Master Smartphone Filmmaking In Just 20 Minutes

It's 2022 and

smartphone

s have reached a point where they can produce truly amazing content that can honestly rival expensive high-end camera equipment in looks and quality, so if you have a phone, there's really no excuse not to. delay your content. journey of creation and in today's video I want to give you the skills and knowledge to take things to the next level. What's up, creators? My name is Anthony Gallo from the contentcreator.com team and in today's video I want to give you the latest. Beginner's guide on how to pick up your phone and record content that truly makes you happy.

This content will apply to YouTubers, social media content creators, hobbyists who are

just

looking to improve the quality of their videos, and even people who are looking to start their freelance business and maybe want to do so. start by using your phone to practice i want to give you a complete hz guide on how to film with your

smartphone

the apps to use the settings potential equipment worth buying film tricks how to start editing tons of things to dive into today to get started , let's first talk about the smartphones themselves. I'm personally using the iPhone 13 Pro, which really opened my eyes to the power of modern smartphones.

However, I don't want you to think that the content of today's video only applies to people who own the iphone 13 pro, most modern smartphones today, especially major manufacturers like apple samsung google, all work extremely well and the strategies we use to capture cinematic content don't really change at all from camera to camera, it's like throwing a baseball versus throwing a tennis ball may feel different in your hand, but the way we throw it actually It doesn't change much, all that said, if you're looking for a smartphone upgrade and are looking to maximize the potential of the content.

I would recommend the iPhone 13 Pro or Samsung's recently released S22 Ultra. They are extremely similar from the camera perspective. Yes, the S22 Ultra allows you to shoot in 8k, which is great, but it has a very significant crop factor. Personally, I don't see that you know people who record with their smartphones and need 8k images, but hey, that's

just

my opinion, instead of basing your purchasing decision on the camera itself, I suggest you choose based on the ecosystem you you prefer, like Apple or Android, okay? I have talked about the phone, first let's talk about the apps.

Actually, a separate third-party app is necessary to create great content. Well, I don't think so, but they can definitely help in many situations simply because they allow you to take more. manual control over the different settings now a big disclaimer about camera settings. I think a common misconception among new content creators is that there is a secret setting that will magically make all the content they shoot look as amazing as they would like. There was only one button we could press, that's just not true. Great content depends almost entirely on three things that have nothing to do with the camera itself and that is lighting composition and storytelling which we'll talk about later in this video.

The real benefit of controlling settings using a professional app is to help you avoid the dreaded exposure shift that comes with automatic modes, so without dwelling on this too much, most native camera apps are automatic by default. , which means all your settings will change, such as the shutter. it speeds up your ISO and your white balance in your name, which in some cases is good, it's one less thing you have to worry about, but this means that your settings change while you're recording, causing a change like this in the exposure of your videos again. You might think this is cool because your camera is doing everything for you, but think about any professional Hollywood commercial film or documentary.

You never see something like this because it's just not natural, it's not something our eyeballs do regularly, at least not something we can notice and at the end of the day, it just takes the viewer out of the viewing experience and distracts them from the important story at hand. the content creator is trying to tell, so if your goal is to capture the most engaging content possible, it's best to take manual control and that's when the pro apps really come into play, now certain smartphones have these pro features built in. in its native camera app and if that's your phone then great, you don't need to get one of these third party apps, but if you have an iPhone like me, I do. it does not allow you to control these settings.

I recommend downloading one of these professional applications. My personal choice is Filmic Pro which is a $15 investment, but I've also used the Moment Pro app which is good and I really like it too. The DJI Memo app is now a pro tip for you guys, if you are in a pinch and need to film something quick and want to use the native app, you can lock your exposure and focus by taking your finger and just tapping and holding. on your subject, so now when I move my camera, even though I'm heading into this bright light in front of me, it doesn't change the exposure, which will solve a lot of the problems that come with changing exposure, that's nice.

It's like a happy medium between auto mode and using one of the professional apps, so with that being said, we've covered the apps, let's move on to the camera settings. Filmic Pro allows us to easily control the main settings that affect our video, which are resolution frames. shutter speed ISO and white balance normally we would add aperture to that list but almost all phones have fixed apertures and we can't actually change them so if you are on a smartphone don't even worry we can spend full videos talking about each of these settings and by the way, we do that in our full course, 14 Day Filmmaker Smartphone Editing, which I'll talk more about at the end, but to be brief, resolution is the size of your video. the total pixels are there and generally bigger is better and with Filmic Pro in the settings I recommend maxing this out generally at 4k.

