Shoot CINEMATIC travel videos on your smartphone [iPhone & Androids]

in this video we're going to cover the number one strategy for shooting cinematic travel videos using your smartphone nowadays you do not need to spend thousands of dollars on all the expensive gear it's actually easier to get better looking shots using the camera that's always in your pocket and I'm going to be showing you real life examples from our lung flung trip in Italy my name is Anthony Gallo from contentcreator.com let's dive into it so Pro tip number one is to Define what type of travel video you want to shoot I personally think there are about four different styles the first is what I call just a cinematic highlight it's set to music Beautiful Clips usually maybe one to five minutes depending on how long your trip was after that we have a hybrid between a vlog and a cinematic highlight so this is where you're talking to the camera maybe giving the audience some perspective on what you're doing but you cut back and forth from these cinematic kind of showcases that then go back to the talking section after that you have like an educational video where it's hey I'm in this spot it's beautiful but here's what to do here's what we think almost like a review of the destination I know personally I watch these all the time when I'm planning my trip and then last but not least we have short form content so Instagram reels Tick Tock videos they're basically unlimited amounts of these on the internet so maybe find some that inspire you put your own creative Twist on it and then you can go from there so Pro tip number two builds off number one and that's to plan the core scenes of your video now obviously when we're traveling things happen and we can't control it we just capture them as they do but there are core elements in any trip that we can control plan and those are going to be the pillars of our video that almost anchor the viewing experience from one stage to another so to be really basic you have the beginning of the trip packing your things traveling to the destination you have a couple destinations or locations throughout your trip that you know you're going to be there you can control when you're going to be there those are areas that you can plan the crap out of and then finally you have the end process you're going home packing your bags cheering a glass of champagne to an amazing trip and on top of planning your core scenes you also want to plan specific transition that you want to do throughout your travels a lot of people are always looking for the perfect transition effect that they can download and use on their footage after it's all been shot but the best transitions the ones that you see online that you absolutely love they were filmed on location with a specific purpose in mind all pre-planned a few examples of transitions that we planned during this trip my favorite has got to be the match cut for this transition I filmed Courtney walking from left to right in the frame at a bunch of different really cool locations I made sure that the distance from my camera to Courtney walking was almost always exactly the same this way in the edit I can cut between all these different locations keeping Courtney in the same spot it makes for a really cool effect another super fun and really easy transition to do are the whip transitions this is when you film your scene and then you end by whipping the camera in a specific Direction and then in a new shot you start that scene by whipping the camera almost continuing off that movement you can cut at the peak of the action and when you play the two clips together you now have this seamless transition all right Pro tip number three is to bring the right gear and you don't need to spend hundreds of dollars on accessories at the end of the day if you're on a limited budget the best thing you can do is save up and buy one of the most updated smartphones because those will internally have software and camera features that make it so that you don't need to bring all this extra gear around which is personally always my goal we have an entire video on this channel where we talk about our highest rated smartphone so I'll link that above definitely go and check that out now if you do have an older smartphone something made before 2019 you're not going to have the best internal stabilization so the number one tool I would recommend is a smartphone gimbal like those sold by DJI or Zion those are going to help you get smoother shots which will make your videos definitely look better now after a gimbal it's not the most exciting tool but a tripod is extremely helpful for filming yourself setting up your composition getting landscape shots filming time lapses it's an essential tool in every videographer's toolkit you can find them on Amazon for for super cheap this is a peak design carbon fiber tripod it is my favorite tripod but it's very expensive and I'll link some more affordable ones in the description below now after that we have a variable ND filter this is the one sold by shopmoment.com these are basically like sunglasses for your Smartphone when you mount them on your camera it's going to cut down on the amount of light hitting your sensor this is going to allow you to lower your shutter speed which increases the natural motion blur in your videos it's going to make it look more lifelike more cinematic which absolutely is something I recommend up next we have something that almost everyone asks me and that would be one smartphone lens now I don't use lenses all the time but if I ever do I use the 58 millimeter lens by sandmark I love this first off because it has a universal Mount you can use it on any smartphone but that lens is important because all the smartphones out there right now they have built-in cameras for Ultra wide wide and telephoto that's all great but the telephoto lens is usually pretty pretty bad it's going to have the highest aperture which we don't want it's going to have the smallest sensor which isn't good so this Lens comes in handy because it's going to give us the same zoomed in look but if we place it over the main camera on our smartphone it's going to continue using the better sensor the lower aperture and still give us that zoomed in look we'll even get a little of that natural blurred out background which so many people want for the microphones they fall through the crack [Music] what in the darn hell oh I put it back in the microphone pocket and you Dingus last but not least and this depends on what type of video You're filming you're also going to want to get a microphone now what