Transcripts
1. Lets Start : Film, boss, learn, repeat. Hello, I'm [inaudible] and this is the how to vlog course. I'm a filmmaker and a YouTuber doing comedy, travel vlogs, and what other production is coming in my mind. Whether you are already a vlogger or you're starting now with it. With this course, you will learn what gear you should use for vlogging, how to tell your own authentic stories, how to film and edit your unique video. You will also understand what is a blog as a medium of communication. You will learn some tips about how your videos can have good audience retention, which is a key for a successful journey on YouTube. By the end of the course, you will have the skills to do your very own video vlog. Weeks is our course project. The good news is mandatory, so you have to do it and post it here. Thank you so much for joining me and I can't wait to see guys what you are going to post. Let's dive in.
2. Course Project: Now it's time for our course project. Do your own vlog? But don't panic we are going to analyze the whole process of making a video vlog in the next part of the course. Find the story that you want to share with your audience, film with whatever camera you have, maybe it's your DSLR, maybe it's an action camera or maybe even it's your phone. Edit your vlog, and then upload it to YouTube and get connected with your audience. Use also the tips and tricks that we're going to learn on this course. I want to remind you that may be your first vlog will not be a masterpiece, but you have to start from somewhere. The most important is to have fun, you must enjoy it. I will be amazed to see the vlog that you are going to create or you can post even your vlog that you have already done, just paste the link and I will check it out. This is a really great way to take feedback, not only from me, but also from the other members of the community.
3. What is Vlog and why to Vlog: What is vlogging? Why to vlog? By definition, vlogging means video blogging. Nowadays, we can find vlogs in many different forms and platforms like, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and etc. Guys, vlog is here to stay. It's a great era for vloggers. I will explain to you right now why internet is getting more and more popular. Gear is getting more and more super, and our stories are waiting to be told. Another good news is that, 2017 was the year that digital ad spending finally beat television ad spending. The focus from advertisers is shifting from traditional media to online Internet content. We, the content creators, the vloggers, we had a great opportunity to cast in in our passion, film making, you can call it vlogging. But why the v-logs has advantages over the traditional text-based blogs? First, viewers can both see and hear the vlogger, the audience can trust the vlogger and there is a real conversation and a personal touch to the content. Second, people with different educational backgrounds, people that they even speak different language from the vlogger, can be our possible audience, and believe me, this audience, this potential, is huge.
4. The Gear !: Let's talk now about our gear. A vlog is a video and for making a video, you have to obviously film. In this part of the course, we will analyze what cameras and what microphones you need to start vlogging. If you are starting now vlogging, my advice is to start and film with whatever camera you have available. Firstly, it's good to start to pay attention to the story and improve your storytelling skills. Challenge yourself to make content with the camera that you have right now and make the most out of it. Then when you know that you want to continue with vlogging and you want to evolve, you can start to invest in cameras and better lenses and better equipment. Now, the rule for vlogging and generally film making is that we are using different cameras for different filming situations. The setup that I'm using most of the time for quality picture and audio is a DSLR and microphone and a tripod. My main camera body is 80D. I think it's a DSLR with great video quality, slow motion for having cinematic shots, the good color science of Cannon and a fully articulated screen that you can see yourself as a selfie, so you can check if you are in focus and if you are properly in-frame. For supporting our cameras we need to use tripods, personally, I'm using the Joby Gorilla tripod. This tripod really fits my needs because it's really small, lightweight and I can take with it creative shots, since it's very flexible and it can be attached to numerous surfaces. Let me get this unique, nice perspectives. Having quality sound in your videos, in your vlog, it's really also important. For vlogging, we use external microphones instead of the microphone that our cameras already have. For sound recording, I'm using the Rode VideoMic Pro, it's a really good directional shotgun microphone. But now in this situation, because the camera is far away from my mouth, I'm using a lav microphone like this. It's a cheap lav microphone that it's straight connected to my iPhone. I'm recording the audio separately and then I will sync the audio and the video in the post-production, in the editing program. But let's now talk about the other cameras that we are using for vlogging. When we are vlogging, when we are filming in difficult conditions, we can use an action camera like a GoPro. When the weather is bad, when it's raining, when we're doing an extreme sport and there is a risk of damaging our equipment or when we want to have with a cheap way underwater salts. In these cases, I am using my GoPro. It's a great solution for these difficult situations because you are calm, you can enjoy and concentrate to the action and you know that in the end your equipment will not be damaged. Another advantage of GoPro is that is taking wide video. You know already that you and the action will be in frame. Another great camera for vlogging is your smartphone. Nowadays, smartphones have really decent cameras and they say that the best camera is the camera that you have always with you in case that something happens suddenly, you just take out your phone from your pocket, double tap the home button and the camera is there to record for you. The last camera that I'm using for my vlogs is my drone camera. I think that drone camera can produce really nice cinematic shots and a great B-Roll footage. You can get a unique perspectives that you wouldn't be able to take with any other camera. Also drone shots can really give production value to your vlog. However, as we told in the beginning, it's better to invest first in the story and then to camera and lenses, and then it's good to buy a drone. Don't buy a drone immediately, if you don't have the money of course. Having so many cameras to choose from, it's definitely an advantage for the vlogger. You just have to think with what camera, with what shot your story can be told the best way it's time and use that camera. It's a great game.
