10 Tips for Shooting on a Mobile Phone

When I was a kid, Fisher-Price released a video camera called Pixel Vision. It recorded a few minutes of video, in black and white, to a cassette tape. I wanted one so bad it still hurts. Obviously, I never got my hands on one, but my future in video was already sealed from that moment on.

It took quite a while after that for cheap video cameras to hit the market. For a few years there were some awesome $75+ cameras that actually shot audio, HD video and was easy grab the footage from. Flip, a camera maker bought a few years ago by Cisco, was the king of this market. I have three. Still.

I never use them though. Why? Because of my mobile phone. Once I had my hands on an iPhone 4, I knew there was no need to carry a Flip cam with me. I had the same exact thing in my pocket already.

On top of that,  the video quality was GOOD. I mean really GOOD. So much so that, on a lark, I shot an episode of Dead Explorer, a paranormal show on YouTube, for my friend Alejandro who makes the show. When I told him I had used my iPhone, he was amazed. For just playing around at the hotel The Shining was shot in, I was pretty happy with how happy he was. You can see that video here.

Sure, that’s not ‘professional’ video, but with some simple techniques you can really maximize video quality, particularly on the new iPhone 5.

Shooting video on your phone is a great way to produce extremely cheap content. If the idea is simple and you treat the phone like a camera (not a phone!) then you might be as happy as Alejandro and I were!

Tips for shooting on an iPhone (or any mobile device):

1. No vertical shots. Video is a horizontal medium. Unless you have a very specific reason for holding your phone upright to shoot video you should always turn it sideways. It’s a no-brainer really, but I can’t tell you how many decent mobile phone videos I have seen that would have been 1000x better if someone had held the camera the right way.

2. The subject should always face the sun (or whatever light source you’re using.) If you don’t, the shot will be blown out from the light source and your subject will, most likely, be underexposed.

3. Don’t look up someone’s nose. A camera shot of a person should try to be slightly above the subject’s eyeline looking down. A straight on shot, especially on a mobile phone camera, can make someone’s nose bigger than it should. A shot looking up the nose? Well we can all agree that’s probably not a good idea!

4. Set it down. If possible, place your mobile phone on a table, a stack of books or invest in an inexpensive gorillapod. This will keep the shot steady

5. If you have to hold the camera with your hands, you should put your elbows against your chest with the phone held out in front of you. This will help stabilize the camera. Practice shooting this way before you start – you’ll need to control your breathing just a little bit (say OM!)

6. SLOW. Don’t whip that camera around. If you’re going to show the contents of a whole room, don’t whip the phone around. That could cause some problems. Be fluid with your motion.

7. Stay zoomed OUT. The farther you zoom in the more any poor camera movements are readily visible. If you’re zoomed out all the way the phone camera is going to react as well as possible to any movement

8. Multiple takes. Don’t be afraid to ask a question 3-4 times or to repeat a take just to make sure you have something you can use!

9. B-roll. Some people in film call b-roll the “kitchen sink” shot. It’s the mundane and boring stuff no one (usually) likes to shoot that is used to cover up poor edits and sound jumps. While somewhat boring to shoot, nothing is more exciting to an editor than finding a b-roll clip that allows them to cover up stuff they don’t want anybody to see.

10. Beware wind. If you’re outside, you’ll want to check the sound on your phone. In my video taken at the Stanley Hotel, I had to do several re-takes because of wind noise. I ended up cupping my hand around the bottom of the phone, while shooting myself. It was meant to cut out the wind noise, which it did, but it also improved the quality of sound!