Transcripts
1. Intro to iPhone Video: welcome to our course on shooting high quality video for your business with on iPhone. My name is Joey, and I'm a documentary filmmaker and cinematographer, also running online fitness company. We produce a lot of videos each week. So one of the business owners I always get asked, How can I improve the quality of my video without spending a lot of money on expensive gear ? So there are a lot of techniques that we're gonna go over in this course on how to use basic filmmaking equipment, a little bit of ingenuity with some lighting on some sound tools and how to get higher quality video out of basic tools that you most likely already have. In this course, we're going to shoot on interview either of someone else or of yourself explaining something about your business, about a tutorial or a customer testimonial. Then we're also going to shoot B roll or additional straw hats, or seems to highlight in illustrator video once we edit it. So if you're ready to up your game and start shooting high quality video with your phone, let's get going
2. Planning Your Video: So before we start filming anything we want to figure out what exactly does we're filming? And we want Plan out both the point of what we want to do with this video and the logistics of the shoot. So talk. So looking at a higher level of what it is we want to film kind one if you're out what message we want people to leave away with and what we want this video to convey. So this video could be something originating from yourself that you are going to be speaking on camera. You being like the business owner or representative or person representing the brand or your brand basically, is you talking about something that's either a tutorial. You're being helpful for people. You are sharing something about your company, how you solve the problem for something, or how what you do self problem better than other options out there, basically something that you want to leave the viewer with, um, and this messages originating from you and you are gonna be the person speaking on camera and your audio is going to be the spine and the foundation of the video. The alternative to that is that someone also speaking and that someone else could be a customer that you interview or another employee, Your person at your company talking about some aspect, maybe, Why your company so great to work out why they love working there. Some of the other aspect of that, Uh, but you are interviewing that, and so that would be option to and that you are talking to that person and you were interviewing that person s. So if you are doing going that route, that would be so. If you need to find out who that person is on, that comes down to planning and figuring out what it is, you need people wise for the shoot. So we need to figure out what resource is you need to film. It's that comes down to people as we were just saying, uh, people being people on camera, if that's you or someone else that you were going to be interviewing or talking to If you need anything else to help film, sometimes it suits will have another set of hands around, move stuff, help keep things going a little quicker on also another set of eyes, both creatively and logistically. on just to kind of bounce stuff off and keep an eye on things, and they need to coordinate with everyone to make sure everyone knows where they need to be . So that means you need to take time to when you're going to shoot and location, which we'll talk about next on. But they're just basic logistic stuff were like, You want everyone to be on the same page and you want everything to run smoothly. And that starts with everyone knowing what's up on even kind of writing out a summary of like, Hey, what's gonna happen? What we're gonna dio, especially if it's a customer or someone who's not internal in your company or yourself where everything is in your head. Letting people know what's up helps everyone be on the same page and helps things run a lot more smoothly. So locations you need to figure out where you are going to film that, so it's gonna be in your office, your house, a park outdoors, customers off place, business customers, House location really does tie into the story, so this kind of goes back to what we're talking about in the beginning of like, what is it that you want to your video to convey? And so it is talking about a customer success story. It might make sense to shoot it wherever your customer is. If it is about your business and your business, it's something that is the actual location of business is integral to the business itself. Say it's a gym. Shooting it at the gym would make a lot of sense if most of what you do is online or with computers than maybe the location is a little bit more flexible, and you're kind of trying to find something that is a little bit just more visually pleasing. Uh, like a cafe or coworking space or something else like that is far speaking locations. It's just a combination of like what speaks well to the story. What is makes the most sense what's the most accessible. And also what do you have the most control over with environment as far as lighting and sound and other more technical aspects of the production and as far as other resources, supplies and gear on top gear in a future video as faras production gear camera stuff. But then it also comes down to supplies or like props that you might need for the video. So if you are sell a product or something, you probably want the product on hand. So that would be something. Do you want to make sure that you bring? It's some of the stuff. Sounds like very obvious. But if you don't plan this stuff out, if you don't write it down, there's so many variables and so many things going on in a video shoot, that very obvious stuff. It's very easy to overlook the very obvious stuff. So just kind of brainstorm right out stuff that you would need to bring. Um, and usually there's that military saying one is not into is one eso. Backups of stuff is also helpful.
