- In this video,
we're going through nine different B-roll ideas
for handheld shooting that you can use in your videos.
All right guys, let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
So yesterday I went out with my buddy Danny,
and we did some mountain biking in the hills
down here in South Orange County.
It's a new area where I moved,
but I wanted to do a video about
just some different B-roll ideas.
And I've been thinking about starting this series
for a while,
instead of just teaching how to shoot footage
and how to shoot B-roll.
And I'd like to dig into actually some ideas on things that
might look good when you're out shooting.
And the reason is you can learn everything that you want to
learn around a subject,
but unless you have some references in your mind of,
you know, what works and what doesn't
or what you like and what you don't like,
you want to actually put these principles into practice.
The idea is that you want to have a library of things that
you do when you're out shooting and then experiment.
So when I'm out shooting,
I'm always trying to grab certain shots
and there are certain shots that I know I like in my edit.
However, I don't want to just default
always to those same shots.
So when you're in a shooting environment like yesterday,
we were out run and gun shooting,
I had this backpack with me,
which has just a side opening here because I wanted to be
able to just pull my camera out,
get some quick shots and keep moving.
When we were out riding yesterday, the goal wasn't to shoot.
I just brought my camera along because I enjoy shooting.
Now, everything in this video was shot
on the Sigma 50mm Art Lens.
I'm actually shooting full frame right now,
so playing around with some different cameras,
but this lens, it's a beefy lens, but it opens up to a 1.4,
which on full frame gives you that super shallow
depth of field.
Now I'm also playing around
with the Freewell Magnetic Filters.
I'm giving these guys another go
because when it comes to ND filters,
it is nice to have something that's quick,
easy pop on and off.
Then these and these are all magnetic
and this is an ND64
with PL so has that polarizer built in and it's a solid,
so you never get the vignetting issues.
Now, when I first started playing around with these,
I thought that they would be a little bit too flimsy,
like the magnets pop off, and sure enough,
yesterday when I was out filming these things popped off
all the time.
So it's not really an ND filter
that I'm gonna continue to use for that style of filming.
Alright, so let's get into nine B-roll ideas
that you can use for your videos.
And the first one is just a dolly from left to right,
or right to left.
Now, when you're shooting handheld footage,
it's harder to get these really stabilized shots.
Now, obviously there's tricks.
And that's what I want to talk about.
There's some tricks to make them super perfect
and it looks like it's on a gimbal or a dolly.
Now what I do is I just get a super wide stance
with my feet.
I hold the camera and I try to just shift.
Now, obviously it's not gonna be perfect.
So I use in-body stabilization if my camera has it.
And then I also put it through some post stabilization,
and last I shoot these in 60 frames per second.
So not only are you getting stabilized,
but you're slowing it down,
which will make all the bumps a little bit smoother.
So here's the before shot and here's the after.
And you could see how clean you can make the shot look
with just a little bit of stabilization.
And just like I said,
plant your feet and shifts side to side.
Try not to let your body go up and down
as you're doing these shots.
Number two is rack focus on an extreme closeup.
So I wanted to get some closeups of Danny's bike and just a
simple movement is stay in one spot and move over your
subject in an extreme closeup.
And you want to rack the focus.
So all you have to do is use your fingers on the lens
and rack from close to far or far to close.
And this might take practice.
It might take a few times to nail it because you're manually
using the focus rings to shift your focus
from one part to another.
So shot number three is kind of an editing technique mixed
with just different things to shoot when you're out.
So with handheld footage,
you can just knock off more shots quicker because you don't
have to set up every framing.
So one of the things I always like to do when I'm shooting
outdoors, when I'm shooting, you know,
something like a mountain biker is just grab a bunch of
extreme closeups and a series of these.
You can do the rack focus, like I said, in the last one,
or you can just grab quick shots.
Because when you sit down to edit,
there's gonna be sections where it will be really nice to
put some of these extreme closeups next to each other,
fragment your subject, do like handlebars wheels, feet,
you know, a closeup of Danny, you know,
sitting there before he goes on the ride.
All of those might just seem like, you know,
not the most exciting shots in the world,
but when you put them together in an edit,
it helps tell the story and it, you know,
visually is very appealing going between these different
extreme closeups.
The next shot idea is go from an empty frame and pan into,
you know, filling the frame with your landscape.
