How to Film Your First Video: Gear, Light, Audio (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Welcome back to my creator boot camp last episode. We went over generating ideas and scripting our first video and now we're getting into the fun or terrifying part depending on where you stand. We're filming baby. That's right. We're going to be going over cameras. We're going to be going over audio lighting performance all that fun stuff. But first a little disclaimer. See one common misconception, especially among newer creators is that you need really expensive equipment in order to make good videos. That is just blatantly false. I'm not going to lie to you. You having that stuff helps but it only does so much. The truth is if you know what you're doing, you can make great videos literally just using your phone. So I don't think you're missing out on anything. If you don't have some of the equipment I use in this vid, that's totally fine and should not hinder your ability to make something awesome. Okay, let's start. First up cameras the thing that films you you already knew what cameras are and let's start first with the phone because in today's day and age this really is a totally acceptable camera that can get you a really good image, which is great for us because one you already have one but two, it's also super versatile. You can use it for more studio settings like this, but also for vlogging and tons of other situations with little to no setup just unlock your phone and record and with the script you can instantly upload all those video files from your phone directly into your project. Then you have your mirrorless cameras like this guy the Sony a7 for if you already have a camera or looking to buy one chances are it's a mirrorless camera and with these cameras. There are two different parts to them. One is the camera body and the other is the camera lens. Now some cameras come with lenses fixed onto them typically point-and-shoot cameras have that but for the ones that don't the lens you want to buy for it depends on the type of content you want to make now, there are two different types of lenses prime lenses and zoom lenses. Now prime lenses have a fixed focal length. For example, a 35 millimeter prime lens while zoom lenses have a range of focal lengths. For example, a 24 to 70 millimeter zoom lens. Now we can dive infinitely deep into what focal lengths are and what they determine but the main two things they influence are how wide or narrow your shot is and your lens compression the lower the focal length of your lens the wider the shot and vice versa and as you can tell by this comparison the higher the focal length the more compressed your shot looks so depending on what kind of content you want to make some lenses work better than others. For example, if I wanted to do run-and-gun style vlogs, I'd stick to a wider lens like a 16 millimeter which allows you to fit a lot more in your frame at closer distances. But if I wanted to do something like sports videography, I'd stick to something closer to a 200 millimeter lens, which allows me to get nice tight shots even from farther distances. And if you want a perfect middle ground a 24 to 70 millimeter zoom lens is going to be your best friend because it'll cover almost every use case you would need you're barely going to have to take that lens off. I personally use the Sony ecosystem of cameras. I have the Sony a7 IV and the Sony fx3 because I really like their autofocus their image quality their third-party lenses, but there are a ton of great cameras and camera brands out there for any kind of budget or use case you may have so do some research on your own to see which camera fits best for what you need. Now, let's get into camera settings. Now, if you have a camera and don't really know what you're doing. So you just put it on auto and call it a day. That's honestly fine. But the more you know how to manually control your camera the better image you can get out of it. And when it comes to your camera and exposure, there are three main settings that you need to know about your aperture your shutter speed and your ISO. This is called the exposure triangle and it influences how bright or dark your image looks but it also influences other things. So it's important that you know how changing these settings affects your shot. The first setting you want to set is your shutter speed, which is essentially the amount of time your camera sensor is exposed to light when filming but it also controls the amount of motion blur you have in your shot faster shutter speeds like 1 over 5000 allow for less light, but they're also a lot choppier like you see here while slower shutter speeds like 1 over 10 allow for a lot more light but also have significantly more motion blur like you see here now based on the style or look you're going for you might actually want to be in these extremes, but the golden rule for normal natural motion blur is to double the frame rate that you're recording in. So for example, if I'm recording at 24 frames a second, my shutter speed should be about 1 over 50 or if I'm recording at 60 frames a second 1 over 120 you want to set your shutter speed first because again unless you are going for a super stylized look you're not really going to be changing it much. You're just going to kind of set it once and forget about it next. We want to set our aperture or f-stop. The aperture is the opening in the camera lens and it controls how much light hits the sensor, but it also determines your depth of field. You know that nice blurry background everyone goes crazy for for some reason that's your depth of field having a higher aperture lets less light in but it also gives you a deeper depth of field. So more of your