the quality of Instagram videos lately have been super crazy amazingly good as
Instagram careers it should be our goal to either obtain that level of quality
or even exceed that level of quality so I'm going to show you all my secrets and
how I get high quality video for Instagram feed videos IGTV videos and
yeah even Instagram stories to make your videos go from yo to whoa that was super
lame salutations everybody Benjamin Brandon
here welcome to another Instagram filmmaking tutorial I'm going to show
you six tips to improve your Instagram videos in a matter of minutes the tips
you're gonna learn here today all refer to your camera whether you're shooting
on a high quality DSLR and Wheeler's camera if you're shooting on your phone
well this is probably not the video although if you want a video like that
hit the comments let me know so the vast majority of motivation and I get to make
these type of videos come from the dialog you and I have on Instagram one
thing you guys ask me a lot is how do you get your videos to look so sharp and
clean and just good looking especially when Instagram compresses them like a
ton the secrets out let's show you it all starts with tip number one now this
is gonna sound like a bias tip but I promise you it's not shoot vertically
when you shoot vertically versus horizontally for Instagram content it
removes a lot of the issues you can have with shooting horizontally such as
composition the lack of quality you get when you zoom in a horizontal video
especially if we don't shoot 4k and even lens selection for instance if you take
a bureau shot that was shot with the 50 millimeter lens horizontally you will
automatically lose a bunch of visual information because you have to zoom
that in either in a 9 by 16 or a 4 by 5 aspect ratio whereas vertically you have
full control of what is seen in the frame and you can pan or tilt towards
the information you want to portray within your video while vertical
filmmaking can be pretty challenging it's actually a lot easier when you get
it right to shoot high quality Instagram videos now when it comes to settings on
your camera that's super important that's where you get the most bang for
your buck such as shooting 4k if you have it and that's tip number 2 shooting
4k even if there is a slight crop will just look better it's best to give
Instagram everything you possibly have when it comes to quality because
compress the more you give the more they'll be able to leave and 4k just
helps that and one strategy that I use all the time for every IGTV video is zoom
in on certain types of elements within my frame so when I do that in editing it
enlarges the video quite a bit to where you can get some pixelation and
artifacts that you don't want within that video makes it look grainy you'll
see the quality loss so when you shoot 4k you don't have to worry about any of
that that's the reason why I personally shoot 4k does suck for my hard drives
though my other go to setting in tip number three is shooting log if you have
it now since I shoot on EOS R I use C log if you have a Sony you'll use s log
apparently there's a V log and I use it for every vlog yeah and the reason why I
shoot log is because it gives you a blank canvas let's say where it does
harness all the visual information that you're shooting and sometimes even
enhances it especially if you're outside so when I go into editing and I color
correct and add a grade on there you get a much more dynamic image because it
gives you a lot of control to manipulate what colors you bring out within that
frame so tip number four we're gonna spend some time on because this is where
I see a lot of Instagram creators either succeeding or definitely needing
improvement frame rates you need to know what frame rates to use and how to use
them it's super important and any camera pretty much has three frame rates 24
frames a second or 23 point blah blah blah 30p and 60 let's start with 24
frames a second this is the frame rate that most will claim the cinematic frame
rate this is how a lot of movies can be shot on especially dramas and it's
mainly because of the motion blur that you can see so if you're looking to make
your videos look film like then 24p is the way to go i personally think it's a
little overrated as most creators swear by it I actually
don't shoot in 24p then you don't shoot in 24p nope as my video still looks
cinematic they are all shot in 30 P there are two main reasons why I shoot
everything in 30 P the first reason is kind of old editing hack where 30 P
footage can be slowed down on a 24 frame timeline by 70 to 80 percent which and
then gives you a smoother looking shot that can sometimes get
a little bit of lumps you may have with the camera or slow things down just
enough to where you can draw someone in it can also help improve your video
stabilization and by nature because 30p looks a little bit crispier than 24p
that's why I shoot in 30 feet on a 24 frame timeline so I still keep the
cinematic feel editing on a 24 p timeline a 30 p footage makes my images
a lot more clear also easier to watch and less motion blur it's not to say I
never used 24 feet I just use it for short films and everything else all
vlogs and all the stuff that I do like that all 30p now for 60 frames a second
you need to use it pretty much only for slow motion otherwise you'll get this
