There have been a ton of questions about recording better phone video where a person needs to record themselves talking to an audience, so today I’ll go over some tips that will help make your phone video the best they can be.
Framing
When we talk about framing, we’re talking about the placement of yourself in the frame of your phone. In other words, the placement of your body on your phone’s screen when you record yourself. Important things to keep in mind here:
Make Eye Contact with your Audience
This one is huge, and is a problem with all beginners. You MUST resist the temptation to look at yourself on your phone screen. When you’re looking at your phone screen you’re not looking at the audience. When your audience watches you, they see you looking off to the side, whether that ends up being to the left, right, top or bottom. When you look directly at the camera lens, your audience feels like you’re looking directly at them.
So where’s the front facing camera on your phone? It’s one of the dots that you can see at the top of your phone when holding it vertically.
What if I see more than one dot? Good question! Many phones have front facing flash, meaning you’ll see more than one dot up there, and it’s not easy to always know which dot is the camera hole, and which dot is the hole for the flash.
Shoot 10 seconds of test footage to find out. Look at what could be the front facing camera, and record yourself looking directly at that hole. After 10 seconds, stop and play the footage back. Does it look like the recorded you is looking directly at you? If yes, you’ve identified which dot/hole is your front camera. If you’re not making direct eye contact with yourself, record again, this time looking at the other dot. One of the dots is your camera! You can identify the dot after doing this test by using a tiny piece of post-it note that you place right next to the camera hole.
Lead-in and Lead-out
The video editor has the challenge of taking everyone’s recordings and putting them together as seamlessly as possible. This job is made much easier if you wait five seconds after you’ve hit record and positioned yourself in the phone frame before you begin speaking. Likewise, after you say your last line in the recording, you want to wait five seconds until you hit stop on the recording.
DON’T MOVE YOUR EYES FROM THE CAMERA LENS UNTIL THE FIVE SECONDS IS OVER WHEN YOU GET TO THE END OF YOUR LINES! Folks are so happy they finally got through everything they needed to say that they look away from the camera dot when finished, even though they DO remember that they have to wait five seconds at the end. The five seconds is ruined if you’re not looking at the camera lens during the five second lead-out.
Make Sure you’re Well Lit
Make sure you’re lit from the front (don’t have light behind you, including daylight from windows). If you do have a tripod and a phone mount, it will be easier to avoid lights on the ceiling. Almost any light fixture or lamp at home will work well to serve as a good light source.
Get Better Audio
Do I need a green screen?
No. It’s hassle, it’s a little costly, it can be hard to get it to work well, and it can introduce other issues (being too far away from the camera, contributing to poor audio quality, etc.).
Questions or Comments? Please send me a note! [email protected]
Framing
When we talk about framing, we’re talking about the placement of yourself in the frame of your phone. In other words, the placement of your body on your phone’s screen when you record yourself. Important things to keep in mind here:
- Hold your Phone Sideways (horizontally)
Everyone is already doing this (good job!). The reason we hold our phones sideways is because the audience will be watching on their tablet, laptop, or TV screen which is also horizontal. You don’t need to watch this video, but it always makes me laugh and helps my students remember to never record a vertical video again (unless an app forces them to shoot vertically). https://youtu.be/f2picMQC-9E - Headroom (or Headspace)
Headroom is the distance between the top of your head, and the top of the frame. Your head should be close to the top without touching the top. The mistake for beginners is that they generally put their head in the very center of the screen, allowing way too much space between the top of the frame and the top of their head. - Centering Yourself
As a general rule, you’ll want to horizontally center yourself in the frame (centered between the left and right sides of the frame). Most beginners aim to do this, but don’t always keep this in mind as they position themselves after hitting record on their phone. When you hit record, take a second to make sure you’re positioned in the center of the frame, with the same amount of space on the right side of your body as the left side. - Keep the Phone at eye level (the height of your head)
Eye level? Head level? You want your phone to be at the same height as your head, or a minor (fairly minor) twinge below the height of your head. So if you’re standing, the phone should be as tall as your head is. If you’re sitting, it’s the same idea. Beginners are typically looking down at the phone, and usually it’s not looking down a little, it’s looking down a lot.
Getting the height correct can be challenging without a tripod unless you have a step ladder or some other device to hold your phone securely at the correct height.
No one is expecting you to go purchase a tripod, or anything else to make phone recordings, but if you feel compelled to add some fairly inexpensive gear to your setup, check out these two items for holding your phone during recording.
