Intro hi I’m Jason van Gendron I’ve known as the pocket filmmaker and I’ve compiled today these six pocket filmmaking tips to help you shoot better quality movies at home with nothing more than your mobile phone now to start with tip Screen Orientation number one is actually a really common mistake a lot of people do when they’re filming with their mobile phones and that is screen orientation so when you’re actually shooting your video if you hold your camera this way the chances are you can be shooting video in portrait mode which means when you put it on your computer or in your TV screen you get those big black bars by the side of your picture and your pictures very long tall and skinny so remember to turn your camera around to a landscape format and make sure you shoot your your video in the same aspect as the screen which you’re going to watch on I can now if Holding the Camera you’ve got really really shaky hands when you’re holding one of these these camera devices to film with you’re not alone lots of people do it so tip number two is just for you when you’re holding the camera remember screen orientation landscape most people tend to hold it away from their body like this like it’s a foreign object and they try and hold away away just to see the screen and what happens is your arm ends up acting like a massive lever so any vibration that goes along your arm is picked up by the phone and succeeded okay so tip number two is really really simple that is just keep your camera closer to your body if you if you bring your arms back in like this and tuck your elbows into your body it’s a far more steady picture and if in doubt use both hands to steady the shot Band the Zoom okay now tip number three a really really simple one and that is band the zoom if it’s one function I could ban on all mobile phone cameras it would be the digital zoom now keep in mind when people use the digital zoom it doesn’t matter whether you got a two time zoom or six times or an eight times digital zoom they’re not optical so they’re not using the glass and the lens to enlarge the picture they’re actually utilizing the pixels that you’re capturing the picture with and just enlarging those the picture quality is no better in fact it’s worse so if you’re going to zoom in on something use your body use your camera move into the object if I going to film that this particular camera I going to move into the camera like this and then move back again to show it it’s a far more interesting shot and your audience will thank you for it tip Vary Your Shots number four is to vary your shots now believe it or not that’s really the common mistake people make when they stand there and they’re filming Christmas at home or the holidays or something like that and that is you just stand there in the one spot like you’re a tree rooted to the ground and you just stand there and you film and you film in your film and you might be filming for a couple of minutes and it’s okay were you actually capturing the action you’ve got everything else happening in the background but as soon as you take that film home and you try to show other people they’ll just find standing in that one position for four or five minutes and wait boring so when I say very the shots going show a wide shot so stand back and film the whole scene that you’re trying to capture and then go in and show individual things within the scene so for instance if you’re filming the unwrapping at Christmastime of all the presents stand back in the room show all the family gathered around the tree show them ripping the paper off nice big wide scene and then come in really nice and tight and film hands-on presents ripping off paper or ribbons or sticky tape then you pull the camera up and look at someone’s expression when they just open up something then someone else’s reaction to that and maybe it’s a toy that’s unwrapped on the floor that’s being played with so think about all the little things within the scene as well as the big picture and make sure you try and show all of those things together not just the one boring steady shot okay Keep Talking now tip number five is to keep talking now when I say keep talking if you’re filming a video yourself particularly your family at Christmastime you’re in a perfect position got in a rate so you know when you when you often film a video clip and you play it back to family afterwards on the television or in the computer and there’s nothing being spoken and said you feel like you need to narrate over the top of it as you’re watching the video back now you can imagine every time you play it having to do that it gets pretty tiresome so the great thing to do is to save yourself the energy when you’re filming and you’re filming a scene in front of you you’re only you know 10 or 15 minutes away from the actual camera so start talking talk over the top of what you’re recording and give people a bit of a sense of the place and what’s going on for all time sake so whenever you play this clip back you’re going to hear your story told exactly the same way at that moment as you’re recording it it’s a really really simple tip and it works really really well Editing now my final tip for creating fantastical home movies this Christmas is for those that got a fear of editing okay now editing is a bit of a craft so not everybody’s got the skills or the want to be able to do an edit job on their particular home video so there’s two ways you can approach it now the first way you could do it is to just record what we call a one-shot wonder which is let’s try and record the whole scene with a whole activity that you’re trying to capture in the one shot and that will work if you remember those two other tips I just spoke about which is various shot size so show the big scene that come in and show smaller things within the scene as well and the other thing to do then is to narrator narrate over the top of it so remember to keep talking and explaining the action and what’s going on for those that are a little bit more adventurous if you’re filming on a device like an iPhone there’s there’s literally hundreds and hundreds of video editing apps that you can now get some which are for free to download which will allow you to combine the video that you’re shot and some still photos as well and even some music and put together a really really simple edited film clip now one of these apps that’s really really cracking and very popular out there is called videolicious so I’ll put that up on the bottom of the screen at the moment videolicious allows you to go exactly through your video clips in your photos select which ones you want to use you can select the template or a theme for the Edit and allows you to choose some music from your iTunes library as well to compile with the clip and you just press a button within like two minutes you’ve rented out a narrative video clip which is really cool so two things to keep in mind one is the one-shot wonder if you want to try and film something all in the one very your shot size and the rate over the top of your video as you’re recording the second thing if you want to be a bit adventurous try videolicious it’s a fantastic little app for the iPhone you know heaps of fun with it that’s it for me that’s my top six tips for helping you get a cracking home movie together this Christmas now remember you can follow my blog to keep in touch with all the latest things with pocket filmmaking or else if you’re interested in anything like these little groovy lenses that I these magnetic lenses to attach to the front of your phone to give you different sorts of shot sizes on these kooky different covers and things I’ve got you can jump into my online store pocket filemaker combo you you can get those easily through there have a fantastic Christmas enjoy your filmmaking get out your phone remember these six tips and you’ll have some awesome Christmas videos to remember for a long long time
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