Tips & Tricks for Filming Yourself

I’m often asked how people can film themselves for testimonials and personal messages, so I’ve thrown together a few tips and tricks for creating better video. I’ll try to keep this up to date with visuals and new tips as they come to me, but for now, I hope this helps! Practically all of these tips apply if you’re filming someone else as well.

The Best Camera to Use
There’s an old photography saying that “The best camera in the world is the one you have with you.” These days, that typically means your smart phone and luckily, the camera on most of them is amazing. If you happen to have a more expensive or professional camera lying around, that’s wonderful, but in 9 out of 10 cases, your iPhone or Android camera will work just fine.

Keep it Steady
When filming anything, one thing to avoid is a shaky camera. We don’t want our viewers getting motion sick. While I highly recommend purchasing a smart phone mount and a cheap tripod if you do this kind of thing frequently, just setting your phone on something like a stack of books, or even taping it to a wall with some masking tape will work in a pinch. If you need to hold it in your hands, that’s fine, just try to rest your arm on something like a table and hold your phone-holding wrist with your other hand to brace yourself whenever possible.

Avoid Vertical Video
Filming yourself in “portrait” or “vertical” mode (or “up and down” as some people call it) may be great for Instagram, TikTok, and others, but if you’re filming something to be edited into a bigger project or need to upload this to YouTube, Vimeo, or to watch on a widescreen TV, you want to always make sure you film your videos in “Landscape” orientation, sometimes called “horizontal” or “sideways.”

It’s All About Angles
People joke that actor’s only want to feature “their good side” but really, the concept of filming from the right angle can make a big difference. The big issue is vertical angles such as filming from below where you’re looking down at the camera and giving yourself a double chin. Filming from above makes you look slimmer but also looks weaker. The easiest trick is to try to keep your camera at eye level whenever possible

Find a Quiet Place
If you’re recording a message, the last thing you want is a car flying by and blocking out the sound of your voice. Find a calm and quiet environment to record your message so that you don’t have too much audio interference like traffic, other people, etc unless that’s part of the video experience. If you’re sending a message from a baseball game, background sound is almost encouraged to set the scene. Even then, you want to make sure you can be heard clearly which may mean you need to use some kind of headset microphone to get it closer to your mouth.

Use an External Microphone if Needed
Sometimes, you have to film the video from far away, or there’s too much background noise. In those cases, you need to use some other option for hearing your voice as too much distance can make you too quiet to understand. Sure, we can turn up the volume in editing, but all of the other sounds around you come up as well. Try to keep your camera no further than a few feet from your voice, or if you need more distance, use a second device like another smart phone or voice recorder to capture the sound separately which can then be synced up to match during the editing process. I’ve often used the voice memo app on my phone tucked into a Presenter’s shirt pocket when I need to film from the back of the room and get clean audio of their presentation.

Lighting
It’s important to be seen as well as heard and making sure you’re in a well-lit environment is a great start. However, you want to make sure the light is pointing in the right direction. Sitting in front of a window with your back to the outside sunshine means the camera will automatically adjust to darken your face, creating a silhouette and leaving you in shadow. You want to put the sun (or interior light) behind the camera so that it’s facing you, but not so much as it leaves a shadow of the phone across your face. If you think of a triangle with you, your phone, and your primary light source as the three points, you should have great lighting with just a hint of dramatic shadow.

Sending Your Video to the Editor
After you’ve filmed your video message, you’ll need to edit it yourself or send it to someone else. Email is not usually an option for large video files, but services like local AirDrop, Dropbox, or my favorite, WeTransfer.com are great options for moving videos from one person to another.

10 Questions You Need To Answer Before Creating a Video

It’s hard to be in business these days without feeling the need to have a video (or multiple videos) of some kind. But where do you start? What should it be? How much should it cost? These are all questions I work out with my clients before we press that little red record button so that when I deliver their finished video, it achieves what they set out to accomplish.

Here are the ten most important things you should decide for yourself, or with help from a professional, before you get started.

