Everything you need to know to shoot... everything.
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SHOOT LIKE THE EXPERTS
What You're Filming: Anything That Focuses on You
YouTube Natalie Alzate
Expert: Natalie Alzate, beauty vlogger, 4 million YouTube subscribers
Strategy: Setting the camera above you does make you look thinner. But for YouTube, you're more connected with your audience when the camera is at eye level.
Natural lighting is best, but that requires you to rely on the weather. I have two circle Diva Ring Light Nebulas on my left and my right, and an umbrella light right above me. It makes a huge difference.
You have three seconds to convince someone to click on a video. Pick the right still. Also, shrink your thumbnail down to the size it would be on a phone and ask, Will people be able to read that? A font called Bebas is best.The gear, techniques, and insight you need to consume and create the best videos on the internet.
What You're Filming: Stunts
Devin Supertramp
Expert: Devin Supertramp, adventurer, 4.6 million subscribers
Strategy: Avoid fish-eye lenses. When you have access to amazing locations, you want to show off the place, and fish-eye distorts the image. Use a wide-angle instead.
Have an intro in mind. I ask myself, How is this video gonna grab people's attention? In our rope-swing video, we had an archer fake-shoot a rope across the canyon, hook it to the rock, then jump off. That starts the story.
The idea is to make it feel like you're right there, but a lot of action sports and wildlife need to be shot from afar. Use a super-zoom lens to get up close.
Get the insurance. We're cautious and want our equipment to last, but if we're not putting it right in the action, we're not getting the shots that people love.
What You're Filming: DIY
Steve Ramsey
Expert: Steve Ramsey, Woodworking for Mere Mortals, 800,000 subscribers
Strategy: Keep the focus very specific—how to make a box-joint jig, for example. You could certainly show every detail of how you made a big project, but keeping it short enough to get people to watch is another story.
For a big project, put the dimensions of the boards in the detailed plans, and put those plans in the video's description. This allows you to show only the key moments that are unique to that particular project, and keep those shots down to just a couple of seconds.
Script any video that needs to be accurate. That's important for me when I'm talking about something like table-saw safety.
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Don't add too much production. I try to color-correct as best as I can, but if it's off, that's okay. I just use the camera mic and leave the room sound, so it's more like you're in the garage with me.
You can vary the camera angles, but it's more important to be sure you show the steps clearly.
What You're Filming: Sports
Craig Woloshin
Expert: Craig Woloshin, cameraman, NBC's Sunday Night Football
Strategy: For sports with action moving left to right or right to left, set up as close to the center line as possible. With only one camera, you want to be able to cover the whole field, and from there, you can see everything.
For sports without a dividing line, like baseball, create one. Position yourself behind home plate, in line with the pitcher's mound and second base. You can get good footage regardless of where things happen.
During action, focus on where things are happening. Use the breaks between plays to zoom in on your child. That way, you don't miss anything and still get shots of the people you want to see.
If you can, climb up the bleachers. Height helps you get as unobstructed a view of the entire field as possible.
What You're Filming: Driving
Ben Joiner
Expert: Ben Joiner, director of photography, Top Gear and The Grand Tour
Strategy: If you've got only one camera, don't just mount it in one place. Be strategic. Think, Lap one, a forward-facing shot. Lap two, facing the driver. Lap three, looking down the side of the car. Lap four, get a friend to jump in and do handheld shots. You come away with a selection that can create a narrative arc.
With larger cameras, use multiple anchor points. Buy a hot-shoe mount for the top of the camera, along with the bottom mount. That will make your shots much more stable, so you get less Jell-O effects.
Dedicate a bit of your day to recording sound.
When you're shooting from the inside of a hairpin bend, study the first pass. If the wheels lift or the tires smoke, jump up to 120 frames per second to get slow-mo of that detail. Next take, use a wide-angle lens and get the camera down low, close to the car. This will accentuate the turn.
In your edit, you can start with a wide shot that shows the whole scene, punch in tight to the tire tearing itself to pieces, smoke pouring off. Then, as it exits the corner, cut back to further up the road. Those shots tell the story of that corner, and what it's like to be near those cars.
What You're Filming: Snapchat Stories
Sallia Goldstein
Expert: Sallia Goldstein, Snapchatter with 30,000 views per story
Strategy: Plan out what you're going to shoot. When I'm showing something like a science experiment, I usually run through it once to make sure it works.