background is in focus while having a lower aperture lets more light in but it also gives you a shallower depth of field. So more your background is out of focus and it gives you that nice bokeh effect. So set your aperture based on the depth of field that you want in your shot. And if you want that shallow depth of field, but your environment is too bright, so it gets overexposed. You can use an ND filter, which is basically just like sunglasses for your lens to compensate. Finally, we want to set our ISO. Now the ISO is usually the last thing we want to touch because it can be the most damaging to your image because ISO on digital cameras is essentially artificially brightening your image so it can introduce a ton of nasty noise and grain into your shot. A lot of newer creators might overly rely on their ISO because it's the easiest setting to make things brighter, but that's almost like overly relying on salt to fix a bad recipe. You know more doesn't necessarily equal better and if you use too much, it'll just make things worse. Each camera has their own native or base ISO that gives you the best image quality with the lowest amount of grain. For example, the Sony a7 IV has two base ISOs of 800 and 3200. Now you want to stay at your camera's base ISO as much as you can and you really should only change it as a last resort. If you can change the aperture or the lighting around you to get the shot you want, that's almost always the better option. And if everything I just talked about sounds like a foreign language to you, that's totally fine. Don't worry. Learning how to master your exposure settings is something that just comes with time and practice. The most important thing is having a basic understanding of what they do so that you can better determine what settings to change when you're setting up your shot. I'm saying setting a lot. Let's move on. I don't have much to say about tripods here. Most tripods will work fine as long as you have a compatible camera mount, but I will say one thing. For some reason, a lot of people tend to skimp on their tripods and I don't know why that is. Maybe it's because it's not as sexy a purchase as a camera, so they don't want to spend as much money on it. But just remember that your tripod is going to be holding your very precious expensive camera. So yes, you don't want to blow a big chunk of your budget on your tripod. That's not necessary. Just make sure that whichever one you do buy is reputable and trusted and can hold the weight of your camera. Audio is a heavily underrated aspect of creating videos. It's really easy to make the mistake of over focusing on the visuals of a video and how cinematic it looks while leaving audio as an afterthought, but any creator or even filmmaker worth their salt will tell you good audio does like 90% of the work. So we want to make sure we're giving it the attention it deserves and there's a couple different ways. You can capture audio depending on what you're making the first and usually cheapest option is this guy a lavalier mic. You can find one of these for like 20 bucks and it's also super versatile. You can plug this straight into your camera into a separate audio receiver or just straight into your phone. So if you want to level up your audio without thinking about it too much, this is probably going to be your best bet since loud mics are omnidirectional. They pick up noise from all around them. So you don't have to worry about facing or pointing it a certain way. You can just clip it to your shirt and you're good to go. Next. You got your cardioid mics, which you'll find a lot more in gaming or podcasting setups. And these mics are great because they're unidirectional. So they're really good at capturing vocals while rejecting outside noise. The only thing is they do have to be nice and close to your mouth. So they would be in the shot. But if that's not an issue for you, these are a totally great option. They usually take a little bit more setup though needing to be connected to a laptop or an audio interface and also needing an arm or a mic stand to hold it. So make sure you keep that in mind, but there are a ton of super awesome and affordable options you can choose from. Now, if you want great audio with no mic in your shot, a shotgun mic is probably going to be your best bet because they're designed to pick up audio from a distance. These are more ideal for stagnant setups though, since they require the most rigging. I mean, there are a ton of great options that you can just mount directly on your camera, but a lot of the more traditional shotgun mics would require a boom pole and a boom pole operator or c-stand and a whole separate audio interface and get to make sure it's pointing at you the right way and it can be a lot of work. So for most people, this might not be the best option. But if you want to make things like short films where you want really good audio with no mics in view, getting a good shotgun mic can get the job done. I feel like I have a wand when I'm holding this thing. Overall, whichever mic you do end up choosing will be an improvement over your camera or laptop microphone. So don't worry. We don't have to spend a bajillion bucks here. Just that small upgrade will make a massive improvement to your audio quality and then you can use Studio Sound and Descript to make it sound even better. So that's nice. I didn't I don't know how to segue out of that. All right, let's get into lighting. Now a lot of people think expensive cameras and lenses are what make a shot look good and that is wrong. 