yo yo yo everyone joey here and in this video we will explore seven techniques
on how to bring your product shots to life through motion and shoot something like this
ever wonder about the first human who thought man i'd like to squeeze some liquid out of that thing
and drink it well me neither and i tell you what i'd rather drink a sustainable plant-based dairy
alternative it's better for you and it's better for that dusty blue marble we're living on
and hey ain't nothing more american than plants am i right only it's like milk made for humans
all right so if you're a regular on youtube you may be wondering right now why on earth
am i watching yet another tutorial on how someone else is shooting product shots and hold on i know
i've been there and i'm doing it myself all the time and i'm actually watching the whole video all
the time because i know there is always one or two little bits and pieces of information in the bts
in the overall creative concept in the execution that i find inspirational so if there's anything
that you take away from this video please let us know down in the comment section below let's just
jump right into the first way to bring motion to your product shots which is a very obvious one
now of all the ways you can shoot a product handheld is possibly the easiest to pull off and
the most flexible you can imitate slides push-ins rotations jib reveals or completely freestyle
the ideal way to approach handheld shooting is to plot out your shots in a shot list beforehand so
that you can easily transition from one movement to the next obviously there's a lot of hit and
miss and you just want to keep the movements short and sweet now shooting with a camera that
has autofocus or having a second person a second ac to help you pull focus makes things easier
alternatively you can just focus on the end point and then move in to the end point actually
it's easier if you start on the end point move out and then reverse the shot and also another
trick is shooting in slow motion that will make your shots a little bit more stable and smooth
but keep in mind that you want to make the movement faster because you slow it down in
post ideally if you have a little crew or an actor you combine the motion of the camera
with the action that's happening so for example if someone pours something in you can move your
camera with the motion and it gives your shots a little bit more more dynamic action as well
now if you want to be a little bit more steady and smooth you want to use a video fluid head
a good use case for that is when you shoot on a longer lens or if you shoot macro shots with a
fluid head alone you are limited to tilting and panning or the combination of both and
so you want to use this mostly when you have like slower shots in contrast to your faster movements
a little tip if you don't have the smoothest fluid head you can use a rubber band i don't have one
right now i don't even have a fluid head here right now but you can pull it basically at the
handle and it allows you to have a little bit of a more smoother transition from the start to the end
now a little bonus tip if you can call it such but since you're generally not recording audio
when you're shooting products just blast music at least that's what i do and get completely
into the zone also you may want to play the song that you will use in your final edit to get into
the vibe to get the feeling for the pace which is particularly important when it comes to motion
now the possibly most used tool in the context of product filmmaking is a turntable oftentimes
motorized some call it lazy susan the jury's still out on who coined that term
and why it's called that way but i guess it's fun to say unless your name is susan or someone's name
on set as susan then you may want to avoid that term and say turntable to avoid any confusion
or conflict i've been using motorized turntables now for ages for my product shots and you can
get them for fairly cheap like on adorama or amazon the one i got was 30 bucks and it gets
its job done though you cannot change the speed what i like about it is it's super simple you
just put your product down and you get quickly a dimensional view on the product while keeping the
lighting set up the same so it helps to just quickly switch out products you want to shoot
um well this is the same uh and just keep the lighting the same so very handy
more often than not i actually place my surface like an acrylic plate on top of the lazy susan
have it rotate with it and from there i just go experiment with angles and framing
a notch up from our previous options and a little more cash commitment is using
a motion control system that allows you to dial in precise movements on the pan and tilt
as well as often times on the horizontal the slide axes with such system the shaky hands or human
arrow are history and there's no need to shoot in slow motion unless it's a creative choice or take
shots over and over again until you need them you just dial them at once and boom there you have
it it also allows you to pull off very intricate shots that are otherwise extremely difficult to
pull off and i've been using motorized sliders like the edelkrone mini slider thingy and the
moza slide part but i've always had my eye on a full motion control system now thanks to rhino
we get to try out the arc 2 motion control system and let's talk about it for a second what i like
what i don't like so you can form your own opinion about it yes they sent me this unit for review but
i can say whatever i want and they don't see that video before you do so let's get right into it
so the rhino r2 is basically a motorized fluid head that you can put either on top of your tripod
or on one of rhinos sliders and make it basically full-fledged motion control system and one thing
you will notice one thing you will not notice right now is how quiet it is well that doesn't
matter when you shoot product shots as we've already established but if you shoot interviews
or if you film yourself like we do right now you don't hear it all i hear is actually the light
with cena cameras like the red komodo or the panasonic eva 1 and the added weight of cena
lenses and monitors the weight payload capacity becomes a make and break decision when you pick
a motion control system and the rhino arc 2 has a max payload of up to 15 pounds or around 7 kilos
now with these heavier rigs you want to set your r2 into the heavy mode which actually limits the
