8 tips for creating vertical video's

 what's up guys Gurdeep here from the pixelcountry team and in this videoi'm going to be giving you my top eight tips for shooting vertical videos

now this is kind of a topic that would have been weird to talk about 10 years ago but lately vertical video has produced some of the main aspect ratios that people use to consume content actually 75% of people who use social media on their phones are watching videos in vertical mode so if you want your content to be more mobile friendly you'll need to start shooting vertically now there are pros and cons to shooting vertically and i'm definitely not saying that you need to completely switch to vertical video but i think a healthy mix of both vertical and horizontal filming will help elevate your content and get it seen by more people now the reason that i shoot vertically when i'm creating content for social media is mainly because that taller aspect ratio takes up more real estate on your phone screen which means

that people scrolling on instagram or facebook are much more likely to stop it also creates a more immersive experience and there are tons of creative editing tricks that you can add in order to utilize all of that vertical space which i'll get to later so now that you understand why vertical video is important let's jump into our eight tips number one is camera orientation now in order to get the most out of your camera sensor you'll want to be shooting with it sideways now before i realized this i was just shooting horizontally like i normally would then cropping the outside edges and obviously this works but you're taking a huge hit in quality by doing it this way now let's say you're watching a vertical video on instagram at full resolution that video is going to be 1080 pixels wide and 1920 pixels tall giving you a 9 by 16 aspect ratio which is just the reverse of your standard 16 by 9 aspect ratio that most tvs and computer screens use so again to make sure you're using all of those pixels that your camera sensor has to offer flip it sideways and intentionally shoot

vertically tip number two is handheld shooting equipment now the first piece of equipment that i recommend if you're planning on shooting handheld is a battery grip if your camera already has one great you're good to go but i do think a battery grip helps vertical shooting feel so much more natural without that placing your right hand on top of the camera and doing the movement feels a little bit awkward you can definitely get used to it but for long periods of shooting having a more natural grip will help keep your footage stable and allow you to shoot for longer periods of time and if you have the budget a camera cage like this one can also come in handy i've rigged mine to have

mounting points on all four sides of the cage so i can just slide these handles off rotate the camera 90 degrees and then slide them back on now while handheld shooting is great i mainly only use it for b-roll sequences or when i'm shooting fitness stuff or other types of videos that would look good handheld one of the main challenges of vertical shooting is dealing with that slimmer field of view when you shoot horizontally it's quite a bit easier to keep your subject in the frame because you have so much space going from left to right both vertical your subject could take one step and immediately be out of the frame so for this reason it's significantly harder to track subjects when shooting handheld so i recommend using a gimbal or other type of stabilizer this brings us to tip number three

stabilized shooting equipment now whether you prefer a glidecam a motorized gimbal like the ronin-s a shoulder rig or even just a tripod you'll need one piece of equipment and that's the l bracket what this thing does is it attaches to the bottom of your camera like any normal mounting plate but because it's shaped like the letter l it wraps around and gives you a bunch of other mounting points on the side of your camera so you can attach another normal

mounting plate and then slide it on pretty much any stabilizer if you have a cage for your camera chances are there's already some mounting points on the side so you won't need the l bracket either way we've gone ahead and thrown together a new kit specifically for vertical shooting where we give you a ton of our recommendations for gear to help you out so you can find that in the description below our fourth tip is following moving subjects now we've already illustrated how vertical video gives you that slimmer field of view which makes it a bit more challenging to track your subjects but here are three tricks

you can use to make it just a little bit easier the first one is to practice your camera movement over and over again now most shots that i get while i'm shooting are not one take wonders most of the time it takes at least three tries to get the right one a huge aspect in tracking your subjects vertical or horizontal is muscle memory repeating the same motion a few times will make the final shot just fall into place the second trick is anticipating the movement that your subject is going to make if you're shooting run and gun don't just look at your camera's screen but also look at your subject i found for me personally that my response time is way better when i'm concentrating directly on my subject and my peripherals are watching the camera screen this is something that also takes practice and a bit of muscle memory but if you want to keep your subject inside that slim field of view you'll need to practice that skill the third and last little trick that you can use for following moving subjects is distancing yourself just a bit more from the subject than digitally zooming in and reframing while editing this is a good tip

