(or, why not to film content on your mobile phone)
People often ask me… They ask me – “Jack how do you make such great scones?”
Well I say, that’s a very good question but I’m currently writing the introduction paragraph of a listicle about the relative merits of using mobile phones over and above proper video cameras to film on and trying to use as many keywords like video production company Nottingham as possible in order to gain traction on search engines.
Oh they said, but I really just wanted to know about your recipe for those scones…
“Well” said I, “I’ll tell you, but first I gotta write this article.” And btw, I was supposed to write a snappy intro to fire off the list, we’re now a good few paragraphs in and I haven’t even mentioned once what the article is about or used many Google-bait keywords like video production company Nottingham. People are going to be thinking ‘damn, this isn’t a very succinct opening to an article is it? In fact it’s neither succinct or even vaguely coherent’ then hammering their browser back buttons.
Sorry! Where were we? Just to kick off – this isn’t a diss track, I love my phone more than anything else in life – possessions, partners, family… everything. No really! And mobile phone (really they’re just called phones now aren’t they Jack, you don’t need to specify that they’re mobile really, it’s 2017 for the love of god) footage has a great intimacy and spur of the moment feel to it. But and it’s a big but, if you want to be taken seriously as a brand – and there’s a huge amount of video content out there – you need to be on a par with stuff you’d typically see on a tv or cinema screen – even if it’s just for web output, dude’s gotta get a proper video production company on the case maybe even a video production company in Nottingham…
It always breaks me when I get chatting with a potential client and they go a little cold and decide to ask someone’s nephew who has one third of a BTEC in Media Studies to film their promo on his Nokia 3210 or something and it ends up looking whack. Granted, there’s always an exception, someone will wheel out something someone’s shot with an iPhone and it’ll actually be pretty good. But just so you have the pros and the cons here are ten reasons our Big Badman Movie Cameras and our Skills as a Proper Video Production Company are better than Using Yer Poxy Phone.
1 Mate, The Aspect Ratio… Come On!
Quick brief on aspect ratios here.
The easiest, most ergonomic way to hold a phone is upright ie a portrait image which is all great fun until it comes to be shown on any other landscape apportioned screens – which just so happens to be every tv and computer screen in existence and has a result comme ca:
If you use a phone to make videos you will 100% trip on some ice. Just saying.
Kinda feels like you’re a medieval serf peering out through a turret window no?
That is a terrible aspect ratio is what that is. Use a video production company instead!
I dont know the famous renaissance artist Michelangelo personally – I wasn’t even alive when he was alive.. Like I say I don’t actually know him but what I do know is this – if you showed him anything filmed on a mobile telephonic apparatus he would look at you with disgust and spit on the ground.
Not just a normal, off-hand disregarding spit, no. A fully blown renaissance spit; he would put all of his accrued genius into the spit, he would forgo working upon the various sketching and blueprints of his various epoch-defining inventions to mock your image and spit on the ground, a globby glottal stop of disgust at how bad the aspect ratio is.
And Michelangelo has taste – I’m sure if he was around today he would recommend us as his favourite video production company, not just in Nottingham but in the whole wide world.
Put yer phone away is all I’m saying. And hire someone decent. (plug ahoy)
The big ol’ proper film camera? Can kick out stuff that looks sublimely cinematic. Like this.
In every aspect ratio from yer old school 4:3 to the standard issue 16:9 to the full blown 2.35:1 cinemascope via everything inbetween.
It’s like a hall of mirrors – but elegant seductive beautiful mirrors – and not any that make you look fat.
2. The Yummy Lens Flare.
As you might be aware after watching our showreel or indeed pretty much any of our work I am a big fan of the ol’ lens flare.
It’s miraculous; the beauty the sheer beauty of these things – various refractions, reflections, precision made optics: some fisheye, some anamorphic, some vintage, some crisp some coated, some uncoated.
Yer Samsung Galaxy Something Or Other? Not so much. My brother! My sister! Got thee to a video production company!
Here’s some awesome lens flares for no other reason than I like lens flares (and also the web guy told me adding images to blogs is good for SEO… Sad really isn’t it that I’m having to care more about what a big ol’ stupid machine (Google) thinks than lovely friendly humans, what have we come to? Really? That said… I sense now – half way through a listicle – is no time for huge fist-beating discussions on the nature of technology and its place in our lives, another time, perhaps. Another time. Oh but here’s another key word just for good measure: video production company. There we go.
3. Depth Of Field ‘N’ Such
Bit of a brief on DoF here.
