Reels, Shorts, and TikToks: How to Tell Engaging Stories with Your Smartphone

1. Introduction: What makes a video interesting? Why do people watch one video till the end and scroll away from another? We ask ourselves these questions so many times. Researched the answers. Filmed thousands of hours of footage, did a lot of experiments in, and finally boiled down to one simple idea. An interesting video should tell a story, Hi we are Max and Lena two Brooklynites behind NYClive, one of the most popular Instagram pages in and about New York City. Our videos brought us hundreds of millions of views across Instagram and TikTok. Because we follow some simple storytelling principles. In this class, you'll learn the craft of making the compelling video that catches and holds your viewers attention. In the first part of this class, we'll cover the ideal settings for a smartphone camera, how to get the best possible quality for social media, and how to write a basic script so your story is easy to follow. In the second part, we'll explore composition using simple principles such as lighting contrast and leading lines. And we'll cover the most used camera movements in cinema to used by masters to tell their stories and how you can achieve similar effects with just your smartphone. These skills will be the bedrock of your craft. Their simple yet powerful techniques to make your stories more visually compelling will even take on the streets of New York City together and practice finding captivating compositions out in the field. And finally, we'll bring it all together with some basic editing techniques to make your story a coherent and effortless viewing experience. We don't use expensive gear and software, so you won't need a DSLR camera and lenses, just a smartphone and some free apps to edit your footage. This class is made for beginners, but if you are intermediate, you might learn some new tricks as well. By the end of it, you'll not only have a finished video that tells a story, but also a way to look at the world and find interesting stories around you. And don't worry, you'll see the results right away. Once you start to see, it is impossible to unseat. We are very excited to share this class video. So let's get started. 2. Class Orientation: Welcome to the class. Thanks for taking it. We're very excited to share our secrets of filming great videos with you. But let's first talk about the class project. It will be a well-planned, beautifully filmed and logically edited video that you will hopefully post on your social media. And in the project section of this class, here are the main things that we'll be looking for in your final videos. First and foremost, are welcome both shots. Secondly, a smoothly performed camera movements, then the seamless transitions between those camera movements. Lastly, the rectum and the pace of your editing and the music that you selected. Along the way, we'll ask you to take some exercises like matching a picture and a feeling like creating a shot list and editing your video from the footage that we filmed for you. All of those you can find in the projects and resources section of this class, like in any craft acquiring skills, take some practice. Same goes for the skills we teach in this class, like composition, lighting, and seeing all those things, and even more so for camera movements, that skill requires some physical practice. After watching all the videos in this class, you most likely won't be able to apply all the tools simultaneously. A balanced approach is what you should be aiming for. For example, lesson about about composition. Once you learn all of the rules of good composition, you should go out in the field and try all of those tools in practice. Same goes for the camera movements. Don't rush through the class, let it settle. Our first lesson will be about planning and structure. So without further ado, let's jump into the thick of it. 3. Planning: Storytelling Structure: Hi everyone. Welcome to the first lesson of our class that we wanted to start with planning and structure. To explain why planning is important, I'd like to start with feelings and emotions first, it's been known for years that a good story makes you feel something from the very first glance on it. In the age of the social media, when our attention span becomes shorter and shorter, we want our viewer to feel something from the very first seconds of our story. Then you want to make them feel something in the next five seconds and in the next five seconds. If you succeed with this task, then your story is interesting. This is where good planning comes into play. What do you want the viewer to feel right away? Or if your video is just five seconds long, what kind of feeling do you want them to go away with? Those are very hard questions of the storytelling process. But the hardest one is how do you plan for someone to feel something about your story? You don't know the people on the other side of the screen. You don't know their age, their cultural background, what they do, what, and what they feel right now, the answer to this question sounds very simple, yet really hard to perform. You as a creator, making your story, you have to feel something about it. If you do, that would mean that there is at least one person that might feel exactly the same while watching your story. Let's see an example. In this short video, we have a very beautiful frame of one of the main streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It is raining and a silhouette of a woman with an umbrella approaches us. There is simple yet mesmerizing piano music plays in the background. It's soothes, it makes you feel warm and romantic, maybe induces some daydreaming. This video went viral on TikTok and it goes without saying that we didn't plan it at all. It was simple luck. But this particular video teaches us a lot about planning. Now, every time it rains in New York and we happen to be outside, we look for the similar conditions of light and composition and just wait for a person to appear in the frame and have a similar kind of vibe. The really important thing about the music in this video is that we took our time to match perfectly to the vibe of the picture. That's why it's so emotionally striking. Also Lena wrote a controversial but curious caption to this video, which made the comments section on TikTok blow up. We'll talk about it later in the lesson about captioning and hashtags. That was a very short video. But what if your idea is more complex and requires a longer story, then you should definitely structure it. There are many, many ways how you can structure a story. And there are many books that were written about it. However, there is only one that proved to be working from ancient Greeks to modern Hollywood blockbusters. It's called the three-act structure. And it's very easy for the creator, writer and a viewer or reader to go through. And most importantly, it keeps attention on your story. The main pillars of the three-act structure, our setup, confrontation, and resolution. The setup is the stage when you paint the initial picture for the viewer and introduce your main hero or the situation. In