- In this video, we're talking about how you vlog
using your smartphone.
And I teamed up with the
master of smartphone video creation, Dee Nimmin,
and we're gonna bring you a bunch of different tips
and things that you need to think about
when you're vlogging only using your phone.
(upbeat intense jingle)
Now to shoot a vlog,
you really don't need all this fancy gear
that everyone is talking about.
You don't need to build out this crazy camera setup.
You honestly just need your phone
to start making videos
and start making videos that people actually want to watch.
And so we're gonna go through
not only some of the techniques
and skills and gear that you can use with your phone
to be able to get better vlogs,
but also I'm gonna talk about
some of the things you should think about
on how to get your videos seen
and how to get people to actually care
about the videos that you're creating.
All right, so I'm gonna let Dee take it from here
and we're gonna go through some tips
on how to vlog using your smartphone.
- Hey Jeven, thanks for bringing me back.
I'm gonna start with the number one thing
that usually stops people from beginning to vlog.
Vlogging in public.
So many people are intimidated
to go out in a public setting
and hit that record button on their phone.
But the truth of the matter is, no one cares.
We live in a time where people are going around,
they're FaceTiming, they're making phone calls,
they're taking selfies, they're vlogging,
they're using Snapchat,
they're making Facebook stories,
everybody is on their phone,
everybody is out taking pictures or filming,
so you, out in the public setting or vlogging,
you're not gonna stand out.
Nobody cares.
These people just walked by me,
they didn't even look to see what I was doing.
Back when I first started,
the first time I went out and filmed something in public,
I was terrified, I was intimidated.
I was thinking what are they gonna think.
But then it dawned on me,
they're not gonna think anything.
They're not gonna think anything at all.
So once I started vlogging
and once I started pushing through,
it took me a couple of videos
before I started to feel really comfortable.
But then once I did, I don't think about it anymore.
I can literally go anywhere,
pull out my phone and start vlogging
and not give a care about what anybody thinks.
It's just a fear that we have.
It's a hurdle that we need to jump over
and the more you do it,
the more you're just not gonna care
what other people think.
And that's really the key to all of this
is not caring what other people think.
- So I agree with Dee on this one.
Getting over your fear of vlogging in public
is probably one of the number one things
that's gonna hinder you.
And I know it's tough,
it's hard to get out there and film
with people staring at you,
but I have a few tips for you
on how to make this a lot easier
and actually get better at doing this.
So my first tip is start in places
where you're less likely to get seen.
So, right now I'm kind of a little bit away
from the farmer's market,
so I'm off by myself,
but I'm still out in public.
So, you can work your way up
to the comfort level where you are
vlogging in like very busy places,
but you know, just starting
in areas that are outside
and places where you might get seen
is a good stepping stone
to get to the point where you're vlogging in public places
where people are all over.
So my next tip is get out there and vlog
with friends, family or Rachel.
- With me? - Yeah!
No, when you have someone around you that you know,
it makes it much easier.
- Especially, yeah, because you're boring,
so you don't wanna just be you.
- (laughs) Thanks.
But it just makes it so much easier to vlog in public
when you have someone around you
that knows what you're doing,
knows who you are,
and also could just give you some feedback.
So the next tip is break down what you're saying
into bite-sized chunks.
So, if you break everything down
into like a sentence or two a thought,
and then move to the next location,
it's gonna make it much easier to be in public and shoot,
because you're not sitting here for 10 minutes,
holding the camera, trying to get something out.
You really just have to pull it up,
grab a quick little snippet, keep going on.
And then it actually makes the video
more interesting as well,
because you have the environment changing behind you
as you're creating your video.
And when it comes down to it,
you just have to go for it.
It gets easier the more you just do it,
so the more that you're around people and vlogging,
the easier it's gonna be.
And it's just, you gotta get over that hump
and you just gotta go for it.
So, go out there and, you know,
have people stare at you, it's not a big deal.
What's your number one vlog tip?
- You don't have to get all ready, just be yourself.