95% of what makes a shot look good is lighting. If you don't believe me, here's what this shot looks like with my regular house lights. Yeah, disgusting, right? I know. Okay, now I have to turn all my lights back on. Now lighting is an art form that takes years of time and practice to master. So I'm not going to dive too deep into it here. I'm just going to give you a basic three-point lighting setup that you can use to get you started. First, you got your key light and this is the main light that's going to be on your subject and it's usually just off to the side of them like this. Then you got your fill light. This light is meant to help fill in some of the shadows caused by the key light. Now, sometimes you want to have those shadows on your subject. So depending on the look you're going for, you'll want a different intensity on your fill light. And finally is your back or edge light. This light will be behind your subject either to give them a nice little edge light or to help light the background behind them. So even if you have some cheap little lights from Amazon, you can easily replicate this lighting setup to dramatically improve your shot. Now you don't even really need all that stuff for good lighting because the best light money could ever buy is already free for you to use. It's called the sun. So if you don't want to buy lights or do any sort of setup, just filming near a window and taking advantage of the natural light is more than enough to get the job done. Just make sure that you do it during the day because it really doesn't work as well at night. Now, let's talk a little bit about performing and being in front of the camera. Now, this is something that may be a little bit intimidating at first, especially if you're more of a shy person. I mean, let's face it. It's weird talking to a black box and pretending that it's just a human. That's not normal. But with enough practice, it will just kind of become second nature to you. I mean, look at me. I'm one of the most shy introverted people I know and you probably wouldn't guess that from the videos I make. Unfortunately, there's no immediate solution to feeling awkward in front of the camera. I do think a big part of feeling comfortable is just kind of doing it just like anything else. It's a muscle that gets stronger with more reps. But if you're struggling to film that first video without cringing so hard at yourself that you literally can't continue, that's totally fine. Okay, we just need to take baby steps. So instead of trying to film your first video, just record yourself getting ready for the day in the morning. Set up your phone, do your morning routine, and just kind of think out loud. Film yourself going on a walk, film yourself doing laundry, making lunch, playing video games, film yourself doing anything while talking about nothing. You don't have to edit these videos. You certainly don't have to post them. All we're doing here is getting you more used to being in front of a camera. And once that feels more normal to you, you're ready to film your video. Now when filming, there's a couple best practices I want you to follow to make sure your recording goes the best it can. One, test your shot. Before you actually start recording, film like 10 to 20 seconds of test footage with both your camera and your microphone. Then give it a quick review to make sure that your equipment is working fine, but also that you like the way the shot looks. Look at your background, your clothes, your hair, your face, just hyper analyze your frame to make sure that you're happy with it before you start filming. Because there's nothing worse than finishing an hour-long shoot and then realizing that you had something in your teeth the entire time, which may or may not have happened to me before. Two, record multiple takes. Even if you feel really good about your first take or it took you a million tries to get one usable take and you're ready to move on, do another one. Because this is less about trying to one-up your performance and more about just having insurance later on in editing. Because the more takes and options you have to choose from, the more flexibility you have in post. So always make sure you have at least two usable takes before moving on to your next shot. Three, audio sync. If you're recording your video and audio separately, make sure at the beginning of your recording, you're doing a visible and audible clap in front of the camera like this. This makes it easy to sync up your audio recording to your video later on in editing and prevents any annoying frame-by-frame matching you'd have to do otherwise. Four, as soon as you finish recording your session, make sure that you're dumping your footage immediately onto your computer and organizing those files. Because the quicker you upload those files, the less chances you have them being deleted or lost or damaged. So this isn't an absolute necessity, but you are exposing yourself to unnecessary risk the longer you wait. Okay, welcome. Welcome to my office. I'm just going to walk you guys through how I set my office up to get ready to start filming. Small disclaimer, this office is extremely messy. Originally, I was going to try to clean it up and hide it from you, but I'm not going to do that. We're all human. It all happens to the best of us. First things first, I usually have a ton of clutter on my desk. It's actually not that bad right now. So I usually like tidy up my desk and then I will add a background to my monitors. If I'm filming for my personal channel, I usually throw a picture on the screen and just make it full screen. But for Descript videos, I usually just have Descript on my screens and leave it at that. Next is turning on all my lights. So first I usually start with the colored back lights that are behind me. This is one of them right there. And then the other one is usually somewhere back here. So what I do is I take this