- If you've ever made a tutorial
or an instructional video,
especially if they're tech related,
chances are, you've had to do
some kind of screen recording
or screening sharing.
There's a really simple method
to make your screen recording more interesting
instead of just cutting to full screen of your computer,
you can superimpose your settings
on top of a device like a computer,
a phone, or a tablet,
to bring in a little more visual interesting
and just kind of add a little bit of extra spice
to your video and to your tutorial
that makes it stand out from the rest.
It's actually pretty simple,
so I'm gonna run you through the process
using Final Cut Pro specifically,
but the basic technique is kind of the same
no matter what software you're using.
So the main thing to understand here
is that you're going to need to film
two things for your screen recording.
You're gonna need a background plate
that you can composite your recording onto,
and then you're gonna need to do
the actual screen recording itself
just like you normally would.
Now, there are a few different approaches you can take
to filming your background,
so for the sake of simplicity for this video,
we're just gonna use the iPad as an example.
I recently did a video
about how to edit video on the iPad
using LumaFusion,
and that whole video was actually edited
on the iPad, which was really, really cool.
But, if I were actually combining that
and editing it in Final Cut Pro
like I normally would have,
this is how I would go about the composition.
The first thing would have to get a background image
of the iPad itself.
You could use a still photograph,
which would be really versatile,
'cause you can put it into a program
like Lightroom or Photoshop
and really adjust it
so it looks really fantastic,
and then superimpose your recording on top of it.
But the problem with it
is it's a still photograph
and so it doesn't have any kind of movement
or light to it.
So rather than using a still photograph,
I actually like to use video clips,
and in this example,
I've got a shot of my iPad
loaded up into Final Cut Pro.
The reason that I like using a video
rather than a photo
is that you can keep the scene alive a little bit.
In my LumaFusion tutorial,
I had a top-down view,
and I had my hands coming in
and moving some of the objects around
that were near the iPad
just to sort of add that interest to it.
In this instance, in the background,
there's a record player that's spinning.
It's not really distracting
but it kind of keeps the room and the scene alive.
You could have lights changing colors,
you could have people moving in the background.
You probably don't want it to be too distracting,
but there's a lot of different things you can do
to just sort of bring a little bit of life
into your scene.
So I've got this shot of the iPad.
Once it's in Final Cut Pro,
the first thing I'm gonna do
is just get rid of the audio track entirely,
we don't need that.
Then you'll notice at the beginning,
the iPad actually lights up
'cause I got a notification.
I definitely recommend
turning your device all the way off,
so I'm just going to cut past that part.
What I wanna do first
is color grade this background plate
if I'm gonna add anything to it.
I'm gonna do a really light adjustment here,
just playing around with the exposure,
maybe a little bit of the color,
this looks a little bit cold,
so I'll just try to maybe warm up
the color temperature just a little bit.
That's pretty much it.
There is a glare on the iPad screen,
but that's not going to matter.
What I don't want
is for the iPad screen to actually be on,
because we're going to be playing
with the opacity of the layer on top of it,
and if the iPad screen is on,
it could kind of interfere
with the end result.
So now that we've got this background plate set up,
I'm gonna bring in the screen recording from the iPad.
This is gonna be the easiest option
because, since I'm taking an iPad screen recording
and putting it onto an iPad screen,
the aspect ratio is gonna line up perfectly.
The only thing that we're really gonna need to do
is sort of adjust the perspective
and distort it a little bit
so that it fits the exact angle
at which I filmed the iPad.
So once the screen recording
is in Final Cut Pro,
we'll just position it over the footage of the iPad,
and then what I like to do
to make my life a little easier
is to just turn down the opacity
to almost halfway,
just so we can see where everything's at.
Then grab the transform tool
and size it up generally
to where we want it to be.
Now, what you'll notice
is even though it's the same size as the iPad,
once I put the video on top of the iPad,
it doesn't line up perfectly with the screen
because we filmed the iPad
not at a perfectly perpendicular angle.
How's that for alliteration?
That is where it is really important
to come down and use the distort tool,
and then all I need to do
is basically pin each corner of the screen recording
to each corner of the actually iPad screen,
and it should line up perfectly.
