An easy, beginners guide to making your iPhone videos more cinematic

Given how much time I spend obsessively hate-watching crappy videos on Instagram and Snapchat these days, you’d think I’d be sold on the whole vernacular of smartphone video. In truth, I’m anything but.

Look, I’m fully aware that the off-the-cuff footage we record with our phones isn’t supposed to be perfect. I get that the shaky shooting style conveys immediacy and realism. But I’m also concerned that we’re trading our memories—hazy and fallible yet rich—for snippets of digital mush. We will end up with years of babies’ first steps, girls’ nights out and improbable holes-in-one preserved as nothing more than jittery blurs.

Not to sound alarmist, but I believe we’re on the cusp of a collective mnemonic catastrophe.

The good news? We can easily save ourselves. Shooting a great video isn’t much more difficult or time consuming than shooting a bad one. We just have to decide to do it.

This all hit me recently while I was watching a clip I’d recorded of my daughter’s birthday. I had flubbed my duties as designated family videographer on a few prior occasions. (Once, I somehow failed to tap the record button and wasn’t actually filming when I thought I was. Another time, my phone ran out of storage.) When this birthday rolled around, I’d learned my lesson: I triple checked that my phone was in working order. I scouted the ideal spot to stand—close to the action but not so near that I’d get in the way of the festivities.

Singing commenced. Candles flickered. Then came the momentous inhale and subsequent gale, followed by seven tendrils of smoke and my daughter’s ear-to-ear grin.

Did I notice the can of whipped cream crowding the frame as all this was happening? No, because I hadn’t taken the time to check the composition before recording. In hindsight, I estimate that moving the offending canister out of the frame would have taken seven seconds.

I’m not saying we need to film our every backyard barbecue with Terrence Malick-like reverence. But if we’re going to bank our memories to the cloud, don’t we owe it to ourselves to make the videos as competent and vivid as they can be?

A bunch of you are likely with me on this. “Yeah,” you’re thinking, “I am going to start taking great video!” But something is telling you that, as gung-ho as you may be now, the next time you pull your phone out of your pocket, you’ll fall back to your old ways. Taking the time to frame your shot properly may be easy, but somehow you won’t bother.

Travel writer Paul Theroux has described the act of snapping photos as “a way of forgetting.” Indeed, researchers have found that people who photographed art in a museum remembered fewer details about the works than those who hadn’t—perhaps because by stepping behind the camera, we step out of the moment. When I need a kick in the pants to take better video, I remind myself that hitting record doesn’t supplement memories; it supplants them.

Once you delve seriously into the craft of smartphone videography, you’ll find a sea of specialized equipment to buy, most with steep learning curves: anamorphic lenses to give your shots a cinematic depth of field, pricey Steadicam-like devices for capturing expert tracking shots. But you needn’t spend a lot of money or learn what “desqueezing” video entails to considerably up your game. There are plenty of easy steps you can implement tomorrow, as well as practical add-ons to tap your inner Spielberg.

To start, keep in mind that all the basic rules of photography apply when filming on a smartphone: If you’re shooting people, hold the camera high to avoid the unflattering up-the-nose view. Don’t leave too much space above your subjects’ heads (step closer if you need to). Avoid recording someone standing directly in front of a bright light or window—which will backlight your subject. If you’re tracking scampering puppies or other fast-moving objects, don’t center them in the frame—leave some extra space in the direction they’re moving, so they don’t feel like they’re about to run off the screen.

This is a no-brainer, but try to hold your phone straight, people. Admittedly, it’s easier said than done. If you botch this and are kicking yourself after the fact, don’t sweat it. You can manually tilt the clip using the Chromic app for iOS (free, $5 for full version).

The beauty of smartphone videography is that you don’t have to know a thing about exposure settings or focusing to do it at least semi-right. If the area you want to zero in on looks blurry or too bright or dark, just tap it and let the software do the rest.

And if you’re going to use your phone primarily as a camera, make it just a camera. When recording a video more than a few minutes long, put your phone on airplane mode. The Wi-Fi and cellular components can make subtle noises that you definitely don’t want to memorialize along with your child’s cello recital.

Last, less is often more. As tempting as it may be to swoop and pan, you’ll find your videos a lot less tiring to watch if you keep your camera still. A small tripod like the GripTight ONE GP Stand ($35, joby.com ) will allow you to set and forget it.

 Source: The Wall Street Journal