one that's usually on the left of me and then I bring it and I place it over here, which is where it's going to be shining. Then I give it a nice little plug in. This is hard to do with one hand, but I turn it on. And I put a color on it and depending on what color I'm feeling, I just set it as that color. So that's one light done. Then we have our other light. So I'll turn that one on and then boom back lights are on and engaged. Next we have my fill light over here. This one's kind of like a half fill light. It's not really a fill light because it's not really like pointed at me at all. It's kind of just like pointed off to the side and then that like kind of like bounces off to me just a little bit. It makes a very minor difference when it's on and off, but I just I like the way it looks better on. I still like having some shadow to my face. So I don't want it to be too powerful. So I usually have it pretty weak. But yeah, I turn this one on next like so boom that one's on and then lastly I turn on my key light, which is the main light that's on my face that makes it bright. Boom light on then the final step most important step you turn off my house lights. Let's dim those bad boys down boom off. So now all the filming lights in my office are on and ready to be used. So now let's let's turn on the camera and there is my camera my boy. This is just like my stagnant tripod rarely ever. Do I move it? It just kind of stays here as you can see. I have various markings on the tripod so that I know where to set it. If I ever do have to change it, but I usually never do and I saw those same markings on the carpet. I literally just circled it around the tripod legs. So yeah, if I ever do have to move this tripod, I can easily put it back and the framing will be somewhat consistent. So yeah, let's turn on our camera now. Ready 3 2 1 I can't find the switch. Where is it? Boom camera turned on now. Let's take our lens cap off and throw that somewhere and then this is my 24 to 70 lens, but I shoot my videos at 70 mil. So let's just bring it all the way to 70 mil and then let's turn on our monitor. Oh, you can see me. Hey, hello. This is the monitor. I use to like check my framing and all that stuff and just like see my shots when I'm sitting down. So I have it connected via HDMI to my camera. So if we turn it on now, we're seeing what my camera sees. Isn't that cool to do a little wave to the camera and you might notice it's kind of like slanted and tilted to the side and it's kind of askew like that because I noticed that it would reflect through my glasses when they was just like head on in front of me. So yeah, it's offset that a little bit. I just kind of slanted it and that seemed to do the trick. Next we're going to turn on the audio interface that I use to record my audio because I don't record it off of my camera. I record my actual audio with the shotgun mic which gets recorded into this little bad boy right here called the MixPre-6. I cannot overstate how overkill this thing is. You do not need anything close to this to get really good audio. I just I'm I'm stupid. So I like spending money on equipment, but you do not need anything remotely as expensive as this. Then I just plug that bad boy in and we got power which gets fed up all the way to my shotgun mic right here. So we're pretty much ready to film. So since the camera is actually pretty far away from me, it's not like within arm's reach. It's kind of on the other side of the room. I start recording right now. Boom. We're recording and then I scooch all the way back and I sit down in my seat. As you can see, we have the normal standard shot that you usually see in all my vids. The camera is just right there. My monitor is right there. So now I usually just kind of like adjust my shot. I just like the key light a little bit to make sure I'm getting the lighting. I want to make sure the lights not in the corner right there. So now what I do is I have my shotgun mic on a boom pole, which is connected to a c-stand. So what I do is I literally just tilt it until it's right above me as you can see. It's just it's right out of frame as barely out of frame as it can get and yeah, it's basically right in front of my face. So just know that every video you've ever seen of me. There's been a microphone six inches away from my face. So then I go to my audio interface over here and then I just make sure I click record and now we're recording perfect. So then I just do a little mic check 1 2 3 1 2 3 make sure that the audio levels are where I want them to be as you can see on the little tiny screen right there. They look good. I have my camera filming. I have my audio recording my lights. They look good. So I'm ready to start filming. So basically I take my laptop right here and then I have my script pulled up and I like to go line by line and just kind of go that way. I've tried using teleprompters before and they worked fine, but I don't know. I just I like my performance better when I'm just kind of memorizing the line and then just saying it to the camera. So that's what I prefer. That's my preference. It leads to significantly longer recordings, but I just I like the way it looks better. And then yeah, I basically film my video and then when I'm done I cut my recording and I upload it all into that computer back there and okay now I have my video all nice and filmed up and I can finally just go take a nap talking is so tiring. So your homework for the week is to get your camera out find the best setup you can and film your video and next episode. We're going to be opening up to script and I'm going to be showing you my personal editing process from beginning to end. It's going to be a real insider scoop. All right. See you soldiers. Bye.