Next we have the frame rate, which is the total number of frames in each second of video. The Hollywood standard for frame rate is 24 frames per second, anything less than 24 individual frames in each second and your eyeball will start to notice the small gaps between each individual frame, so with that in mind shoot your entire content at normal speed at 24 frames per second if you want to capture slow images. moving video then you would increase the frame rate to 60, 120 or 240 frames per second and each higher frame rate will allow you to slow down the video even more, basically the more frames you have in each second of video the more you can stretch the video. footage. and slow things down without getting to that point where you start to see the gaps between each frame after the frame rate.

We have shutter speed. There are two settings on our phone that we use to control image exposure, which is a fancy word for brightness. those settings are shutter speed and iso. Ideally you want your shutter speed to be twice your frame rate, so at 24 frames per second we want our shutter speed to be 1 48 of a second. Do this in Filmic Pro by pressing this icon to lock the ISO in place by tapping it and then scrolling the wheel to change the shutter speed to the desired setting. You'll notice when you do this that it changes the brightness of your video now if you're filming in slow motion at 60 frames per second.

Follow the same approach and change the shutter speed to 120 seconds following the 2x rule. Now you're probably going to finish this video. Go outside, follow these settings exactly and say what the hell, Anthony, my video looks terrible, how could you have directed it? I am so wrong in life. Here's the thing. Remember what I said earlier about the importance of lighting. It really dictates our image much more than we ever give credit for. What you have to do in a situation like this is increase the shutter speed, which slows it down. depending on the amount of light entering the camera this corrects the exposure which is good but it all sacrifices motion blur which is the main reason we generally try to keep the shutter speed lower following the 2x rule.

It may sound strange, but motion blur is actually a big key to capturing natural-looking content because motion blur is something our eyes pick up naturally in our everyday lives; However, in certain situations you are simply forced to increase the shutter speed and lose motion blur. The only other option you have is to purchase what is called a neutral density filter or nd filter, which is basically a pair of sunglasses for your camera that reduces light and allows you to keep your shutter speed in the ideal range that you want. generates that movement. blur the image again, my favorite brand for accessories like this is from shopmoment.com, so if you want a second filter that's where it would go, okay, going to iso is the second setting we use to control our exposure, think in iso as digital.

Brightness If it is dark and our image is underexposed, we can increase the ISO, which adds this digital brightness to the image. It sounds great and is really useful, but it also adds digital noise to our image, which really decreases the quality of our videos for this reason. Always keep your ISO as low as possible to avoid that ugly noise, only increase it when you have no other option. Ok, next a really crucial setting to focus on in Filmic Pro is white balance. White balance does exactly what its name implies, making sure the whites in your video actually look white, not too warm orange or unnaturally cold and blue.

The reason the color of our whites can change is because all light has a particular color temperature and when these lights shine on the objects in our videos, the color temperature of that light changes the color balance of our scene. and to compensate for those changes we use the white balance settings on our camera, so there is no perfect setting for white balance. Change from scene to scene depending on the color temperature of the lights, now it's automatic. White balance on your phone is a very useful feature but we still fall victim to that unnatural shift that can happen while filming as our phones make the decision for us so what you need to do is before you press the button recording open the white balance settings in filmic pro click on auto which will set it for the current scene and then click on it again until it turns red which locks the white balance preventing it from changing during our recording real.

This will help your scene stay consistent from start to finish. It's much more professional now, if it still looks a little strange after locking it in, you can adjust the white balance using this bar here until things look much more natural on camera. Now is the last thing I want to talk about here while we're still here. in the app, it's technically not a traditional camera setup, but with modern smartphones we usually have multiple cameras that we can switch between, most phones have a standard wide and ultra wide camera and a telephoto lens, which is great , it really gives us more reach. the diversity of shots that we can capture but and this is quite large, but they are not all built the same 95 of the time and I would even say that 99 of the time the standard wide angle camera is much better than the other two when We are talking strictly about image quality, this is because they are made with much larger sensors that capture better video, they have wider fixed apertures that let in more light, meaning the camera will perform better in low light situations and They generally have more advanced stabilization technology that helps smooth out movements in the footage so that when you walk down the street and film your dog while you walk, the footage naturally looks smoother, so in my opinion, if the lens is to capture video content with the highest quality possible.