- [Jeven] Hey, that's a good one.
- That's a good one!
- Now let's talk about what you actually need
to start vlogging.
The first thing you need is your smartphone,
and the phone you have in your pocket
or the phone that you're watching this video with,
that's good enough to get started.
And it doesn't matter if you're on Android or iOS,
the only thing that matters
is it has a camera,
and you're able to edit, even on a basic level,
the vlog that you create.
And you might be thinking,
okay, that's great, the phone that I have in my pocket
is good enough to get started,
but is the camera inside of the phone
really good enough to make good looking videos?
And the answer to that is probably.
It depends on what phone you have.
If you have one of the newer flagship phones
that have come out in the past few years,
the camera inside your phone
is definitely good enough.
If you have an older phone
and the camera is not so good,
if you're an Android user,
check out the Open Camera app
or the Moment Camera Pro app.
If you're an iOS user and you want more manual controls,
check out the Moment Camera Pro app
or Film It Pro.
All of these apps are great apps.
They allow you to change the frame rate,
and by the way, that's how a lot of vloggers
get that buttery smooth B-roll footage
that you always see.
They change the frame rate to 60 frames per second
or 120 frames per second,
they shoot the clip,
they pull that clip into their video editor
and then they slow it down.
That's gonna give you that smooth B-roll
that so many vloggers use.
- Now just a quick note,
I have been shooting this entire thing just on my phone,
with no attachments.
So you're just seeing the front facing camera
with the audio from an iPhone 11,
and that's the beauty of using just a smartphone
is you don't need tons of fancy gear.
Now there's things you can add.
And so let's talk about B-roll
and getting like cinematic B-roll,
that's such a hot topic.
And something when you're shooting your vlogs
is you wanna get some B-roll
that really shows off what you're doing.
So a few things that you should think about
when shooting B-roll,
first is you want to treat your camera, your phone,
as a big motion picture camera,
and that's gonna be how you're going to
get the best looking footage.
So you wouldn't whip your big,
red, Arri Alexa camera all over.
It just wouldn't look good.
You want slow, subtle motion,
and that's how you create that really cinematic look.
So a lot of times, I like to use a gimbal.
Now I've done a ton of smartphone
gimbal reviews and comparisons
and I'll put a link down below in the description
to where you can see all of those,
so you can make the best possible decision
when buying one of these gimbals.
However, when it comes to a gimbal,
the idea is creating cinematic motion with your B-roll,
and so you want to do slow moves,
like a slow dolly from left to right
or a slow punch in or a slow punch out,
and having that really smooth footage
is how you get cinematic looking footage.
Now also like Dee said, slow motion is great.
Most phones nowadays have a slow motion setting,
so use some slow motion to create cinematic footage.
But also, one huge tip is get out of the habit
of always shooting eye-level.
So because the screen is in front of our face,
we tend to shoot at our eye level,
which makes all of the footage look the same.
So you want to like get down low,
you want to shoot shots where
you're just above the ground or way up high.
You want to get creative with what you're shooting
and try to avoid always shooting from the same perspective.
So change up the look of your footage
and give yourself different perspectives,
different angles, and shoot sequences.
And I'll put a playlist in the description
so you guys can dig more into that
if you want to shoot cinematic looking B-roll.
- There you go.
So now you've shot all of your vlog footage
and you need to edit that footage.
No problem, if you're an Android user,
check out KineMaster or Power Director,
and if you need something free, check out Vlogit.
If you're an iOS user check out Videoleap, LumaFusion,
KineMaster or iMovie,
because iMovie is the one that
came with your iPhone or your iPad.
All of these are great video editing apps,
but of course, try them all out
and find the one that works best for your workflow
and that works the best for your device.
Hey, boy.
This is a temple dog.
(laughs)
Hey, boy.
- While Dee is in Thailand playing with the temple dogs,
I'm actually in Santa Monica, California,
where the weather is not the best.
It's not your typical sunny day.
It just stopped raining.
Well, one of the things that I think really plagues creators
is figuring out what to shoot.