a social media world it needs to contain some kind of hook, a visually striking image, a surprising statement, or a shocking statement sometimes to make them watch further, the confrontation is the second stage of a three-act structure. After the setup, you leave your spectator with some kind of feeling. Now it's the time to change that feeling. It has to be something that changes the course of the story to make them feel something different, you may introduce some kind of situation that changes the vibe of the story. Or you can put some obstacles in front of your main hero and see how he or she deals with it. The third stage of our three-act structure is called resolution. Now it's time to slow down and reflect on what happened, draw some conclusion, or maybe leave our story with an open ending if this sounds a little bit complex and confusing, Here's an example of our latest video that has those stages very pronounced. I moved to New York in April and oh my god, was the city so beautiful and blooming that I fell in love with it instantly. And Angela came and I'm standing on a subway station sweating my *** and saying funny ****, I'm moving to Montana and never ever am I looking back then October came and I'm like, oh, I was so wrong about New York. This is so romantic and cinematic. Where's my pumpkin spice latte than in January? The setup of the story is when our main hero moves to New York and falls in love with it because it's so beautiful and nice. And this is where our spectator might connect to the main hero with the feelings that New York is really beautiful place and there's everything to love about it. Then the confrontation stage comes in and our main hero realizes that not everything is so sweet and beautiful about this series or summer, there's hot and it puts our spectator in a different kind of feeling. Oh, there is a downside about the city. The confrontation stage still continues when the fall comes in and our protagonist realizes that it's still beautiful and awesome and loves the city. But this is where our spectator might feel. There's something up there, something suspicious about it, something's going to have to happen. And indeed, in the resolution Act, which abruptly finishes our story, our main hero finds himself in the middle of January when it's freezing and he's screaming. Recap. The story is about feeling things. A good story makes you as a creator, feel something about it when you make it. This is how you plan for your viewer to feel something about your story as well, to structure a complex story. Start with the setup, continue with confrontation, and finish with resolution. Now let's open our guidebook and find the page title, structure and planning. And find a table there with two columns, feelings and videos. In the left column put any kind of feeling or emotion you want your viewer to feel right across. Describe a video or a movie scene or a famous painting that might induce this feeling. Alright, in this video, we covered how to plan and structure your future story. And in the next lesson we'll be talking about best working camera settings for social media. 4. Setting Up: Camera Settings: Welcome back. Let's set up your smartphone camera when you film and then post your story online, it will have the best possible quality of your video, which won't ruined by the compression algorithms of social media apps. We use an iPhone 14 pro camera at the time of recording this class, and will be showing the setup on its native camera app. But most new smartphones have the same settings. So you shouldn't have any issues when setting them up. When people film their videos, they tend to think, alright, I turn on 4K and 60 frames per second on my camera. So it should come out really well. Unfortunately, this is not the case. when any app deals with large amount of video data. It compresses it for a faster download and a better user experience, usually, when you upload your 4K video, for example, on Instagram, you might probably notice that it is jumpy and has some weird artifacts. After some research, trial and error. We found out that the most digestible settings are 1080p and 30 frames per second. This format will be uploaded almost unchanged. So will have the best possible quality. Sometimes we film 60 frames per second to slow it down 50 per cent in the editing app. For a slow mo effect, We tend to switch of HDR in our settings because we notice that it doesn't benefit the ultimate result. We also noticed that it makes video pale by lifting the shadows and taming the highlights. The next setting that is constantly on in our camera is grid. It helps a lot when it comes to building your composition and keeping your camera straight when you apply some movement, we almost never use digital zoom because it ruins the quality. Only in cases then the object is far. But it's necessary to film it right now and you can't approach it. But new smartphones have telephoto lenses and you should use them by all means because the quality doesn't really suffer. And sometimes you can use a telephoto lens as a tool for building your composition. Another helpful setting on your camera is exposure adjustment. That's a very useful tool when you need to reduce the light of the scene or achieve a creative effect, all you need to do is press on your screen while using the camera and drag the exposure adjustment to your taste. Then to prevent auto exposure, you can press that little square for two seconds and it will lock your autofocus and exposure for you. Let's recap. Set your camera to tell ATP and 30 frames per second. Switch on the grid. Try to avoid digital zoom and practice using different lenses on your smartphone if it has them, experiment with Exposure Slider and autofocus and exposure luck. All this information you'll find in our guidebook. Let's now talk about lighting 5. Lighting & Timing: Hey, there. In the next two videos, we'll be talking about lighting and composition composition as the main pillars of your storytelling. Light plays a huge role in the video. It changes the color, therefore, it changes the mood, it changes the contrast. Therefore, it changes the composition. We shoot our videos is mostly outside. That's why the timing is crucial. It was noticed a long time ago that the most appealing colors one can observe during a sunset and sunrise, that time was almost immediately named golden light. Not just because of the major color, but also because of its unique characteristics. We always try to strategically utilize the golden hour by filming at a certain time. Look at these two examples. One of them was filmed during an afternoon light and then the same place during the sunset light. Staggering difference. The sun during the dark and light. Anything with this unexpected, beautiful orange lie. That's what we're looking for. Even the surfaces that don't seem to reflect any kind of light during the other times of the day now can shine in beautiful orange. You should pay attention to those little details and it will help you to draw and lead your viewers attention. Another unique time we tried to take advantage of is called Blue hour. The blue hour is the time right before the