With each new release of Apple’s iPhone, the device’s camera gets better and better, so it’s no surprise that amateur and professional filmmakers alike have begun turning to the device that many of us carry around in our pockets every day to make their movies.
With the widely praised iPhone 5S-shot movie - Tangerine, in cinemas now - it's a great time to give you hints and tips on how to shoot business and marketing videos using just an iPhone or smartphone.
Making business videos and video marketing clips in the past has been an expensive undertaking. You would have to hire a professional company to come into the business and spend the day filming with professional equipment and scripts. You could then wait up to 6 months to get the final version of you videos to post on YouTube, Social Media and, of course, your company website. This limits your video marketing plan massively, as you also don't have the ability to quickly record videos to react to industry trends, missing an opportunity to show your target market that you are the market leader.
Recording video on your smartphone has always been simple and easy to do, but more often than not you can expect that the quality will suffer because of shaky images, out-of-focus lenses, low lighting levels and poor sound quality. Now all that can change with the latest iPhone, smartphone cameras and software which make it easier than ever before to create studio-quality movies, with nothing more than the smartphone itself.
Below are some tips to aid you and your business to record, high-quality videos at a fraction of the cost of a professional company, and publish your videos to YouTube and Social Media in a couple of hours. Video marketing is a crucial tactic to aid your marketing plan and get more leads to the sales team.
To find out more about promoting your videos on YouTube please read this article: 5 Video Marketing Tips: How To Promote Your YouTube Videos
A simple rule to abide by with audio is to get the microphone on the smartphone as close to the subject as possible to get clear voice audio. This can be a challenge when filming. To combat this problem, use a second smartphone set to voice recorder to simply record the audio and use software such as garage band and Adobe Audition to match the sound with the film. You can also plug an external microphone into an iPhone to record audio to greatly enhance the audio of the recording.
One thing is for sure when recording a new video for your business, you will need to have top-level audio to accompany the video. Lucky enough for iPhone users, using an iPhone 4 or above you get, included with your device, Garage Band which is a great piece of software for getting great audio.
Take your audio to the next level, use Adobe's Audition software which can help even the beginner audio mixer to mix levels, take out script mistakes and add pre-set levels to enhance audio.
No matter how steady your hands are, your iPhone or smartphone is going to have to work pretty hard to stabilise a handheld shot. If you're editing multiple takes, slight movements can be really distracting, so it's definitely worth the extra effort to stabilise your shots with a tripod.
Avoid the temptation to use the iPhone's built-in camera zoom. Since the lens isn't zooming optically, you're just enlarging the picture digitally, which means you will have a pixelated video which can look incredibly poor. If you want to get a closer shot in the video, move the tripod closer and test different viewpoints to get the best video possible.
The built-in camera flash on the new iPhone or smartphone will never compare to using off-camera lights. Off camera softboxes are now very cheap and can really add a different level to your videos. If you don’t have access to softboxes, no need to panic as the iPhone performs incredibly well with natural light. So position your subject facing a window and the use the natural light from the sun.
Top Tip: Clap once at the beginning of each take to create a reference point for syncing the good sound from the voice memo with the bad sound from the video recording.
You can edit the recording on your iPhone or smartphone with some simple software from the relevant app stores. What Apple users do have is the Free iMove, which is a fantastic piece of software to fully edit the recording with filters, transitions, logos, and even the ability to choose from a predetermined bank of animations that can be used to pull from one shot to the next.
With a critically acclaimed movie Tangerine being completely recorded on an iPhone, it is evidence that you can record your corporate videos on a smartphone. Using the hints and tips above when recording, you can record high quality videos fast for your target market on Social Media and for your website, to significantly aid your lead generation.