These tripods are all over Amazon at a wide range of prices, but as of this writing, this price is the lowest you can find it for: $20. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PN723L3 It’s a 72-inch tripod, and it’s super cheap (not the price, but the tripod itself). It’s made of plastic, and you DEFINITELY don’t want to trust an expensive DSLR or other heavy camera with this thing. It’s awesome for phones, GoPro style cameras, and small palmcorder camcorders.
The tripod alone won’t help you. To attach your phone to the tripod you’ll need a phone mount, and the magic price you want to look for is $7 like this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XQ6YWD3
Make Eye Contact with your Audience
This one is huge, and is a problem with all beginners. You MUST resist the temptation to look at yourself on your phone screen. When you’re looking at your phone screen you’re not looking at the audience. When your audience watches you, they see you looking off to the side, whether that ends up being to the left, right, top or bottom. When you look directly at the camera lens, your audience feels like you’re looking directly at them.
So where’s the front facing camera on your phone? It’s one of the dots that you can see at the top of your phone when holding it vertically.
What if I see more than one dot? Good question! Many phones have front facing flash, meaning you’ll see more than one dot up there, and it’s not easy to always know which dot is the camera hole, and which dot is the hole for the flash.
Shoot 10 seconds of test footage to find out. Look at what could be the front facing camera, and record yourself looking directly at that hole. After 10 seconds, stop and play the footage back. Does it look like the recorded you is looking directly at you? If yes, you’ve identified which dot/hole is your front camera. If you’re not making direct eye contact with yourself, record again, this time looking at the other dot. One of the dots is your camera! You can identify the dot after doing this test by using a tiny piece of post-it note that you place right next to the camera hole.
Lead-in and Lead-out
The video editor has the challenge of taking everyone’s recordings and putting them together as seamlessly as possible. This job is made much easier if you wait five seconds after you’ve hit record and positioned yourself in the phone frame before you begin speaking. Likewise, after you say your last line in the recording, you want to wait five seconds until you hit stop on the recording.
DON’T MOVE YOUR EYES FROM THE CAMERA LENS UNTIL THE FIVE SECONDS IS OVER WHEN YOU GET TO THE END OF YOUR LINES! Folks are so happy they finally got through everything they needed to say that they look away from the camera dot when finished, even though they DO remember that they have to wait five seconds at the end. The five seconds is ruined if you’re not looking at the camera lens during the five second lead-out.
Make Sure you’re Well Lit
Make sure you’re lit from the front (don’t have light behind you, including daylight from windows). If you do have a tripod and a phone mount, it will be easier to avoid lights on the ceiling. Almost any light fixture or lamp at home will work well to serve as a good light source.
Get Better Audio
- Record in a Quiet Place (A Silent Place)
This one seems obvious for some, but not for all. You want NO background sounds happening in the location you're recording. This includes the sounds of appliances (motors humming, fans whirling, etc.) This noise is picked up by your phone and cannot be easily removed. It’s also distracting/annoying to the audience, especially when others don’t have background noise in their recordings. - Record with Strong Vocality
With children in the house, it’s tough to find a quiet place to record while they’re up and about. That restricts some folks to have to record at night when the kids might be in bed. Folks feel compelled to speak in a hushed or quiet timbre of voice because they’re trying not to disturb others, but the downside to that is the audience hears you talking in a hushed, lower volume voice. This one is harder to figure out because you need to balance not waking up/disturbing your household if you record later in the evening. Just try your best not to speak in a hushed, or quiet tone when your record. - Stay Close
Stay close to your phone, and record in a room with carpet if you can. Reverb (sound reverberating/echoing around a room) isn’t easy to control. Connecting a lapel mic to your device is a good solution for better sound.
If you’re recording with an iPhone or iPad, This lapel mic will work well: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SPZPPYQ A mic like this one helps to minimize the reverb in the room you’re recording in. If using a mic like this, make sure the wire goes UNDER your shirt from the back, and then clip it to the OUTSIDE top of your shirt. You should generally avoid having the mic itself touch your skin to avoid the vibrations of your chest combining with the sound of your voice.
Using a mic like this is not suggested for Android devices because there is no standard among the device makers on how the mic jack/headphone jack is wired. There's also no standard on how the camera app on Android devices should handle lapel mic connections. For these reasons, I cannot recommend a lapel mic solution for an Android device. All iPhone devices, across all models, handle these connections the same way. If a mic is labeled to work with iOS devices, it should work on any of Apple mobile device. Don’t have an iPhone? If you have an iPad in the house, you can record with the iPad instead of your phone. Tripod mounts for iPads can be found on Amazon.com.
Do I need a green screen?
No. It’s hassle, it’s a little costly, it can be hard to get it to work well, and it can introduce other issues (being too far away from the camera, contributing to poor audio quality, etc.).
Questions or Comments? Please send me a note! [email protected]