sunrise and right after the sunset. The sky isn't fully dark yet, and it acquires this deep nautical color, which so magnificently contrasts with the artificial lighting in the city. Keeping that in mind, try to find the contrast between the blue sky and yellow lights. Okay, we covered the most interesting times for shooting your videos. But what about other times? What about the blasting afternoon sun or an overcast, really gray and moody day? There is nothing wrong with those lightning conditions at all. You just have to be a little bit more curious and creative. You see your lighting should serve the story you're trying to tell and convey the mood you want your audience to feel. For example, if you go out and shoot and a gloomy day, it'll be hard to convince your audience to feel happy about your video. You can try, but it will be hard. Same applies for the bright sunny day. It'll be hard to make your audience feel sad when the sun is really high up and the lighting conditions aren't as flattering, will try to find some leading lines in our composition, which we're going to talk about in the next video. And wait for our subject to appear to make it even more interesting. When it comes to filming on a gray day, we usually like to emphasize the moodiness of the shot and use the exposure fader to make it even darker. Try to pick different lighting conditions and play with them with your camera. Tried to notice these things more. How the light reflects from the surfaces, how the light affects the color. Therefore, the mood of the shot. Too much slide during the afternoon is a powerful time to explore some unusual composition. And when it's an overcast, try to utilize the moody vibe of the video, it would be really interesting to find a certain spot and the street and keeping a same composition, try to film it during the different times of the day and see how light affects it. That was it about lighting. In the next lesson, we'll talk about the most powerful tool for your storytelling. Composition. 6. Exploring Composition: Now that you've learned something about lighting, Let's talk about composition. What is composition? Well, simply put, composition is the art of arranging objects in the frame. And it relates not only to video, but also to visual art and architecture. Unfortunately, composition is such an enormous thing to teach that will hardly be able to cover a little part of it in this class. However, as in any form of art, there's always craft. In craft, there are always tools and tricks and little tips and rules that we can teach you. It turns out that photography and cinematography borrow the most appealing types of composition from architecture and visual arts. It makes finding and beautiful composition a little bit easier for us. We can just borrow it from the masterpiece of visual arts composition in cinematography and videography starts with the types of shots. The first one is wide shot. The wide shot is used to show your audience a main scene where the event is happening. The second type is medium shot. This is where the focus goes from the scene to the subject. And then the last one is a close shot. As the name suggests, you come a little closer to your subjects. You try to research their emotions. There are micro movements of their face. When you know all the types of shots, you may unconsciously start to pay attention in the movies, what kind of shots the director used. Now let's talk about some rules that we tend to use more often than the others to build our composition. The first rule that comes to my mind is probably the rule of thirds. It's being used everywhere in films, in advertisement, and even in visual art. This is actually where it comes from. To use that rule, we divide our screen in the thirds, vertically and horizontally. It will make nine equivalent rectangles. Now that we've done that and we start filming, we tried to put our subject on one of those axes of thirds or their intersection. The second type of composition that we seem to use more often than others is one-point perspective. One-point perspective is a type of composition. When the objects appear to get smaller, the further away they get from the viewer. The reality is that we live in the city were roles of buildings and the converging lines of streets and sidewalks. The whole screen one-point perspective. Here are the few examples of it from our videos. One-point perspective. We'll always look better with a vanishing point, which represents a little dot on the visible horizon line. And when all of the lines of your composition they kinda lead to that little dot. It can be curved lines of trees and rivers and mountains. In our case, it's streets and buildings. This type of the composition is a great storytelling instrument. Will have to stop on New York City streets and look west or east depending on where the sun is at the current time and when the sun shines in the end of this tunnel of the buildings, this is what gives you the feeling of a curious story. A two-point perspective is another type of composition that we use, but not as often as one-point perspective as the name suggests, the two-point perspective has two points on the horizon and the subjects get bigger the closer they are to you. Let's talk about contrast. We try to use contrast when the light is really harsh and there was always shadows are buildings that create those shadows will try to utilize those border lines between well-lit and a dark spots to lead our viewers attention, all you have to do is find that composition set up your camera and just patiently wait for your subject to appear and to make your composition even more captivating. Speaking of subjects, even the best compose shots with beautiful buildings and leading lines. And the contrast will look even better with people moving freely between them. The fact is that people in the frame with only the existence can tell a better story than just the building. Even if you're shooting a masterpiece, uniquely lit, people will always improve your composition. We often find ourselves looking around, waiting for people to come and bring some life to otherwise lifeless shard. So those were the rules of beautiful composition. Let's talk about tips and tricks. The first one, look for a better angle. There is always a better angle and room for experiments change the height of the camera, turned it upside down. Unusual angles draw our attention, be observant, look for leading lines and contrast. Those are always good for your composition reflections. Sometimes they give you an alternate universe, the film. Look for them and try to utilize them. And lastly, frame your subjects. Look for leading lines, trees, buildings that put the focus on your subject more. Those simple rules are meant to guide you, not to limit you or prohibit in any way. There are many examples where should obey the rules and as many where you should really break them, experiment and practice. And it will dramatically improve your vision and your craft, which really helped us to develop our vision, is watching more films, going to exhibitions and museums will try to pay attention to those little rules of composition and putting ourselves in the shoes of the creator. Try to use all the tools we described in this class and decide what would work better for your story. Don't forget about the mood you're trying to make your audience to fill and please post your exercises and the project gallery so you can get a feedback from us. This was a lesson about composition. In the next two videos, we'll talk about camera movements. See you there. 