- What's up everybody?
Peter McKinnon here, and today we're talking about
how you can start shooting better handheld footage
without a stabilizer, a tripod, nothing, just you.
(upbeat guitar music)
Okay, so one of the things I get asked a lot,
and I see it a lot in comments
and just general inquiries about this kind of thing,
is what kind of stabilizer do you use,
or what kind of monopod do you use,
or how can I get smoother footage,
or how can I track objects better?
Your b-rolls really smooth, how do you do that,
and how do I do it?
So, I put together a couple tips with a few examples,
using some B-roll,
of how I get smoother footage
without the use of a tripod or a slider
or a three axis gimbal,
or a glide cam, none of that.
We're gonna cover those things in another video,
but I wanted to preface that video with this,
by saying you don't need to have all of those things
to get smooth, great looking footage.
Now, they help, absolutely, and a lot of the times,
they do make your life easier.
But at the same time,
not everybody has those things.
Sometimes they're really expensive.
Sometimes they're more of a nuisance to have to lug around
and drag through the woods and up a cliff,
and pack your car
and try to get your friends in at the same time.
It's just easier to grab your camera and go.
So these are a few of the techniques that I use
when I wanna stabilize my footage
without having to use all of this extra equipment.
Okay, so the first thing you're gonna wanna do
when you're holding your camera to shoot handheld
is you wanna hold it with two hands.
Now, you'd be surprised.
A lot of people just shoot like this
and they're like, ah whatever, I got it.
But, you want two hands on there,
it's gonna be a much more stable grip.
A second is you don't wanna have your arms extended.
You don't have as much core strength
when you're shooting this way
trying to adjust settings,
it's a lot easier,
and you're gonna get way better results
if you pull that camera into your chest
and lock your elbows in.
Think about moving as one,
instead of all these different things moving.
Instead of having the camera move
and your wrists moving and your arms moving,
try to pull those arms in,
lock it in close so it's nice and tight,
you got a grip on both the body and the lens,
and then just move your body.
You're gonna get way better camera movements like that,
than you are if you're trying to just
move all your extremities at the same time,
doing different things,
you're gonna get camera shake that way.
Okay now, similar to a three axis gimbal,
having three points of contact
on the camera at all times
will, again, help get your footage more stable.
So, you got one point of contact,
two points of contact,
what could be the third?
Well, it could be holding it against your chest,
it could having it up against your eye,
which the third point of contact would be your face.
But what I like to use is the camera strap,
which is a technique you've seen
probably a lot of filmmakers use,
but that goes around your neck.
I like to use this peak design one
just because I can take it on and off real easy,
but this is now my third point of contact.
So I've got my hand on one,
two on the lends,
I've got this against the back of my neck,
with tension, allowing me to have a third point of contact.
So now I've got a way more stable shot
with a good, solid grip.
My arms are locked and extended outwards,
and I've got that tension on the back of my neck,
so I'm able to do panning shots.
I'm able to move up and down,
and that is a huge, huge benefit in the field.
I use this trick all the time.
If you're doing hyperlapses,
it's a little bit dark
and you gotta drag that shutter out a little bit longer,
this is a huge help without having to set up a tripod,
or throw it on a gimbal, or something like that.
Try this out,
you'll be really, really happy with the results.
Okay, obviously the next thing is gonna help
is having an image stabilized lens.
So that's gonna help a lot when smoothing out your footage.
So now you've got your three points of contact,
you're using an image stabilized lens,
you've got it nice and close,
or you've locked those arms out with the strap.
The camera is doing it's thing,
either you have an IBIS,
which is In Body Image Stabilization,
or you have the stabilization built into the lens,
one or the other, that's just an obvious added bonus
for getting those smooth, buttery shots I like to say.
