Go Cheap And Go Big: Beginner’s Guide To Shooting With A Smartphone
- Jan 20, 2018
- 4 min read
Who knew shooting a feature-length film with just a smartphone is actually legitimate in Hollywood? That is... Welcome to the future where sophisticated shooting devices are just in everyone’s pocket.
(Image from Mysplash.com)
Filmmaking equipment is now getting smaller cheaper and more powerful than ever thanks to the development of the latest technologies. These little pocket devices known as the smartphones are beginning to take a leap into the world of filmmaking especially having cutting-edge camera features that are able to provide filmmaking needs like the 360-degree view, Leica lenses, 4K recording quality and more.
[Steven Soderbergh at Sundance Film Festival 2017. Photo courtesy from cinema5d.com]
“I think shooting films with smartphones is the filmmaking future. anyone who sees this movie and has no idea of the production backstory will never know that this was shot using a smartphone,” said Steven Soderbergh, director and producer of Magic Mike and The Ocean’s Eleven.
These innovations are providing the film industry only way to adapt and adopt new methods of producing quality films. It could be that we have reached a turning point in modern cinema where huge expensive cameras and a massive number of crews would no longer be a factor for the success of an award-worthy film.
“There is no excuse now. Start shooting movies with your smartphone.” Soderbergh says in an interview with Indiewire.
With that said, here are eight steps on how to shoot a great video using your smartphone:
1. Clean The Lens
First things first, make sure that your rear end camera is free from dust particles and fingerprint marks. Having a dirty camera lens is the least unnecessary mistake that you would want to make. Not judging the fact that there may sometimes be environmental factors with low light settings that could add noise that could straight up spoil your footage. Also make sure that your fingers are clear from the camera view. You wouldn’t want any out-of-focused thumb being the centre of attention of a footage, do you?
2. Check Your Camera Settings
Most smartphones now have options for you to toggle between camera shutter speed and ISO settings, even the recording frame rates. It is best to pick the highest definition and highest frame rate possible to avoid laggy footage. Default smartphone cameras now come with 1080 24fps which works great, but if there is an option that holds 60fps, then take that. However, this would also mean that your phone storage would take up even more space.
3. Change Your Storage Settings
Before recording makes sure to go into your camera settings and change the photo storage location to an external SD card that has more storage space than your internal SD card. The recommended storage space for the external SD card would be 64 gigabytes.
Although purchasing the 64 gigabytes SD card would be slightly more expensive than that 32 gigabytes, it is much more convenient than to constantly transferring all footage files to your hard disc or computer every once in a while. We want to make sure that it is the most convenient and effective way of filmmaking so make sure you get all your required settings ready.
4. Apply Your Cinematography Skills
When all your settings are done don't forget to apply your basic filmmaking knowledge. Some photography rules like the rules of thirds, symmetry and camera angles could be applied for filmmaking. Make sure to check where the light is coming to eliminate as many shadows as possible. Check out our ultimate checklist of cinematography angles here, and if you want to know more industry tips and tricks of cinematography, head over to our podcast where we interview a commercial videographer to tell you more about it.
5. Shooting Stabilisation
Shooting with a smartphone maybe easy to handle compact to carrying a heavy camera body but that doesn't mean stabilisation of footage is taken out of this equation. sure some of you may have steady hands but when it comes to camera panning, tracking or dolly, it is time to invest a little into a phone stabiliser.
Some brands like Fotopro would have cheaper prices compared to sophisticated ones like Gorilla, but for a frugal filmmaker like me, I would use a bendable tripod as both a stabiliser and a shoulder rig like so. the footage would be much more controllable compared to free-hand held. With a little bit of post-production editing to stabilise the footage, it would look just as good as it was filmed on a real stabiliser.
6. Audio Recording
Unless that you are filming a post-narrated short or a music video, you wouldn't need to worry about audio recording. Other than that, it is recommended that you must invest a little bit in the microphones for your phone camera or a handheld external microphone to be synced later with the footage.
Personally, I will always avoid recording audio directly while the phone is shooting. Instead, I would dub the character’s dialogue in post-production or record it with an external microphone that is attached to my phone. Check out the list of gears that I always swear by for filmmaking here, especially for audio recording.
7. Editing
It is actually easier to edit directly with downloadable smartphone video editing apps, but with limited editing transitions and effects of course. For lengthy feature film productions or professional corporate videos, I would recommend that you export all the footage to your computer and edit it from there or else it will take up a lot of your phone batteries power, phone storage and decrease its video quality.
You have to understand that there are some videos that can be edited and exported fully from a phone, but some can't. Editing with a smartphone is best for short videos around five minutes. Anything more, use a computer. Click here to see the list of free software and apps that I always use for editing my short films in both smartphone and laptop.
8. Exporting
After all, is done, here are some tips to remember when exporting your videos. Smartphones normally export videos in MP4 format, that is 1080 x 720 pixels; whereas MOV files are of higher definition, it could go up to about 2K, but would take up a lot of storage space. It depends on what kind of video you take.
If it is a casual vlog video and MP4 format would be good enough as it's uploading speed is faster than the MOV format. Other than that, it is best to stick with the MOV format.
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