7. Movement: Static, Pan, Tilt & Zoom: Hi again. We're embarking on the main core of this class. In this video, we're going to talk about camera movements, which we use to make our videos more captivating. Well, we will share our tips and tricks for each of them, for you to get a better result. For all lessons on camera movements, where you're gonna go to the streets of our favorite city in the world, New York City. Camera movements is one of our main tools to make our stories more interesting and standout and our social media pages in New York City, before you start moving your camera, you have to make sure that your lighting and composition are intact. You should plan your camera movement first. You're going to have to figure out what composition do you want to start with? What kind of composition your camera is going to land on. That being said, our first camera movement isn't really movement at all. It's a static camera shooting whatever happens in the frame. Ideally, it should be an immaculate light and composition and some movement of your subject in the frame. It's always a nice idea to have a tripod for aesthetic camera shot. But if you don't have one, you should press your elbows against your body and hold your hands as still as possible. So this is how we set up our static shots. We have our beautiful composition here with the leading line and subject sitting on the third of our frame. As well as the Empire State Building being on the third of our frame. And now we're waiting for another moving subject to make our composition even more beautiful. I'm holding my elbow on my lap to make it even more stable. And here we go. The ship appears and makes our aesthetic crane a little bit more interesting. Our favorite director who employs the most mesmerizing static shots in his films is Andrei Tarkovsky. He would spend hours on establishing a perfect composition, would have some subtle movements in the frame to show the existence of time, you should definitely draw some inspiration from Tarkovsky is films are next camera movement is pen. The pen is a horizontal camera rotation from side-to-side while you stay at 1. This is probably the most popular camera movement on Instagram. But some people go all over back-and-forth with their cameras. What we do is strategically plan our composition from the beginning to the end and what will be in-between. We use the pan when the scene is too wide to fit all the subjects in the frame without moving your camera. Though this is the perfect example of the wide sin. I found my start and end composition. I slowly start moving my camera from one side to another, making sure it's smooth and stadium. The second reason why we would use the camera pan is to track our subject from one part of our friends in our. Wes Anderson is a master of the pen. He uses it to reveal the environment of his sin and does it in his clinic manner and refund. If he's still haven't, you should definitely see his films. Are next camera movement. This tilde tilde is a vertical camera rotation upward or downward. We usually use it to show the size of the object. Most of the time, it's a tall building like this one or abridge. We also use it as an effect of ascending or London back from this guy. Try playing with contrast. And so the empty sky until down to the crowded street. Mind-blowing tilde shots we found in interstellar, a film by Christopher Nolan. Of course, you should watch it, not just for this particular movement, but also as a great piece of cinematography in Zoom. As I mentioned in the camera settings lesson, we prefer to not use digital zoom. However, having a smartphone with three lenses, you should absolutely take advantage of using all of them. For example, a wide lens gives you an interesting composition, most of the times very unusual. Another interesting effect that wide-angle lens gives you is those beautiful flares when you should directly against the Sun. On the other side is a telephoto lens. We use that to form a very long shot when all the subjects in the frame seem to appear on the same plan. Two things you need to know about those both lenses. Wide angle is usually good for well-lit conditions. If it's not enough light, the video gets a little bit noisy. For a telephoto lens, you have to hold the camera really still are. Otherwise it gets really shaking as far as zoom in and zoom out as camera movements, we prefer to use Zoom out when we have a subject, and then we zoom out to show the surroundings and the environment around our subject. This is how we can pose for our zoom shots. Right now behind me, there's Wall Street and Trinity Church right in the end of it, looking absolutely stunning with the highlights from a sunset light. We have our standard camera on iPhone right now, which makes our composition kinda interesting. But we're going to zoom in and try to change it towards more beautiful shot. So this is not so interesting composition. And now we zoom in on a telephoto lens. And suddenly it looks fantastic and interesting. And all we have to do is hold our cameras still and wait till people appear more in the shot and our subject becomes more beautiful. We got really inspired by Quentin Tarantino's rapid zoom shots and his film django Unchained. Great examples of slow zoom movements you can find in Stanley Kubrick, The Shining. Make sure to watch great films by great directors and try to analyze why certain camera movements were used and what kind of effect the director wanted to achieve by employing those camera movements. In the next video, we'll continue to study our favorite camera movements. See you there. 8. Movement: Push, Pull, Track & Truck: Welcome to part two of camera movements. In this video, we'll continue sharing some useful tips that you can apply to your smartphone videos and make them more interesting. Our next camera movement is push. The push is moving your camera for word while keeping it straight and steady. This is one of our favorite moves. It works well with walls and objects around you. When you push your camera for this scene, they disappear from the frame. We like to move our camera through the streets, hallways, crowds, and trees in the park remain secret. Here is the catwalk. This is how it's done. You should step from heel to toe with your knees slightly bent. Hold your camera with two hands to vote shakiness and slowly start moving. The grid will help you hold your composition intact. Now the pool is the opposite movement used for the same purpose to lead the attention through the objects. With the difference. You show your audience on the part of the scene, and the rest of it will be revealed during your movement. For example, this SkyBridge. It exists out of the frame. And when I start moving back, it appears