You'll really want to stick with the main camera. That being said, sometimes you need to make quality sacrifices to help tell your story better and I do that all the time. For example, I invest in real estate and recently purchased two Airbnb properties. I wanted to create content for them quickly on my phone when I did my initial tour and although the camerastandard is of much higher quality, the wide angle camera is displayed 10 times. more of the scene and it makes the cabins look a lot bigger, so I pretty much always use the ultra wide camera because it told a better story when it came to that particular subject and that's a really key point: you have to make a balanced decision between creative storytelling. and focusing solely on camera specs, my usual process is to start with the main lens and see if I can step back to reveal more of my scene or zoom in to see if I can make my subject more prominent without having to change . that telephoto camera, if I really can't get it to work, I'll switch cameras for the sake of the story and accept the fact that the image quality may be slightly affected.

There are third party lenses you can buy to put on your camera. main camera to modify that focal length without sacrificing quality, but I almost find myself not carrying them with me simply because, in my opinion, the purpose of creating content for smartphones is to run and shoot without needing a huge setup with tons of equipment , OK? That was a lot of information, I know and I'm sorry to be so technical, but questions about camera and lens settings are the most common questions we get from people starting out, as I said before, at contentcreator.com, we have a complete smartphone

filmmaking

master

class that covers all of these settings in greater detail, but for now doing exactly what I talked about when it comes to these settings will get you off to an amazing start, although let's talk about the number one thing that will affect the quality. of your strange contenttrue, it's not the phone, it's not the app or a particular setting, it's the lighting, it's exactly how someone who has a lot of skill can make their smartphone images look 10 times better than someone who doesn't have experience using equipment that is very expensive and is usually the number one thing that prevents people from recording content that they are really proud of, so the first step to improving lighting is to simply consider it all together, don't start recording content without heading without taking light into your equation, now you can go crazy looking at lighting.

Online equipment is as expensive as much of the equipment. There are also plenty of lights that really provide a lot of value for your money. I'm talking less than a hundred dollars for lights that can multiply the quality of your work by 10. Now my two favorites. The budget lights are the yongnuo yn300 which is nice and bright, and then if you can stretch your budget a little more, behind me is the godox sl60 which I think for the price is the best light you can buy right now, just having light is just one. Half the equation here, the second half is diffusion.

You see, there are actually two types of light: hard light and soft light. Hard light, as the name suggests, is very harsh and does not favor people much. The soft light, on the other hand, is Amazing and really looks great when you shine it on your subject. We create soft light by adding diffusion to our light source, which you can do in several ways. I love using this super affordable diffusion panel that you can get on Amazon for about $15. Placing it between me and the light source softens that light and really improves the look of the content Now, especially with smartphone content, we're not always in a situation where we can carry lights with us and even if that's the case and we don't have our lights, we still want to apply the same concepts to the light that already exists in the scene, so instead of placing the subject in the middle of a room where the only light source is the orange ceiling lights, change the scene and place your subject next to a window which will naturally add a lot of soft, diffuse light to that scene.

If you're filming outdoor content, try to avoid filming during the middle of the day, when the sun is highest in the sky, that angle of light is not really flattering and it's also when the sunlight is at its brightest. Rescheduling your day to shoot during the golden hours of sunrise and sunset will dramatically increase the quality of your content because the light is much softer at that time of day and b The angle at which the light actually hits our subject is much more flattering. . Simply put, if you're ever filming and your content doesn't look good, the first thing you should do instead of blaming your camera, which is what most people do, including myself.

Try to remember that even the best, most expensive cameras in the world shoot poor quality video when the lighting is bad, and challenge yourself to bend the light in your favor. After lighting, we have composition and shot selection. This is another section that we could talk about for hours, but first let's cover some of the basics that will greatly improve your content and this one is important, don't hit the record button if you don't know what you're filming, it's very natural to just whip out your phone and start recording for the sake of recording, if you're just documenting a quick snapchat memory, that's fine, you're not breaking any rules here, but if you're trying to capture cinematic footage that you plan to edit together, this is bad and will make you fill your phone with content that you will never edit.

