Shoot Better Video With Your Phone: Best Practices

You don't need to be a professional when it comes to shooting high-quality video on your own these days.

Creating a video or going live on social media with a smartphone or tablet can look just as good as a professional recording. Here are some key tips to keep in mind.

Always Shoot Horizontal / Landscape / Sideways

The first instinct for most smartphone and tablet users is to hold their device upright instead of on its side. But by simply turning the device horizontally instead of vertically, the video is optimized for all screens rather than just mobile devices. In other words, viewers can watch the video or live broadcast on a computer monitor, laptop or TV screen, just as they would a TV show or movie. While vertical videos have increased in popularity, horizontal video is the universal format and should be adhered to unless the video is being made exclusively for a vertical reel.

Smooth and Steady Pleases Viewers

While filming, put your phone on Do Not Disturb Mode to prevent the video from stopping or catching the noise or vibrations if you receive a notification while recording. It's also important to keep the phone as still and level as you can, unless you’re shooting something where you’ll be moving. This will keep the video from shaking so it’s easier to focus on the main object and so the image doesn’t appear to be low quality or unprofessional.

You also want to hold your shots for much, much longer than you think. Stay locked on your shot a few seconds after the "action" ends. Your post-production editor will thank you.

One way to keep the phone steady is through the use of a gimbal stabilizer. One such model is the hohem iSteady XE Kit Gimbal Stabilizer for iPhone or Android. It's currently priced under $70 on Amazon and includes a tripod accessory to stand the gimbal up when not in motion. Sometimes referred to as a "steadicam," these devices will ensure any camera movement is super smooth, even when you're walking up stairs.

Get closer

Smartphones are quite bad at recording video when the subject is standing far from the camera. You will get more noise in the shoot, the subject is more likely to be out of focus and the overall image quality of the video will be lower.

Most smartphone cameras have a relatively high field of view, meaning they can capture a wider shoot even if you can really close to what you want to shoot. So don’t hesitate to get really close to your subject. This will improve the image quality, mainly by focusing better.

And while it may be tempting, but don’t use the zoom tool on smart phones while creating videos. This will lower the quality of the video. Instead, just move closer to the object. If you’re moving toward the object during the video, move slowly so the image stays clear.

Disable the auto-focus feature

If your smartphone’s camera software allows it, adjust the settings manually so that it allows you to capture the best quality shots depending on the particularities of each situation.

Manually set the exposure and focus so that everything looks as good as it can under the given circumstances. Auto-settings might be easier and faster to use, but will not allow you to get the best looking video every time and if you're not paying attention, auto-focus can screw up your videos badly.

So make sure to turn that off and use manual focus. In case your smartphone camera’s software doesn’t allow it, install a different app such as Open Camera for Android.

Increase your smartphone's video quality

On the iPhone, open your Settings app and then tap Camera. Next choose the Record Video option and you'll see lots of video resolution and frame rate choices.

You'll have different settings available depending on which iPhone model you have.

The best video settings available will be on the iPhone Pro X, which will support:

• 1080p HD at 30fps

• 1080p HD at 60fps

• 4K at 24fps

• 4K at 30fps

• 4K at 60fps

Your best settings are going to be 4K at 60fps, which will give your editor more latitude.

In the stock Android Camera app, you take these steps:

Touch the Control icon, open up the Camera app > switch to Video mode > and then tap on the recording settings to open up a list of resolutions and fps values.

Select 4k 60fps from the onscreen menu. If 4K is not available, select 1080p 30fps

There's one major caveat that you should know about when recording at 60fps instead of 30fps, and that's file size. Because your phone is capturing twice the number of frames, 60fps videos take up more storage, and there's often a recording time limit if you ramp up to 4K.

Resolution and video quality for the front-facing camera are set by switching to the front camera and then following the same steps. The resolution and quality choices are more limited, however, because the front-facing camera is not as sophisticated as the rear camera.

Remember to the resolution or video quality before you shoot!

How does it sound?

Make sure that you're close enough to the person speaking and that there isn't a lot of background noise if you plan to record audio. Too far away, or too noisy, and you're not going to like what you hear when you're done. If you're like me, I can watch less than stellar video as long as the audio is good, but if a video has terrible audio, I just can't watch it at all.

You can also control for sound with a wireless lavalier microphone. With these devices, you can connect the wireless microphone to your subject, even hundreds of feet away with clear line of site, while receiving great audio. One device if this Hollyland Lark C1, but there are others. Just remember, you get what you pay for.

After filming

Make sure the video is saved on your phone. You don’t want to get home after you put everything away and realize you don’t have the video and then have to go set everything up again. Although you may just be uploading the video straight from your phone to your social media pages, it’s a good idea to save the video on your computer as well.

If your video is large, you may want to follow these techniques to get videos off your iPhone and follow these techniques to get them off your Android.

If you're working with our team on post-production, we'll provide you with a file request so you can upload the files directly from your phone to our studio.

Now you have more video know-how!