So, you really need to have a clear vision
of what you wanna do.
But first, you just need to think about
why are you here on the platform?
So, if you're here just to make videos, to have fun,
you can really shoot whatever you want, to be honest.
Like, there's really no pressure for you
to grow a channel, to make money doing that
if you're just doing it for fun.
And that's what I originally started my channel for.
But if you have more of an idea
of what you're looking to do,
so if you want to grow a following
or if you want to build a business,
then you need to have a little bit more thought
put into the content that you're creating.
And so, a lot of it comes down to
who are you trying to target?
So who is your target audience?
So say your channel is a fitness-based channel
and you want to teach people
how to live a fit and healthy lifestyle,
well, there's a bunch of different topics
that kind of swirl around that same audience.
You can do fitness, you can do nutrition,
you can do some cooking stuff.
And your vlogs can all be centered around
the center of this idea of
how to live a better and healthier lifestyle.
Now if you were to just throw in a random video
where you went to like a car show
and it's just your vlog going through that car show,
well that has nothing to do with your central topic
and your target audience.
Now, you might think that it's super interesting
and you get some really cool shots
and it's really exciting,
but you really have to think who is the audience
and once you start looking at who the audience is,
then you're gonna not want to put videos on your channel
that don't satisfy that audience.
The idea is that hyper-focused, hyper-targeted niches
with target audiences are gonna grow much better
than if you were just creating content all over the place.
- If you're thinking about getting a microphone
for your smartphone,
that's probably a good idea
because audio is 50% of the experience.
However, it's not necessary to get started.
But if you do want to get a microphone to vlog with,
I recommend getting one that connects to your headphone jack
or your lightning port.
If you use a lapel microphone,
the kind that comes with a cable,
then you have to worry about untangling the cable
before you go out to vlog,
and that could slow you down
if you're trying to run and gun.
Some great microphones are the Rode VideoMic Me
and the Rode VideoMic Me L.
And Shure makes the microphone
just for iOS users called the MV88 Plus,
which actually comes as a kit.
You get the microphone, a small tripod,
and the tripod doubles as a handle.
And if you do find that you want to go with the lavalier
and you do want to get a cable,
I recommend getting one with the shortest cable possible.
When you're reading the reviews or the specs
on Amazon or B&H, it will tell you
how long the cable actually is.
You'll also want to think about
how you're actually going to hold the phone
when you're out vlogging.
And you have a few options here.
Of course, you can go the free route
and just hold the phone in your hand
and that works if you don't have a mic
that needs to be attached to something
or an external light,
but if you can plug the mic into your phone
or you don't have a mic at all,
holding it in your hand works just fine.
You also have the stick option,
which comes with a mount.
You put your phone in the top.
This is great for holding the phone.
This is actually one of my favorites.
However, it's not great for setting down.
So if you want to put it on a table
and film yourself speaking,
you're either gonna have to play the balancing act,
or you're gonna have to get a little tripod
that screws into the bottom of the stick,
if it doesn't come with it.
There are also the Gorilla type grips
that you see so many vloggers using.
These are flexible, they bend.
Some of the cheaper ones, they might break,
the legs might pop off,
but they do pop right back on.
Also, some of the cheaper ones
they do wear out and they get loose,
so you will have to replace it eventually.
But these are a great, affordable solution.
You put your phone right on the top.
You can bend it and shape it
and wrap it around things like doorknobs
or even hang it upside or put it in a tree branch.
This is a very versatile way of holding your phone.
Another solution is a low-profile tripod.
These sit low to the ground or low to the table
that come with a mount.
You can hold them in your hand when you fold them up.
Easy to toss in a bag.
These are really versatile, really good thing to have
and they're usually not very expensive.
- So this next tip is directed at those of you
who really want to grow your following here on YouTube.
So to be able to grow a following,
you need to focus on search-based topics.
And I break this up into two categories:
I have timeless and time-sensitive.
And I consider this video a timeless video
because in a year from now,
you could watch this video
and you still will able to
pull some things out of this video
that will relate to what you're doing at that time.
