Practice Filming
This one is tricky to master, but with a little practice you can go from novice to impressive levels in next to no time.
Shakey cameras will be offputting for your audience, so practice filming whilst smoothly moving your camera from one subject to the next.
Don’t overuse zooms. If you want to zoom in on something that’s fine, but the smoothness of the zoom you’ll achieve will vary from zoom to zoom. Also the device you’re zooming with will make a difference.
A pinch zoom on a mobile screen can be smooth or messy and this can be down to a slip of a finger on a touch screen. Also it’s worth noting that a pinch zoom on a mobile phone is more likely than not going to be a digital zoom which will just mean that you lose some resolution as the image will actually just be cropped rather than genuinely zoomed in. Some modern phones can actually achieve better telephoto zooms, but as most can’t I’d suggest not zooming this way and sorting it out with a zoom in editing (more on this later).
DSLR cameras with a zoom capable lens allow you to rotate the lens to zoom in and this really makes you feel like you’re a legit photographer or filmmaker when you start to master the smooth zoom action. Zooming this way is fine, and will give a sense of the manual zoom look to the footage, but again if you’re able to I’d suggest that since most DSLR cameras can do at least 1080p if not 4k footage you don’t overuse zooms and save some of your zooming for when you edit the video (I promise I’ll explain this soon).
Another thing to consider is if you want to film in landscape or portrait mode. When we watch films at the cinema, or anything on TV, the footage is produced in landscape mode. YouTube is also completely landscape leaning with the majority of all videos presented that way. If you want to vlog in portrait mode it can work well on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok which are tailored towards vertical videos, but I’d say that unless you have a good reason to shoot in portrait that you go landscape. I will occasionally shoot something in portrait mode, and this may be due to a circumstance meaning it’s safer or more convenient to hold my phone upright, but I’ll also do it as stylistically I will use several cameras to create my vlogs and I’m happy to occasionally remind the viewer that they’re watching a vlog. A sudden vertical video in a vlog mainly composed of landscape shots will be jarring to the audience, but give a sense of this being a documentary where an obvious mobile phone shot sequence can be good for your live reaction to something.