3. Framing for Social Media: on the technical side of planning and figuring out stuff you when it kind of started the end of mind and figure out where is his video going to end up? Because if you have a clearer idea of what platforms you are going to share this on, that will help dictate how you will shoot this video stylistically. So what I mean is, if you are a shooting a regular HD video and a horizontal landscape mode like much everything you would see on TV, that's normally an issue quality image. The ratio of the length toe with is 16 by nine, so we just kind of call that 69. That's very that's like the most common format right now. If you're posting stuff on certain social media channels and just posting videos and generals like YouTube, Facebook is linked in Twitter. All those videos air going to be 16 by nine. All of them are going to be HD. The actual specific size of video varies from platform to platform, but if you have an HD video that is 1920 by 10 80 pixels, that is a 16 9 ratio that is regular HD video size you have a video that is that size, it's gonna be fine on those platforms Were things a little bit different is if you're going on instagram And if you're only going on instagram so instagram you can still post widescreen video, but it works in a better if you are posting square video because that's what it screams kind of built for square video. Be a 1 to 1 ratio their dimensions, I believe our 606 100 pixels. But if we have a video that is HD cropped, even those could be bigger than 600 by 600 Is the grand old crop it? The main thing we want to keep in mind is the size of the frame is going to be square instead of a rectangle, and that dictates how we film. Because if we're filming with the end of mine being, hey, we're gonna crop this into a square and we wanna start framing everything a little bit more center. Then we normally would if we were a shoot stuff for widescreen and we would have stuffs on frame, right frame left. We're not gonna do that as much if we know we're going out to instagram and another thing to keep in mind not just instagram post, but also instagram stories and stories. Vertical video. It is basically a completely rotated HD image. The dimensions on those are nine by 16. So 16 by nine as the wide rectangle flip that you get nine by 16. That is a vertical instagram story. So these are all things to keep in mind when you are filming. Knowing where you are going to post this video will help dictate how you're going to film.
4. Planning for Multiple Videos: planning to shoot for multiple videos. So this going back to what were first talking about figuring out what you want to achieve with your video? Uh, what? I like to keep what I like to do when I'm shooting, because a lot of resources go into the actual production side. So I like to maximize all of that time and all of the resource is ever coming together. Try get as many of the years as possible. So go with This course has come away with a 30 to 62nd video. But if we plan for, we could easily come away with multiple short videos that we can share on social media. So with one interview, we can think about what this person talk about. Andi, how can we cut that up into different videos that we can share on such media that we get out of this one? Shoot. So when you're going back to when you're thinking about like what you want to use this video, also think about what can we ask and talk about with this person or what can you, as a thief, the person representing your business, it doesn't just have to be one story or one thing that you're sharing. You can kind of make a list of multiple things and talk about it once. So basically, you just shoot everything at once because it takes a lot more resources for production, shoot everything, get it in the can, and then you'll have it later to edit. So it's another thing to keep in mind help maximize on your time and efficiency and make more videos.
5. Creating Questions and a Shot List: and lastly, with planning when you're interviewing someone else, you want to kind of come up with the questions that you want to ask them on some of topics you want. Ask them. Lucky for you, I have entire other course on skill share about creating interview questions and interviewing other people. So I'm not gonna get into that too much. But just some things to keep in mind. When you're creating questions and asking questions to a person during the interview, you want to eat the questions open ended. Basically, you want them to talk as much as possible because you went at it. Your voice out, usually especially social media, is a little bit quicker, so you really don't want to have to hear your question or type your question out. You want the person to be able to carry the entire weight and story of the video, so you want them to say everything. A closed under question would be something like, Were you excited when you first discovered our product and be like a yesterday answering the big Yes, and that's not very exciting. Opening a question. Be like Tell me what you felt when you first discovered our product, and then they could go into a story or something about when they first realized how amazing your product was. Another thing to also ask of the person eyes to answer in complete sentences. So I will ask people to do this before I start recording the interview before the camera starts rolling. Eso incorporate the question. The answer. The example I'll give is like If I ask you what is your name? Your response should be. My name is Joey, not Joey. Eso incorporating question into the answer at the context and again helps give the viewer context that we don't have to hear our voice, our voice being the interviewer. And lastly, if it is you that is talking to camera and you're not doing an interview, come up with the list of the key points that you want to hit. But don't memorize a script verbatim because that tends to come off robotic. And, uh, it's a little it might sound a little more focused than the rambling I'm going through right now, but memorize scripts. Sometimes it comes off. You just kind of sound like robot s. So I kind of remember those key points you want to hit. There's also digital Utkan. Do it over again a couple times and as we will see later on editing, there are great ways where you can mask all of the flubs and mess ups that you dio Aziz. You will probably notice a lot of edits in these tutorial videos, as I have covered up a lot of flubs and false takes that I have done so in the next video, we'll talk about setting up our iPhone with the best camera settings and some third party APS to help get even better video quality.