On top of that, if you get back to the studio,
your office, your bedroom, your dorm, whatever,
if you get back to your place,
and you've done these tips
and you're using the strap,
you've done the three points of contact,
you've got an image stabilized lens
and it's still a little bit,
just a (mumbles) it could just be a bit better,
you can still the run the warp stabilizer in Premiere Pro.
So all you're gonna do is go down to the Effects panel,
you're gonna type in warp,
it's gonna pop up,
you're gonna drag that onto your footage
and it's gonna analyze the clips.
What that does, is it adds a gyroscope to the footage,
and it zooms in a little bit
to get rid of shake on the edges.
So, that's gonna stabilize your footage
past having an image stabilize lens,
past you doing everything you could in the field
to make it smooth.
At this point, your footage should be pretty smooth, so.
If it's not, maybe you're just really cold.
(shivers)
Or you have arthritis,
or maybe you just drank like 16 cups of coffee
and it's just a little bit, whoo, little bit crazy.
Now this text tip is something
that I've been doing for years.
I haven't really seen anyone else do it,
so I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's original to me.
Anyways, I came up with it myself.
It's kind of ridiculous,
but what I do is I learn forward,
and then I just let myself go a little bit too far,
so that I kind of fall for like one to two seconds
then I put my foot out and I stop myself.
And I do that both forwards and backwards,
and what lets me do is get like two perfect seconds of
free fall motion before I get that camera jerk.
And the best part about putting your foot out,
aside from not falling on your face
or smashing the back of your head,
it obviously makes the camera jerk, right?
Like, you're learning back and the camera stops suddenly.
That's kind of like my marker when I'm editing.
I look for that camera shake,
and then I go back about two seconds
and I know that's my sweet spot.
So I take those two sweet seconds,
falling forward or falling backwards,
and I know those are gonna be really, really smooth,
'cause it's essentially the camera is in a free fall.
I can then run warp stabilizer on top of that,
and now I've got a really nice,
just either slow pan forward or slow pan backwards,
depending if I was shooting at 60 frames or 120 frames.
So that, is a little bit of an unorthodox technique,
but it's something that I do personally all the time.
Now, disclaimer, you look absolutely ridiculous
when you're doing this in public,
and people wonder if you're drunk or if you are,
they don't understand people.
They don't understand, but we understand.
So, you're gonna try it,
and you're not gonna be embarrassed.
Let's call it the, let's call it the PM Rock N Tilt.
Sure. (laughs)
Now another tip doesn't necessarily have to pertain to
a technique, but motion hides shake.
Alright, so if your camera is panning,
if you are moving those shots forward,
backwards, side to side, that kind of thing,
it's going to cut down on the camera shake 100%.
If you're just trying to keep a steady shot,
as steady as you can,
it's gonna be obvious
by looking at the edges of the frame,
if the camera is moving or if the frame is shaking or not,
opposed to if you're actually panning like we talked about,
it's a lot harder to pick up the fact
if the camera is shaking or not.
Something else you wanna keep in mind:
focal distances.
If you're shooting wide,
you're gonna get less shake.
It's way easier to get smooth looking footage
when you are shooting wide, okay.
Here's some examples,
shooting at 16mm, doing some pans,
doing some motion,
doing some of that stuff we just talked about.
That looks great.
Now cut to the next scene,
which is shot at 200mm without image stabilization.
And I'm doing my best to handhold it,
Gabriel is taking some stuff out of the truck,
but it's a lot more just jittery,
because my frame is so much further zoomed in at 200mm.
And just as I side note,
if we flip on the image stabilization on that lens,
look at the difference.
It looks a lot smoother.
So if you are shooting handheld,
and you wanna be in at like 200mm
or 100mm or something like that,
it does absolutely help to have an image stabilized lens,
there's the proof.
But when you have a wide shot,
shakes are way less noticeable,
opposed to something zoomed in really, really far.
The slightest movement of the camera
when your zoomed in at like 200mm or 100mm,
is gonna be a huge reaction on-screen.
It's gonna look like you just went (exasperated noise)
It's gonna look massive!
