lock symbol. You can't raise or lower the exposure like you can in the regular camera app and make sure , just like I said before, when you focus on something, it will focus on that and mine. I need to switch the orientation. Let's see to that to it. Yeah, you can see these little arrows right here. That shows me that now top is here. Bottom is here. And when skin I'm going todo you lock. And now my walk is on the top like that instead of on this side. So I know this is the top. This time I will use pink so I can show you later the difference between black versus color . All right, so this for this video, I want my pen to be sitting in it before I start. And then I'm just going Teoh press record. And then let's see. Oh, put it back in right there. So then I press stop. And now this is the core part where I can watch right here, and I can decide how fast So if I wanted a 12 times speed because really fast it shows me that it's 58 seconds originally into five seconds. It's two times its 29 seconds. This is really helpful if you make a really long post and then to make it one minute to fit on Instagram, you have to fit it with 12 times. But let's just do two times or yeah, let's just do two times. So then I just hit check and now it's going to save. Okay, let's do new hyper laps. And now I'm going to turn on my lights and we'll see if we can tell the difference. Okay, so now I'm probably still going Teoh lock. Even though it looks like it's bright enough, it doesn't need it. But if my hand is making it brighter and my hand moves out of the shop, then it will go dark again. So I just like it to be the same. So let's see. I'm going to use this space right here, okay, so I want to show you if I I wanted to add different elements into my video. So let's say I'm going to use my equine and my pinto into Miikka Line that I want to make sure that it's in the shop so that people can see what tools I'm using. So here's Miikka line open and number. I'm watching this little square right here, So if I'm lettering right there, I still want to make sure my square be right there. This time I'm going to start my video. Let's see, I'm gonna dip it first. So oppressed. Start here. - Low power mode. It's the worst turn out of battery. All right, So before my phone dies, I need to see this. Let's see. So that's only a minute. I'm gonna save it at two times again. 35 seconds is pretty good. And next, I'll show you how to edit the video.
6. Editing the Lighting: Okay, so now I'm going to show you how to edit the lighting of the video. I'm using my iPhone, of course, cause that's what I have. So color story. This one right here. This is on Android and iPhone, so anybody can use this one. Let's open up color story going to open up the first video that I did. So this first part right here is how you can edit it so you can turn it around. I can flip it upside down. I need Teoh till Teoh anyway, there's a lot of features you can dio if I want to crop. It can crop in any way I want. Make it a square. This is probably the square I'd need, but for now I'm just going to leave it in case they need to edit anything else later. So let's continue. So now there's all these different things you can do with it clips. I just go into tools. You can use pre made filters, but I never do. I just use all the free stuff, and I find it works just fine. So here, carbon frame. That's exactly where what we had at the beginning and then what I want to do is adjust, so that's under tools. Adjust. And then right here. This is where the magic happens. So the first thing I dio is hit bright and see if I need to increase the brightness without washing anything helped. So because name marker was black, it should be okay, increasing the brain. It's just a little bit hit the check mark that I'm going to do. Contrast. Contrasts picked basically makes all of the whites whiter and the blacks blacker, so that is looking a lot better just by increasing that even a little bit. If you do it too much, everything will kind of look washed out. So let's see, how about about right there and then saturation? I normally add just a little bit, but you don't want to add too much. If I go all the way, my fingers start turning orange, so this does normally help with the colors off my brush markers. Since this video was with black, we'll just increase it just a little bit. And then vibrance, this one justic situates anything that's kind of dark, and so I'm just going to bring it up. Just a tiny bit and then I don't use many of these other ones sharpen. I always liked to sharpen it just a little bit. If it's too much, then it'll start looking like grainy or something. But I normally do it just a little bit. So because otherwise, sometimes it can look a little bit blurry. And then sometimes I will increase the exposure just a tiny bit. I don't think I needed on this one, so I won't do it on this one. But I do sometimes use that. And clarity just takes any of the black lines, makes them darker. I don't think I needed on this one. I think this is good. If I touch and hold, I can see where it started and where ended. And then I'm going to click review. It's gonna take some time to load, and then it's gonna show me the video. And then I can see of all the colors air. Okay, how my letters look. All right, So now I couldn't watch my video. And remember, this is the one that was from a straight on. So you can see already that it was totally blocking my word. My hand was blocking my word. So that's why having something straight on is best when it's something really big and not with little things. And that lighting looks good to me, so I can just save. If you don't like the Whiting, you can return to editing and star exactly where you left off, or you can start again and completely start over with the new video and I am going to start it. Ken, let's take my next video. It was this one, this one I already can see. It's pretty yellow instead of white. I'm not gonna do it any cropping yet, so I'm going to go into tools and adjust and then start with bright on and let's see, so every video is different. You have to know what tools work where. So that looks about, uh, goods increase the contrast. You're a there. Just going a little bit of saturation. Remember it on my orange hand in there. I can't see my hand. Um, so that's one heart. Think a This is vibrance just a little bit and then sharpen. I don't see him too. Don't actually looks good with loss. Keep it kind of it. This one. I am going to increase exposure just a little bit and then have a little bit of clarity. Since my words are black, it's too right there and you can add a little bit more contrast. Okay, so let's see how that works with my hand. If it washes out my hand, then