What I like about yer proper cameras and moreover why I tend to generally, as a man who runs a production company, lean towards filming stuff on a proper camera rather than a terrible mobile phone is that the image has depth and can be changed to alter the perception and hence the emotion around the shot itself.
I like images that can do what the eye does – when you look closely at something obviously your gaze is drawn to that and perceptively or imperceptibly the background is out of focus or otherwise hazed out ie your attention is on that thing you may have awareness of things around it but it’s that object which is fore-fronted.
Mimicking this with a proper film camera wielded hither and thither by a video production company such as ours has a pleasing and natural effect – one inured in the viewer through watching hundreds of films and tv shows – and having got its claws thoroughly into the human psyche over a 100 year + history – yer mobby? Not so much, it’s all deep focus so that, yeah you can see yer nan and her ham in the foreground but you can also see yer peering shoppers and assorted pigeons fighting each other and everything else going on up to and include the sign for the SpudULike baked potato shop.
Not a pretty image uh?
4. Lenses
If I want a big ol’ wide angle of a concert resplendent in the sunshine – I swing big ol’ wide angle lens on, if I want a macro of a grain of sand being blown up in front of a monster truck I swing da macro lens on. If it’s hot and I want a Solero Exotic I go to a shop and buy a Solero Exotic (granted, you can also do this without the camera, to repeat, you don’t need a film camera to buy a Solero)
Also, are there any other flavours other than the Solero Exotic? Has anyone ever seen any? Do tell if so.
But back to the point – you can change lens on a big ol’ film/video camera. Yeah I’ve seen the pictures on your Insta with the sunglasses over part of yer phone lens – it looks pretty good but… Wide angles! Come to our video production company for plenty of wide angles!
5. Zoom
And yes I know I know you can pinch yer screen of yer iphone and it looks closer, see this is digital zoom – zoom that is just zooming in on the pixels making each square pixels bigger each time – you can do this even after the image is taken with the exact same effect.
Aint getting no more detail with that bossman. Aint gonna win no awards with that bruvstep. You know what you’re going to get? A bunch o’ pixels that’s what. No big win bossman. Gotta get a video production company on the case bossman.
6. Compression.
I know very little about compression – but I do know this – iPhones are very compressed, what that means is that theres very little raw data to play with that means the more you want to manipulate the image ie add a colour grade to it, VFX to it or whatever other filth you had in mind it is probably going to crash and burn as there isnt enough going on all told to make it all happen. Sorry!
Here’s another keyword plonked in arbitrarily at the end of a paragraph: Video production company.
7. Rigging
Have you ever seen a follow focus for an iPhone, or a technocrane or a jib or a dolly or a steadicam or a car mount. Nah so you’re at the advantage of having an phone that you can sling pretty much wherever but it’s called a motion picture for a reason and ergo has to have a bit of actualy motion and the only movement you can feasibly get with a phone is the wobbly hand held type. You want footage that’s gonna look like a Richter 9.7 in a bowl of jelly? Go ahead son, wield that mobile! You want good footage? Get yourself to a video production company.
8. Dude… It’s A Phone… It’s A Phone!
For this section we’re going to do a bit of mindfulness meditation and visualisation. To begin: Picture a film set, sit back, close your eyes and picture me a film set, I see the chairs with the names on, I see lights, cameras, actions I see the camera with those Mickey Mouse ear film canisters on top I see Paris I see France I see someone’s underpants.
What I do not pictures is a dude with a phone, if you’re filming a film on a phone, the same device you use to hook up with partners, chat, text and whatever else on you need to take a long look in the gosh darn mirror. Really you do.
Also, what if you get a call during a shot, it will ruin the sound it will. Which brings us nicely on to… (it’s like I’ve planned this, I very haven’t planned this)
9. Sound
Also just sound in general. Ever tried jamming an XLR into yer Samsung Galaxy S5? Not gon fit is it? Not alot of sound ports all told on yer Samsung is there?
10. Dude, Just No, Getta Video Production Company Innit
Ever got to nearly the end of a list article where you explicitly promised ten points and have only written/thought of nine? Can’t leave it at nine can you – gotta be a nice whole round number, mate. Gotta be mate. You can’t just go back to the top where you rambled on about scones (I haven’t forgotten about that recipe btw) and change the 9 to a ten. Gotta add one point in at the end which isn’t even a point just a reiteration of the previous points with yet another keyword jammed in for good measure (if you’re wondering what that keyword was it was video production company Nottingham).
Any other thoughts – hit us and/or me on StinkedIn, Titter, Disgracebook, Instaspam or email (I can’t… I can’t think of a hilarious derivative for the word email)