We don't always like to use a tripod,
but it shouldn't be a choice out of laziness.
Handheld camera movements tells a certain visual story
And there are more things to pay attention to than we might think.
So let me share five tips with you for better handheld movement.
What up guys, Jordy here for cinecom.net
and welcome to the creative filmmaking channel.
Holding the camera with your hands might seem super simple,
but unwanted shaky footage will not be appreciated by the audience.
The kind of motion you're creating has to fit with the scene.
First off, we need to understand why we're going handheld.
Handheld movement adds a lot of drama in the shot.
It's also considered to be more natural from a person's point of view,
because our head also doesn't sit still.
So therefore it's often used to increase the realism of a scene.
But a love drama or a gun fight require two different handheld movements.
In tip #1 we'll have a look at the gentle camera movement,
often used to increase that realism without adding too much drama.
The idea is to try and get a stable shot.
So you wanna try anything to lock your camera tight to your body,
perhaps lean to a wall or to a tree.
What you want to avoid now is that your camera will start to shake.
Instead, you want to move the camera gently around.
Here's an exaggerated example where you see the camera shake on the left side
and camera movement on the right side.
What helps is that you move the camera on your breathing.
As you breath in, you let the camera move upwards with your body
and downwards as you breath out.
The second handheld movement is what I call "locking the talent in".
Someone who has been busted, or is trapped.
We can emphasize that situation by taking a close up of that person
and trying everything we can to keep him in the frame.
This means that when the person is moving around, we follow him.
We even adjust our framing on the smallest movements.
This creates tension and focuses on the talent, which ads more drama to the scene.
The eyes of the audience are locked on the character, he has no place to go.
The third handheld tip is emphasizing certain actions.
Sudden movements like someone jumping off a rock.
When that person lands, we can increase the power of the landing by shaking our camera
in the direction of the movement.
Here's another example where Yannick is boxing
and to increase the power of his fist hitting the tree,
I move the camera a bit further in the direction that he's hitting.
A great technique to use during fight scenes,
as it's much harder for the audience as well to focus on the details
and therefore the staged fight mistakes won't be that noticeable.
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But first, let's have a look at two more tips for handheld movement.
The fourth one is adapting to the scene.
We're going back to Yannick who's fighting with the tree.
We're bouncing the camera with his movement, but obviously... he's losing.
So he has to give up.
As he stops fighting becoming calmer, the camera movement will also too.
Like in the first tip, after the heavy camera movement
I now breath on the same pace as Yannick does,
and so my camera movement will adapt.
The audience also gets to rest because of that change in camera motion.
And then the last tip is to experiment.
The camera movement from the film Deadpool
got also some attention because it had some organic touch to it.
The camera operator was gently slanting the camera back and forward.
It adds a lot of dynamic to it and works great if you're rolling over the ground or next to a wall.
I recently shot a promotional video for a graffiti artist
and adding such experimental movements definitely worked great for that scene.
Here I also roll next to a wall, or I would use other objects to push the camera through.
In this shot I had my camera vertical
and slowly rotated to create this artistic, dynamic movement.
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Thank you so much for watching...
...and stay creative!.