I will have to start over with this one. Okay, so I'm watching it and the black looks really good. My fingers are a little bit orange, so that means probably the contrast was a little bit high. I'm going, Teoh, Save it. And then I'm going to return to editing and bring down the contrast a little, but and bring them to the break. This create that looks a little bit better. Still seeing that one as well. Let's start over with next video. So next we will be my pink one Right here. Number tools. Adjust, Miss. When my lettering was pink so we'll see that works. I'm increasing the brightness. I am going to add some saturation so that my people stand out. But see, you can even see my fingers turning orange as I raise it up too high. So it's too be my donated the vibrance on this one who will sharpen it? E will increase exposure. Remember exposure. You don't need too much. It's like completely washed out, just even a tiny little. It will go a long way. You see the difference. So let's see some clarity. All right, so let's see. My hand doesn't look to orient, so that's good. And the pink looks great. So I am going to save. I never had to grid. It's like you could plan your instagram feed with it. I just don't. And so there we go. Let's start again and this time we're going to do. And this one was the one when I turned on my lights, remember? So let's see if there's any difference tools that just you will increase the brightness, it's dio there will add to the situation a little bit of contrast to see that makes a big difference and how white the background is. And if you don't want to worry about getting your background white, then you could use a different color posterboard. Or maybe you have like your desk. It's a nice would color. Guess what doesn't really cool in this arrow right there That will just take it back One step if I do something to it. And I say, oops. They didn't want to do that. Then I just can like backspace right through. Okay, This one looks really good. Let's see if it changes. All right. So my hand looks good. The color of my ink looks great. And this will look really good when I zoom in later, when I crop it to a square, So I am going to save
7. Editing the Clips: Okay, so I'm going to show you how to edit your video, not the lighting. This time this thing will be the actual video. So I'm using I'm movie. There are options that you can use for android as well. Fillmore ago is a great option. You can trim and merge clips and do all of your brightness and contrast editing right in the app. I have also heard good things about video shop and video show. When I looked at it, video show does have a watermark that you'd have to pay to get off video shop. It didn't look like it even had a watermark. And you can do all of your video editing and color editing in one. So I'm going to open my movie and then just right here quick, create project just a movie. And then you have all of your photos and your videos. And so this is why I didn't crop any of my videos yet because I'm going to choose that on this one. This one and this one. Those are the four that we just made. And in my movie, it has this dimension, this 16 by nine dimension. So if I brought in a square video, then it would have gray sides. So I always just at it like this. And then I can cut the video into a square when I'm done. So let's look through and see if I want to change any of the transitions. See how right here, if I click on this brings me down here to these different transitions I can choose. This one is dissolved. I'm gonna put it at 0.5 seconds. So dissolve basically just dissolves unto itself. And then another thing you can do if I still decided that I want this to be sped up even more, Then I can click on it and hit this little clock looking thing right there. And now I could make it faster. You can only make it two times fast. So if I didn't make it fast enough before, sometimes I have to save it two times fast. Bring it in again, stated again and two times fast until I get it to the speed that I want. And it shows you when you click on it like that shows you this is no 13.5 seconds. So if I think that video clip is going to be good enough at 13.5 seconds, Then I can leave it with that. Okay, so another thing you can do this is is right here. This clips is so let's say this is taking too long and I want my video to end right there. Then I just touch it right there. Quick split. Then I can delete this quip. I have to change your transition again. Let's just make all of the use even faster. Make sure the transition is 0.5. Sometimes you can't dio if you make it too fast the clips too fast you can't do dissolve. So in that case, maybe I would dio fade or just leave it without So you have different filters. You can put it on it right in here you have. You can duplicate it if you freeze it than it'll. Just like let's say you wanted this picture toe last for a few stick ins. Freeze it and then it will keep it like the volume. This is where it doesn't have any volume in this one, so I can't touch it. But if you're gonna add sound to it, that's where you would do it. You can add text so I could type something right here. If we are just keeping it simple, though, I don't even want any text. So I'm gonna go back to none. And then that's it. You can add any other videos, photos, songs, anything you want and I'm gonna hit. Done. And now I can save save video. And why always choosed this highest 1 10 80 and then it will export.
8. Final Video and Class Project: all right, That's it. You made it through. So now the class project is to create your own video, make a video of something that you've been working on, something new, whatever it is, used the techniques in this class to make your high quality video. So here is the final video that I was working on for your class. Project. Skill share doesn't give you the option of sharing the video file. So take a picture of your video set up and post that in the class project section. You can also share a link to your video if you posted it somewhere else. Each of these video clips are a little bit different so that you can see the variation. And I hope this gives you some ideas of different things that you want to try. The goal is that you feel comfortable with what you're doing, trying to things. There's not one perfect way to do it. There's lots of ideas. Be creative, come up with your own. And this last one is when I turned on my lights So you can see the difference is that the light is coming from behind instead of just from the top, but you definitely don't need expensive lights to get good lighting. Thank you so much for wanting this class. I am so excited to see what you come up with.
Sarah Ensign, Hand Letter Artist
