Top 10 Smartphone Filmmaking Accessories (in 2022)

i'm gonna share my absolute favorite smartphone filmmaking accessories for shooting amazingly gorgeous cinematic videos these accessories are perfect for creators focused on travel videos music videos youtube videos product videos commercials and tons more i've got 10 different things to go over and make sure you stay until the end because spoiler alert number 10 is the most important in my eyes now before we dive into my list i do want to point out that we are going to cover a lot of gear in this video keep in mind though that you absolutely do not need all or any of it depending on the type of content that you're planning on shooting i'll do my best to outline when a certain piece of gear might be unnecessary for certain categories of content but just always keep in mind that when you're watching videos like this on youtube just because someone recommends it doesn't mean you absolutely need it everyone has different needs all right now that we've got that out of the way though the first and most important thing that you'll need to shoot great smartphone videos well it's a great smartphone pretty obvious i know but if you're watching this video with a smartphone that is more than two to three generations old i truly think one of the best investments of your money would be to get one of the newest smartphones from the two largest manufacturers which are apple or samsung the past two years have been an insane whirlwind of smartphone camera upgrades between the iphone 13 pro coming out last fall and the recent release of the s22 ultra from samsung the difference you'll see in quality comparing just an iphone 11 to an iphone 13 is pretty mind-blowing and i know that personally because my old phone is an iphone 11 and jumping to the 13 was a huge increase in quality the sensors have been increased in size the fixed apertures have been reduced meaning better low light performance the stabilization technology has become insanely good combine all of these things and you have a smartphone camera that can honestly compete with some entry-level mirrorless and dslr cameras okay up next although i don't use it all the time when i'm filming with my smartphone i think the coolest and most unique accessory out there are anamorphic lenses now i talked about anamorphic lenses in the last video so i won't linger on this too long but basically an anamorphic lens uses complex optics to essentially squish your footage together making it look pretty awkward by itself but most filmmaking apps like filmic pro have an automatic setting which desqueezes the footage stretching it out into a more cinematic ultra wide screen format you've probably seen videos before where a person kind of tried to copy this wide screen format by adding black bars above and below their video that's cool and all but you're technically losing data from the sensor you're just covering it up with black bars whereas an anamorphic lens actually gives you the true widescreen format without losing any data from the sensor and on top of that you get these really cool horizontal lens flares that are reminiscent of hollywood movies that were also shot on anamorphic lenses although theirs probably cost like tens and tens of thousands of dollars my favorite brand for lenses like this are from shopmoment.com and i personally have the gold flare option which i think is better for filming outside when you're in the sun all right number three on this list of smartphone accessories is a gimbal this is a super helpful tool that uses electric motors to keep your phone super steady as you're moving this allows you to capture much more professional looking movements that don't have that telltale amateur shake that comes from just filming aimlessly handheld there are really only two different gimbals that i recommend for smartphone content creators the first and my personal favorite is the dji om5 which is a super compact but powerful gimbal that can pretty much just fit in your pocket i love how portable it is it's also super easy to balance and just quickly start using because all you need to do is clamp this magnet onto the back of your phone which just immediately clips on and off of the gimbal making startup time just a few seconds the om5 is strong enough to carry my larger iphone 13 pro with a case and an anamorphic lens attached but that is the max we can't add any other accessories on top of that otherwise the motors just fail it's too much weight to me that's not the end of the world because i rarely find myself needing more weight but if you do want more power and you plan on rigging up your smartphone even larger than i do that's where i would recommend my second favorite gimbal which is the zyun smooth 5 gimbal it's a slightly larger and more expensive smartphone gimbal but it has additional power which is going to carry all of that extra weight the main trade-off is mainly price and portability now coming in at number four on my list is a microphone it's very common for people to focus like crazy on their camera in the look of their video but at the end of the day no matter how good it looks if you have a terrible audio quality and it sounds like you're recording in an echo chamber it really reflects poorly on the message you're trying to convey it's going to be hard for you to keep your audience focused on your content now if you're filming within a few feet of your subject or recording selfie style where you're just a few feet away from your mouth you can probably get away with using your built-in microphone but if that distance increases anymore you absolutely need a new microphone solution now when people realize this most of the time they go out and buy a shotgun microphone to place on top of their camera now when you think about it that doesn't really solve the problem because we still have that distance issue the microphone is still attached to the camera so however far away it is from your mouth we still have to overcome that big gap so instead what i recommend is to use a lavalier microphone solution you basically have three options depending on your budget and how convenient you want things to be the first is a standard wired mic that you plug directly into your phone something like the pop voice pro love mic which only costs 15 from amazon but has a long enough cord to allow you some extra distance when filming after that you can use the same love mic but plug it into a dedicated recorder like the zoom h1n this means you can be as far away from the camera as possible and still get great audio you just have to sync the audio with the video while you're editing because they're technically recorded on two separate devices and then finally the last and most convenient but also most expensive option would be to invest in a wireless microphone solution i personally have the rode wireless go 2 system which i really love but dji recently released their own wireless microphone setup that i think is a little bit better for the money i'm going to take a quick break here in the list just to remind you guys that all the links for this gear is going to be in the description below if you do want to purchase any of this gear and if you find this content valuable we'd really appreciate it if you hit that like button and subscribe to the channel and then let us know in the comments what videos do you want to see us make next back to the list though up next at number 5 we have a professional light when you think about the fact that a camera is just a tool that captures and interprets light data it's pretty clear that owning a light to enhance your videos is pretty dang important one single light can quickly and easily transform a setup that looks like this to this which is a much more professional looking scene now we could talk for hours about lighting theory in the different types of lights worth buying and we actually do in our online filmmaking program 14-day filmmaker but for the most part i just want people to realize how useful just one light can be now as far as recommendations go my two favorite lights depending on your budget