and makes the video more compelling. Make sure you know your way back or you have someone to spot you to prevent any accidents. Some of the first examples of the push and pull camera movements you can find in tracking shots in The Shining by Stanley Kubrick. Highly recommend watching this movie and get inspired by it. Moving your camera from side to side without panning. It is called trucking. We just trucking and our Instagram a lot. And this was probably one of the main features that distinguish us from a lot of NYC bloggers will love trucking for its storytelling effect that it gives to our videos. Trucking looks absolutely astounding when you cross one of those endless New York City streets and start filming cars and people crossing it at the same time. It gives you this little 3D effect, which is so interesting. So this is one of those streets and I start walking crossing the street and filming the people crossing it simultaneously. I found that my composition and using my walk, I'm filming those people and cars. And this is where we land our composition. Our favorite trucking shot was introduced in Rama film by Alfonso Koran. Will love it probably because it matches the environment of our city. And this is the shot we always keep in mind while performing our tracking shots. What does arc or parallax is irritation of your camera around this object. In our case, there are always some installations and sculptures and message that we should use in parallax. It shows all the details and aspects of this objects in the 3D perspective. For example, this hippo by the Grand Central is really cute. The fact that it's located by this historical and architectural landmark defines our parallax rotation. I really use the wide angle camera because it's really huge and doesn't see it in my standard camera. So I'll begin from the face of the hippo and rotate my camera to this side, where we can see both the sculpture and the Grand Central. One of the most iconic arc shots that almost became a meme is a shot from the matrix by Lana and Lilly Virchow scheme. This completes slow more through 60 arc, has everything flying bullets bent in a very uncomfortable pause, Keanu Reeves, his emotions and his epic plan cloak. And other camera movement that we really wanted to mention is tracking. Tracking isn't really camera movement. It's any camera movement following your subject. And when performed, ride tracking is just pure magic. When it follow a person or an object with your camera, the power of focus and curiosity about what happens next is enormous. And again, it's really important to have other objects in the frame to make this kind of 3D effect and make your shot even more beautiful. So far are tracking shots, since we don't have a third person to fill them out as both simultaneously. I'm going to have to do impossible and shoot on both cameras, on smartphone and a big camera, which shows the street because it's absolutely beautiful light right now, leading lines, long shadows and fantastic model Nana. So here we go. We're turning on both cameras and action. Trying to walk slowly with our catwalk, holding our cameras still. Having that mesmerizing tracking shot and cut. This camera movement is called three-sixths, a role, and it's performed by rotating your camera around its horizontal axis. It became available to the consumers with the appearance of camera gimbal is on the market. But today, we're going to teach you how to perform it without one. This is how it's done. First of all, you should press your record, but before you start moving, otherwise, it will be pretty hard to do it after. Then you take your phone with one hand and grab your risks with another one. You should rotate your wrist in the opposite direction of the movement and then start slowly moving your camera in the 360 roll movement. Here we go. I locked my exposure, dragging a little down to make it look more contrasty. And I press my record button, grab my wrist, turn my phone upside down, and then slowly start moving it in a counterclockwise direction. When an internal like this is pretty cool to combine 360 role and a camera push to make your video even more mind-blowing. Look how it's done. I perform my 360 role and the catwalk camera Porsche. Together. There you go. All the movements that we just started, you're going to find in our guidebook to master all the movements that we just learned, you should really practice. Don't hesitate to move your camera and move with your camera, like no one does move slowly. Most of those camera movements don't require you to be nimble, rather smooth, and calm. And finally, practice your catwalk. In the next lesson, we'll talk about improvisation and how to film in an uncontrolled situation. 9. Improvising: Hi there. In this video we'll talk about improvisation. Improvisation is about being childish and try and everything out and hoping for the best of luck. We like to improvise by combining some camera movements. Here's an example of combining a camera pool and attract one. Another example, There's a hole in the fence off the Manhattan Bridge in New York. People tend to put their cameras out of this hole towards downtown Manhattan. We decided to combine day and night in a single free six-year-old for an upside down effect from the Stranger Things and for the bad effect. We put there soundtrack on the background music. In this example, we had a spectacular sunset behind the Brooklyn Bridge, but it wasn't enough just to film that sunset, the pupil on the loan versus sitting like they were intentionally placed there by a director, like they would sit on a future stage. I noticed that guy approach in this scene and started filming semiotic semi push movement. Those sudden people started drifting into this side and that guy edit even more interests to the video. The cherry on top is the One World Trade Center Building that appears from behind the tree branch. I love everything about this visual improvisation isn't the only thing that those videos have in common. There was some skill to begin with that made those possible. Hone your craft and don't forget to experiment. Here's one more example. I tried to film this income cap from different angles with different camera movements with an move-out people, and it didn't work. Then at a certain moment, I realized that a semiotic movement could be the best moment here. And then I noticed a dead with his little son approaching this installation. And this is where I start filming. The boy approaches and touches a car, showcasing the scale of it. And boom, 10 million views on Instagram and 1 million on TikTok have as many tags as you need to perfect your video. Different camera movements and compositions, and play with the exposure slider. This is where watching tons of videos on social media can be helpful. Don't get frustrated if you can't repeat them exactly how they were shot with time, you will develop your own vision and craft. This was the video about improvisation. In the next lesson, max will teach you how to create a shot list or your video story. 