5. Shooting B roll footage: Let's now talk about B-Roll footage. Nowadays, B-Roll footage is everywhere on vlogging videos. But when you have only B-Roll footage on your vlogs, on your videos, you can't really tell a story. However, B-Roll footage is really important for your vlogs and we will learn how we can use it. But let's examine A-Roll and B-Roll from a film perspective to understand it better. What is B-Roll and what is A-Roll footage? A-Roll is used to describe your footage from your main sought. Thing for example, the central action that is taking place. The one basic thing that without it the story cannot be taught. From the other hand, B-Roll is the supplemental footage, that it helps you cut in a sequence and gives visual meaning in your video. B-Roll establishes the environment and gives more information to the audience. B-Roll, it can be also really helpful to the editing process of your videos, of your vlogs. When you have, for example, psyche footage in the A-Roll, you can cut easily with the B-Roll. Personally, I'm using a lot of B-Roll to my YouTube videos, to my production videos, but is really important to know how to use it. The rule is that B-Roll must serve your story. If it doesn't serve your story, don't use B-Roll footage in order to say that, "Oh, okay. I used B-Roll footage." Now, I will give you some tips for having amazing B-Roll footage. It's really important to have a plan for your B-Roll footage. Write down what is your main subject of your vlog, of your video, and then try to think what B-Roll footage you can have for supporting your main thing. Also, don't forget to take a variety of shots of your subject, like white shots, medium shots, close-up shots. Close-up shots can illustrate important details in an environment that they can help you to tell your story. Also, you can take many slow motions for a really nice cinematic feeling in your videos. Also, you can have some drone shots for achieving unique perspectives. Another tip is to use time lapses. Because with time lapses, you can illustrate that the time is passing. Another good tip is to don't forget to move your camera. Of course you will have some static shots, but don't forget to take panning shots in different speeds. Because with this process, you help yourself to adjust the pace of your video. My final tip about B-Roll footage is that more is always better. It's preferably to have way too much than not enough B-Roll footage. In conclusion, B-Roll footage is absolutely vital to produce a really engaging video because it helps you to tell a really more colorful story. Plus, you will have a greater flexibility in the post production.
6. Story is the KING: Story is the kink. It's good to have good fancy gear, many cameras to choose, microphones, lights, and on and on. But you have to have a story to tell with your vlogs, because if you don't have, your vlogs will fail. At the end of the vlog of the video, a story must be told. You have to have sent a clear message to your audience. When he started his daily vlog, our favorite YouTuber and vlogger, Casey Neistat said. I'm going to make a movie every day. We can see that he's facing his vlogs like films, like movies. Vlogs in order to be successful, must tell a story. It's not enough if we just connect with montage, with editing some video clips of our everyday life, because this will be really boring and sometimes pointless. Our vlogs must have something to tell, like the three act structure of a film. A vlog is good to have a beginning, the setup, and middle, that something happens and an end, the solution. When you're vlogging, you must think why you are vlogging. What is the message that you want to convey to your audience? For example, my last vlog, it was about hiking with my friends in the forests of Finland. In that case, I didn't have a really good A-roll story, but I really had a really good B-roll footage. So I decided to start my vlog, explaining to my audience while they are about to shoot because I didn't have sufficient A-roll footage and only B-roll footage. I have with some way to justify my good B-roll footage. Let's have a quick look. This story is a story without a start, a middle, and an end. However, this story appeal to our deepest emotion, happiness. This story is the online diary of five Erasmus students who decided to discover the beauty of Finnish nature. I will have a link in the description if you want to go and check the whole vlog.