6. Best Settings for iPhone Video: all right, so let's talk about getting some of the best settings out of our iPhone for shooting high quality video. So by default, the iPhone X shoots 10 80 video, which is regular HD video, which is fine, but it is also capable of shooting four k video. And even though we might not be finishing our video by finishing, I mean exporting the final video in a four K video size. It would be better to shoot four K because by shooting an image that is four times the size of how we're actually going, Teoh export it. We have so much more latitude where we can reframe the shot. As you probably noticed in these tutorials, it will jump in and out, reframing the shot, so it basically looks like there's multiple cameras or multiple different types of lenses, like a wide angle lens and close up lens. But really, I'm just reading a wider shot. I'm cropping the video later, and you can't really tell the quality difference because I'm shooting in four K right now, but I'm exporting it into regular HD video, so I would do the same thing that I'm doing with this a DSLR them shooting this on with the iPhone so we can go into our settings and enable the iPhone to shoot four k video by default when we use the regular video app. So we go into settings and then we go down to camera. And if we go to record video by default, it's a 10 80 p a to 30 frames per second, so we just switch it to four K at 30 frames per second. Now our video will shoot four K by default. And if you look up here in the upper left corner and we see now, see that says four K 30 p and just couple quick pointers for having a better control over the image. When you're shooting on the iPhone, if you tap once on the phone, you will focus it. If you tap and hold, you will lock the focus and exposure, and if you slide your finger up and down, you will adjust the exposure so that could come in handy. We're doing things like trying to stay focused on something really close, and we need to lock in that focus now. If I tilt up, everything remained blurry and overexposed because I was just exposing for his table. So that's just a couple things. Keep in mind with exposure. That's not a thorough tutorial on how exposure and how do you expose for different settings . But this is the basic, and there's probably only thing you could dio while shooting with the iPhone with the default video app. Where you can do is get a much more professional video app, such as Filmic pro. So Filmic Pro is the go to high quality video filmmaking app available for the iPhone. This is what stuff like high Flying Bird that's on Netflix that was shot by Steven Soderbergh. They shot the entire thing on an iPhone. There's the app that used to shoot those types of movies on an iPhone. It gives extreme control over pretty much every single aspect of the image. Color, balance, focus, focus racking, exposure, control. You can overlay grid lines, so if you want film, but you wanna have, there's one by one line, so you kind of know where to frame video so you can crop later. This app could do that filmic. So we've got audio levels go in. We've got all of our settings over our frame rate, our film size, our frame rate, our frame sighs. What kind of guide You wanna have? The overlay. We can change to have different types of controls for exposure. For focus, we can have focused guides not gonna get into all the amazing things that film that can do . But if you're looking for the most control you could possibly have over your iPhones camera for shooting video, filmic is the way to go when you're recording. A good practice is to go into your shortcut menu, turn on airplane mode so that you disconnect from a cellular network, turn off WiFi eternal fire connections and then also turn on Do not disturb this way. You won't get notifications or anything happening or any phone calls while you are recording, because they both show sound and be annoying. And if you get a phone call wire recording, it will actually stop recording, so we don't want that to happen. So turn off notifications and all of your cellular connections. It's one more note about your phones, cameras, the four K and all the settings we went over that only applies to the rear facing camera camera back here. This is the better higher quality camera, the selfie camera, the front facing camera that can Onley shoot up to 7 20 piece. That's not even full HD. So if you are recording yourself, it's obvious a lot easier to use the Ford facing camera, because you can just set it up and look at yourself and you know that you have the shot. However, given mind that the quality will not be as high as if you are shooting it with the rear facing camera, so they are shooting yourself thistles. Another good reason to get some help and get someone else to help. Start recording and make sure that you are in frame so you can use the higher quality camera. So these are just some of the ways that we can have a little bit more control over the image that were shooting. When we're filming with an iPhone over the frame size will come into play later, when we're editing and over the exposure and focus, which is key to getting better quality video and not letting our elements dictate how our video looks. But having control ourselves over what we want to expose for and what we want to focus for our next, we're gonna go over actual tools that we can attach to the iPhone for getting better quality images and better quality sound.