The reason behind this is that filming randomly means that you don't have a clearly defined theme in your videos and all content needs a defined theme. theme or it will just look amateurish, so for a really basic example, let's imagine you are filming your partner cooking dinner, what most people do is pick up their phone and just start filming by stitching together random shots with no movements. professionals. So they'll start with a wide shot and then maybe they'll move around and show the pasta and then they'll show the stove and they'll keep going back and forth and what they're doing is Basically, I'm trying to compress an entire video into one clip, but if you think about movies from Hollywood in professional commercials, it's not just one long clip that moves a lot, but there are many short clips that are edited together and each short clip is very specific.

If we change that situation above, what the professional content creator does is choose a specific topic and then create a move to highlight that topic and that's it, they will repeat this process over and over again choosing a specific topic and having a very planned clip To highlight that point, it's funny if you really think about the biggest difference between Hollywood movies and the things we shoot with our smaller cameras, the biggest difference is not the equipment we use, but the level of planning that goes into it. in the final product, so if you want to improve your content, the number one trick that will allow you to do it without spending money is to plan more.

If you think about it, television shows literally have years and months dedicated to planning specific shots. So if we add a little of that same essence to our videos, our content will look much better. That's a very high-level perspective on how composition and deliberation can improve our content to be more specific. Here, let's repeat. some quick composition tips make sure the lines in your scene are straight up and down or left to right while you're filming, nothing is more compensating than seeing a shot where the horizon is off all the time, study the rule of the thirds and try to align the subjects of your shot along the vertical and horizontal lines or, better yet, align them with the intersection of these lines look for patterns of symmetry in your shots, leading lines and, most important of all, Create depth with your composition.

Depth is essentially the art of doing. Your content feels immersive, three-dimensional, and realistic instead of flat, two-dimensional, and boring. There are a million and a half ways to create depth in an image, but my favorite strategy is to create more layers in your video. Familiar with the terms foreground, middle ground and background, when I say create more layers, I mean trying to add foregrounds and backgrounds to your shot. An easy trick to achieve this is to film against things, essentially creating a foreground that adds a new layer to your image. increasing the perceived depth in your content take a look at these two shots here we have a very small movement and in the first shot we don't have any foreground just our subject but in the second shot we do the same very small movement but now we have that new layer in the foreground and not only does it enhance that movement, but it also improves the overall depth of the shot, so in my opinion the best shots are those that have a foreground, a middle ground which is usually the subject and then a background.

On top of that, this is why in the setup you're seeing now I'm as far away from my computer in the back as possible. By increasing the distance between me and my computer I increase the depth creating a more distinct background in my scene well next in this video I want to talk about motion this is another crucial aspect of content creation that separates the amateurs from the professionals like composition before the best thing you can do is be deliberate in the way you use movement instead of just randomly panning and tilting to show your subject, which by the way are my least favorite movements, plan a specific scene and then use the movement to highlight that scene.

By doing so, your movements will be more controlled because you think more about them and they will help you. It reinforces everything we talked about earlier in the section about composition because movement exists to highlight the theme of the scene rather than just existing randomly without a clear reason to give you here some specific movements that you can easily adapt to basically all the content you shoot . Whenever I find myself anywhere and I don't know exactly what I want to do, I always make sure to do a push in motion, I usually do a pull motion, I do a truck, which is when you move the camera from right to left and I also do an arm movement, which is when you move the camera up and down doing those very simple movements and I know how simple they probably sound, but with a clearly defined theme it will enhance your content like crazy, it's much better than just standing there in a specific place and then just moving your body to keep the subject in the frame, now you might be wondering, okay, anthony, well, how do I create these smooth movements?

Well I'm glad you asked, believe it or not, modern smartphones are incredibly built. -In image stabilization that honestly allows you to capture smooth motion handheld, the key is that less is more when it comes to creating these motions, don't rush down the road filming handheld and expect the footage to look smooth, in Instead, plan small checks. movements that highlight the subject by linking a previous concept when filming against something in the foreground, you will actually increase the impact of small movements because the foreground will move much faster than what is further away in your image now if you want to push Go a Step further and purchase additional equipment to enhance your projects.

My number one recommendation for smartphone cinematography tools would be a motorized gimbal; My favorite is the OM5 sold by DJI. This will allow you to move faster and further with your camera while still keeping the footage pretty smooth, there are a lot of tools you can buy for making movies with smartphones and if you want me to make another video just talking about accessories let me know in the comments below and maybe we'll do it for our next youtube. video and while you're in the comments section, if you find this valuable, I would really appreciate the like button if you could hit it and maybe also the subscribe button all now last but certainly not least.