Now time-sensitive videos might be something like
a new product that just came out.
So the DJI Mavic Mini, that is the product
that just came out recently.
If you do videos around that product right now,
they're gonna get a ton of attention.
And both of these types of topics
need to fall under search-based traffic.
So, content that people are gonna be looking for on YouTube
and not have to find through suggestion.
Now, obviously your videos
will get promoted through suggestion
once they start getting some momentum,
but the idea is when you focused on search-based videos,
you can create videos that will draw in an audience
and don't rely on the algorithm
to be able to be seen.
Because if you're creating around topics
that people are searching for,
then people will find your videos eventually.
And yes, it's gonna take time.
Like, you're not gonna get a huge boost
right out of the gate,
but you never know when that one video takes off
that's highly searched for.
For me, that was the DJI Mavic Pro
when that first came out.
I made a video about that
and it made my channel explode
and I was growing very slow until that point,
but I was doing search-based videos,
and eventually one of them took off.
So let me give you three tools
that you can use to find which keywords to target.
So, once you have a topic,
once you have an idea of what you're gonna search,
just go into YouTube
and you know that search bar right at the top?
Start typing in phrases that people might type in
to find the videos that you're creating.
And so for the DJI Mavic Mini,
I might type in DJI Mavic Mini,
and then I'm gonna let it sit there for a second
and see all of the results that popup underneath it.
There's a bunch of results here,
and they're all topics that are being searched on YouTube
around the Mavic Mini.
It's a great resource to use
to figure out what keywords to even target,
and even what topics to shoot around this product.
Now, another tool that I use is TubeBuddy.
And it's the same type of thing.
You can type in a keyword,
pull up the TubeBuddy tool,
it's gonna show how relevant that is,
so it's gonna give you the amount of monthly searches
that a topic or a specific keyword phrase is getting
and it's also gonna show related keywords.
So these are great places to look at
to start figuring out what topics to even shoot
that are being searched.
Now the third tool that I use is Morningfame.
This is a newer tool and I love this
because there is a whole keyword research tool
that takes you step-by-step
to figure out the best keywords to target,
and it walks you through how to title your videos
so that they're gonna help you rank in the YouTube search.
And this is all geared towards your channel.
So you put in your channel into Morningfame,
and it's gonna tell you whether
this is a good idea to do or not
and it's gonna give you a gray rating.
So these tools are very helpful
in finding those topics and terms
that are getting highly searched,
and the idea for using something like
TubeBuddy and Morningfame
is to get your videos to rank higher in the system
so that when someone types in DJI Mavic Mini,
then my video is gonna pop up
on that first page of search results
so that it gets clicked on.
And so the ranking system is huge
and if you can target keywords
that people aren't necessarily using,
but people are searching for,
that's your golden ticket
to getting a video to start taking off
and building momentum for your channel.
And I'll put a link down below in the description
to other videos that I've done all about this,
and I dig into a lot of this
in my YouTube Growth Academy Course
that I have on the CreatorFilmSchool.com.
So, tons of resources for you to
learn keyword research and really figure out
how to get your videos to rank higher in the YouTube system.
- Now let's talk about wide angle lenses for a moment.
First of all, you don't need them,
but they are really convenient,
and let me explain why.
Look at the environment around me.
Look at how much room is around me
right now as I'm speaking.
Now let me take the wide angle lens off
and you're gonna see how much closer
I am to the lens now,
and how little of what was once behind me
is showing in the shot right now.
Now these things come in really handy
if you're shooting in a small room,
if you're shooting in a car,
or maybe you're into van life
and you need a lens to shoot inside of your van
to capture more of your van.
This little thing does the trick.
Now when you're outside vlogging
and you're walking around,
there's something that you really need to be aware of,
and that's if a car drives by you
and the music is playing,
or you walk past a bar or a store
and they're playing music out of the speakers in the front.
You cannot put that in your vlog.
You do run the risk of getting hit with a copyright claim
or a copyright strike on your YouTube channel.