I'm using to record this video is the rode Wireless go to microphones I actually have a lot of mic plugged in underneath my shirt a little bit more of an affordable option is the zoom h1n that paired with the Loft mic is going to get you great results by the way we do have a full video covering all of my favorite smartphone accessories I'll link it somewhere above check that out after this video I just watched back the final video before posting and I realized I forgot to ask people to subscribe so please if you find this content valuable hit that subscribe button and as a thank you here's a cute video of a puppy Milo come here buddy hey come here say hi hey yes aren't you the cutest we want to play with your toy he doesn't know where the camera is but that's okay all right Pro tip number four is to film at the right time of day now it doesn't matter what gear you have even if you have the best filter if you film in the middle of the day when the sun is highest in the sky it's just not going to look good because the sun is Harsh and at that time of the day it is super harsh it's going to make all of your human subjects just not look good so what I recommend doing as hard as this may sound is to plan your day accordingly so you do something cool in the morning film that when the sun looks good then midday for us that's usually when we catch up on work maybe do a little bit of editing we'll go out to eat we'll do something that we really have no intention of filming that way we don't set the expectation of filming something amazing and then having it look terrible because of the bad lighting now if you have no other choice but to film during the middle of the day here are some tips that will help you out up first try to focus on the action sequence and not tight shots on your subjects because your subjects in harsh lighting never going to look good but if you have a really cool action sequence like a hike jumping off a cliff going to this amazing Scenic location the sequence can still look good when the focus isn't directly on the people now after that try to really avoid air areas of super harsh contrast basically any area where part of your scene is really bright and the other part of your scene is really dark smartphones and even expensive cameras just don't have enough dynamic range to make these shots look good what ends up happening is a ton of contrast that isn't flattering you lose a lot of saturation in your colors and the overall image just starts looking flat so ideally you want to film in an area that is all really bright or all in the shade like under trees or wait for a cloud to cover the Sun that way the lighting is uniformed with very little contrast then finally if you're filming just General locations filling into the sun it's going to look a lot better than filming with the Sun at your back the only time you break this rule is if you're filming subjects faces if you're feeling into the sun it won't look that good because it's almost going to be a silhouette you're not going to see much of their face so in that instance rotate your subject slightly so they're getting hit on one side from the Sun and on the other side they have a little bit more of a shadow to it pro tip number five is to really focus on cinematic composition so the first thing you're going to want to do is go into your settings and turn on the grid lines this is going to separate your frame into thirds both vertically and horizontally now when you're filming subjects you want to put those subjects on one of these vertical lines and ideally you want the head of your subject at the intersection of one of these lines when you're filming Landscapes you want the Horizon of your scene to be online with that lower horizontal line and also use it to make sure that your horizon is level and not tilted now if you're traveling to places with amazing architecture symmetry is something that you can use in your frames to give it a more professional look in those instances you just want to make sure that your subject is in the center not on one of the thirds now one of the biggest things that you can do to enhance the composition of your frame is to add depth through having layers kind of like an onion we've talked about this before in the channel you've probably heard the terms foreground in background before and that's what we want in our videos if you can place an object that's not your subject in the foreground this could mean filming low so that the ground round is actually in the foreground or you could put a bush a tree a chair anything that's just going to show off the three-dimensional depth in the scene from there you'd have your subject in the mid ground which is the middle and then behind them you'll have the landscape the beautiful architecture the scenery whatever it is that's going to be the background now our video has layers foreground mid-ground background and it's going to look so much more three-dimensional than if you have nothing in the foreground or if your subject is just right up against the background and then last but not least we want one beautiful composition per shot don't have these long Clips where you change the composition 100 times short clips one composition per clip now building on top of cinematic composition tip number six is all about the camera angles now in Hollywood they use the term coverage and it basically means filming one scene from as many different angles as possible so when you're editing that scene you can cut between all the different options you have and you aren't limited to just one take so again with travel videos you don't have the ability to film everything 15 different times from a bunch of different angles but whenever you do have a controlled scene make sure that you're filming a wide shot a medium shot and a tight shot that's the general rule of thumb that will give you decent coverage but try not to film these scenes by just putting your camera up at eye level and switching between the different cameras on your smartphone instead maybe film one low looking up you can film one at eye level you can film another one looking through a bush or a tree that way we add some more depth to our scene like we talked about before now when we talk about the different cameras on our phone we want to use them all to get decent coverage but each one actually has its own specific purpose as well so if we're talking Landscapes action shots things with a lot of movement where maybe the camera is jerking around a lot and you still need the shot to look smooth that's where we want to use the wide angle lens it gives us