How to film yourself. This is a topic I've seen covered by a lot of people. However, I do have some insight that'll offer a unique perspective that I think, I think you're gonna want to hear. In 2023, I filmed a total of 213 Some long, some short, for clients, for myself, for my mom, a large percentage of which I filmed completely solo, completely by myself.
While filming those videos, I was able to pick up an immense amount of insight that not only made my videos incrementally... better as time went on but also made them easier to make and that's what I'm gonna talk about. See I want you to think of shooting by yourself as a chef whipping up a delicious scrumptious dish.
First you've got the prep where you meticulously plan and script your videos laying out the ingredients. Next we have the cooking which is the shooting where we apply the heat and mix creativity with technique to bring the flavor out. And finally the plating, post-production where we garnish and present our visual ideas turning the apparent regular into a visual masterpiece that actually has substance. It's just chips and guac.
I don't know what this is. Chips and guac. Each step is crucial and interdependent. There's stuff that we have to pay attention to at every single level.
So let's not waste any time. Let's get into the kitchen for the prep. Back with it, uh, action packed raps. Back to back. Eating off of the rap snacks.
That's some action. When it took me to catnap. Planning is your best friend. If you've ever seen any of my videos, regardless of how spontaneous, and off the cuff they appear. Every single line is split.
Literally everything. I organize my lines by location with notes on how I want to deliver those lines. I have screenshots of visual references of visuals that I want to shoot at those locations.
Basically what we're trying to do here is to save time later in the shooting process so we can be more creative when we actually have the camera in hand. Now if I'm being completely honest, it's hard to rival the simplicity of shooting with a friend or shooting with a DP for one reason and one reason alone. Motion. When you're shooting by yourself because of the tripod, you can't have any motion. But what you and I are going to do is going to use that extreme planning to make up for those static shots and creativity and angles, composition, lighting, diversity of shots, props.
Props are also, props play a very crucial role in these videos. I want you to think of your props not as just objects but rather storytelling tools that help to sharpen the attention of the audience and to hone in on exactly what story that you're trying to tell. Wardrobe. Wardrobe is also very, very important. All the great filmmakers.
and directors have a very signature style. Wes Anderson, for example. Wes Anderson is such an incredible artist because of how cohesive the worlds he creates feel.
The outfits, the locations, the set dressing, every single detail is heavily and lengthy fully considered. Don't be afraid to be a little extra and get like a chef's outfit and a chef's hat to kind of accentuate your point. Like you gotta be, you gotta be theatric because this is, this is the arts.
It's the arts. In short, the prep stage is about aligning all these elements, the script, the composition, the props, the wardrobe, to set a solid foundation for whatever visual story that we're about to tell. It's the attention to detail that elevates the final production and gets us ready for the next step, the cooking.
This is my favorite part of the production process. I love the cooking, which is shooting. Now since we have all our ingredients, the shot list, the visual references, our script, the wardrobe, the locations, this video is basically going to shoot itself. You just got to show up to the location.
read the line that's on the script and move on to the next shot which means we can we can take a little bit more time to to get creative my goal here is to grab the attention of the audience and bend it around my vision like i'm conducting the symphony the close-ups the back advantage of you, the macro focus, the tracking shots, Dutch angle, POV shots, the silhouette, super slow motion, and my favorite, top down. You name it, if we can spice up the video, we're gonna throw it in the video with reason. The way I look at it is, it is possible to get the ideas across of whatever video you're making, plain vanilla and just very simple, but we want the personality to flavor the visual dish that we're creating.
We wanna make these videos with personal flair and style. So we're gonna bust out these cool filters that we have. We're going to bust out the fog machines and we're going to use them to supplement whatever story that we're telling.
We're trying to make a cool looking piece, a cool looking video here. Okay, so it would be a shame if I didn't mention arguably the most important thing when it came to filming by yourself The tripod getting a good and reliable tripod is important to working fast and not getting frustrated when it's time to get Get these shots, you know, I use I use the peak design travel tripod in aluminum. It's very reliable I've been using it for years and I like it.
I also use a small old man photo tripod for my lights as well because lighting is very important when it comes to creating these visuals as well. Lighting is a whole other important topic that I intend to cover in another video all by itself because it's so important but just if you if you don't know anything about lighting just remember these three things. One, shoot from the shadow side.
This means if your lights coming from this direction then you put your camera on this other side shooting into the shadows relative to your to your face or your subject's face. It just makes it look a little bit more cinematic and a little bit cool. All the directors do it, so I'm gonna do it too. Pointer number two, if you can't afford big expensive lights, pocket lights will get the job done perfectly. And if you can't afford pocket lights, a flashlight is also good enough.
I used a flashlight for a few of the scenes in this video and they turned out amazing. You just have to get a little creative with it. Lastly, point number three, natural light. is your friend. If all else fails, if you can't find a light, just shoot in front of a window and the light will be evenly balanced on your face and it'll be beautiful.
Would you look at that? We're done cooking. It's now time for the final stage, the presentation. This is where we transform our raw footage into a captivating visual feast. I like to create tiny little wow moments.
I call them visual nuggets to keep the attention of the audience glued to the screen. If you're curious where I get my inspiration for all this stuff, I look at music videos and documentaries and see the techniques that they use to hold the attention of the audience before I move on to the next step, which is sound design. Oh my gosh, sound design.
Sound design is half of the entire video. When it comes to sound, you want to meticulously and very carefully select sounds and layer those sounds in a way that complement your visual story. I'm talking about ambient sounds. crisp clicks and ticks that amplify key moments.
It's about crafting an audio landscape that pulls the viewer deeper into the experience and gets them ready for the very next step, which is probably the most important step of this entire video, the music. Oh my gosh, the music. Music selection is crucial. I can't express how important music is when it comes to these videos. It sets the tone and sets the mood for the entire video piece.
We're looking for tracks that resonate with our visual narrative, enhancing whatever story that we're telling. You can use music bed, sound cloud, whatever it is. But just use whatever music that truly speaks to you and speaks to the video that you're creating.
It's like looking for a perfect wine that pairs very nicely with the visual meal that we're creating. You're looking for something to complement and elevate the entire experience. And look at that.
We have a very delicious dish that we've created sitting right in front of us. It's time for us to eat so stop watching this and go make a video. See you on the next one.