- What's up everybody?
Peter McKinnon here and today we're talking
about Instagram Stories.
It's an incredible part of a platform
that is being highly underutilized
by just about everybody out there that's using it.
But there's one guy that is taking advantage of it,
and today we're gonna meet him.
(upbeat instrumental music)
("Schoenefeld Original Mix")
So several weeks ago we did a video
on how to crush your Instagram game.
In that video we talked about
Instagram Stories a little bit.
Not too much, we barely grazed the surface.
But we talked about how you can put a little more effort
into it, and how you can edit those stories
on your computer, things like that.
Now my friend Jesse, who you are going to meet
here in a second, he takes that to a whole new level.
And I'll let him explain it to you
and his process behind all of that.
But when I saw these stories, and I've been watching
him do these since November, I just thought to myself
at some point I need to get him on the channel
to teach you guys how he does what he does.
And to show you guys what he does
because I think it'll inspire you.
There's always room to grow.
There's always room to improve.
And Jesse's a testament of this.
He's definitely taken something
that everybody uses and raised the bar.
And he's gonna keep raising the bar,
and I think we all need to be raising
the bar for ourselves and for everyone around us.
So that is the purpose of today's video,
and I hope you guys love it.
And with that being said I'd like to take
a quick minute to thank our sponsor
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So, woo!
What are you waiting for?
Let's go.
(grunts)
- Ow.
Was that how you do it?
Hey what's up?
My name is Jesse, and I am a filmmaker.
I'm a photographer.
And lately I've kind of evolved
into an Instagram
story
teller.
Instagram story-maker
person.
Right now, Instagram Stories is my primary form of delivery
for the things that I want to make
for the things that I love making.
And I was already on Instagram and then Stories came out.
I realized that people were under-utilizing it, you know.
Everyone was just looking at their phone, talking
for 15 seconds, or they were showing
outfit of the day in a boomerang.
Because I'm a filmmaker I thought I could
do what I do, and I could put it here.
I can tell a whole story in 15 seconds.
I can have a beginning, a middle, an end.
I was shooting on my iPhone.
I was editing in iMovie on my phone.
I was adding music.
I was shooting time-lapses.
And it was just my day-to-day life.
It was nothing exciting or extravagant.
It wasn't mountains.
It was walking to my studio, which is just my place of work.
It was making eggs for my daughter.
It was nothing excellent, but I wanted to tell those stories
in a way that I didn't see anyone else doing.
So I took that 24-hour deadline,
and I used it as motivation to make something everyday.
I can't procrastinate on it because if I don't make it,
it doesn't happen.
So the pressure of creating this long-form vlog,
or travel lifestyle video, was gone.
It was totally lifted because I only had to fill 15 seconds,
and then it was gone.
And then it would just disappear.
So I get messages from people all the time saying:
"Why are you putting so much work into this?"
"Why do you spend so much time
"editing these videos everyday?
"They're just gonna disappear.
"They're gonna be gone tomorrow.
"What is even the point, I mean."
I think Instagram Stories could totally be what you make it.
It can be a super condensed version of a vlog.
It can be your daily life edited fast-paced.
Or it could be your version of Vine, rest in peace.
It can be what you make it.
It doesn't have to be boomerangs.
It doesn't have to be.
It doesn't have to just be screenshots
with stickers on your face.
It's not just another version of Twitter where you can make
an announcement about another thing you did.
It really is a platform for filmmaking.
You can make a 15 second any thing you want,
and it's still gonna disappear tomorrow.
And I love that because it means you can't procrastinate.
If you're gonna make them, you have to make them now.
Hey it's a beautiful beach day.
I'm with Pete.
(beeps)
(yelling)
Clean this off.
(yelling)
- [Pete] Werd.
It's very wet and cold (laughs).
- What are the tools then that I use
then for these Instagram stories.
As you know I started with an iPhone.
I was shooting them on my iPhone, editing them on my iPhone.
Film my face, film my feet, film my friends,
edit together a little story.
Quickly I realized I kind of wanted to do something new,
something different, so I bought this friction arm.
And I put a little phone mount on it.
And what that meant is that I could mount my phone anywhere.
So that meant that I could shoot time-lapses out the window.
It meant that I could shoot myself
walking towards the camera.
And it gave me a whole new way of presenting these stories
that wasn't just here's me, here's life.
But I'm a filmmaker, and so naturally I was obsessing over
how can I make this better?
How can I make it different?
How can I stay above the boomerangs,
coffee, selfies, sippy cup.
And so I started shooting them on this little guy.
So this is the Canon EOS M5.
I love this little thing.
It's tiny.
It's portable.
It fits in my bag with the microphone on.
It's got a little flip-out monitor
so that I can see myself and what I'm doing.
So the key here is actually to shoot it vertically.
And it's a really weird mind shift to try and hold your
camera this way and to film
the world
in a 9x16 aspect ratio.
But I really think it's worth it.
I think it's worth it because I'm a strong believer
that you should create content for the platform.
So this video that I'm making it's for Instagram Stories.
It's optimized for Instagram Stories, and it's gonna
look best the way people are consuming this content.
People are watching stories like this.
People don't want to turn their phone
every time they switch the story person.
So I started producing content for the way people
were watching this content.
(grunts)
(instrumental music)
(laughs)
(yells)
My butt is so wet.
(laughs)
So a big mistake that I see a lot of people make
is that they film it this way.
They film it the way you should film video,
and then they crop out the center.
The problem with that is though is
you're gonna miss things.
You're gonna miss the edges of your frame.
You're gonna miss part of your composition
because in your head you didn't
realize how narrow 9x16 really is.
So when I'm holding this out with the screen,
I see exactly what you're going to see.