10. Creating a Shot List & Filming: Hi filmmakers, we covered the most useful tools in our arsenal, and now we're ready to go out and film our story. Let's plan what we need to film greatest shortlist and go out and film everything. We prepared a template of a shortlist for you in the projects and resources section of this class. So feel free to download it and change it to your needs. Let's take a look at our shot list. We plan everything, the type of the shot, the type of the composition and camera movement. For our video, we wrote a whole script with a voiceover, and we'll be building our video according to the script. Now it's a good time to remember our planning and structure lesson. We have a very pronounced three-act structure there and a hook line. Let's take a closer look at our script. Let me get my laptop. So our script sounds like this. How come that in the city that never sleeps? It's so easy to feel alone for the crowds of tourists that flood our busiest city and enjoy It's fun attractions. One little fact remains unnoticed. New York is a city of loners. Some of us get pets, some party every weekend. But it doesn't fill the void in our hearts. But don't feel sad for New Yorkers. We have the best freaking bagels in the world. Let's go. Passage by passage are setup contains a whole client. How come that in the city that never sleeps, It's so easy to feel alone. This raises some surprise and curiosity in our audience. We need about two wide shots of the city, ideally, time lapses, because time lapses show that the city is very busy and really never sleeps. And ideally it would be a night time shots. The second passage, this is where our confrontation act comes in. For the crowds are tourists that flood our business city and enjoys fun attractions. One little fact remains unnoticed. I think we need about two or three wide shots of the most crowded tourist spots in the city. This is how our audience gets connected with this common idea that New York is a very busy city. Passage number three, this is where our confrontation stage still going on. New York is a city of loners. I think this is deepens the curiosity of our audience. Why do they feel alone? And we have a medium shot of a person sitting on the bench with a building or a bridge nearby. The confrontation stage is still going on. Some of us get pets, some party every weekend, but it doesn't fill the void in our hearts. This is probably where audience might feel a little bit more connected because everyone loves pets and everyone loves to party. We have one wide or medium shot of a person with a dog and wide or a medium shot of people in the bar or nightclub having fun. The last part is resolution, but don't feel sad for New Yorkers, we have the best freaking bagels and the world. It's a surprise, It's a little shock. And because it was the whole time, it was a really sad story about loneliness and the CD. And now we have this big surprise. We decided to go with the same person that was sitting on the bench and now the camera is pushing towards them to the close-up and now they turn around and buy the big chunk of a bagel. When we were writing the script, we kept in mind that we had tons of footage that we might have some shots for this particular video. That being said, we only have to shoot this last scene with our protagonist and his beautiful bagel. There is another video for which we made a script and a shortlist. It is about complicated relationship with New York. And it has a voice-over. Here it goes. What Is New York City for me, it's crowded, but it's fun. It's weird, but it's also inspiring. It's dirty. But there is more beauty than dirt in it. It's many things, but most importantly, it's home. Did you notice a three-act structure here? The setup is what is New York City for me? It is also a hook that racist curiosity, a very pronounced confrontation act is opposing statements like it's crowded, but it's fun. These are very emotional words make people react to your story better. The resolution act is, it's many things, but most importantly, it's home. This story gained a lot of use because it has this structure and emotional swings and we found the best footage for it. Please find the shortlist for it in the resources folder of this class. Also, Leanna, we'll be talking about it in the next lesson about editing. You can and should create your own shortlist scripts and outlines with your own unique strategy of planning your videos with the abundance of content on all social media platforms. Videos with interesting stories really stand out. Read some books about storytelling. We highly recommend Save the Cat. But Blake Snyder and the Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. This video was about creating a shot list. And the next one, we'll talk about editing and music. 11. Editing & Music: Hopefully you filled all the footage, you need it even more. Now let's edit it all in a storytelling manner. Editing is a powerful tool. Great directors develop relationships with camera people and editors for years and chairs them. The best directors do editing together. The editors, this way, they make sure all ideas are translated. Good editing can glue a barn footage into a good story. A bad editing can kill the best foods rich in the world. That's how important editing is. I'm not trying to put any pressure on you. Just keep in mind that editing is a great opportunity to make your story even better edits and for social media is quite different from editing for cinema. Over some principles are applicable. First, keep in mind the attention span. It's quite short for social media, first shot should be the most impressive, most beautiful, most interested in moles, moles, moles. Second, the pace of cards is fast but not super fast. And also, if the story requires some deeper connection with its message, you might want to slow down your pace. But in general, social media appreciate faster stories and faster editing. Third, combined camera movements with similar motion. For example, if the first shot has a left to right pan movement, try to have a band in the same direction in your next cut. Or a tracking shot from left to right, or a static shot where the subject moves from left to right. You get the point. You can break this rule of course, but it's better to learn how to use it first to require a sense of motion in your video for play with this space, combining white, medium and close-up shots, there is a rule of thumb to start with. We have wide shot to introduce the place where your story is happening, but it's not obligatory. Fifth, if you have music, try to logically put your cuts to the rhythm of that music. Not necessarily to every bid, but just in the way that the music leads your story, there is so much more about editing that would require a separate skill share class. Let's keep in mind just those principles for now and start editing our loneliness slash bagels story. We have a voice over and the music prepared, so it'll be easier to put these shots together in the storyline. Let's download and open a free app called cap cut. And the open all of our footage there, three reasons why we use cap cut. Its powerful, super intuitive, and it's free. If your footage is scattered all over your library, you can favorite the videos you