Get a tripod.
You can use a dry-erase marker on your phone, literally on the phone screen. I do a lot of stop-motion, and it's really hard to make sure your face is in the same position or the object is in the same position as it was last time. So I'll draw an outline of my face or the object with a dry-erase marker so I'll be able to take the same picture again.
Good lighting is so important. Dark, blurry snaps are so awful. Grab yourself a flashlight.
What You're Filming: Product Reviews
YouTube Maques Brownlee
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Expert: Marques Brownlee, who has 4.8 million YouTube subscribers
Strategy: A lot of devices, like smartphones, have reflective screens. To block reflections, find the window or light behind you that's causing it. Take literally anything and block it.
If you're reviewing tech with a display, don't set its screen brightness too high, because that will be overexposed relative to the environment, or too low, which can cause a shuttering effect when filming.
Look at the camera lens like you're talking to a person. And look away sometimes. It seems robotic when a person's eyes never leave the camera.
A review video is a purchase-decision tool. You have to go over all the nitty-gritty details of owning the thing, of the pros and cons. It's not a review if it's just a showcase of something's specs and price, or beauty shots.
Be decisive about where you want light. That's ultimately what video is, capturing moving light. Think, I want to light this behind me, but not have it spill over to this other thing, so I'll block that light from this camera over here. It helps a lot. When I was reviewing a TV, I had to change the lights every time I moved the camera, but that attention to detail makes your videos different.
What You're Filming: Anything Live
Rob Perez
Expert: Rob Perez, host of the Periscope TV show Buckets
Strategy: Bring as many backup batteries as you can, scout the Wi-Fi connections before you start, and make sure your phone doesn't overheat. (Take off the case or turn down the brightness.)
Interact with your viewers and commenters. I started with 30 to 50 total people and comments once every two to three seconds. Now I'm getting 15 comments every half a second. If a viewer writes something, I'm going to see it and I'm going to react to it. It's the hardest part of what we do, but it's also what people appreciate most.
YOU'RE GONNA NEED A LOT OF STUFF
Try a Lens
Wide-angle lenses take in more light and widen the field of what the viewer sees, which is especially useful in tight spaces like cars. It's a small difference that'll set your phone video apart from everyone else's. Moment lenses (starting at $80) come in macro, telephoto, wide, and fish-eye varieties. You'll need to buy the $30 case, but that ensures that the lens is always perfectly mounted.
Get a Joby
The Joby Gorillapod (starting at $20) has bendable arms that let you mount your phone on tree branches, wrap it around a skateboard for tracking shots, or just hold it as a small-scale selfie stick. It's great. There's a reason that every vlogger uses one and the inventor is a millionaire investing in flying cars.
You'll Want a Microphone, Too
Built-in microphones are just okay. They usually give you static. YouTuber Natalie Alzate says people won't even watch a video if there's static. She uses a Røde VideoMic Pro ($229) or a Sennheiser G3 ($800) when she's outside her studio. "It makes sure you capture just the voice, no static or background," she says.
Move Up From Your Phone. Eventually.
The Canon EOS 80D ($1,249) has a huge sensor, a flip-out monitor, and quiet and fast autofocus. The only downsides are its bulk and the fact that it doesn't shoot in 4K. The Sony RX100 IV ($900) is exceptional, especially considering its small size. It has video autofocus and a big sensor for low-light shooting. It'll do buttery-smooth slow-motion at 240, 480, or even 960 frames per second. It can't match the vividness you get from Canon's lenses, but the small size means having it everywhere, and it shoots in 4K.
Don't Be Scared to Invest (a Lot)
Marques Brownlee uses the RED Weapon 8K S35 ($75,000)."RED cameras have super-high resolution, amazing color science and range. They make it feel as realistic as possible," he says. The 8K resolution "means my footage will look good as YouTube evolves."
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One other camera to know about is from Hasselblad. Till now, Hasselblad cameras haven't been best for video. They shoot only 30 frames per second, and max out at 1080p. But that will all change later this year, when the renowned Swedish company plans to release some worthy competition.
Don't forget lighting
Nicholas Calcott
Natural light is always best. But it's not always an option. The Neewer 160 light ($30) attaches to the top of a camera or a stand. It uses LEDs so you get better color accuracy than you would with tungsten or fluorescent light.
