Access to video-making equipment has never been as easy or affordable as it is in today’s climate. This means filming yourself has become ever-present in the day-to-day of promoting a company or running a social channel. Before I discuss the tips for filming yourself, let me explain my experience.
I’ve worked with hundred of people when it comes to being online or recording themselves for their online business and recording yourself seems to be one of their biggest fears! It’s crazy how stiff and unnatural people seem to be when recording themselves.
In this day and age of social media, where content is imperative, we’re always looking to stay up to date with the latest interactions. One of the more prominent forms is daily vlogs, which have been a huge hit.
Here we will look at the top tips for filming yourself. Let’s check them out!
Top tips for filming yourself
We’ve broken down the best tips and tricks so you can learn how to film yourself like an absolute professional, so, here are our top tips for filming yourself.
1. Stabilize your camera
Make sure your camera is stabilised in some form. Use a tripod if you have one, if not you can prop your camera or phone up on a table. There’s nothing more distracting than shaky, unstable footage.
You’ll lose your viewership and it’s a pain to try and resurrect in post production.
2. Have Quality Lighting
You will want the footage to look good, and by controlling the light you’ll be able to achieve this. There’s nothing worse than having a horrible glare push through the windows and enter your setup, especially if you notice this after filming the piece.
For example if your filming inside, make sure the room is lit evenly and you don’t have light from the window hitting you directly. As this will cause you to appear as a silhouette on the screen due to the over exposure.
The correct setup will allow a softer lighting and eliminate the issue of having shadows in your video. Read our guide on lighting below to help you with your setup!
Read More: 9 essential film lighting techniques every filmmaker should know
3. Ensure you have quality audio
Poor audio will kill your video in seconds. You’ll lose the audience in seconds if they can;’t hear what you are saying properly.
Make sure if you are filming on a DSLR or a phone to add an external microphone. Maybe use a shotgun mic or a lavalier microphone. You’ll instantly improve the sound quality ten-fold, and this is imperative to telling a story or conducting an interview.
Read More: A filmmakers guide to buying the best microphone for filmmaking
4. Add subtitles
This isn’t too much of a tip to help you whilst filming yourself, it’s one for when you post on social media. It’s incredible how many people watch videos on mute, that’s why it’s imperative to have great subtitles.
You’ll gain additional viewers and captivating them even if they’re watching it on public transport with no headphones. That’s no bother to them as they have your perfectly worded subtitles to fall back on.
5. Be natural
Being natural is important when creating your vlogs, social media video posts and videos in general. Some people will freeze up and forget what to save when you press record.
To avoid this plan what you’re going to say beforehand. Don’t plan word for word or you’ll be stopping an starting trying to remember your lines and it will come across as unnatural.
Bullet point the key topics and talk to the camera in an enthusiastic manner about the points. Don’t worry if you stutter or stumble on a sentence. Pause for five seconds, compose yourself and start again. That’s the joys of editing.
Don’t try and reel it off like a monstrous 10 minute monologue, break it down into bitesize pieces and go for it.
You’ll be a pro in no time. Keep practising and you’ll nail it.
6. Have fun with it
This kind of links with the “be natural” header above. But honestly have fun with it. The more you enjoy it, the better it will be. You’ll come across as relaxed, entertaining and bring an engaging atmosphere to the clip.
And remember, as we said above, you can always trim clips down and edit them, so don’t worry too much about missing a word or slipping up. Take a second, compose yourself and start the sentence again.
Then sort it out in post production.
7. Be creative!
This is where you can experiment with different lenses, different angle and changing up the script once every while. Why you ask? Well, it differentiates your content.
It keeps the audience engaged. Sometimes if you continually post static mid shot videos people start to lose interest.
Don’t get us wrong you will still get viewers but look to change up the camera angles, maybe shoot from the ceiling or even create a super wide shot for your intro. Test different methods out and see what works and what doesn’t.
It will keep you audience interested, wanting more and will allow you to develop and grow your style.
Read More: A guide to framing: 6 essential camera angles to tell your story
8. Learn to edit
Teach yourself how to edit – it will help you develop your style and create more engaging content.
Ensure you learn how to sync up your audio, learn multicam editing techniques, and of course learn to create subtitles!
You can add your own spin to the video. Maybe you can add different effects to emphasise important parts of your content or look at the different transitions to create smooth transitions from clip to clip.
Read More: The Top 5 Adobe Premiere Pro Tutorials
9. Exporting your video
Finally make sure you export for the right size and format for each social media platform you will be posting too.
This is really important as you want to optimise the user experience for each platform and ensure it looks clean and sleek.
Read more on how to export your clips here: How to export a video from Adobe Premiere Pro
We hope this article on the top tips for filming yourself was helpful. Let us know what you thought of the article and what else you want to hear from us in the comments.
Here’s a few additional resources to help you on your filmmaking journey:
