How to make videos with your mobile phone?

If you want to improve your mobile phone shooting skills and techniques, keep the following tips in mind:

Technical preparations

The first lesson is – keep the lens clean. And that is not the only important lesson. Always have enough free space on your phone or memory card before you go somewhere to shoot. And the battery should be full. Remember, if your phone rings while you’re recording a video, the recording will either stop immediately or stop if you answer the call. So, divert your calls or turn on Airplane mode before you start recording.

The phone allows vertical and horizontal recording. You should record horizontally, that is, in 16:9 format when making a video for YouTube, Facebook or for television broadcasting. You should record vertically, i.e., in 9:16 format, when making a video for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook story, YouTube shorts.

The same rules apply when we use the front camera. We use it when we want to communicate something directly to the viewers. Be careful, however, to always look into the lens when speaking into the front-facing camera, because if you’re looking at the reflection of your face in the phone screen, you’ll lose eye contact with viewers.

Cell phone options

When shooting with your mobile phone, always include the lines that divide the frame into thirds. Explore how using these lines can provide for a more dynamic recording.

Also include the levelling line to ensure that the image is not skewed.

Is your subject very far away? Do not use the digital zoom to zoom in, as you will ruin the quality of the recording. Whenever you can, get close to the subject.

You probably already know that your phone has autofocus. This means that it will help sharpen the object in front of the camera.

Regardless of whether you have a tripod or not, today almost all phones offer an option to stabilize the image during recording. Use it, because it makes a huge difference, especially if you’re moving. When shooting with your mobile phone without a tripod, make sure your hands aren’t touching your torso, because if they are resting on your torso, your breathing can affect the stability of the image.

Using light

Light is the most important. Without it, there is no recording.

There is a small light on your phone, but don’t rely on it. It will ruin your footage more often than it will improve it.

You will almost always get bad results when the light source is behind the subject. The same goes for when the subject is in the shade, and the frame is dominated by strong sun or vice versa.

Leveling the sound

You capture the image with the camera, and the sound with the microphone. However, the phone best captures the sounds that are closest to it. If the subject moves away from the phone or there are other loud sounds in the immediate surroundings, then the tone will be unusable.

Bluetooth headphones with a microphone can serve as a low-cost alternative for the microphone on modern phones. On some Android devices, this is done by first connecting the phone and headset, then selecting the Bluetooth headset as the primary audio source in the phone’s camera settings.

This turns your Bluetooth headset into your microphone. Ordinary wired headphones can also become a microphone. You just need to connect them to your device.

On some phone devices, however, the camera app won’t let you select the Bluetooth headset as the audio source. You will need a new application.

Check out the tips on how to record with a mobile phone in the video!