I don't worry that you know
I'm gonna be chopping off my ears.
When I point at something,
I know my pointing finger is in the shot.
The next thing that I upgraded was the microphone.
So I was getting so much wind noise originally
when I was shooting just like this.
I picked one of these guys up.
This is a Rode Videomicro.
It's an incredible value for the money.
You stick it on.
It comes with the little dead cat.
Sorry.
(meows) (chuckles)
You plug it in, wind no more.
It captures my audio perfectly.
It sounds great.
And a lot of people probably have no idea
that I'm using a microphone.
But what they notice is that they never hear wind noise.
(grunts)
So I met up with my friend Pete here again today
to make a video about making these Instagram stories.
And part of that is bringing
cameras up into stupid places so.
(instrumental riff)
Wait what?
Sorry, I'm.
Can I also get small creamy chocolate chip iced thing.
A small is good, counting calories.
And a double chocolate doughnut.
- [Woman] And anything else?
- Um, gym membership J-K.
So it's kind of a sub-conscious thing that I think
really elevates the level of your stories.
If you want to learn more about audio techniques,
you probably recognized me from a video Pete posted
the other day in the description (chuckles).
We hear this kind of stuff all the time,
which is I don't have that life.
Like I don't have an exciting day.
I'm not jumping out of helicopters.
Or I'm not standing at the base of mountains.
What am I gonna film?
The truth is, my life isn't that exciting either.
And so what I did is I took my regular life.
A lot of that is walking to and from my studio.
And I decided that I'm gonna shoot that everyday,
and I'm going to try and find a different way to
try and tell that story every day.
And sometimes that's with Jazz music,
and sometimes that's hip-hop.
Or sometimes it's through time-lapse with stop-motion.
Sometimes my walk is raining, and I play with it.
Or sometimes it's sunny, and I play with that.
Sometimes I'm holding my camera,
or I'm setting up my camera, filming myself walk by.
Sometimes I'm skateboarding.
I'm longboarding.
I'm biking?
I never bike.
I stopped biking.
And I started noticing there was these repeat things
that happen every day on this walk.
I wanted to turn those into characters.
So there's a rope that I duck under
every single day walking to my studio.
And I just decided I want to include
that in as many ways as possible.
And so sometimes I'll duck under while I'm talking.
And sometimes I'll skateboard under it from afar.
Sometimes it'll hit me in the face.
And sometimes my hat will fly off.
So I started taking things in my life and adding
personality, giving them
a character role in these stories.
One example is Soylent, which is space food
that I drink everyday.
And it's weird, and it's silly.
And people think it's gross.
But I really like it, and so I've been trying to find
different way to show myself opening bottles of Soylent
or drinking bottles of Soylent or telling you I'm gonna
cook breakfast and just pouring into a cup.
(rain falling)
- It's cold and rainy outside.
I'm gonna make some breakfast
and do some work.
Breakfast.
Sweet taste of space food.
Oh and by the way, this next story I shot it yesterday.
So
sue me.
So I'm using that on a daily basis
as the content for my stories.
It's not exciting.
It's not glamorous.
But it's giving me creative freedom
and creative control over my own life.
I'm taking these pretty mundane things, walking, drinking
space food, and I'm turning them into characters,
and I'm making it unique.
And it's making my stories unique,
and people are noticing them.
And I'm amazing.
(chuckles)
So I don't need to be buying tickets across the world
in order to have a lifestyle that I think is worth sharing.
I can just take my current life and show it to you
every day in as many different ways as possible.
And it's honest, and it's raw.
And it's really fulfilling to me because I'm getting to do
the thing I love, filmmaking, photography,
and I'm doing it everyday.
And then it's just gone forever.
And I even think there's a sort of comedy in putting
all this work into something that's just going away because
it's just all about going the extra mile and doing the work
that other people don't want to do
so that your work can stand out above the crowd.
And I've noticed that since starting these back actually
in November, I have a bunch of friends that are starting
to do this same thing, which is exciting to me.
But it's also encouraging and inspiring to me,
and it makes me feel somewhat competitive.
Like I want to raise the bar even higher.
I want to do better than anything I've ever done before.
I want to put in more work.
I want to composite myself through a time-lapse,
all for a 15 second story that's gonna be gone tomorrow.
So it's all of this stuff.
It's the gear.
It's the time.
But more than anything it's the work and the willingness
to actually do something different
than everything else you see.
Don't look at my stories and make those stories.
Look at your life and tell those stories.
Because that's what people are interested in.
That's why they follow you because they're interested in you
and what you do in your perspective.
- So that's it for us today guys.
I hope you guys enjoyed it.
I hope you got something out of it.
It was really really fun video to make.
I've been wanting this information.
I've been wanting this topic covered for quite some time.
Basically for as long as I've seen
Jesse's Instagram Stories.
But I'm super pumped that he was gracious enough to come on
to this channel and teach us everything about what it is
that makes his stories unique.
So I highly recommend giving the guy some love.
Go follow him on Instagram.
Follow his channel.
I'll put all the links below.
I sincerely love his content,
and it's just a pleasure to watch on a daily basis.
Hit that like button if you got something out of this video.
Smash it if you so desire.
Subscribe if you aren't already.
You can hit the bell to be notified
every time I upload a video.
And join the notification squad.
With that being said, thank you again so much for watching.
I appreciate each and every one of you.
And, and I will see you guys in the next video.
(whooshes)
- It's a bit chalky.
- Gonna try the chocolate one?
- Yeah.
That's got a bit of a weird aftertaste.
- Little bit.
It's space food.
- I much prefer this one.
- Yeah.
- It's all yours.
- Change these.
- Oh, yeah.
(chuckles)
(instrumental music)