7. Gear for iPhone Filmmaking: all right, so let's talk about tools and gear that we can get to help make a better quality video with our iPhone. So let's start off with some camera support, such as tripods, to help lock down a camera and make it rock solid and steady. So there's a couple of ways we can mount the phone to the tripod. Eso first off, time out tripods is just a basic still photo tripod. You can easily get this and adapt it for use on iPhone before getting to the adapter is another tripod That is excellent and very popular is the Jobi tripod is one is obviously much smaller. If you're gonna lock it down, you need to put it on A table or chair is not very hard to find stuff that you can stack up to get it. Uh, I hide if you are standing in recording stuff that is standing, but it's ready to because it's super flexible. You can wrap it around railings. You can wrap it around objects on it, a lock in place and state study. This specific model is bulkier than you would need for something with the weight of an iPhone this one can hold larger DSLR cameras. They sell much smaller versions that you can get that would be perfect for an iPhone. With all this gear, have a resource in the resource is area below that will have a bunch of links to different items available. Stuff unemployment here, then some other stuff that I either don't have or just didn't have with me. Teoh Demo. So now we have the tripods mounting the phone to the tripod. This is super inexpensive stoop reason way to mounted on your basic works with literally any phone. It's just a clamp with a bit of a rubber grip in the end, and you undressed clamp in amount. Phone. I believe it came on a hot shoe. Mounts. There was something that you could mount on top of an actual camera DSLR if you wanted to have the two stacked up, but you just remove that it has a regular pin screw hole in the bottom, and you could just easily mounted to any type of tripod. This is a super basic, super basic option for mounting the phone. A little bit more robust and secure because I was not secure is this mount from Alonzito, and this one actually has a screw on detention system so you can load in your phone and screw it in. And it is much, much, much more secure with your phone holding And you Judah vertically, Aziz. Well, which This one, I wouldn't trust it to shoot toe, hold the phone. And she critically on the other cool thing about this one as well as it has a cold, true mount. So you can mount something like a microphone or life accessory to the top of this. With this class, we're not really gonna get into too much of lighting a set with artificial light. We're gonna focus on how to use available like Teoh make really nice looking scenes. But just because you were in different artificial light options just messed around with or as accessories and stuff that works well with a phone one. Is this very small? Little I like That is a great light just to kind of actually comes with metal plates. You can stick it on the back, your phone. If you're shooting some sort of event or something on you just need a little bit of extra light also just kind of worked great for adding with some diffusion or something. Ah, little light for a close up. There's the light tra light. It is literally the size of a GoPro session. It's waterproof. It is rechargeable. It's got three different brightness options. It's got things diffusion, little soft box thing on top, and it has a bunch of other filters available with it as well. And they make a little bit bigger version you can actually control from your phone on his dimmable, and you can change the colors on that one on their on their bigger version. But these light this light I've had and I've been playing with and I really like it, especially for like, on the go running gun fill me and I keep it in my bag, Um, when I'm just kind of shooting stuff with my phone on if you want to go bigger, Amazon has thes lights. These are newer and e w er, uh, led lights there really inexpensive. Maybe $100 for two are made a little more than that, but with a whole set were come to stand and the power adapter and stuff you can adjust the color of them. You can address the brightness of them. You can get out on batteries so they could be battery powered or plugged into the wall. Um, these are very inexpensive way to add some more light if you need light. Not gonna get into like him too much. But usually light works really well. Fit is raising the ambient level of lights Account just amount of light in the space of urine. Dark space and you won't shoot something that's a little bit more ambient light. You can bounce the lights and walls, bounce the lights and the ceilings, and then also you can get diffusion, and you don't have to have to get diffusion. That is, like labeled for filmmaking tools. Diffusion can be anything from white bedsheets. Teoh the shower curtains kind of thick, opaque shower curtains and lastly sound sounds probably one of most overlooked things, and I think one of the most important things for video people can forgive bad or shoddy looking video. But when sound is not that great, it takes away from the video a lot. Sound on an iPhone is a little trickier, but now they're a lot of microphone options that are built specifically for the iPhone and for the lightning port connection. So one option is this microphone from shore plugs in you can rotate it. It is not a shock. And Mike, it built more for musicians and singers and stuff they want to use. Their iPhone is recording device, but when you getting close up, it works really well. And it is still way better than just using the on camera mike available on