so you want to make videos but your main experience thus far has been filming blurry videos of your cat well whether you want to be the next Alfred Hitchcock or you just want to impress that special someone who won't return your phone calls you've come to the right place because we're gonna go over some of the ropes this is filming basics 101 so let's assume you've got your hands on some sort of camera old new vintage iPhone the first thing we need to deal with is framing step 1 find someone you don't like step 2 by a bolt in their name step 3 you said boat for smuggling step 4 call the cops on them they get arrested you'll get away with it win-win let's talk about framing as it relates to film that's a great idea let's go we'll start things off with the rule of thirds the rule of thirds is a guideline used to help you compose a shot basically you imagine the image being separated into well first pretending there are two lines going from left to right and two more lines from top to bottom dividing the image into nine equal boxes this helps you balance the subjects of your shot and lets you keep an eye out in case your frame is a little too busy unless of course you want your shot to be busy you want to put your subjects at where the lines intersect if your subject is a person you normally want their eyes to be at the top one-third of the frame or right along that top horizontal line some other things you need to pay attention to when filming our look room and leaders say you have a subject that is looking a particular direction you want to frame the shot in a way that whichever direction has their main attention also has the most space this is known as looked room and it gives the audience more of an idea of which way the character is looking off screen otherwise you can make a character looked kind of trapped or like they're in some sort of artsy movie now if your subject is moving then you want to be prepared to compensate for that so you give them more lead room by putting them on the opposite side of the frame that they're moving towards this way you can track with your subjects so they don't accidentally leave the frame now that we've gone through the basics of framing let's talk about going from one shot to another now if you're filming a sketch or just simply the next oscar-winning movie there are a ton of ways that you can link shots we're going to just quickly touch on a couple the main way most of the time when linking shots together is to hide the fact that you've just cut from one shot to another from the audience probably the easiest way to get from one shot to another is called a cut on action say your subject is pouring and cool and refreshing glass of unhealthy carbonated sugar you can cut from shot a two-shot beat while the action is taking place and the viewer will barely notice because they're too distracted by something that's happening on-screen if you happen to be doing some live camera switching at an event a good time to transition might be when the speaker moves their hands or changes to the direction they've been walking that way it's just a little bit of a smoother transition you can also hide edits in clever ways say someone wants in front of the camera completely taking up the whole frame you can use this as an opportunity to switch to a closer shot or a different shot entirely it looks cool you look cool and your audience doesn't notice the transition as much another good time to cut is whenever someone is reacting to something like this don't worry about her man she's a slob anyway I mean look at her it's probably gonna be fat in a couple years now say you have a character speaking to an audience and they tell the best jokes anyone has ever heard and the audience is laughing hysterically this is the ideal time to cut us out to be a cynic once the laughter dies back down you can go back to your character again the reaction shot lets your viewer get a feel of the room and the emotions that are playing out there justified shots that make sense to the viewers and therefore are usually less noticeable how long should you stay on a particular shot well it kinda depends on you and whatever you're making when we go to see a movie we're used to seeing quick edits for example 2004's the Bourne Supremacy has an average shot length of 2.4 seconds now that's over 2500 edits and a hundred minute on film now movie goers have become attuned to seeing a lot and a little bit of time in life reduction work harder that doesn't mean you have to switch shots so fast you get calluses the goal is more about keeping it interesting for whoever's watching it so you don't want to say I'm shots too long but how long is too long if there's music being played you might want to cut you the rhythm with beat of the song if there's a killer guitar solo you probably want to cut to that a little closer now if you're filming a speaker you probably want to cut a little bit less as there's likely less action going on then there would be at say a concert however if you're filming someone's speaking at an event you may really want to consider showing the audience every now and again if you stay and glows on your speaker the entire time the on can kind of forget the room that the speaker's talking to from the viewers standpoint they could be speaking to an empty room or a group of people once or even just well look at you you're ready to make your mark on Hollywood or at least you know on YouTube but before you get started let me mention one more thing throughout this video I know I talked about a lot of rules and techniques rules are important and are generally what you want to stick to as a guideline however just like any good rule they can be broken so it's important to know the rules so you can create your own path and get all artsy with it you know more importantly though in all of this make sure to have fun film is fun yay now go out there and make something great when an award and anything they like