tilt motion to a certain degree i guess you can try out the normal mode i've tried it out with
the commodore and it works but you still want to use the heavy mode and even then you want to
make sure that the camera's center of gravity is still properly in the center of the mounting point
uh to avoid any any micro shakes that that i got even like when i tried and played around with it
so there's always the danger of it you just need to adjust the motion sometimes to to
get it really dialed in talking about weight this whole setup here the essentials bundle with a 24
inch carbon fiber slider weighs around 12 pounds or around 5.5 kilos and comes with this
nice carrying case now would i go on a three hour hike with this
meh possibly not but it's definitely easy to carry around if you shoot somewhere else now
the one big upside with the arc 2 and the slider is that you can dial in extremely
precise and slow motions which comes very handy when you shoot on longer lenses or particularly
when you shoot with macro lenses like the lower probe lens honestly i always felt a little bit
limited on what i could do with this fascinating lens until i got this motion control system
because before i was always tinkering around with the lazy susan and trying to get the movement and
the focus lined up but that changed now with the arc 2 and the optional focus motor which allows
me to precisely dial the movement in though with a focus motor you have to keep in mind i ran into
like some issues with like stiffer single lenses and especially when you go out in the polar vortex
in very cold temperatures it's even getting harder and sometimes it skips gears so you want to keep
that in mind indoors it's not much of a problem but when it's outdoors and cold may run into
issues lastly you can control the whole shebang on the device itself with the knobs and dials and the
display and basically set it up and without the need of any additional device you can set your
two keyframes basically your start and end point of the motor motions right on the device it's
limited right now to two keyframes uh and they're promising to add more soon so that would be very
helpful in particular for product shoots there is also an ios app which allows you obviously
to control the device but also do some dope face tracking when you mount the phone on top of your
camera but it doesn't exist for android so bummer failure when you have an android phone again like
always all in all the arc ii goes for one thousand four hundred dollars and the essentials bundle
is two thousand three hundred fifty dollars which includes the slider and the slider motor and this
carrying bag as always i leave the links in the description below if you fancy checking them out
all right before we move on to the next motion let me share with you a trick of the trade on
how to create water droplets on your object so instead of using just water spray water on it
you actually use the solution a mixture of water and glycerin usually like two to one ratio of
glycerin to water and glycerin is a pure versatile skin care product but it's an oily substance that
very much looks like water but the nice thing is it's a little thicker and accumulates more
nicely into the droplets on your can on your glass on your bottle
and you can create that fresh look in with this combo let's move on
now a great and absolutely free way to bring motion oops am i just circulating too much
apparently now a great way to bring motion to your scene without moving the camera around is actually
bringing motion to your subject now we already talked about the lazy susan but how about just
like putting down the subject with your hand in doing the scene or pour a liquid now with smaller
items like the oats we had you can also just throw them in the air or drizzle them down or pour them
together with the milk and it's an absolute mess trust me anytime you work with food and product
shots get ready for a mess oats everywhere now before we get into the final two motions let's
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another neat way to bring motion to your product shoots is by neither moving your
camera nor your subject but actually by moving a light around it you can quickly
create some scanning motions rotating motions that especially with reflective surfaces bring
the product to life and make it really pop it all comes down to just experimenting
and trying things out you generally want to avoid your light source from reflecting
on the reflective surfaces of your subject so use a soft light source that generally helps with it
i won't go into much depth of lighting in this video because there will be a separate video
coming out on how to light your product shoots very soon so stay tuned for that
last but not least it's a little bit of a cheat code let's say you're getting a beautifully framed
static shot that would be simply too difficult to inject with motion in practical terms you can just
add digitally some motion i do that all the time because it's simple and has some great effects
that's why it's so nice to shoot in 6k because you can crop in and your output is still in 4k
territory and i use it even with motion shots just to enhance the effect just a little bit more
now no matter what technique you use in order to bring motion to your product shots keep two things
in mind first variety is key to keep the interest up to keep your audience engaged and second
don't use the motion just for the motion's sake it needs to make sense in the grand scheme of your
concept and in alignment with your product now you can obviously you combine all these techniques and
get very creative there's a common theme in these videos as always i'll leave links to more
information and the products in the description below and also there will be a video coming very
soon where we talk about lighting product shots so sorry to interrupt but this is an opportune time
for you to smash that subscribe button and hit the notification bell trust me it's worth it what he
said and as always thanks so much for watching have a good morning have a good night whenever
and wherever you are around this beautiful planet bye bye okay on a motorized slider as well how am
i doing this well possibly because it's right on it right now yo yo joey here and in this
video we will explore seven tech sneak technique techniques techniques techniques framing framing