But if you're shooting wide,
and you do a little bit of this,
it's almost undetectable.
And then if you run the warped stabilizer and post
and it zooms in a little bit,
it cuts off those edges.
Here are some things that will cause shake
that you can keep in mind not to do when you're shooting.
Changing settings,
you wanna make sure that you have
your camera settings the way you want them.
Your stabilization is on,
your auto focus or your manual focus is on,
you've got all your dials
dialed into what you want,
because if you're trying to move the camera on the fly,
obviously, you don't have that nice, secure grip anymore,
you've turned the camera,
or you're looking at it
and now you're pushing something on the side,
and that's introducing camera shake,
you're gonna see that in the footage
if you're pushing auto focus to manual focus,
you're physically pushing the lens in,
so you wanna make sure that you're not
touching anything on the camera,
that you're preset, you're ready to go,
your settings are locked off
and you're just focused on getting the shot.
Okay, so I've just thrown together a little kind of edit
of everything that we just used for examples,
the B-roll footage, into one little segment
so you can see that this whole thing was done handheld.
There was no tripods, there was no gimbals, nothing,
just using the warp stabilizer
or the image stabilization in the lens,
doing the techniques, the fall,
the PM Tilt, whatever we called it,
I don't remember already. (laughs)
But just using the techniques that we just learned,
this is what that looks like.
Now, side note,
there are some shots of me shooting those shots in this.
Those were done also handheld,
either with image stabilization or warped,
the same kind of thing, just with a different camera, okay?
(upbeat electronic music)
So those are a couple tips.
Now, it's important to say,
sometimes you want camera shake.
Sometimes you want to introduce
a little bit of natural movement,
if it helps tell your story,
if it helps drive home a point,
like we mentioned before
in the Step Up Your Filmmaking series,
sometimes it helps to set the tone.
If you're chasing somebody,
if it's supposed to feel a little stressful or intense.
Sometimes that camera shake,
and handheld camera shake,
is very, very beneficial.
You'll notice in a lot of movies,
like even the Born Identity series,
they use a lot of camera shake in that.
Sometimes to the point where you're just like.
Okay, yeah, I mean I wouldn't be opposed
to a tripod at this point.
It goes without saying,
sometimes it adds that raw feel.
If you have too much smooth motion in all of your shots,
sometimes it can come off just a little too produced.
A little fake, and it just feels like
there's no real, raw connection.
So, sometimes throwing some of this out the window
and getting some camera shake
into a particular clip or scene
is absolutely essential
to portray what it is you're trying to portray.
Now the last thing that'll help you
get some smooth, buttery, tasty handheld shots
is shooting in slow-motion.
Be it at that 60 frames a second,
or 120 frames a second,
or even higher speed frame rates.
Shooting with those will definitely help get
nice, smooth handheld footage.
Let's say you even shoot a clip that's five minutes long
and it's 120 frames a second.
That's A, gonna be a huge file size,
but B, even if it was really, really shaky,
there's probably something in there somewhere,
that several seconds of a nice, smooth rotation
you can clip and you can cut
in and out of that one clip
to pull what you need from it.
So that's the last tip for the day.
And that pretty much does it for this video, guys.
I hope you enjoyed it.
I've been asked that a lot.
So, I'm really excited to be able to share some of these
gorilla-style filmmaking tips with you.
I hope you got something out of it.
If you did, hit that like button.
Smash it, if you so desire.
And, and, if you hit the bell,
you'll be notified every time I upload a video.
So I've got several more planned for this week,
so hopefully you guys will come along for the ride.
Thank you to everybody who is new here
at the Peter McKinnon channel.
We talk a lot about photography and cinematography
and teach cool stuff and vlog different things.
So, it's a fun ship to be on, as I've said before.
And I appreciate each and every one of you.
I will see you guys in the next video.
Not wearing a hat. (airy sounds)
(funky hiphop music)