the iPhone s. That's one option is the envy 88. Another option is a microphone from road. This is built for DSL. Ours. I believe they do make a custom a smaller version for shooting with an iPhone, but you can easily use one of these. Use one of the lightning port adapters to modify this to work, I'm feeling. And then, as I said before, you have some of these mountains that have the culture. You mount option. So you just easily mount this, and you've got a pretty robust tool for shooting high quality audio on your phone. And a lot of these things work really well, too. We won't cover it in this lesson, but if you're doing live videos. These kind of on board options work well for having better quality sound when you're doing your live video. Andan Leslie. One of the best options It's getting the microphone literally as close as possible. The person. So there's a lab earlier microphone that is specifically built for the iPhone. It is from Apogee, and you would want to run this underneath the shirt. But for sake, here, just clip it on and it's got a link that's actually designed for people to record themselves. So the length of the cable it's designed where you could put this on a selfie stick and record yourself or you put on a tripod. Andi wire goes down long enough so that you have enough distance to keep it out of the shot . So there's a few options for adding extra gear to our iPhone to help make it a little bit more of a professional shooting right to get better quality shots and better quality audio on our next lesson, we're going to talk about actually shooting our video
8. Framing and Eye Lines: So let's talk about framing and I lines. First off, framing What is framing mean? That means the size of the frame and how we're going to frame the person that we are filming, whether it's yourself or the person you're interviewing. Eso framing generally when we're shooting for something that could be shared on social media, most people are going to be watching this on their cell phone. Eso the phone screen is small on. We want to have that human connection when a person a face is talking so generally want to shoot our interviews relatively close on a frame them relatively close that also comes into play when we want better quality sound. And if you don't have an external microphone, this helps by having a closer and getting better sound quality, so framing wise for an interview, a good point of reference for framing is framing bomb a frame a little bit above the trust level and then ending it a little bit above the hairline and again because we want to shoot in four K, which we talked about in settings earlier. Um, you can go a little bit wider and then you have that latitude later where you can zoom in and crop in later to make a closer shot. So we're shooting in a wider resolution such as four K. It's better to shoot little wider. We always reframe it later. If you shoot super close up, we can't magically make that wider so we always go in way. Can't go out. So another thing with framing This goes back to the first video with planning and where this video is going to end up. Uh, depending on where this video is going to end up that also dictate how we frame the video. So there's going on something like Instagram where it's going to end up being a square video or we're going to do something. We're going be cropping the sides off the way. Want to frame the video where everything is mostly center frame? I'd also mentioned earlier that you can use frame lines so you kind of know where you want to frame it in the filmic. But if you're not using that app, just use your best guess with how Teoh reporter crop it. You're not locked into it because, as I said and editing, we're going to be cropping and reframing. We can always tweet that later in editing. If we need to slide the frame around. If you're not going to instagram and you're gonna keep this video in 16 by nine just regular widescreen type video, then if you're shooting the interview, then you either wanted to center framed or you want to position the person on one side of the frame, which is a both a creative and practical debate on that also comes into I lines. So I line what that means is, where is the person who was on camera looking? So right now I'm talking directly to the camera, but it comes across that I'm talking directly to you, but I cannot really see you. And obviously this is not a live chat. So I'm just talking into a lens right now. Imagine me that I'm talking to a person on the inside of computer who's watching this like you. But if I were to say being interviewed and when you watch documentaries or kind of more traditional type interview styles, uh, something on the news, they're talking to someone off camera and you know that they're talking to a person but we never see that person. Andi. It's just sort of you as the viewer, The Observer aren't sort of directly engaged in the person than whatever is happening. You're sort of been more of a voyeuristic and observer from the side, getting a little bit of home theory here right now. But it really comes down to like a stylistic choice and kind of how you want the video to come across. Traditionally with social media, I feel like attended Seymour videos, where people are talking directly to camera again. It's a little bit more personal, and with social media, the framing and the cropping is that a little bit tighter? So the faces are a little bit more close up. Eso We kind of want that intimacy and want that talking directly to camera. But there's a couple of practical things to consider. So if the video is just of you representing the company or the business and you're