7. Edit your vlog : Now that you have feeling vlog, you have an overall idea. Now, it's time to edit all these small things, all this small video clips and make it one. You should always have in mind that longer videos doesn't mean better videos. Try to keep your videos of your vlogs short enough so that you can tell effectively your story, and not make the viewers tired. Because if you do so, they will leave. For editing my videos I'm using the powerful Premiere Pro. It's an editing program from Adobe. But if you are just starting now, video editing you can use the application iMovie if you are a Mac user or the Movie Maker, if you are a Windows user. These are really also capable editing programs that they will cover your first needs of editing. Now, I will show you the whole process of editing my vlogs using Premier Pro. Come with me. Let's see now the exact process of how I edit my videos on Premiere Pro. Let's say that this is our media, the videos and the music track, and now we are going to create a folder and we are going to name it hiking. Now we are creating some sub folders for videos and one more from music. Most of the times, vlog has many clips, so it's real easy to forget and not import something. For this reason, we organize our files into folders. Let's now open the application of Premiere Pro. Here we are the starting Window. We click on New Project. Then we're going to name this project Hiking Vlog. Then let's save this project in our Hiking folder. We click Okay. Here we are in Premier Pro. This Window here is our timeline. This here is the project panel. This is the playback Window, and this is the source monitor. In this step, we are going to insert our media to the project panel by just drag and dropping. Now we have our media on Premiere Pro, and now it's time to create our sequence. The resolution of our sequence will be determined by the frame rate of our videos. We go in the videos, in the panel project and with right-clicking, we can select the Properties of a video, and now we can see the frame rate, 60 frames per second. Now for creating a new sequence we go to Find New sequence, and we can choose full HD, 30 frames per second, the half of 60 frames per second. Here we are with a ready sequence. Now what I'm going to do is to label the videos in the project panel with different colors according to the location that I showed its clip. I will know where the videos are and I can edit faster. Let's say that these videos are from the location B, so I will label them with mango. Let's say that these first videos were from the location A, so let's label them with Caribbean. Now that we have label our videos, we are ready to insert our first video in our timeline. Now we just have to double-click on a video and it will appear on the source monitor so we can take this video what it's about. From source monitor here, and with this way, we must watch carefully all of our windows because we need to know what sorts we have. This will massively help us to do better and more complex edits. We can take the full advantage of what we have. Most of the times we don't want to insert a whole video in the timeline, but just a part of it so we can select the in point of our clip, pressing the I on our keyboard. I want these to be the in point, so I press the I. Then here I want to be the out point, so I would press the O. Then we just have to drag and drop this clip on the timeline. We go here to the thumbnail we click it and we drag and drop it down on our timeline. Keep the settings and here we are. This video as I saw you was in slow motion at 60 frames per second. Let check it again and let's go to properties. We can see that it's at 60 frames per second. We can slow down this footage. We go here in this clip in our timeline, and we go to speed, and then we can apply 70 percent slowdown. We click Okay, and now we have a nice slow motion video and we can apply this process to every window that we want to slow down, but be aware that the slow motion will be much smoother if the video has 60 frames per second or more. For cutting, I will select the Eraser tool, and then I will click here. Then it's cut. Then I just have to press Delete and then move back again the clip. In this clip, we can listen to our voices, but in slow motion, they are like scary. It's not so physical, it's not normal. We are going to narrow slow the levels of this video by just drag down the level of the audio track. Now if we play back the video again we cannot listen to the audio. Let's now in these points, have a title. We just click the Type tool and then we go to the Play Back panel and we can just click wherever we want and we can add the title, we can write something. Now dragging the ends, we can shorten our title. Great. Now we know also how we can add titles on our vlogs. Let's