to start with because as you become more and more comfortable tracking your subjects you can start to move closer to them and eventually you probably won't need to use that digital zoom in alright the fifth tip i have for shooting vertical video is composition even when your aspect ratio is rotated the rule of thirds still exists which is what i'm always following to make sure my subject is properly framed and i have good composition honestly you can make an entire video just talking about the rule of thirds but generally it just means you want to place your subject on or between one of those vertical lines and the horizon on one of those horizontal lines now another thing to consider when you're organizing your composition is the aspect ratio that you're going to be publishing the video not all vertical videos follow

that 9x16 format actually most vertical videos that i make use a 4x5 aspect ratio which are the max dimensions for in-feed posts on instagram something you can do is grab some gaffer's tape and stick it to the top and bottom of your screen so you can better frame your video for that four by five aspect ratio or you can just give your subjects a bit more headroom and then reposition the clips later the last thing to consider when organizing your composition is making sure that you're filling the frame you can fill the frame by either getting up close to your subject or by showing your subject from a bit

further away but in an interesting environment and this topic actually brings me to tip number six background compression remember that shooting vertical video works best when you've rotated your camera 90 degrees to use the entire sensor but it causes an interesting effect the videographers aren't typically used to and that's that your image becomes more stretched out from top to bottom rather than from side to side this might be fine for shooting big buildings or trees and capturing the height of something but generally you'll want a tighter focal length so that your image has tighter background compression now if you don't know background compression is when the background elements of your image appear larger than they actually are so as you increase your focal length those background elements become larger and tighter background compression is really

important in vertical video because you have a tighter space to work with than you normally would with horizontal video this means that generally you need to pack as much of your environment as you can in the background so that you can establish location i say generally since there are obviously certain shots and special cases where a wider focal length would be useful but the majority of the time that wider focal length is just going to show off either the sky or the ground plus give your subject a long face now if i had to recommend just one focal length for shooting vertical videos it would be without a doubt 50 millimeters and that's for two reasons first off 50 millimeter is a very flattering angle so when you're filming a subject up close their face won't be stretched out and it'll look completely natural secondly 50 millimeter gives you great background compression it's not as tight as 100 millimeters or even 200

millimeters for example but you'd have to be extremely far away from your subjects to frame them for let's say a medium shot whereas the 50 millimeter lets you get relatively close while still bringing in the environment behind your subject therefore filling your frame all right these last two tips have to do with the editing side of creating vertical videos so i figured we'd move to the computer for these ones so tip number seven is to use all of that vertical space i'm actually going to use my buddy alec as an example because he does a great job adding cool engaging effects to his vertical videos and utilizing all of that space one of the main things that he does is duplicate his footage and stack them on top of each other i've noticed that he does this with both horizontal and vertical footage so he's often getting some footage with the camera horizontal than just editing everything together on a vertical aspect ratio sometimes he'll also take his main clip and place it in the

center of the frame then have different clips on the top and bottom in order to tell you more about the scene these are usually detail shots and clips that wouldn't stand alone very well but do a better job complementing some of the other footage another way to use all of that vertical space is by adding text at the top or the bottom i've done that a few times during this video and i'm actually able to add more text than i normally would because i have more space to work with all right our eighth and final tip is posting on social media i get questions all the time asking about my sequence settings video dimensions etc so if you're curious about any of those things here you

go my sequence settings for this video which is a 9x16 aspect ratio is just 1080 by 1920. and if i was making a video for my instagram that would be a four by five aspect ratio or 1080 by 1350. now beyond just the principles and rules of shooting and editing vertical videos you also need to consider the duration of your video if you go on instagram or facebook to watch something chances are that you won't watch anything especially vertically for very long before getting bored and moving on to the next video for that reason it's important that you make your vertical videos not only good and engaging but relatively short even though 75 of mobile social media users are watching vertical videos it doesn't mean they have a long attention span so just keep that in mind when you're planning filming and editing your next vertical video alright and to recap this video here are my eight tips number one camera orientation number two handheld shooting equipment number three stabilized shooting equipment number four following moving subjects number five composition number six background compression number seven use all that vertical space and number eight posting on social media but guys that pretty much wraps it up hopefully some of these tips come in handy as you start

transitioning to shooting more vertical videos if you're looking for more content such as general filming and editing techniques in-depth tutorials as well as specific training on different industries like commercial real estate videos wedding videos music videos travel videos etc you'll love our online course full-time filmmaker where we teach you everything we know about shooting in these industries so whether you're a beginner filmmaker or a veteran i promise you'll find an incredible amount of value with nearly 400 videos and a private community of over 14000 filmmakers just like you but guys thanks for watching don't forget to subscribe if you have any further questions please let us know.