talking to camera 90% of time, you're going to want to be talking directly into the lens and into the camera. Um, there might be other circumstances where you don't do that thes air all guidelines you don't have to do this just makes more sense to talk directly into the camera. The other option on this comes into play when you're interviewing someone else is Do they talk straight to camera or do they talk? Teoh, you the interview are off camera. Um, with some people. If you ask the question, you just asked them to speak into the lens and into the camera. Some people just freeze up and kind of get that deer in headlights. Look, when they start talking to a camera, are start panicking or whatever a 1,000,000 things that happen in the mind. Sometimes it does work better if they just talk to you off camera, and so that when I that I line comes into play, you kind of went the eye line going across the screen. So say if I'm frame left, I want my eye line to be looking across the street so I would be looking towards the right side. Same thing if I was on the other side of the frame. I want to be talking to someone on the left side. My left the right side of the camera looking across the island. If it's framed say, like if I am frame left and I'm looking frame left, I'm looking directly off screen, and then there's always like empty space here. It just looks weird, so you could make a stylistic choice where you want to do that. That's cool. But for the most part, these were just kind of like guidelines that tend to work out really well. If you stick to them and the stuff looks pretty good, so that's off angle. There's 1/3 option. It's kind of a mixture of both and basically you. The interviewer can stand really close to the camera, and the person could be talking to you. But the eye line is so close to the access of the lens that sometimes it plays off where it's you can't really tell that they're not looking a camera, and so I kind of get that effect where they do look like they're speaking to camera on speaking directly, the person. But they're actually talking to you off camera over that one. You just got to get really close to the camera on played out that way. One other note about I lines. You want to keep the eye line of the camera and of the person at the same plane level. So it I'm sitting down here. The cameras lower so our eye lines air about level. The camera is not higher ups looking down on me cameras, not low angle looking up on me. It is at the same level. And if I were to talk to someone, they would be sitting in a chair and our islands would all be equal so that I'm also not looking up talking to someone up there. Same thing. If I were standing camera, be higher up. A person who was interviewing me should be standing around a stool and all of the eye lines or level. That's just another keep in mind. I want to keep everything level.
9. Lighting & Sound Made Easy: All right, So let's talk about actually shooting your video so we're setting up for shooting the person. Whether that is yourself or something that you're interviewing. You want to find a spot that has a little bit of depth, so you can see here. I've got little bit depth behind me and background. You want to avoid shooting up right up against the wall. I see a lot of videos where that kind of place the person up against the wall. It kind of looks like a mug shot. It's not the most flattering position. You want to have a bit of depth, so keep about 10 feet, at least away from the person and the wall. Obviously, these are all guidelines in every situation is different, but a little bit of depth on you want to see a little bit in the background? Nothing too busy or distracting, but some depth and distance for some visual interest. So every space is different and you want to spend a little bit of time just kind of looking around the space looking behind you sometimes just a couple of minutes of exploring space messing around the camera. The great thing with the iPhone is it is tiny, and it is easy to just walk around with it and explore and look at stuff. Ah, couple minutes looking around could pay off dividends and finding a great angle on some great lighting available in space, where you don't have to really do much of anything to make it look really cool. So spend a little bit of time looking around some things you want to look for. You want to use large doors, large windows to your advantage. They want to use those huge outside sunlight coming in to help us like the scene. When we position the person that's on camera, we kind of in a position. The light, the light source of window Big white inside. Whatever it is, you're in a position like yours, about 45 degrees from the person. That's a rough guideline. It's not a hard and fast rule we're trying to avoid is kind of like coming in directly from the side. And that tends to create a really harsh shadow effect on harsh light, 45 degree angle. Add some shape to the face. It's not too flat at little bit shape on does not too harsh. Goldilocks. Think it's right right in between. If you are interviewing someone and they're talking to you off camera and you doing that off angle thing that we just discussed about you want a position yourself in between the camera and light sources. Every have camera here, light source right here. You want to be somewhere right here. So I'm looking at you, and I have this balance of the light coming in off the angle of the camera. It's just a little bit more of a classic look, and it kind of balances out the look of the image. If I was like talking this way and the light source coming from the same angle as a camera , I just a little bit more