Having said that, if you want to replace the music
that you accidentally picked up,
or you wanna put some great tracks on top of your vlogs,
there's some awesome music resources
that you should check out.
If you're on a budget or you need to go free,
check out the YouTube Audio Library.
All of those tracks are free.
They're made by YouTube,
but you need to make sure
that you sort them by attribution
so you give proper credit to the songs
that are requiring it.
You also paid options like Epidemic Sound and Musicbed.
They have huge music libraries.
This is where a lot of your top YouTubers get their music
and if you're part of these services,
you get access to their entire library,
so you can put some really good tracks
on top of your vlogs.
- So personally, I use Soundstripe for all of my music.
I like their library and I like their interface.
It's just super easy to use and just works well.
So let's talk about keeping people entertained
throughout your vlogs.
So you've done awesome titles, thumbnails,
you've got someone hooked,
they are ready to watch your video.
Now what could go wrong is that you just bore them
by putting a bunch of scenes in there
that don't make sense.
You have to use storytelling techniques
to be able to keep an audience engaged
and keep them interested throughout.
So, what is the challenge that you're facing
for whatever this video is about?
What is that problem,
because that's gonna help keep people interested
because throughout the video,
you're going to try and solve that
or you're trying to get your goal.
If there's some sort of journey,
if there's some sort of thing that you're up against
or some sort of challenge or
that's what keeps people interested.
People don't just wanna watch your day,
you're doing just random things all the time.
And so with that, you want to do
a beginning, a middle and an end
so that you want to setup what's happening.
You wanna give the audience some background.
You want to get them into the story.
Now the middle is the whole journey.
So after you've set it up,
you've put the stakes up
and the challenge is clear of what's happening,
then just the journey of the vlog happens.
That's the entire experience
that you're happening throughout the day.
And then the ending is a resolution of a sort.
So whether you've completed something,
you didn't complete something,
the challenge is still there.
You know, you have to have some sort of a resolution
that gives people a closing,
but also you want to hook them for the next episode.
So just putting in a basic level
of storytelling into your videos
will make them stand out
among all the people that are just
running around, shooting everything
and cutting it all into the video.
Now one kind of extreme example of this on my channel
is a video I did where I talk about
how my drone got taken away from me in Nicaragua.
This was a little while ago.
The video itself is not very visually pleasing.
It's me talking to my phone.
However I tell my story of how I got
my drone taken away from me in Nicaragua
and it goes through what happened, the whole journey
and then there's a resolution at the end of it.
And that video is in the hundreds of thousands of views,
and it keeps getting more and more views
because it's a story,
so people end up watching more of it.
They watch the entirety of the video,
which causes the YouTube algorithm
to push it higher in the ranking system.
And this all has to tie back to the watch time.
So are people actually sitting there
and watching the entirety of your video?
And then deciding to watch more videos
or are they clicking on,
watching a couple things and clicking off?
All of it plays together in growing your channel.
So do some storytelling in your videos,
create some sort of an arc.
And if you're new to storytelling,
I highly suggest digging into
just some storytelling basics.
Look up some videos around storytelling
and just get, you know, the basic arc down
of how you craft a story,
because it's gonna really help you as a vlogger
tell better stories in your videos.
- If you want to learn more about vlogging
or making content with your smartphone,
Jeven is gonna put a link to my channel
down in the description below.
Come on over, I would love to see you over there
so we can carry on this conversation.
And Jeven, thanks again.
- All right guys, I know this was a long video
and a ton of information
and I just want to say thank you
for sticking around until the end.
And I want to say thank you to Dee
for jumping in this video
and giving you some awesome tips on how to vlog
using your phone.
All right guys, if you want to see more videos
on how to grow your channel,
I highly suggest checking out this playlist
on how to get your first 1,000 subscribers,
and if you want more tips
on how to create better looking videos with your phone,
then here's another playlist
that dives into all of my cinematic techniques
using just a phone.
All right guys, that is it.
I'll see you on the next one.