are the yongnuo ym300 mark ii which is the budget option and then for a little extra money you could also get the godox sl60 which is actually what i have lighting me right now from there you just want to keep in mind that diffusion plays a large role in the quality of your light i like to use diffusion panels like this to soften up the light and make it a little bit more flattering on my subject's faces which is kind of like a bonus accessory for this section okay number six is a pretty straightforward tool it's a tripod it might seem boring but they're still the most popular filmmaking tool on planet earth if you don't have one you're probably gonna need one at some point in your filmmaking career the tripod i use most with my smartphone is the peak design carbon fiber tripod it's a more expensive option than i would typically recommend but i really do love just how compact it is now if you're looking to save some money there are loads of tripods on amazon that will do just fine i just make sure that you read the reviews before buying up next number seven we have an nd filter without getting too technical nd or neutral density filters are basically like sunglasses for your camera if you went out and bought one right now slapped it on your camera you'd probably be a little bit underwhelmed because it just makes your videos darker the real benefit is that by cutting down on the light that comes into your camera you're able to keep your shutter speed which is one of the settings that controls our exposure in the ideal range of anywhere from 1 50th of a second to 1 120 of a second depending on your frame rate this will give you the perfect amount of motion blur in your videos it sounds strange but motion blur is actually good in most situations it makes our videos look more natural and lifelike and it's a big component of the cinematic quality that sometimes can be hard to put into words if you look at these two shots right here in the first example we are not using an nd filter and in order to keep the exposure where we want it to be we have to crank that shutter speed all the way up and if you look at courtney's hands they are super jittery there's like no motion blur whatsoever and it just looks a little unnatural now when we put that nd filter on it cuts down on the light entering the lens which allows us to bring that shutter speed back down to where it's supposed to be and now we have that nice natural looking motion blur which makes our video look more cinematic i personally love filming with my anamorphic lens in the 67 millimeter variable nd filter from shotmoment.com and i know you probably think like shopmoment.com sponsored this video they absolutely didn't i just really like their accessories when it comes to smartphone filmmaking all right moving on at number eight we have our editing program now i know an editing program isn't really an accessory but i imagine people watching this video are somewhat new to content creation and i think one of the most stressful decisions is choosing what program you're going to use and how you're actually going to edit your footage together do you want to edit everything on your phone using a computer program how much do you want to spend on the program you use there's a lot that goes into it now i'm obviously biased because i shoot and edit videos for a living and not everyone has the same goals they might not want to get that in depth into video editing but i truly do think that editing on a computer however daunting it may seem will make your life editing videos so much easier there are great smartphone apps for editing but the real drawback in my eyes is the lack of screen real estate that comes with using a smartphone so with that being said my recommendation would be to start with a computer editing program i personally use premiere pro but that does cost a monthly fee so for those looking to save money my recommendation would absolutely be davinci resolve which you can download and use for free and it's also the same program that a lot of hollywood studios use to work on their films it's a super powerful program i really like it i've just invested so much time into premiere pro i don't see myself switching full-on into davinci resolve but if i were starting over today and i had no experience i would absolutely go with that program otherwise if you're committed to sticking with just smartphone apps my favorite and the one that i use for simple edits is vn video editor and by the way all the programs that i just mentioned premiere pro davinci resolve and vn video editor we have a full training series on each one of them inside the program 14 day filmmaker but more on that later up next at number nine we have an external hard drive most people realize this as soon as they start shooting videos they take up a lot of space and we only have so much built into our phones and computers you are basically guaranteed to someday run out of storage and that could be very soon if you're shooting a lot of content which is where an external hard drive comes in and saves the day this right here has 2 terabytes or 2 000 gigabytes of storage on it which in the eyes of a smartphone content creator is a lot of space that can save you you know years of content if you're shooting you know maybe once a week i literally have tons of hard drives just sitting on my desk and i have even more in my closet just because we shoot so much content as content creators and it has to go somewhere i hate deleting footage because i might need it at a future date and a lot of times i actually store footage on duplicate drives that way if one crashes or gets stolen or burns down in a house fire whatever it may be i always have two copies so you know just redundancy is safe then finally coming in at number 10 by far and away the most important thing that will help any content creator shoot better videos is real filmmaking knowledge i'm gonna stop there i know how cliche that sounds but it is incredible what a person is capable of creating when they understand the basic fundamentals of filmmaking in fact you could give a person who knows very little about filmmaking a 50 000 camera and all the other gear they need and then another person who studied the basic fundamentals just a smartphone or other entry level camera and i can all but guarantee that the person who studied the basics will be able to blow away the person who has all the expensive gear i literally see this happen all the time if you spend just a few weeks focusing on camera settings movement composition and lighting even if it's just with your smartphone by the end of those two weeks you will be so much further along than most people who just spend their time on youtube watching videos about gear that they want to buy now if you didn't know this already at contentcreator.com we have a course called 14 day filmmaker that has helped over 45 000 people quickly learn the ins and outs of shooting amazing cinematic videos no matter what gear they have for their youtube channels their businesses their social media channels a lot of our students have actually started video production companies getting paid to do what they love we've built the most streamlined online curriculum for aspiring content creators and part of the reason we've been so successful is the fact that the course is literally 48 that's a lifetime access to everything for less than the cost of a trip to the grocery store not to mention we recently created a smartphone specific version of 14 day filmmaker which you also get lifetime access to as soon as you enroll and we didn't up the price when we added that at all if that sounds interesting the link to enroll is the first one in the description beneath this video and we also have all the gear links down there as well other than that thanks so much for watching this video don't forget to like and subscribe and i will see you in the next one you

Channel: Content Creators

Views: 47,178

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: oXiAuuXQ9Es

Length: 13min 32sec (812 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 27 2022