the widest field of view so we can capture the entire scenery because it's also such a low focal length it's super smooth in the stabilization within our phones will help even more it really just gives the viewer a sense of being right in the action as if they were there themselves now up after that the 1X or the standard wide lens on your phone that's good for basically everything but also keep in mind it has the largest sensor the lowest aperture meaning the video coming out of that camera is going to be the highest quality so if you're ever in a situation where the lighting isn't perfect that lens is going to be really good it's a natural focal length for enhancing the way people look so if you're doing portrait style shots where the focus is a human face the standard wide lens is almost always my go-to it is very little Distortion compared to the ultra wide angle lens which if you get too close to a person's face or if you place your subject along the edges of the frame they're going to look pretty dang weird and then last but not least you have the telephoto lens on your camera this one in particular I really only use if I have something that's just so far away this is the only lens that is actually going to capture it or I'll use it for quick cutaways let's say we have a wide angle shot where we show a bell tower off in the distance then I'll do a quick cutaway shot with the telephoto lens to give the viewer a little bit more perspective but Big Picture This is the camera on our smartphone that's going to have the lowest quality footage in general so I use it sparingly or I'll use that 58 millimeter telephoto third party lens sold by sandmark and place that over my wide angle camera now Pro tip number seven is to focus on cinematic movements one of the most common mistakes that I see beginners make in their travel videos is they go to a location they pull out their phone and they just point it around at all the different things that look cool you do not want to just take one clip where you move the camera back and forth to all these different things you want to take a series of small short clips each focusing on just one movement at a time now on this channel we have an entire video that focuses on cinematic movements with smartphones but for the most part focus on just these four core elements up first you have the two Classics you have the Cinematic push in and pull out I know these sound simple but they are so powerful at adding a little bit of cinematic movement to your scene now after that I love the jib movement which is where we start low and slowly raise up our camera I usually do this as a subject is walking by which allows us to introduce the viewer to this new location that we're at and then last but not least we have the truck which is where we very slowly move the camera from right to left or left to right and this is not a pan which is where we rotate the camera from right to left the truck is a little bit more cinematic now those are the four movements I do it almost every new location I go to they edit together extremely well so you can have one fluent sequence now once I've captured those four staple movements I will then get a little bit more creative sometimes I'll mix in a POV shot where I'm just filming as if the camera is behind my own eyeballs on top of that I'll also start mixing movements together where I direct my subject to do something very specific so a lot of times I'll have Courtney start behind me I'll point the camera at the ground and slowly move back and tilt the camera up as she walks by or if we're going to a new location I'll tell her to walk up to one spot look up at the amazing thing that we just got to I'll Parallax around her which is where the camera rotates around and it'll end focusing on her face as she looks up at the actual focus of the landscape whatever it is that we're seeing biggest key though is to just focus on those short individual movements in each clip it's going to make editing your entire sequence together so much easier and it will look 10 times more cinematic okay Pro tip number eight is all about the editing and I'm going to start by answering one of the most asked questions what is the best editing program or app now like so many of these questions there isn't just one answer but there are a handful of really good apps that I recommend to everyone if you're editing on a computer which is usually what I opt for because I like the extra screen real estate I would recommend Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve Premiere Pro is a monthly investment but it is the industry standard when it comes to editing software on the other hand DaVinci Resolve is just as powerful but also free to download and get started with due to that one simple fact it's usually the software that I recommend to beginners on a budget now if you really want to edit on a smartphone my three favorite apps are the end video editor tap cat in Wilma Fusion VN in cap cut are very simple apps that I love using for social media they're really easy to use and have some really Advanced features as well but if you are looking for more of a computer style editing app on your smartphone lumafusion is what I would recommend now if you are aware we have entire editing miniseries for all of the programs I just mentioned in our online course 14 day filmmaker but we'll get to that later now when it comes to actually editing the content one of the biggest things I would advise you of is to keep your videos short and super condensed with only your highest quality Clips with the way attentions fans are in 2023 it's usually better to have a 30 second to one minute video than a two to five minute long video where there are some slow sections that people are going to get bored of a lot of times I'll ask myself is the purpose of this video to get views or to preserve memories for myself if it's to get views take that advice but if it's to preserve memories do whatever the heck you want make it as long as you want because the video is for you and not your viewers now what I usually do while traveling at the end of each day I'll take all my footage put it on my computer or organize it on my smartphone I'll import it into my editing app throw it all in a timeline and go through it at a medium speed where I delete all the clips that are just kind of garbage and I know that I'm not going to use even some of the good Clips I'll trim them down to just the parts that I feel are cinematic and worthy of being in a video it's a small investment of time each day but when you actually do sit down to edit the final