now see how we can color correct one clip. We just have to click on this clip, and then go to Color, then we will see on the right that like Photoshop, Light Room; there are some parameters like, Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, White, Blacks that we can make changes. So let's say, for example, that this video here, is underexposed, so we can increase the Exposure by dragging the Exposure on the right. Let's decrease the contrast a bit. Let's remove some Highlights, let's increase the saddles, decrease the Whites a bit and let's leave the Blacks like they were. We just color corrected a bit our video, it's super easy. You have to do some experiments to see what you like, what you don't like. This is the before and this is the after. One tip that I want to give you here is that when you have two identical clips that they need, almost the same color correction changes, you can just right-click here and then copy. Let's say that this is the identical video, that there is the need of the same changes. If you click again here, the right-click, you can just paste the attributes Lumetri Color effects that you applied to the previous clip. So if you press "OK", immediately we have here the same settings. But here, these setting are not correct for this video, for example. So we are going to deactivate them. But this is a nice tip that can save you a lot of time. Now we are going to talk about something really useful. The Adjustment Layers. But what is an Adjustment Layer? With Adjustment Layers, you can add certain effects over the videos underneath the Adjustment Layer. Let's see this effect in practice. New item, Adjustment Layer and click, "OK", and here it is, our Adjustment Layer. We just have to drag and drop it in our timeline on the top of our videos, and then we can drag it and extend it to all over our videos. So how I'm using personally the Adjustment Layer? I'm using the Adjustment Layer to color grade my footage with a really easy way. Let's see, we click on Adjustment Layer and then we go again to Color. We are already in the Color tab. Then we go to Creative, and from there we can apply some lat, some preset like the Instagram filters for example. Let's say that we want this one. Now, all my videos have colored graded by this lat. When you are color grading like this, don't forget to go in the creative tab again and check the intensity of the lat of the color presets that you are using. So you can adjust it and looks more naturally, not so intense. So around 80, it should be good. Now it's time for inserting the music. We'll go again on our project panel and we double-click on our audio track. Here we have again on the source monitor, the preview of the song and with the same way we set the in point, pressing I and the out point, for example, they're pressing the O. Here again, we click on the waveform and we drag down the audio in the audio track. But let's now see. Let's suppose that our Vlog ends here, we are not going to just cut the audio track like this. Then delete the rest and leave it to end like this. This is not so natural ending. We have to create a soft fade out of the sound. We're going to do it by adding key frames. What is a key frame? How to apply a key frame? We click on the audio track, on the sound, and then we go to Effects. We can minimize these windows. Here are the effects. We're going to go to levels. Every variable that have these alarms, it means that you can apply key frames. So let's say that we want to start our key frame from here. We'll just click to add key frame. Let's say that we want our key frame to end. Let's actually extend a bit our audio track. Let's say that we want our key frame, the last key frame, to be there. So we add key frame again. We're going to reduce the decimals to all the way down minus. So here, there is no sound. Let's play back again to see how it feels. Let's fix some last details. We can use fade in doing right-click here and just apply default transitions. We can add fade out applying default transitions. Now guys, I'm going to show you the finished product of this Vlog and how it looks like, and how many clips there are. So guys, you can see how much more work needed to be done. So you can see how complex this Vlog is. We have here our voice-over on the track audio. We have here, the music that I used. Here we have the physical sound from our video parts, the channel, and this audio channel. Here we have our first and main video channel, here we have our photos. All of these are our photos. Here we have titles. Here is our Adjustment Layer that I applied my color grading there. I hope guys, that you learned something from this video editing tutorial and that you can't wait to edit and craft your own stories in your own Vlogs, your own videos. But let's now continue our course.