1. Why do you want to make a video?

If the answer is, “Because someone told me I should,” I’d very much recommend holding off until you feel it’s something you want to do for yourself and your business. Yes, video is super popular and a very useful marketing tool, but doing something because you feel obligated won’t bring in a positive result and will probably just leave you feeling sour about the whole experience. If you’re not ready, wait. You’ll know when it’s time.

2. What do you want to make?

Most people start with an idea, then after answering all these questions, end with something different. However, it’s helpful to have a baseline of what you want to see in the end, whether that’s a straight-forward commercial or a more nuanced “explainer” video that feels more like a documentary. Look around at your competition and see if you can find examples of videos you like and try to remember what you enjoyed about them.

3. What do you want it to achieve?

Do you want to educate your existing customers, bring in new ones, build or change your reputation? It’s essential to have a goal in mind to decide the tone you want to set for your finished video. If that’s bringing in new customers, that’s going to feel very different than a video that teaches your existing customers how to get the most out of your product or service.

4. How much should you spend?

Video production ranges from free (produced by your nephew on his phone) to many thousands of dollars (from production teams of twenty people). There’s a solution within your budget, no matter the size. However, it’s important to know what you’re comfortable investing in this project before you start reaching out to professionals, if anything, just to make sure you’re looking for the right help at the right cost. There’s no wrong answer, but there’s also no real standard rate. Every filmmaker charges a different amount based on their experience, their availability, their equipment, and more.

5. DIY or Hire a Pro?

If your answer to number four was $0, then you’re probably leaning toward a more DIY solution, and that’s ok. Depending on your idea for content, that may be just fine, or possibly even better than hiring a professional. No matter what, you’re making an investment. Either with your time to learn the equipment, software, techniques, and other elements of creating a video, or you’re investing your money in hiring someone to help you. In the end, it’s your decision, so you want to choose what’s most comfortable for you.

6. Should it feel “Personal” or “Professional”?

The answer to this may depend on your budget, or it may be more about your taste. A “professional” video is going to feel very polished with fantastic crisp sound quality, beautiful clear focus from a high-quality camera, and editing that feels perfectly timed. A “personal” video may look more like a moving selfie with the person on screen talking directly to the phone in their hand with no editing at all, and to be honest, that can sometimes be better.

Imagine a real estate agent. If they’re trying to sell an expensive house, a super polished video tour of the home with gorgeous lighting and beautiful music will do the trick. But what if they want to get buyers and sellers to trust the agent and want to work with them over anyone else? Maybe they’ll stick their phone on a selfie stick and film themselves walking through lots of houses to give clients a better idea of who they are to build a client-agent relationship before they ever even meet. Anything is possible with the right idea. That’s why it’s so important to know what you want to achieve.

If you're planning a series of videos, you might want to learn more toward a "personal" vibe as the cost of producing consistent "professional" videos can add up quickly, although not as much as you'd think depending on what you want.

7. What will you do with it?

The answer can’t just be, “put it on youtube.” I promise you no one will see it. You should have a plan of where you want to put it and how you’re going to track its progress. For most of my clients, their videos are something they host on their website, so when people hear about them and visit, they’re greeted with an entertaining and/or educational video to get a better idea of that product or service.

8. How long should it be?

Knowing what you want to do with your video can also change a lot about how it’s made. For example, videos on Instagram can only be 60 seconds long. If your goal was to create a video ad for that platform, you immediately run into that time limitation. For a more detailed answer, I’m going to refer you to my other post, "How to Choose the Perfect Length for Your Video" about the various lengths of videos and why it should be a conscious decision.

9. Who’s going to be in it?

Not everyone enjoys being on camera and that’s ok. Depending on the kind of video you want to make, you may not need anyone on camera. However, if you’re a lawyer and want to create videos to get clients to hire you, you’ll need to decide some solution that lets clients see your face and hear your voice. If you’re a retail store, it might be better to film some of your more articulate customers giving a testimonial of sorts.