flat, doesn't add as much shape to my face and doesn't look as flattering. I talked about this earlier, but another thing is you want to avoid shooting directly into windows. You won't avoid having the windows in the background if they're in distance in the background. It's kind of part of the scene that's cool, but the main thing you want avoid is large windows and putting the person in front of the windows because what's gonna happen is they're either going to be a silhouette because of the exposure is going to happen for whatever is outside the window or it is going to be a huge, overly lit bright background. Person's gonna be swallowed in light, and everything just got blown out, buying them. Either way, they don't look that great. If you're filming outside, same guidelines apply. You kind of get the sun or light source at about a 45 degree angle. If the sun is directly behind the camera or behind you, that if they're talking to you, they're gonna start squinting because the sun is kind of right in their eyes. Um, and also, if the sun is behind them, you might get that same issue if you were shooting into window, where you get that silhouette effect and everything's a little bit blown out and harsh and last. But I think most importantly, sound so as we said before, get the camera as close as possible. If you just have an on camera mike, you want to get as close to the person's possible. So avoid wide interview shots where persons are up against a wall, and there you can see the entire body and frame. You want to get trust high. That means camera is gonna be relatively close, but it's gonna help us get clear sounding audio by having that closer distance close, the microphone is to the source, the better the quality of sound will be. So obviously we could get a level ear or something additional that will be even better sounding. But don't worry. You don't have it. Get the camera close. You also went to get the environment as quiet as possible. So if this is a space you have control over, such as your own space or the person filming space will be a little bit easier. Some things to keep in mind. You want Teoh? Make sure there's no background music happening. Try to keep all chatter in the background. Either that's island or at a minimum of science is not possible. Um, any type of random clicky sound noise, things you want to get rid of. It can. If an airplane or something loud happens outside while the persons talking feel free, just say, Hey, let's hold up for a second. Let's wait till the sound stops and then ask them to start over again from you gotta pay attention. But wherever the last kind of natural break was in whatever they were talking about, you're kind of doing a mental reality rewind going back there and then having them say again what they said, because you don't want any of these weird, loud sounds happening once you start editing. Having these abrupt sounds makes editing a lot more challenging and difficult. Just also is attracting it doesn't sound very good. So we covered a lot in this lesson about shooting the yourself or someone else with lighting sound setting up the camera, I lines, framing a lot of stuff Here s O that covers pre much everything for shooting the interview and making it look good. And that interview's going to serve as our spine, especially the audio. That's why it is very important service their spine for telling our story. But we want it have something visual, and we want to visually be able to tell the story because it is a visual medium. So the next episode we talk about getting the other shots bureau shots of visually telling our story
10. Show, Don't Tell with B-Roll: So we've got our interview or you speaking camera in the can. So let's talk about shooting the other stuff, the cool looking shots, B roll. Or, as I like to say, we're shooting for the edit. So does that mean we want to think about how we want the end product look and all the stuff that we have for editing? Make sure we get enough coverage and enough cool shots to make this a visually interesting video on also have enough material to actually edit with eso. There's a couple of practical reasons, besides cool visuals and making engaging video for having a variety of B roll shots on additional shops to cover up the interview. The main one is, as I have said, cover up the interview. So when we have the interview, we're gonna be spicing it up, chopping up little sections here, cutting out pauses, cutting out we're things. Merging soundbites together to make a more coherent on shorter story, and you can't have jumped cups. Jump cuts were basically when there is just a heart edit and it is very obvious that there wasn't headed in place on the shop, stays the same and jumps from one thing to another is very popular in vlogs, another types of formats. So it is a stylistic thing that has kind of become a lot more common and accepted. But it's also a style choice. There isn't really need to do it in a social media type video, especially when you when you're going to use that time to visually show whatever it is we're talking about. So reminds we'll show B roll Andi cool shots of stuff We're talking about eso in a practical sense, all of those jump cuts on dead. It's that we have going to cover that up with cool shots that tell the story, So we want to make sure we get enough shots. One way to do this is to make sure that we have a shot list beforehand when we're in the planning stages of things that automatically come to mind that we know we want to get another way to figure out what we want to shoot is listening. Pay attention when they are talking. During the interview, you mentioned