So I did this from going from the sky down.
So if you have an empty sky,
this is a great way to just have blue sky pan down
and now you've seen your scene.
Now you can do this from something else, like say you're
focusing on the water and that water's filling the frame.
And then you pan up to reveal the coastline.
So just think of different ways that you can fill the frame
with something big and then pan into your shot.
So you're basically revealing the scene of what it is
that you're shooting.
Now, the next idea plays on the shot reverse shot.
So if you were doing just like a basic interview or talking
head scene, you would go between the two characters,
you know, character A shoot one shot,
character B shoot the other shot,
that's shot reverse shot.
Now what you can do when you're actually doing action is
have the shot reverse shot play out
so it feels like the action is seamless.
So in this example when I was out with Danny,
I had him ride towards me
and then I had him ride away from me.
And then when you cut these together,
it looks like it's one fluid motion, you know,
riding towards, and then away.
Now, obviously I didn't really nail the focus on this,
but you get the idea of what I'm talking about.
And sometimes having things go out of focus
isn't necessarily a bad thing.
So I would just say maybe a little bonus idea here is play
around without out of focus or play around with rack focus,
where it nails the focus for a second and then goes out.
I like play around with this.
Sometimes I don't want to have everything in focus
all the time.
And playing around with that rack focus kind of gives your
footage a little bit of organic quality where not everything
is perfect all the time.
And that's one thing when you're shooting handheld footage,
you're gonna have some shake,
you're gonna have some bounce.
You don't always have to perfect every one of your shots
and make it super, super smooth.
There is a whole strategy behind getting handheld footage.
Handheld does look good,
and especially when you're using it in the right context,
it's actually gonna work better than if you had a gimbal.
The next one is one that I really like to play around with,
especially when I'm in the outdoors and that is having an
extreme wide shot and have your subject way off in
the distance moving through the scene.
This is harder to get if you're like hiking
or mountain biking, especially if you're by yourself,
you have to like set your camera down
on a ridge line over there
and then like, go way out, shoot the shot, come back.
You end up with like 20 minutes of footage because
of the hike and whatever.
So if you are shooting a subject,
it is obviously much easier.
You just have to get yourself into position to shoot.
So with this,
I let Danny ride way ahead, find a really cool framing,
and then I shot it from the distance.
So get the camera really far away from your subject.
Now the next shot idea is to dirty your frame.
I love using this technique and you'll see it all through
the footage I was shooting yesterday,
put things in front of your lens
that's between you and your subject, whether that's a tree,
a building, some grass sticking out,
just the idea of having different objects between you
and your subject creates depth.
So you want to have the background,
the view of the mountain scape,
and then you have your subject and then you have the
foreground, like some trees or brush,
you really create this sense of space when you do that.
And since I'm shooting on the 50 millimeter
on a full frame camera, you know,
it goes out of focus on the foreground and background
and you really get your subject isolated between
these different objects that are in your frame.
I think it just looks really good when you dirty the frame.
Even the opening shot of this little sequence I did,
I had made sure I had some trees in there
to give it some depth,
rather than just shooting a landscape
with nothing in the foreground.
Now you don't always
want to just be focused on your subject,
try to get a wide shot or a medium shot
and let your subject pass through it.
It's just like I was saying earlier
with like the extreme wide shots,
find places to put your camera where you can focus on
something in the surrounding and then have your subject move
through it in different ways,
whether that is coming in and going out, or it is someone,
you know, way off in the distance just
part of the bigger scene.
Now another shot idea is to start with a wide subject,
have them come towards you
and then close up onto like a detail.
So for this shot right here, Danny is riding towards me.
I have a wide shot of him.
It goes into the detail of his bike.
So playing with different shot sizes within the same take is
a fun way to go between like a wide to a closeup.
It brings focus in on your subject or you start on your
closeup and then it goes to a wide shot,
it does more of a reveal.
Now you're gonna have to play around with your focus on this
and rack your focus.
Guys, let me know down the comments,
do you like these videos around B-roll ideas?
Is this a series that you'd like to see me create more
videos around maybe some videos on gimbal work
or videos on drone stuff?
And guys, if you missed this video right here,
I highly suggest checking it out.
It's how you shoot B-roll,
but I talk more about the whole idea of B-roll in general
and things you should think through
before you even hit record.
All right guys, I'll see over there.