crazy-looking staccato effect where everything looks super sharp to the
point where it's not really viewable after a few seconds and 60 P is used for
action sequences so if you have an action sequence and you're trying to
just get them kung-fu moves all in frame and make it you know nice and easy for
everyone to see then yeah you can shoot that in 60 P but when I'm referring to
slow-motion shooting 60 frames a second allows you to slow down your footage by
50% on a 24 frame timeline so that's how I get all my buttery smooth vertical
b-roll is shooting 60 P and dropping it into my 24 frame timeline slowing it
down by 50% and then watching the beautiful butteriness that I've just
made now don't get me wrong I do also shoot in 120p so if you do have 120p
go after that fam but if you don't 60 works just as good now
everything you just learned about frame rates won't work unless you have the
right shutter speed for the frame rate that you're shooting with which leads
into our next step which is 180 degree shutter rule 180 degree rules main
purpose is to allow things to look more realistic as if the human eye were to
perceive it off of the camera so we watch something on your phone if you
apply the 180 degree rule it looks realistic it doesn't look like an
animation or that crazy staccato effect so to achieve 180 degree rule for the
highest quality you can put on Instagram you need to do very simple math so since
I shoot everything in 30 P that is my frame rate I need to times that by 2
which is 60 and find the shutter speed that is closely resembled to that
so for shooting 30 frames a second my shutter speed is one sixtieth of a
second the same thing applies for 24 frames a second when you times that by 2
yes you do get 48 I can do math but then you round that up so it becomes 50 so
then you'll use one fiftieth of a shutter where this applies the most
though is 60 feet because let's say you shoot something in 60 P but you use one
sixtieth of a shutter and then you slow it down and post 50% like I told you you
should I want you to come in to mean like then I slowed it down at 50 what
what this is gross multiplying that by 2 gives you 120 I don't have 120 shutter
speed round up again to 125th of a second or 1 1 twenty fifth of a second
and the difference is absolutely evident slowing down something shot in 6ep but
not using the right shutter speed makes things all glitchy and weird motion
looking and does not look buttery smooth at all whereas applying the 180 degree
shutter rule using 60 P at 1 125th of a second that's where you get buttery
smooth b-roll that makes people go wow not yo get it that was a recall from the
begin everyone so follow the 180 degree shutter rule the next thing I do is find
what is called the lens sweet spot the sweet spot is an old photography term
that is definitely applied for DSLR and mirrorless video cameras where you're
able to find the sharpest looking image that your lens is able to offer a lot of
times what happens is we crank our aperture to these fastest setting so for
this lens here the fastest aperture is a 4.0
that actually doesn't give me the sharpest image on this lens to find your
lenses sweet spot you need to lower your aperture by one to two stops once you do
that you can tell the difference between the fastest aperture and then your sweet
spot there are some visual details that does get captured by finding your sweet
spot versus cranking your aperture to the fastest setting and this is what
helps me and get the most sharpest image now depending on the type of lens you
have that may be hard because using a slowish lens like a 4.0 here I have to
crank to almost about f/8 which will definitely darken my image so it does
work very well if you're in well-lit situations or if you're outside but
let's say you're in a low-light scenario that's gonna be super hard obviously
faster lenses like 1.8 1.4 that helps a ton because then you can crank to about
3.5 and not lose much exposure don't get me wrong I don't always try to find the
sweet spot because well sometimes I'm in the dark and I can't do that so with
whatever lens you have I challenge you to lower your aperture a little bit and
find your lenses sweet spot and for my last secret use ISO appropriately do
your best to limit the amount of ISO that you use on your camera consider
everything you learned with shutter speed and aperture as a actual physical
process happening within your camera when it comes to eye so that is a
digital process which means it gives you essentially fake information aperture
and shutter speed control the amount of light that goes into your camera sensor
whereas I so it's essentially a visual highlighting effect where it brightens
up your frame by enhancing all the visual information that your camera's
already tapped so it's like putting a highlighter on something what I do in
every scenario that I'm in is I lower my ISO all the way and then once I have my
shutter speed appropriately using the 180 degree rule and my aperture to find
my sweet spot I'll then crank the ISO just enough to where I can see what's
happening and I either can tell cool my subject is well exposed or I know that I
can tweak this and editing without compromising the quality of the footage
now you know all my secrets to how I obtain high quality Instagram videos for
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