This is the million dollar question. “I know how to shoot photos, but when it comes to video, I have no freaking clue!”

I hear you! While photo and video seem so different, they’re pretty similar! But with everything, there are differences between the two.

We all know that video is so powerful and this is why I offer full blown Senior Year Films for my clients, which are beautifully directed and created cinematic images that truly capture your client’s personality in a way that photos simply can’t do in the same way. Photos are great at this, but video is just super amazing at this.

To start out, let’s look at the important things and see what the differences are and how you should be setting things up to start creating killer videos for your clients.

Shutter Speed

When thinking about film, there are some technicalities that you want to be aware of. The first is what your shutter speed should be when you’re shooting video. I recommend shooting 1/2x your frame rate. Basically the way this breaks down is that if you’re shooting slow motion video at 60p (60 frames per second), you will want your shutter speed to be 1/120s. This is for a couple reasons. The first is that you don’t want to get something called rolling shutter. This results when your frame rate and your shutter speed are out of sync or don’t match up correctly. If you do have rolling shutter, it looks like your video is not lining up correctly. Picture a straight line, but when you pan, it forms a diagonal. If you still need a visual, look up a photo and you’ll see an example of what I’m talking about! The second is that you want to make sure that you’re not “stopping” your motion. This results when your shutter speed is too high. We would want a faster frame rate when shooting sports, but not when we want something that looks like it was shot on film for a film. This is purely a creative decision, but I do think that it makes an impact when shooting client films.

Aperture

Aperture is really a creative tool, but you’ll also want to keep a couple things in mind since video is a little bit more temperamental than photo. With video, you won’t really be able to go in and sharpen the eyes as you would in Photoshop if you barely missed focus. For aperture, I recommend not opening up your aperture to f/1.4 like you would for photos. I usually stop down to about f/3.2 or even f/4. This will not make a huge impact on your creative look and will allow you to make sure that your subject is sharp and in focus. If you’re shooting shots with a lot of movement, this is essential whereas if you are shooting a scene that’s more static, you can open up your aperture a bit more. Just be aware of making sure your subject is in focus and a smaller aperture definitely helps with this.

Picture Style

We’re so used to shooting RAW images, but when it comes to video, most of us aren’t really taking advantage of shooting a “RAW” format. (If you are interested in super advanced video, you can Google LOG video formats, but this isn’t applicable to 99% of people who are reading this.) Therefore, we have to think of video almost like we would think about JPEG settings; your picture style WILL be applied to your video! If you have a picture style turned on that’s super contrasty, your video will be really contrasted. If you have one that’s flat with no sharpening, your video will come out this way too. For video, especially if you’re not correcting or color grading – we cover this in the Film Course, I recommend finding a picture style that resonates with you and is closest to the look that you’re going for.

These are a few tips to get you started when shooting video. It’s not overly complicated, but these are just a few quick tips that will help get you started especially if you are new to video and film. It’s something that I absolutely love being able to offer my clients and hope that it’s something you will love as well!