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How to Shoot a Video with your Android or iOS Smartphone

Nov 25,2017• Proven solutions

Smartphones are one of the most essential accessories for us these days; they are not just limited to calling rather solve lots of purposes. Being best source of entertainment, they allow us to view and shoot videos. If you also have an android smartphone or an iOS device then you must be curious to know the professional tricks to record high quality videos. The article below can help you in this context, keep reading.

Preparation:

First of all, to begin with the video recording process we need to collect all the basic accessories. Indeed, the most essential one is your iOS or Android smartphone but there are few other important requirements. In order to stabilize your phone while capturing footage you need to buy a tripod and also, to make connection between smartphone and tripod stand, a compatible holder must be there. The most impressive videos use to contain high quality audio content in order to capture that audio information accurately you need to buy a microphone. Android users are also advised to download ‘Open Camera’ application that is available for free and helps to adjust the manual exposure for your recordings.

Steps to Follow:

Now as you are ready with the accessories, so let us proceed ahead with these steps:

Step 1: Prepare your content:

Start with your content preparation because when you want to produce your own video then it is essential to jot down details about what type of content you will include. It must be well planned as per available resources and you also need to think about time and cost factor.

Step 2: Check your location preferences:

For the first time video generators, this might be a complicated task because they will not be able to make analysis about which light conditions are essential as well as the effects of background noise. It is important to choose a location that is neither too bright nor too dark, at the same time it should be free from background noise. In simple words, pick a location that is perfect for the scene you have planned to capture.

Step 3: Time to mess with your Tripod:

So finally, you are here to deal with your tripod. Now you need to make efforts to fix your camera lens and tripod at proper height. It must be arranged in such a manner that camera lens stays little below your eye level. You will be glad to know that market these days is loaded with height adjustable tripods so you can easily set them as per your need. Those who do not have a height adjustable tripod can make use of gorilla pod to adjust their phone at desirable height.

Step 4: Avoid Distractions:

When you are trying to shoot videos with your smartphone then definitely you need to make some arrangements to stop distractions, because if it starts ringing in between then you will lose your important scene. The best way is to switch to flight mode so that all calls, emails and sms can be disabled for that desired duration of time.

Step 5: Fix your phone:

As your tripod and camera both are ready to shoot now so you need to fix your phone on this stable stand. To do this, mount your smartphone horizontally in the holder connected on the top of tripod. It must be adjusted to proper height from where it is capture scene well and the camera must be adjusted as forward facing.

Step 6: Do lens cleanup:

You must have observed that camera lens often collects lots of dust, dirt and grime. Naturally, it will make your view unclear. Thus as per expert advice, you must start only after cleaning your camera lens thoroughly.

Step 7: Plug your Mic:

The fact is well understood that most interesting videos need quality audio content and to get that you need to connect mic. Prefer to buy a microphone that picks signal with strong details and can be easily clipped to jacket, tie or shirt etc. It should be at a proper distance from your mouth so that audio signals can be easily transferred for recording.

Step 8: Ensure availability of free storage space:

While recording videos, you need to care about its storage too. Prefer to use a memory card with higher storage space to store high quality content, professionals recommend using Class 10 configuration for best and fast results.

Step 9: Adjust manual exposure:

Here is an interesting thing to learn about professional video shooting. Generally when we capture videos or stills from our smartphone then its camera make automatic adjustments for light conditions. The brightness use to reduce automatically when you fix your camera at brighter sites and it increases when scenes have darker appearance. But to get professional quality results you need to make manual settings for light adjustments. It is desired to have same brightness settings for whole video and to do this you must switch to manual lighting or expo sure. If your camera does not have this manual adjustment feature then you must record with ‘Open Camera’.

Step 10: Start with a test video:

Although, everything is ready now but you are advised to shoot a test video first, it will help you to ensure that weather everything is fine about settings or not. Check the brightness levels, background noise etc. Once everything appears perfect then move to step 11.

Step 11: Get started with your original video:

Now you can start recording with all above settings. Make sure that you are getting noise free footage with proper audio and video content.

Step12: Time to edit:

As soon as you are done with your video recording, it is time to edit your video on PC or Mac device to make it more useful and interesting. You can also trim it using advanced editing softwares like Filmora etc. and later it can be shared online.

Liza Brown
Liza Brown is a writer and a lover of all things video.