video a lot of the very tedious and time-consuming work has already been done and you did it when the videos were really fresh in your head then my last tip for this editing section is while you're actually on your trip if you had specific and maybe complex transitions that you already planned out which you should have at the end of the day you shot that transition bring it into the editing program and just practice doing a rough edit of that transition because the last thing you want is to get home start editing your video and realize that one of the transitions that you were really hyped for didn't turn out the way that you wanted if you practice that edit on the trip you'll know then and there and you can refilm it while your trip is still going now we're going to roll right into Pro tip number nine which is to have of the right export settings for the platform that you're going to post on now I'll make this one short and sweet there's really two settings that you need to focus on the first is the resolution of your video and then the next is the bit rate which is usually identified with Mbps for megabits per second on platforms that are optimized for long-form Content like YouTube and Vimeo they like 4K resolutions so make sure you select high quality 4K and I usually opt for a bit rate in the 40 to 50 megabits per second range now on the other hand we have social media platforms like Instagram Tick Tock and Facebook they will compress your footage if the files are too big and when we export in 4k with a high bitrate that means the files are going to be large we want to avoid compression because it does not make our videos look good if you ever posted a video and it ended up looking grainier and just kind of not as sharp as it was when you edited it it's probably because of compression so if I know the video is going to be posted to these platforms I will always export in 10 NEP resolution this is going to make the file size smaller and for the bit rate I'll usually go in the 5 to 15 megabits per second depending on the length of the video if it's a really short video we can maybe get away with 15 megabits per second but if it's long I'll opt for much lower Pro tip number 10 is all about having the right camera settings on your smartphone up first the most important camera setting is to film in the right frame rate now with travel videos a lot of times we're going to slow the footage down and to have slow motion we need to film at a higher frame rate so I film almost all the time at 60 frames per second that's going to allow you to slow the footage down by a factor of two if your final video is in 30 frames per second or you can slow it all the way down to 40 percent of the original speed if you're going to edit in 24 frames per second now there are only two exceptions to when I change my frame rate out of 60 frames per second the first is if it's talking head footage like this I'm going to film that in 24 frames per second and after that if I'm filling in an area where the lighting is just not that bright I'll drop the frame rate to 24 or 30 frames per second which is going to allow more light to get into the video so we'll have less noise and it'll look better now almost all smartphones nowadays have HDR motor high dynamic range mode it's really valuable but some computer editing programs don't really like it all that much if you're going to edit on a computer turn HDR mode off if you're going to edit on your smartphone keep HDR mode on because all the smartphone apps they already know how to handle HDR footage moving on we already mentioned it in this video but make sure you go into the settings and turn those grid lines on so you can follow the rule of thirds and improve your composition and last but not least we have to talk about cinematic mode so if you have an iPhone 13 an iPhone 14 the new Samsung phones like the s23 ultra these have built-in cinematic modes that are basically going to Auto detect the subject and blur out everything behind it kind of mimicking the look that you get from a more expensive camera with a lens that has a super low aperture if you have cinematic mode I think it's a great thing to test and try out in your videos I don't use it all that much in my travel videos because my favorite lens for travel videos where we have Landscapes is the ultra wide and you can't use cinematic mode with that but if you have like an intimate scene where you really want to focus on a human subject maybe you want to get a cool Parallax and get that super smooth Ultra cinematic look it is something worth trying and sprinkling in your video from time to time now look that was a long video we covered a ton and I really hope you found all of that useful and you can implement it in your own travel videos the reality here though is we probably could have made that video an hour and a half long even two hours long because there is just so much when it comes to squeezing as much quality out of your smartphone now if you've made it this far in the video I can all but guarantee you will absolutely love our online course for smartphone filmmakers it's called 14 day filmmaker it only costs 48 dollars but it has so much more content just like this that will help you master the process of both shooting and editing amazingly cinematic smartphone videos when you enroll you get lifetime access to everything which means all the content in the course all the bonuses are student community on face book where I personally host a live q a call every single week not to mention all the other downloadable bonuses like editing templates sound effects cheat sheets there's honestly so much we cover all the gear that you may or may not want to buy how to get professional movements light cinematic scenes we have bonus sections for YouTube creators social media content creators even people who want to shoot commercials with their smartphones it's all in this course and you can get access right now the link to learn more and enroll is in the description beneath this video check it out I'd love to know what you think other than that hit that subscribe button and I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Content Creators

Views: 423,717

Keywords: paul xavier, filmmaking, filmmaker, cinematography, fulltime, fulltime filmmaker, tomorrows filmmaker, online film school, filmmaking basics, film basics, full time filmmaker, learn filmmaking, learn video, cinematic, camera, movement, lighting, film course, film, school, parker, walbeck

Id: owLFKbRbvN8

Length: 22min 11sec (1331 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 04 2023