Top 10 HANDHELD Camera Moves For EPIC Shots!

hey what's up guys thomas here and in this video you're going to be learning the top 10 handheld camera movements that are going to make your shots epic now handheld camera movements are still my go-to when making videos with all the hype around new gimbals coming out i think it's actually more and more important to emphasize how effective handheld camera movements can still be and i still think they're the number one skill set for a filmmaker to have in their toolkit now this is because number one handheld camera movements can give a look and a feel that you actually can't get with gimbals and number two they are easier cheaper and also less effort than using a gimbal now whilst this may sound kind of lazy actually for us live capture filmmakers out there who maybe just want to go on a trip make a video about it it's not always practical to be lugging around a heavy gimbal that you're worried about damaging because it's expensive and it's quite hard to control and use especially if you're not experienced so the gear i'm going to be using for this demonstration is actually going back to the sony a7s2 and i'm going to be using these two lenses today because they are quite wide so here we've got a 35 which goes down to 1.4 and here we have a 14 mil which goes down to 3.2 and that's a pretty low aperture for such a wide lens it really gives an amazing depth of feel it gives a really shallow depth-of-field look that i love when shooting handheld now i know everyone's talking about this ongoing debate does your gear matter can you do everything with a phone or do you need this fancy equipment just to add to the other side of the argument i'm also going to be getting some shots with my phone which is a xiaomi me 8 and it's going to be interesting to compare some of that footage at the end of the video so stick around for that so quickly before we get into these 10 shots we're gonna break them up into two different categories this is really important because each category has a slightly different strategy so the first category is gimbal replacement shots we're actually going handheld but we're trying to make it look like as if we had a gimbal so we're going to be doing single directional movements as i like to call them and it's all about having super steady hands and actually trying to portray the fact that you might have had a higher production value than you actually did so maybe if you're on a budget you don't have a gimbal you can kind of fake it as if you did have a gimbal category number two is when we're owning the fact that we're going handheld and we're actually making the most and we're emphasizing the handheld feel that we have and this is when we're going to be getting some unique looks feels and textures in our shots so first up are the gimbal replacement moves so with these we're going to be turning the inbuilt stabilization in our camera on the reason for this is because we are doing single directional movements so the inbuilt stabilization is actually going to support that and help it look slightly more gimbal like all right so we're all set up but first i need somebody to film let me just see if see if paulo is around hey paulo paolo yeah i'm just filming a video would you mind being a model so i see you now yeah i'll see you now [Music] perfect all right so the first shot is the push forward now for this very importantly i've got the camera strap around my neck now i'm going to be pulling this torque which is going to give me another axis of stability and paulo is just going to walk slowly this way and we're going to move forward slowly shifting our weight keeping the camera strap pretty taut and that's going to look nice it's a great way to establish a scene because we're bringing the audience in handheld camera movement number two is the pull out so this is very similar except we're gonna be doing the same thing in reverse so paul is gonna be walking this way very slowly [Music] nice okay with that one we did the same thing we're just leaning from forwards to backwards and it's not obviously as much you can't get as much range of movement as a gimbal the gimbal you could be doing this however with this shot all you really need is one or two meters to get the camera movement in there and it's what the camera movement is saying that is important using these pulling out camera motions are often really good to end videos or to end a scene if we're moving out of the scene we're taking the audience out we're saying goodbye to that and moving on to the next one okay so this next movement is the track now what we're going to be doing is putting our weight on our left foot here pressing record and we're going to be shifting our weight from side to side whilst keeping our shot on paulo there we're going to do that one more time making sure we keep the camera strap nice and taut [Music] awesome we can also do this and experiment with walking slightly it's going to be slightly more shaky but we can still get a really nice movement here and especially with stabilization in post this can look pretty gimbal like as [Music] well [Music] shot number four is something i call the tracking pan now the number one mistake that beginners do is they have a nice view in front of them so they just do this we're gonna pan across the whole thing this often looks pretty amateur so what we can do is put kind of a track in there a track would just look like this keeping the camera in one place and then the tracking pan would be doing both so we're starting on the left we're tracking at the same time as panning slightly and it can be quite a cool way to make your pans look slightly more cinematic so again we're starting from left on weight on one leg here and we're moving the camera whilst shifting our weight and actually physically moving our body from left to right and then ending the shot there [Music] all right for shot number five we're going to be doing the dutch angle i covered this slightly in one of my last videos however with a gimbal and what we're going to be doing this one is doing handheld the strap is really key for this one the strap allows us to remain taut