1. Best Practices Shooting With Native iPhone Camera App [4:21 min]
TRANSCRIPT
Hi I’m Aubrey Mozino from We Make Movies.
If you are just getting started shooting video on your iPhone, the best place to start is the built-in Camera app. In this video we’re going to look at the basics of shooting video on the native Camera app that ships on all iPhones.
Open the camera app and slide over to VIDEO. The first decision you have to make as a cinematographer is which orientation you want to use. While most social media platforms are optimized for vertical or Portrait style video, shooting horizontal or Landscape is better suited for YouTube and professional video content. If you’re shooting for multiple platforms it’s easier to shoot landscape then crop in for Instagram than the other way around. With iOS13 you can change the orientation and even crop your video without leaving the app by pressing the EDIT button in the Camera Roll then the CROP button. Rotate or flip orientation in the top left corner and crop in by pulling the corners of the rectangle inwards. If your video is a bit crooked you can even straighten it by pressing the left most circle and using the visual guides to adjust until level.
You can also apply a grid to your screen to help you align elements in your shot. This can help you capture more visually interesting shots by lining up your horizon or the eyes of your main subject on the points of intersection of the vertical and horizontal lines.
Next go back to your settings menu and CAMERA option to adjust your frame rate and resolution. Best practices for professional quality content is to shoot at a minimum of 1080p at 30 frames per second (or FPS). However, if you have the space on your phone we recommend shooting in 4k at either 24 or 30FPS. 24FPS will give you a more cinematic quality while 30FPS is used more frequently for documentary, news or social media/YouTube videos.
For high-speed motion like sports you can bump up your frame rate to 60FPS which will make your videos look very sharp and allow you to use editing software in post production to slow it down to 24 or 30FPS to create great slo-mo. If you have the iPhone 11 you can adjust frame rate and resolution in the upper left hand corner of the CAMERA screen.
Next find the focus of your shot by going back to the Camera screen. By tapping anywhere on your screen you’ll see your dual reticle which controls both your focus and exposure. Position that to the area of interest -- usually the main subject of your shot, slide your finger up and down to fine tune your exposure. Once your shot is well lit you can lock the AutoExposure/AutoFocus by tapping and holding down that area until you see AE/AF Lock pop up. To unlock just tap anywhere else on the screen. If you’re going to be moving from an area that’s extremely bright to one that’s dark during your shot -- like a movement from exteriors to interiors you may not want to lock exposure as your shot will end up being too dark once you’re inside.
If you have the iPhone 10 or above you can switch between the regular wide angle lense which is 1x magnification, the ultra wide at .5 magnification and on the iPhone 11Pro the third telephoto lense gives you 2x optical Magnification. To zoom in further you can either pinch to zoom or to be more precise you can long press any of the magnification selections to make the zoom wheel appear. Just note that if you zoom above any of the optical selections at .5, 1 or 2 you’ll be using the digital zoom which can degrade the quality of your image a bit and make it look a little noisy. Stay at the optical lense magnifications to have the sharpest and highest quality shot.
Once you’ve shot your footage you can add music, transitions and titles by editing it in iMovie right on your phone or upgrading to a pro video editor for iOS like Lumafusion. If you want to finish the project on your Mac you can export both iiMovie and Lumafusion projects directly into Final Cut Pro X and pick up where you left off.