need. And in cap cut, you can open that favorite folder and get all the footage from there. You can also record your voice right here in the app and do it to your footage, or vice-versa, makes sure to reduce or remove sounds from your videos dependent on your goals. Our first two frames are wide-angle time-lapse shots of New York. Let's put them the phrase, how come that in the city that never sleeps. It's so easy to feel alone. How come in the city that never sleeps? It's so easy to feel alone, by the way, when there is a voice-over in our videos with type it individual. So people who watched them with no sound or people who can't hear it, can get an idea of what the story's about. We'll add the texts later when we're done with keratin the footage, our first shot is the white panoramic view of New York City skyline. It gives us a clue where the story is happening. The second time lapse gives a little closer perspective of a busy city. The cars and the lights of the bridge. Now, we decided to give our audience some time to digest this question. We put a pause with the additional shot of me on a swing. And this is where the music comes in two alone. It amplifies this bus unless we move sink in. Now we have several shots of the tourist in the visit places. We put those on the words for the crowds of tourists that slot are busy city and enjoy it. It's fun attractions. One little fact remains unnoticed, just like this. For the crowds of tourists that flat or business city and enjoyed spawn attractions. One little fact remains and noticed. The first shot by the raging bull sculpture. The camera movement here goes in the opposite direction from the screenshot. It seems like it changes the course of the story, but that's a subtlety. The rest of the movements under this line are random. The connection between the shots happens through the subject, a crowd of people. Now we have this super set phrase, New York is a city of loners on the words New York, we decided to use the iconic Empire State Building. Here we could have something else, like a skyline. But we chose that push movement towards rebuilding. That leads to the next line. And a shot of a lonely person on a bench. New York is a city of loners. We feel that specifically for this video, the idea was that we introduce this loner in the middle of the video, and then the same loner bites a bagel in the last scene. To details here, it was very important to show a building or a bridge to emphasize this scale. A small, lonely human in a big city. Now the part with pads and parties. We had a shot of a cute dog and hairstylists owner, the subway. Let's use it. I like this part where the duct turns her head. Let's use this moment. It adds some interests in the shot. We also had a shot from our visit to the main net venue of New York City, Brooklyn mirage. Let's put that on the line. Some party every weekend. Some of us get past some party every weekend. We also had this wide angle shot of a large dance floor, but we decided to have a narrower perspective to put our viewer in this atmosphere of a staff and nightclub, the line, but it doesn't fill the void in our hearts. We struggle to decide what's gonna be here. And we remember that famous hall in the Manhattan Bridge fans with this push camera movements through it. And it worked. We can, but it doesn't fill the void and our hearts. This wide shot of New York City skyline feels like a void, especially pushing through that hole in the fence. It could have been just a fade to black video, but this is where we could lose a lot of people. We don't want that. There is still a bagel part. Now the final two lines, but don't feel sad for New Yorkers. We just filmed this man near the Greensboro breach. This is also a push movement, which works great with this previous push shot. And our last shot is the same person that was sitting on the bench on the line. City of loners or push camera movement continues and he turns around and bites his bagel. Now let's add some texts that repeats the voice over. We cheated here because Max makes music and Herodes some easy piano lines to the script. It could have been some calm, ethereal music that doesn't have much of a refund. The pace in this video is directed by a voice-over and we cut our shots according to it. How come that in the city that never sleeps, It's so easy to feel alone for the crowds of tourists that flat or busy city and enjoys fun attractions. One little fact remains unnoticed. New York is a city of loners. Some of us get pets, some party every weekend, but it doesn't fill the void and our hearts. But don't feel sad for New Yorkers. We have the best bagels in the world. A little thing to note is that music builds up to this last moment of resolution. This is a good trick that creates a suspense and the racist, the expectation music is such a great storytelling instrument, never neglect its role in the video. It can set a proper mood and help the story to make our audience feel some emotions. Just the music carefully and try to ask yourself, what is video makes you feel? And if it matches the mood of the music you want to add to your story. If there's a little doubt that piece of music, and try an hour one, there is perfect music for each story out there. Thanks to best music libraries on social media, you have a chance to select the best for your story. Now let's check on our video. What is New York City for me, it's crowded, but it's fun. It's weird, but it's also inspiring. It's dirty. But there is more beauty than dirt in it. It's many things. But most importantly, it was edited to a voice-over, but with more rhythmical music on the background. Same process of editing. We're taking a voice-over track and match or film the videos for it. Again, the first shot is somewhat wide. It introduces the place of the event. Movement is the tracking through the cars and yellow caps. It gives the audience a feeling of experience. In this video, we used a less known editing trick for social media, it's really helpful to hold the attention of the story. There is no scientific name for it, but we call it contraction and expansion. We jumped card from a medium to a wide shot and then back to medium, and then back to white. Again. For our brain, it feels like some novelty over time, but don't overuse it. When it's too repetitive, the brain gets tired quickly and dismisses the rest of the video. If you decide to use this trick, makes sure of two things. The video is short under 15 seconds, and the shots are well composed. In this particular video, there are no shots that are longer than two seconds. One more thing, there's a really rapid part in this video that says it's many things, but most importantly, we use all the shots that represent New York City for us. What kind of things we see on a daily basis. The last thing I want to mention about this video is that we wanted last shot to be as warm and pleasant as possible for obvious reasons. Here's some tricks and editing that we'd like to use. First, when we edit a longer story with multiple shots, we make sure each card doesn't exceed three seconds. Although we really like to enjoy a long cuts in cinema, the reality of social media dictates faster cuts. Second, change the composition of cuts from y to medium to close up introducing a new place, we always start with a wide shot. It's hard to explain, but the storage should feel right and smooth. This comes with practice and tons of good films and social media videos. If something in your video doesn't feel right, try to change your shots, swap them, choose a different piece of footage until it feels right. We put a bunch of our footage from New York City in the Project and Resources folder, tried to edit it in a historian at some music or a voice-over. If you feel like it, get as creative as possible and make sure to post it on Instagram and tag and waste your life, will give you a feedback and maybe posted on our stories. This was the lesson about editing. Will continue this class with Boston and captioning in the next video. 