and get a lot of control over this shot and notice that i'm moving forward at the same time as spinning around we can also do that in reverse i really like that shot because it gives the kind of a creative feel to your videos and it can often be used to get kind of trippy effects [Music] all right so shot number six is the push into focus to emphasize this even more i'm going to change from my 14 which i was using so my 35 which can go down to 1.4 aperture so how's life parlor how are you doing man i'm good mate just observing birds so when we're pushing into focus the most important thing to do is get the focus first so we're going to come nice and close into paulo here and notice that just his eyes are in focus this is what's really nice about having a 1.4 aperture so now what we're going to do is remember more or less where that was so right here and we're going to start further back and then when we come back in nice and steady we get to that same spot and it's kind of like this really great way to get a portrait of somebody but you can also do this effect with objects and what you can also do is pull out to focus this is a kind of a bonus shot here but we could start kind of blurred and then as we pull out he comes into focus so again starting out of focus pulling out coming into focus like this and if you do this slightly more slowly and steadily it can create a cool effect as a nice portrait of somebody okay so now we've finished the gimbal replacement moves i just want to get a couple of these on my phone so you guys can judge how good the camera quality is okay so we're going really close to paulo's face we're getting him in focus we're pulling out so he's nice and blurred and then we're pushing in to get him in focus again not bad hey we'll do that one more time and pushing in here nice it looks good man so there you go there's a little sample of how this would look with the phone it's not all about the gear the phones still look good although obviously the gear looked a bit better all right so for these next shots we're going to be doing the handheld emphasization this means that we're going to really be emphasizing the fact that we are doing everything handheld and to really get that effect we're going to turn off the inbuilt image stabilization on my a7s2 so just turning that off so the first one is the follow over the shoulder shot so i'm actually going to be walking with paulo here i'm going to be placing my hand under the camera to get as stable as i can because i don't want it to be shaky unpurposely i don't want it to be pointless and shaky bad handheld camera movement might be something like this where we're trying to keep it steady but it doesn't look good and it's just not what we want make it steady enough so it looks cinematic but we're still gonna get this purposeful camera shake we're gonna be lining it up with paulo here bending the knees we're just going to be getting a nice amount of camera movement in there that shows we've kind of got this run and gun feel but because we've got good hand position on the camera we're bending our knees it's not overly shaky so it still has this cinematic edge [Music] okay movement number eight is tracking backwards handheld so we're gonna capture the same scene as if these two shots are going to be cut together and what we're going to do now is have paulo the same style maybe slightly further away making sure he's nice and in focus and you're going to turn around here buddy and you're just going to walk towards me so we're going to maintain our distance here and again we're kind of bobbing up and down slightly still getting this kind of handheld vibe except we're trying to keep it more or less steady okay shot number nine is going to be a dolly into a whip pan now of course you can do a dolly movement with the gimbal or whatever but it's quite hard with a gimbal to do a dolly movement that then whips to the right or whips to the left why would you want to do this is because when you whip you can then perform an in-camera transition to the next shot where you whip into it which is going to be shot number 10. so let's just go over that shot number nine we're going to be dollying in like this and then whipping to the right [Music] okay this leads us into our last shot shot number 10 which is going to be the whip pan into and then this is going to be an object tracking shot so you see these kind of shots a lot in daniel schiffer's videos the way that he will find an object and then follow that object such as a knife on a chopping board or a smoothie he'll be kind of reacting to the movement of that object so we're going to do that here with paulo's phone except the difference here is we're going to whip pan into it and then follow it so let's give this a go i'm going to go three two one go okay i didn't get that at all two one go two one go hey what's up g i think this is good eh [Music] all right we only had a quick opportunity to show you the object tracking camera movements we did one of those but it was pretty cool if you want to see more about that kind of stuff head over to daniel schiffer's channel he's got a ton of tutorials that are really cool around those specific kind of movements if you're super thirsty for knowledge about filmmaking in general i would really recommend checking out the 30 minute training that is in the description below there i'm going to walk you through a ton of secrets that have helped me along the way in my journey making travel videos making life capture videos and all the kind of videos in between so i'm really excited for you guys to check that out at the end you're also going to be finding a little bit more about the life capture academy program and if that is right for you so i'll see you there and until next time keep filming bye-bye el paolo every step i'm soaking up the heat followers make a hip-hop video all right ready to go bro okay all right so for sure but you filming me man this motherfucker's getting social media clips

Channel: Thomas Alex Norman

Views: 368,011

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Id: vCt4vJUVNhg

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 11 2021