This is a really important step to sell the effect
because what you want it to look like
is that you just filmed the iPad
operating on its own,
and in order to that,
your screen recording
really needs to look like the actual screen.
Now once the overlay is positioned well
on the background,
then we can bring up the opacity a little bit.
I don't like to use 100% opacity
'cause I feel like it looks too fake that way,
so I usually bring it down to about 85 or 90%
which then brings in a little bit of the texture
from the iPad beneath it,
but the screen still stands out
so that it's easy to see what's happening.
Then if we play it back,
it's gonna look like the iPad is just operating on its own.
It is important to mention
that for this technique specifically,
you don't wanna move your camera at all.
So when you're filming your background plate,
whether it's phone, iPad, whatever,
keep the camera very steady on a tripod.
If you move the camera,
then you gotta get into a different type of tracking
that probably moves into more after effects,
and we wanna keep this really, really simple.
So if you keep the background very, very steady
where the camera doesn't move
and the tablet doesn't move,
it's gonna be really easy to do.
This took about 30 seconds.
If you wanna take it a step further,
you can select your clips
and create a new compound clip out of them.
So then you can have the screen recording
and the iPad merged together,
and then you can do some pretty fun stuff
using keyframes.
I like to sometimes zoom in
using the scale option.
You don't need to do much,
but then once you add in those keyframes,
it can even act like the camera
is pushing in to the screen recording,
which just, again, makes things a little more interesting
and a little different from what people are used to seeing.
If you want the best results for this,
it is really important
to use a software program
that lets you warp and distort
your overlay image.
When I was editing on the iPad using LumaFusion,
I used an overhead rig to film,
thinking that the camera and the iPad
would be perfectly perpendicular to one another,
but even that still wasn't perfect,
and the final result
wasn't as perfect as I would have liked it to be,
because LumaFusion doesn't give you the option
to distort or warp footage
or pin corners or anything.
But Final Cut Pro and Premiere and After Effects,
and most of the bigger desktop editors
do have that functionality.
Now, when and why would you actually wanna use this?
If you're doing a large tutorial,
especially if you're changing a bunch of settings,
if I'm telling you how to do something
in Final Cut Pro,
and I'm going over here and messing
with all of these keyframe settings,
there is no way that I want the whole thing
to be on a smaller screen on the frame.
But it is a great way
to catch your audience's attention,
kind of like how I started this video.
It looked a little different
than just me talking at the desk,
but the fact that I was on the iPad
made it a little more interesting.
It's also a great way
to quickly transition from one to another.
So you can show yourself talking about
what you're gonna introduce,
then you could cut to your composition
that has your overlay on a background plate,
and then once you get really into the settings,
you could cut to a normal, full-screen screen recording
just like you normally would.
Now, there is one last,
really important thing to be aware of.
In this example, I composited an iPad screen recording
onto an iPad screen,
so the aspect ratio is matched up perfectly.
But, if you wanna mix that up a little bit
and you wanna take a recording of yourself
kind of like this,
and then superimpose that on a device screen,
things are going to be a little bit different.
What you'll notice is
as soon as you take the footage of you talking
and try to overlay it on your device,
like an iPad,
you're gonna notice that the aspect ratios don't line up,
and this footage does not fit
perfectly into the iPad screen.
So all that means is you'll need to
crop the footage a little bit.
You just overlay your video footage
on top of the device footage,
scale it so that it's almost the same size,
and then just crop from the all the sides
to make it fit,
and then you just pin the corners, distort them,
the same way you did with the iPad footage.
This is just a simple way
to use footage and recordings
that are different aspect ratios
on different devices
that they might not naturally fit onto.
So I think this is a great way
to help make your tutorials
and your instructional videos more interesting.
Of course, the thing that you're teaching
and that you're trying to communicate
should always come first and be the most clear.
But, if you can do that in an interesting way,
then it's probably gonna hold your audience's attention
a little bit more,
and adding in these little creative touches
is also a good way
to keep building your skill.
So you can take these techniques
and build on 'em and do your own thing
and experiment with 'em
and do a lot of really cool stuff
to make your videos really stand out for your audience.
So I hope that was helpful,
let me know if you've got any questions,
and I will see you next time.
(upbeat music)