anything that triggers an idea of something to film afterwards, say that you're filming a client and they have a bakery, and they mentioned something about the cookies that they sell thing. You want to make a mental note like Okay, we definitely get shots of the cookies that they're talking about so we can show the cookies when they're talking about it in the video. One thing I'd like to use the mixture that I have enough coverage on enough angles and variety to make a visually compelling story is used the 357 guidelines. So that is three scenes, five angles for seven seconds each shot. Um, this basically guidelines So three scenes when we talk about scenes, this could be a very broad sense of scenes are very narrow sense of scenes, but it's basically just something is happening. So going back to a gym example, if someone is doing a workout, it's like a scene. Could be someone doing backs. Trump's someone running someone on a rowing machine. This could all be considered scenes. Basically, some kind of different action is happening. If it's a bakery there at a cash register, packaging up goods, UH, one scene that could be stirring up the cookie dough, another scene that could be decorating the cookies. Another scene I could be making decorating the cake. Another scene s just kind of something is happening. You want to get at least three of, like, different things of something happening to get enough variety? Um, remember, if you are shooting for multiple videos to come out of this, then you want to get even more than just three. Try to get more varieties of your videos. Can look a little bit different on, not have not have to recycle the same footage over and over again. Eso three scenes five angles each. So angle is basically your Have your camera on dure getting an angle of at least seven seconds or whatever angle you pick. You want to get that shot for at least seven seconds. Angle move. Get a different angle move and angles are both at camera is an actual different position, and our frame size eyes different can be different. So we have different angles as far as positions and then different frame sizes. So we talk about frame size, gonna have extreme wide shot, a wide shot, a medium shot, a close up and extreme close up. There are tons of different frame sizes, frame variety on, then also just different angles in capturing whatever it is they're doing. So when you're getting B roll, the person doing stuff kind of the best way it just be like, Hey, I'd like you to do this on then Just keep doing it. I'm gonna move around. I'm gonna be like a fly on the wall. Just ignore me. Go about your business, Do whatever it is that you would normally be doing and ignore me as I go around. And then I'm just gonna kind of float around and get the shot hole. They get the shot, hold it. And that seven seconds at least seven seconds is important because I've dealt as an editor of with a lot of video that I did not shoot other people shot on do sometimes, especially when you're so used to shooting still photos and especially people with our phones replies shoot more stills Then we should video on your conscience Used to like up Got the angle click Got the angle click. I make sure you video I think I see a lot is kind of people hold up the thing and shooting videos like yep, got it Yep. Got it. And it's like maybe they held the shop for a second or two on when you doing video. That's just not long enough. And I've had to do a lot of tricks of extreme slow motion and stuff. Teoh hold static shots longer, easier ways. If you just hold the shot on, count to 567 in your head on, then you could just move on, get the other shot. It is a lot easier to cut down a shot than it is to extend a shot that isn't there. And then we were just talking about static shots. But you can go into other things panning dolly shots. Eso I've been tracking shots. You can move around camera. You can pan, you can tilt down. There are a bunch of different varieties of types of shots you can get with the phone. It's super easy, and it takes, like, two seconds. You really don't have to set anything up. You get dressed, move around and get whatever the shot is and feel free to explore this space on. Try out different things is the time we got fun. Get creative, get experimenting with it. The key thing is you don't get enough variety and a bunch of different types of shots. When you come to the edit, you have a lot of options for editing.
11. Onward to Editing: thank you so much for following along with this course. I hope you found a lot of it useful and it was gonna help you a lot and making much better looking video. Uh, in the resource is below There's a whole cheat sheet of covering tips and reminders of everything we covered in this course. You refer to that when you're filming and have the sheet handy to recap, remind yourself of how to get better looking video. I encourage you to work on the project of the project is shooting a 30 to 62nd interview our film of yourself or someone else and then shooting five B roll clips and posting that on the project. You can either post the video, just put all the video clips together into one video, or just take screenshots of the clips and share them there because we've not gone over video editing. That's in the additional course. So if you are interested in learning how to edit this video with my movie, there's an additional course that you can take. Thank you so much for watching. If you have any questions, just leave them in the comments below and I will get back to you. I hope you enjoy this course, and I look forward to seeing all of your projects.
Joey Daoud, Documentary Filmmaker
