Hi, everyone, I’m Tom and I’m the author of Travel Videos For Profit.
I’m here today to give you some tips on how to use your smartphone to shoot better video. There are some simple little tricks that you can use that will just drastically improve the quality of your videos.
Video Transcription:
So the first one is going to be the most important one and also a very, very simple one. There are two ways of shooting video. One is vertically like that and the other one is horizontally like that. And I recommend you shoot horizontally like this. The reason for that is because if you shoot vertically like that, that might look okay on Facebook and Instagram, but on a big screen, on a computer monitor, it will look like this with big bars on each side. So try to avoid that. Always hold in your phone like this. Also, don’t start off filming like this, and then remember in the middle to turn it over. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work. So you have to hold it like this and then press the record button. That’s my first step.
All right, the second one is move slowly and deliberately. Moving slowly and deliberately is very important because it allows the viewer to take in whatever they see without getting too disoriented. So think of it as a photo frame that starts your movement and a photo frame that enters movement. So you want to move from something of interest with hopefully a great composition to something of more interest. That is also a great conversation. So if you were to take a photo of your last frame and you’re happy with that and your first frame, then you’re happy with that. That is a good starting point.
Then you essentially move your camera, your smartphone from that starting point to that endpoint—do it slowly and deliberately. There is a stabilizer within your phone, so don’t worry too much if it’s not exactly in a straight line or if it’s not if there’s some shaking there, that’s not a problem at all. Your phone will stabilize all that.
So they don’t need to worry too much about it. Just do it slowly and deliberately. And that’s going to create a really nice pan. And that pan is clean enough so that you can then send it to stock footage companies. Also, I would recommend that you do panning in both directions.
So you moving from your starting point to the endpoint and back to your starting point in the other direction. And that helps you to have choice because the choice of direction is very important because if you only pan in one direction, that means you’re going around in a circle.
If you start putting clip after clip after clip, you’re essentially going around and around in a circle. And that’s for one a bit disorienting, nauseating, and it is also kind of boring. So you want to have patterns, both directions, so you can choose.
I would also recommend that you do these shots for at least 10 seconds. And that will then allow you to submit that footage to the stock footage company because it should be at least 10 seconds long. You might get away with eight or nine seconds, but anything short of that really is too short for stock footage companies.
If you creating a longer video, the more footage you have, the more slowly and deliberately you’re moving, the easier it is to fit that footage into other clips and create a sequence out of that. And there is, believe it or not, software in your phone that will allow you to create sequences like this, the third degree.
So, yes, you have the software on your phone that will help you to edit the video footage that you shot on your phone. And you will find more information in my course about that.
One final tip, try to take close-ups. And that’s one thing that people always forget because we’re more used to shooting sort of medium to long shots. So landscape type of shots. But it is just like in a story, sometimes you want to see details, you want to get really close. So be it an insect or flower or, you know, a close-up shot of food or something like that, or even just a hand doing something close up.
Shots are very important in order to tell your story more effectively. So try to take those as well. And that will then give you enough clean and diverse footage so that you can submit it to stock footage sites, create videos out of that that you can then give to businesses and they will look much more professional.
Then if you’re just shooting vertically, if you’re moving too fast, if you’re running around and shaking all of these things, they detract from the quality of your footage and it just doesn’t look professional.
So just to recap, so hold your phone horizontally, try to move slowly and deliberately, make your clips at least ten seconds long, pan in both directions from the point of interest to another point of interest back, and finally, take close up shots. Those are my tips for shooting more professional videos with your smartphone.
I hope that helped and. Thanks for watching.