Tips for using your phone to make videos for your business

Modern smartphones are fantastic pieces of technology. They’re so common that we take them for granted, but we often forget that they can do things that, just a few years ago, you would have needed a room full of equipment and specialized knowledge. HD video? Nah, they do 4k now. Edit your video with effects? Not a big deal. Publish video in a way that can reach thousands or millions of people in a few minutes while in your car? Not a problem. Of course, you already knew all of this. The thing is that most people never use their phones to their full potential. In this piece, I will give you a few tips on using your phone to make better videos to promote your business. 

Let’s start with the basics:

Decide where you are going to record

Sound:

Sound is kind of critical when it comes to video (more important in many ways than the image itself, but that's a different topic). But until you are ready to start investing in extra gear for sound, let’s think about how to get the best sound out of what you already have. The biggest factor in getting good sound out of your phone as it is your location. When picking a spot to record, think about what that space sounds like. What you want in terms of a good-sounding room to record in is a quiet room with lots of soft surfaces in it, like furniture, carpeting, and curtains. Or a quiet place outside. The interior of a parked car is a great place for sound. If you are in a mostly empty room with lots of hard surfaces around you, things are likely to sound echoey and hollow. This isn’t very pleasant to listen to and can make it hard to understand. Also, listen for the ambient noise in the room. Is there music on? Turn it off. Is there a landline that might ring? Turn that down if you can. A fan or AC or a noisy appliance? Are there other people speaking nearby? If the room is noisy in a way that makes recording good sound without distraction impossible, then find a different room, even if the light isn’t as good. Nobody will watch your video if they can’t hear you well.

And don’t forget proximity. If you set your phone up across the room or far away from the person you are recording, then the sound probably isn’t going to be very good. The closer you are to the phone's tiny little mics, the better you will sound. 

Lighting

Sitting near a window is really the easiest way to light yourself for a self-made video. When professional videographers are lighting people for interviews they are often trying to emulate natural light from a window. There are all kinds of technical reasons for why that is the most flattering light on human faces—even the old masters like Rembrandt and Vermeer loved window light. But the bottom line is its easy to do and just looks good. Now not all window light is the same. If you have a west facing window and it’s late in the afternoon and the sun is streaming in, that light might be too harsh to look good. A window that isn’t getting direct sun in day tome is much better because it’s softer and more flattering light. Also position yourself so the window is not directly in front of you or behind you. Ideally it should be just off to the side of your face. 

If you want to record in a room with only overhead lights then position yourself with the lights slightly in front of you. This will avoid unflattering shadows on your face. And that doesn’t mean any shadows on the face; we’re just trying to avoid the unflattering ones. The face in the image above has shadows that shape and accentuate the contours of the face.

If you want to invest in some lights for a space where you plan to record yourself on a regular basis like say your desk. Then look for our buying guide to video desk lights coming soon. 

Choose horizontal or vertical?

This choice is dependent on where your video will be published. Is this a video to be embedded on your website, a YouTube channel, or Linkedin? Horizontal is probably the best way to go. Is it a Tiktok or a Facebook or Instagram Reel? Vertical all day long. Just decide before you start where the video will be viewed and make the appropriate choice for that platform.

A Phone on a gimbal.

Hold it steady

While it certainly is possible to make a good video while holding your phone and for some things this is necessary. And the great thing is that modern smartphones often have stabilized cameras that reduce camera shake when recording handheld. But just keep in mind that excessive movement of the camera can sometimes be hard to watch or can make the viewer dizzy or distracted when watching. So just keep your camera as still as you can, avoid turning around or moving the camera too fast. 

If you are sitting and recording yourself then you might want to get a phone tripod or some kind of mounting device to use so your camera is in a good position and doesn’t move. Here are some ideas for phone stands you might consider. 

Gimbals. If you don’t know what a gimbal is, it is a motorized device that studies a camera while it is hand held. Basically, it robotically holds the camera still for you.

There are some great small phone gimbals you can get that will make even your handheld shots just as smooth as butter. We like the DJI Osmo, but there are many others you can consider. These are great if you are regularly giving tours of spaces or even travel videos. They’re light and small and won’t take up too much space in your bag. 

Editing

Sometimes, editing can be as simple as choosing when to start and stop recording. Sometimes you need to trim something off the beginning or end of the video (in the video business we call this the “top” or “tail” of the clip.) Or maybe you just want to piece some clips together in order. None of these things are difficult to do yourself and some can be done without any different apps than what you already have on your phone. 

Trimming:

Most phones let you trim, mute, crop, and adjust clips very easily. But it’s different depending on the phone you are using.

iPhone

The Apple Photos app is where your videos live when you have recorded them. The photos app gives you lots of options for making simple edits to your videos. You can crop, mute, adjust color, trim and a few other things to your videos there. Rather than trying to explain how to do all of this here, I will link to a handy guide on how to do all of these things here. 

Android

The default app for managing your photos and videos on Android phones is the Google Photos app. This app gives you most, if not all, of the capabilities that the Apple Photos app gives you –crop, mute, trim, etc. and the guide to do all of that is here. 

More advanced editing

Want to do more advanced editing? Try some of the video editing apps available for your phone platform. For Apple iPhones, you can try iMovie or one of the many video editors available in the Apple App Store (we will make a full blog post about mobile editing in the future). For Android there are also many options. These apps let you do all kinds of editing besides just combining clips together including adding titles, transitions and effects. It’s also good to keep in mind that many of the video publishing platform apps (Tiktok and Instagram) have some editing features built into them too. So those are also worth exploring if you are mostly publishing to those platforms. 

Hopefully these tips are helpful to you for making your own videos with the tools you already have. Do you want more personalized advice? We are here to help. Or if you are ready to move your video marketing efforts to the next level we can help with that too! Feel free to reach out to see what we can do for you.