My Favorite Accessory: HISY Bluetooth Camera Remote, $25
"The only piece of hardware I've spent money on was a shutter button. It's a button that you can Bluetooth-remote on your phone so you don't have to tap and hold the photo button, even in Snapchat. I can put my phone on a tripod and record without having to have my hand on the phone." —Sallia Goldstein, @salliasnap
Field Tested: The Gimbal Mount
Whether you're shooting with your phone or an expensive SLR rig, a gimbal will help stabilize your shots and prevent your videos from looking like they were shot by Jason Bourne after 16 cups of coffee. For your phone—especially larger ones like the 7 Plus and the Pixel XL—the Zhiyun-Tech Smooth Q ($139; pictured) takes only five minutes to set up. It works basically like a car mount: Your phone sits in the cradle. After getting everything balanced on all three axes using the gimbal's two sliders, you can power on the motors that will ultimately control the movements. It was much easier than I expected. I used the Zhiyun to annoy film my wife making dinner. I got way better shots than I expected and although it was just to practice, I was thrilled with my ultra-slow-motion pan of tomatoes cascading on to a fresh bed of salad greens.
For my SLR, a Canon 5D Mark IV with a 24–70mm lens and an attached Røde shotgun mic, I tried the Ikan EC1 three-axis gimbal ($799). Balancing a big SLR with a long lens was way harder than balancing a phone. The center of gravity is harder to figure out and I was worried the whole thing would tip over and break before I got to shoot anything. All this was made worse when I tried to assemble and balance the rig at a dusty racetrack. Worst of all, it was heavy. After 14 hours of shooting a motorcycle race in Kentucky in the hot sun, my hands, back, and shoulders ached. That's when I appreciated the joystick. I could set the whole rig on a flat surface and pan by moving the stick. The video came out great. My back, however, still feels terrible.—Michael Wilson
HOW TO EDIT
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• by Joe Walker, Academy-Award-nominated film editor of 12 Years a Slave, Arrival, Shame, and the upcoming Blade Runner 2049.
Be bold. If footage hasn't grabbed you in 30 seconds, you don't stand a chance. You have to arrest people right away. From there, think economically. Give yourself the freedom to use only what's most effective and ignore the rest. Don't be frightened to cut big chunks out. When the audience knows where it's going, they don't mind skipping over something. Simplicity and elegance—that's what you're aiming for.
My style, if I have one, is to try to do the maximum with the least amount of actions. It's kind of slow, to be honest. Not boring. To me it's a balance between tension and speed. If it's tense, then it's never going to feel slow. If I'm cutting a dramatic scene, I try to find the most economical way around the scene that shows you everything you need to know. I'm guessing where an audience might want to look. Maybe that's a reaction, or it could be the action itself. If scenes are too busy, it has the effect of making the thing feel too long. If it's very cutty—endlessly bouncing around—that's a turnoff.
Sometimes showing where everyone is in the scene is not as effective emotionally as showing something very specific and unique. Remember: Just because they shot it doesn't mean you have to use it. When I see someone holding my hand too tight, I kind of reject it like a skin graft. It feels like I'm being pushed. I like to find my own way around a story, to invest. I want to be drawn into a screen rather than just sit back passively.
Concentrate on an edit that works without music. Even if you know it needs music, it should still stand on its own two feet as a visual and verbal piece. Sometimes Denis [Villeneuve, the director of Blade Runner 2049 ] and I will turn the sound off completely. If it works visually, then you have a clue that it will work with everything. Once you're satisfied that you've given the film the greatest scrutiny in its barest, most unpolished form, that's when you allow music and sound effects in.
SHOULD I LET SOFTWARE EDIT FOR ME?
New apps use image analysis to automatically edit your footage down to the exciting bits. Popular Mechanics video producer Ryan Mazer tested three of them to see if they'd render him obsolete.
Magisto (web only)
The final video is long, but still feels edited. There are no embarrassing cuts, and it didn't omit anything important. The best of the three.
Shred (iOS)
It picked out a cool scene and made it slow-mo, which I like. But it does so much of the work for you that it's not customizable. And it did a fade-to-black, which is tacky.
Flo (iOS)
The final movie was shorter than the others, but somehow not as tightly edited. It has a lot of dead air with nothing happening.