12. Posting: Captioning and Hashtags: Now that we edited our video in a cohesive story and we're ready to post it. What's gonna be this cherry on top that will make our video to stand out a little more. Let's talk about captioning a hashtags. You can probably completely disregard the captions and hashtags. Why do you want to lose this opportunity for our story to be discovered by more people? That's what the hashtags and captions are, mainly four, then let the search engine of a social media app know what your story is about and what kind of audience would be interested in your story. Plus an interesting caption can encourage people to engage with your post more like it or dislike it, leave a comment, or even share it with their friends. The more engagement your post gets, the more people the algorithm will show is story too, but you probably already know it. Here's the fun example. We had a beautiful TikTok about rain and then it came up with a caption. Only pluvial files will understand. People went nuts in the comments. Some of them were triggered by how similarly pluvial file sounded to another infamous word. Others were bringing the definition of the word from Wikipedia and people who just loved drain enjoy their new name. Engaging captions can connect you with your audience. Let's caption our video about bagels. We usually brainstorm some ideas with Linda to come up with the best one are stories about loneliness in New York with a surprise bagel at the end. Sometimes it's a good strategy to let your audience know what your video is about right away. But in this case, let's be a little bit more mysterious. Let's say what New Yorkers don't tell you about New York is idea number one. It has the keyword new York for our search engine. It also makes people curious about the secret ID number two, what tourists don't notice in New York. Same reasons we have the keyword new York and some curiosity about our caption. Let's say the idea number three is the dark, the dark secret about New York. I think I'll go with the first idea because it's really simple and not as click Beatty as the others. Although you might think differently depending on your experience with Craig Bates done. Now with that, we selected our caption. Let's take a smartphone and start working on uploading the video. Let me type what New Yorkers don't tell you about New York. There you go. Now let's get to a hashtags. There are multiple strategies with hashtags. First there's three big and several small, meaning the number of boats under those hashtags small being under 100 thousand posts under the hashtag, and everything higher is a big hashtag. Then the strategy of all small when you're just starting out and all big when you are an established influencer logistic to what social media platforms tell you about their hashtags. They say from three to ten hashtags and all of them about the stuff that's in your video, not some abstract hashtags that can draw random people to your story and make them scroll away from it. So we are in New York City and the video is about New York City. It would be fair to use New York City hashtag and New Yorkers hashtag. So let's pose those right here. Under our caption. Ideally, you would put a little gap between the hashtags and your caption to make it look a little bit more digestible. There's some debates about hashtags in the caption box or in the comments. But Instagram said it should be in the caption box. So we're typing in New York City and New Yorkers hashtag. We've been using our own hashtag, New York City lives, and it's gotten pretty popular. So let's put that one in there as well. Now, we have a bagel and our video. And the bagel is a pretty big hashtag. But if we search, in our hashtag search, we realized that we only have food bolus here. And it's not really our topic and not really our target audience. Now, let's narrow it down to NYC bagels, which is smaller and more precise. By the way, it's always a good idea to check your hashtags. Instagram search, New York City streets is one of our favorites. Let's put that into. Now let's put the hashtag, solitude and loneliness, since the big chunk of our video is reflections on those feelings. Let's make sure everything looks good. Select a cover image that will be reflected in our profile grid too. Now let's add the location and click share our videos posted as we want to narrow down our potential audience. It's a good idea to be more precise with hashtags. Try to brainstorm the ideas of captions with someone, or just throw some ideas on the paper by yourself and select the best one. If you see posts with an interesting caption, write it down for your future inspiration. Try to select more visually interesting covers of thumbnails for your videos so the people will more likely click on it. Don't use questions in your captions unless you're curious about some kind of idea or concept once your followers to help you with the answer. But now questions just to engage your audience sound in authentic and will likely cause an opposite effect. Don't be afraid to use small hashtags when you're just starting out. It's a better way to get some more audience for your posts because the big hashtags are fast rotating once and your posts will likely be buried under the thousands of both by big influencers. Congratulations. Now your video is posted. Don't forget to respond to the comments. 13. Conclusion: Congratulations, you made it through our class. And the Coke for the created an awesome video story and posted online for all aspects of filmmaking. People study and practice for years. But in social media world, all of it often falls down on the shoulders of one person. And if there was the only thing to learn about making awesome video stores, it wouldn't be curiosity and practice. Well, two things. Watch the best films and see how they were made on YouTube. There are many classes on Skillshare, from screenwriting to filming and editing, maybe brilliant teachers. So make sure to check those as well as for practice, go out and try everything. Make your camera, your friend, read down the best ideas because they tend to slip out of our memory. And most importantly, have fun. Don't forget to leave us a review if you like our class, and follow us to stay tuned. Thanks. So taking our class, see you next time.