10. What should it say?

The answer to this is often deeply personal for each client, or at least it should be. Just saying, “Come buy my product!” doesn’t help anyone. You want to send a message to your viewers about who you are, what you do, and why you’re the person (or provide the product) they need. That being said, every video needs some kind of call-to-action, something that lets the viewer know what they should do next. Otherwise, the video ends and they think, “Oh, that was nice,” and then they tune out. Always make sure there’s either a soft or hard sell, or more information available, or a website to donate, buy, register, etc. that is both easy to do and incredibly beneficial to both business and customer.

I hope you’ve found the answers to these questions helpful and I strongly recommend writing them out for yourself and answering them in your own way if you’re considering a video project. Even if you’re not, give it a try. You might surprise yourself with a great idea and run with it.

If you have any questions or would like to review your answers with me for feedback, or your answer to question #4 was to hire a professional and are reaching out to start the process, feel free to contact me here.

How to Choose the Perfect Length for Your Video

The world of online video changes daily as does the average viewer’s attention span.

Videos need to be shorter, snappier, and flashier than they were yesterday.

So how long should your video be? One minute? Two, three, ten? The answer is different for every video and is one of the first questions to ask when deciding what kind of video to create and where you plan to publish it. (For example, Instagram videos can only be up to 60 seconds.)

The easy answer is... the shorter, the better.

As a little experiment, go watch some YouTube videos and note the time where you felt the urge to turn it off. You might be surprised.

People get bored easily and when a viewing platform like YouTube shows a viewer that your video is ten minutes long and the other suggested video next to it that covers similar content is only two minutes, which would you choose? That’s not to say you can’t have a ten-minute video; it just has to be better than the two-minute video.

Let’s say you want to make a video for your business and let’s go through a few options and what would be an appropriate length.

• For a commercial format, think short. 60 seconds is forever in the commercial world. Think about all those times you’ve wanted to skip an ad on YouTube but panicked when you couldn’t and saw the ad was 60 seconds long. You want something closer to 30 seconds for a straight-forward “buy my product” or “call me” kind of ad and it should grab the viewer’s attention in the first five seconds. I also recommend you make something funny and have some memorable or brand-able element. I’ll talk more about this in other articles.
  
  You should also keep in mind that for most videos used as ads on YouTube, viewers have the ability to skip that ad after five seconds, which means your content needs to jump right to the good stuff in the first five seconds.

• For something like a “Website Explainer” or any video that will go on your site and give people a better idea about what services you provide, you should still keep it short at a maximum of around three minutes, but there’s some wiggle room. The reason is that people have come to you already interested in your or your service and they want to learn more. They want to get to know you before they pick up the phone to visit your contact page. People don’t want to take chances on unknowns anymore, so vetting you by watching your explainer video is a great way to do that anytime they want. For you, it’s a way to pitch your services while you sleep.

• For an educational format, such as a how-to or “tips and tricks” style video, you get much longer, even up to ten minutes is pretty standard these days. If you plan to educate people on how to maintain their bathroom fixtures or tackle tough mildew problems, etc., people are willing to sit through much longer videos because they have an active need for that information. It also demonstrates your knowledge in the field and establishes trust in you and your business.
   

The basic idea is whether or not you have a cold or warm audience for your video.

A cold audience has no idea or interest in you, and to get through to them, you need clean, snappy, and short. A warm audience has shown interest in your service by reaching out, visiting your site, or looking for the information you provide. Sometimes, you even have a captive audience at an event such as a fundraiser gala where your professionally made video will play on a large screen. In those cases, you get much more time, but don’t take that for granted.

The last thing you want to do is bore your viewer. That doesn’t mean you need flashing text or bright color explosions to keep their attention; they’re not toddlers. However, you do want to keep them as entertained as they are informed. How you do that is up to you, or if you’re unsure, people like me can help you develop your strategy. Never cultivate your idea in a bubble, or I guarantee it will pop.

As an exercise, try coming up with a few different ideas for videos about yourself or your business at various lengths, such as 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 10 minutes. If you decide you want to produce any of those ideas, jump to my next article: "10 Questions You Need to Answer Before Creating a Video."