WHERE TO SAVE ALL THIS STUFF
External hard drives are fast, mostly reliable, and cheaper than buying the same amount of space from Dropbox. Western Digital's hard drives are consistently among the fastest, and the brand has an unmatched reputation for reliability. Get an 8-terabyte (350 hours of 4K video files) My Book for $200. If transferring files just sounds like too much work, you can always use Google Photos. It compresses anything you shoot down to 1080p HD, but it's the only truly unlimited, free option.
THE BEST SOFTWARE FOR REGULAR PEOPLE
iMovie (Mac)
YouTube Video Editor (Web)
HitFilm 4 Express (PC)
These apps are free and use the basic method of all movie editors: drag, copy, and trim video and audio segments into a narrative. They don't let you get deep with sound effects and transitions, but you can make a name on YouTube with any of these.
THE BEST SOFTWARE FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO BE BETTER THAN REGULAR PEOPLE
Adobe Premiere Pro ($20 a month)
Premiere has superseded Final Cut as the unanimous choice of professionals. You're paying for customizable tools like stabilization, color correction, and titles. If you're going to commit to learning video editing on one application, this is it.
FIELD TESTED: THE PORTABLE STUDIO
I pushed a lot of carts filled with switchers and camera cables down the halls of my high school. Like the dark clothes and fashionably unwise choices in eyewear, it was part of being in the AV Club. It was a tangly hassle—and nothing like the new SlingStudio. This $999 multi-camera production platform lets you record from, switch between, and edit four high-definition-video inputs in real time from as many as ten connected smartphones and cameras. The best part: You don't have to string any cables or hook up all those switchers. If you have two linked cameras 300 feet from each other, you won't also have to run 300 feet of crowd-trampled cable between them. Just plug the somewhat chunky wireless sending unit into any HDMI-enabled camera, and it automatically syncs with the SlingStudio hub. Connect your phone or tablet (assuming it's an iPhone 6 or later, or from a limited list of Android devices) to the hub with the app, and you can stream the outputs of any connected camera to Facebook Live or YouTube, or record it all to an onboard SD card or USB drive to edit later. The SlingStudio hub provides its own Wi-Fi access point, so you don't need to worry about your location having connectivity. Or power: The battery-operated hub lasts up to three hours on a charge. My only complaint is with setup and configuration. It's not fun. You need patience and, ideally, experience with streaming video to set up all of the different Wi-Fi links and devices. It's far from plug-and-play, but the wireless setup will change the way you record studio-quality video—and the number of people you trip while you do it. —Dan Dubno
SEVEN PLACES OTHER THAN YOUTUBE TO POST OR WATCH VIDEOS
Vimeo
YouTube's less famous, more polished cousin. It has no advertisements and is generally a venue for professionals. (The series High Maintenance came out on Vimeo before getting picked up by HBO.) Basic membership is free, or you can pay $240 a year for a Pro membership, which allows 4K video, lets you restrict access to your videos, and gives you 20 GB of uploads each week.
Twitch.tv
Credit (or blame) Twitch for making watching other people play video games a successful video genre. The site is entirely game footage, what you'd see on the screen of Minecraft or Mario, with the player's head in the corner, narrating—and likely shouting. We'd laugh more if it weren't actually kind of addictive. And if 100 million people didn't use the site every month.
Dailymotion
A video-sharing site similar to YouTube, but with 10 million daily viewers instead of 30 million. And more relaxed restrictions on nudity. It's a mix of professional (Larry King interviews, movie trailers) and amateur (civilian footage of Julia Roberts shopping). The site recently added a Netflix-style recommendation engine.
Vevo
The resource for official music videos in crisp resolution. Vevo also plays on YouTube, which is why you'll sometimes see channels listed as the artist's name plus "Vevo."
Scrop
An app-only social media network, like Vine, with 15-second videos. The app posts a topic (the Kardashians, public breast-feeding, the president's latest speech), and users reply with short video responses, which other users rank.
LiveLeak
Want to bum yourself out for a few hours? This site is a repository of user-generated videos posted in the name of public awareness, some of which are violent assaults, explosions, and shootings.
Live.ly
A live-video app primarily populated by teenage girls, who rate the platform's most famous personalities with "Likes." Its other metric: "Gifts," tokens of appreciation for which viewers pay up to $99 and send to the performer. Users also earn gift credits by watching ads.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/apps/how-to/a27911/how-to-do-everything-video/