8. Export, Publish, Marketing and Instagram Optimization: We are ready now to export our vlog. We go to file and then export and then media. Don't be confused with all of these numbers and parameters. We need the format to be H.264 high bitrate, and then we are going to change the name hiking vlog. Then we go to settings. We have full HD, 30 frames per second, and then I want to change the bitrate settings to 2 pass encoding. Then I want the target bitrate to be 12 and the maximum bitrate to be 15. The use of maximum render quality is already clicked. We are just going to click export. This is the basics about video editing and I think that you're ready to go also and try and edit your vlogs, your stories. It's so satisfying the process of editing when you love what you edit, because you start with the mess, with really a lot of footage and then you are ending up in a really nice finished product that you love and like. YouTube will lower and compress the quality of your video, but you have to export in the best possible settings because there is a great chance that you use these videos, these vlogs in the future, maybe not in YouTube, in other platforms, and you want them in the best possible quality. I highly recommend you to publish your videos, your vlogs in YouTube because is the biggest video platform. Your videos will have the best potential to be seen by the most audience. Another tip is to make vlogs not strictly everyday, but in a regular basis. With this way, your audience will build the habit of watching your vlogs and it will be, of course, more engaged with you. Something also really important is that you always have to provide your audience with value. Your videos must be entertaining, or informative, or preferably both. If your vlogs have these characteristics, your viewers will slowly be converted to loyal subscribers. That's the main thing that we want to achieve. Audience retention is also really important for the YouTube algorithm in order to promote and suggest your video. That means that your viewers must see as much of your video as possible. Here are some tips. Make sure that your titles and thumbnails are not misleading, super important. Also try to give to your viewers immediate value with a hook, for example, in the beginning. Tell them why they should watch your video and not something else from the whole Internet. After your intro or after your hook, get into your main content really quickly. Time is really valuable for them. You have to respect the time of your viewers. It's a really good principle to start with. Respect their time. Also another good tip is that you don't use click-bait titles because you want to build a trust relationship with your audience. My last tip is to promote your video vlog to your Instagram, the hottest social media platform nowadays. I will tell you how. Personally, for Instagram promotion, I am making a short version of my vlog with my best moments, and I am uploading this small Instagram version to my Instagram storage. I'm going to show you now how you can change the dimensions of your video in order to fit in the Instagram story. Let's see now how we can change the dimensions of our sequence in order that our video fits in the story of Instagram in order to promote our vlog. We go in here in file, new, we add a new sequence and we keep the same settings. Let's rename the sequence Instagram story. We click okay and our sequence, it's ready, but we have to change the dimensions. We go to sequence, sequence s settings, and now we are going to reverse the resolution. We type here 1080, 1920. We click okay and here we are with the vertical Instagram story mode. Now we just have to go there in our vlog. Of course, our vlog will not be so short so we will have to edit and shorten our log with our best moments, and we will copy the shorter version selecting everything, and then command and C to copy, and then we go in our new sequence and we're going to paste. If we playback, it's really obvious that we need to do some changes. As we can see now, in this new sequence, there are some black bars and this is not good. We have to fix it. How we will fix it, we click on the clip and then we go to scale this up. Then we can move our video left or right, going to the position here and then we just drag this number left or right. We make sure what it fits best to our frame, and then we move on to the next clips with the same way. We scale up, and then we'll go left or right. Now, we also have to read dimension or adjustment layer. We click on our adjustment layer and then again, we can scale this up so everything is color graded again. Now, we are ready to export the Instagram version of our vlog in order to do good, Instagram marketing.
9. Last words ( I am dancing for the last time the FILM POST LEARN REPEAT ): Hey there again. Congratulations, you just finished our course. Now, you just have to grab your camera quickly and go out and vlog, and film, and film again. Learn your camera, tell your stories, edit your movies, post your vlogs, give them to the audience, and learn from this process. Film, post, learn, repeat. Film, post, learn, repeat, and have fun. Remember also to always give value to your audience via your vlogs. Don't forget to implement our marketing strategies and tips that we learned in order to boost the audience retention in your videos. I can't wait to see the vlogs that you are going to create, just post them on the project section of the course so me and the other members of the community can watch them and give you feedback. I know that this course had a lot of information, if you have any questions, just feel free to send me a message and I will try to answer you. Again, thanks a lot for taking this course, see you in the next one.
Evangelos Anagnostou, Filmmaker and Photographer