Speaking of capturing clean audio, I now realize that not everyone correctly records the same style of content and the audio changes depending on the type of content you are recording, so I will split this section into two different categories of content creators, those who They capture content. with people talking and those not, it's pretty simple if you're filming youtube videos with your smartphone audio it should be at the top of your list because nothing is more frustrating than watching a video where the audio sounds terrible, it's It's just very distracting and can really frustrate viewers. The good news is that the solution is easy and usually very affordable.

My recommendation would be to purchase the Pop Voice Pro Love Microphone on Amazon for about $14. You can connect it directly to your phone with the correct adapter. Clip it to your shirt and even if you're an arm's length away from the camera, your audio will sound crisp and clear like this compared to the built-in camera microphone, which now sounds terrible if the cable doesn't reach the phone. where you're filming, let's say you're filming another person whois walking around the room and you can't actually connect to the camera, you can simply plug that microphone into your phone in your pocket and open the voice recording app which will capture your audio and then you can take that audio into the editing room and sync it with the footage you shot and everything will be perfect now if you fall into that other category and you're not recording content with dialogue, let's say you're recording a travel video on vacation you still have to consider the audio, it's just in a different way, You may not have vocals that you need to record but you still want the sound of the waterfall, the ocean birds singing, chirping or calling, I don't know what. noise that ocean birds make, there is still audio that you absolutely want to capture in your final edit, but you probably won't be able to connect your lavatory microphone to ocean birds and capture them while they make those noises, so here in this situation, we have two options: Option A is to simply capture what you can using the camera's microphone and make sure to include those sounds and noises in your final edit or download sound effects from the Internet that represent the things you are showing. screen, you can download tons of free sound effects from YouTube, but if you're looking for a site, my favorite is epidemicsound.com.

They have a huge library of cool sound effects that you can get unlimited access to for just a monthly fee. Now you'll probably see people using shotgun microphones on their smartphones this way, but honestly, I've tried them and they don't do much better than the built-in camera microphone for recording sound effects. They sure are decent to talk to. audio but the moment you get further away from the camera the audio will start to suck and that's why I always recommend lava mics instead of shotgun mics on camera okay so you've filmed all your content now that you have the right app.

You already know the settings, understand how to light and compose your scenes, highlight your subject with smooth movements, and record high-quality audio. Now it's time to edit your amazing images together. The best thing here is that if you have done a good job concentrating on everything. What we've talked about today, editing will be much easier because it's always much more fun and easier to edit well-shot footage, with a plan and without major mistakes that you need to solve creatively with a lot of advanced editing. I'm not going to go too deep into editing here because the focus of this video is really on capturing great content and I know it's gotten pretty long already, but I will say my two favorite editing apps for smartphones are vn video editor for short content and simple on lumafusion for longer pieces like youtube videos or short films vn video editor is free and you can get it on Apple and Android devices, while lumafusion has a small fee and only works for Apple devices, although I will say that it was just announced that they are releasing a new version for Android users, which is great, but that's it for this video.

I really feel like if you focus on everything we covered today, you can easily 10x the quality of the content you shoot with your smartphones now, as I hinted at earlier in this video on contentcreator.com, we've had over 45,000 people sign up for our 14-day

filmmaking

master

class for filmmakers, giving people a step-by-step process to get familiar with their equipment and master the fundamentals of content creation without wasting time or money. We recently added two more courses to the 14 day cinemaker curriculum and we're excited to announce that the first is the 14 day cinemaker smartphone edition, which is a huge expansion of everything.

What we talk about in this video, we delve into absolutely everything you need to know to master creating content using your smartphone, we cover all the settings, the equipment to purchase all the intricacies of the editing process, behind the scenes breakdowns on how we actually filmed and edited. particular scenes and we do all this for each major category of smartphone content creation. We have a specific section that focuses only on YouTubers. We have another section for social media content creators and we even have a business section that teaches you how to make money with your camera. filming for other brands and companies, the second program we added is called a week-long director, which teaches you how to create compelling stories and turn your vision for a short film or documentary into reality, even if you have a limited experience budget and very little equipment.

Of camera. to mention that you also have access to the 14 day traditional filmmaker which covers professional DSLR cameras and advanced editing programs. We believe in affordable education so lifetime access to all of that is just 48 if you're looking to accelerate your learning I think this is a perfect place for you and the link to learn more about that program is in the description below this video. Other than that, thank you very much for watching this video and I'll see you in the next one.