A guide to working with less-than-ideal equipment

The best cam­era is the one that’s with you.

Right now, social dis­tanc­ing due to COVID-19 means that many of you have lim­it­ed access to film equip­ment, but there are many sit­u­a­tions where it’s nec­es­sary to impro­vise with what­ev­er equip­ment is available.

Some of you do not have access to a DSLR; this is not a prob­lem! Some of the most influ­en­tial movies in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma remain those that were made using a wood box with a crank on the side. Great movies have been shot with a con­sumer cam­corders and phones. This guide is designed to help you get the most out of those devices, to gain man­u­al con­trol over them to the extent pos­si­ble, and to think about the assets and advan­tages of these idio­syn­crat­ic cam­eras rather than their limitations.

Smartphones

If your phone was made in the last 3–4 years, it has a remark­ably high-qual­i­ty cam­era, even by dig­i­tal cin­e­ma stan­dards. The prob­lem with phone cam­eras is that they are designed to be com­plete­ly automatic—to make all the deci­sions of focus and expo­sure for you. We know that this is a bad idea! But there are ways to exer­cise more con­trol over your built-in camera.

iPhone

I’m using an iPhone XS with iOS 13, and its avail­able set­tings may dif­fer from your phone. But they should be sim­i­lar enough that you can fol­low along—iPhones have had very good cam­eras for the last 10 years, so the odds are that if you have an iPhone, you can shoot sharp, vivid, emi­nent­ly usable video with it.

Before we do any­thing else, take a trip to your set­tings, and scroll down until you see “Cam­era.” Now, take a look at the “Record Video” sub­menu.

This lists the avail­able frame rates and res­o­lu­tions for shoot­ing video with the native cam­era app. You can see I have mine set to 4K/​24p because it’s the only 24 fps option my phone sup­ports, but should I need to, I can go down to 720p/​30 or all the way up to 4K/​60p.

My cam­era can record slow-motion video, up to 240fps! I haven’t played with this much, but it pro­vides some inter­est­ing possibilities.

Under the “For­mats” sub­menu, I can choose between the “High Effi­cien­cy” codec (HEVC) or the “Most Com­pat­i­ble” codec (H.264). I’ve suc­cess­ful­ly edit­ed HEVC footage in Pre­miere and DaVin­ci Resolve on my Mac, but if you’re edit­ing on a Win­dows machine, you may want to switch this to “Most Com­pat­i­ble” to avoid com­pat­i­bil­i­ty problems.

Taking video

The built-in iPhone cam­era app is very sim­ple, but it does allow some semi-man­u­al con­trols, using a tap-to-focus interface.

Open up the cam­era app. To get into video mode, swipe left until “VIDEO” is high­light­ed in yellow.

Tap and hold on the part of the image you want to focus on until the mes­sage “AE/​AF LOCK” appears on screen, then tap and drag up and down to adjust the exposure.

I haven’t found a way to adjust white bal­ance in the native app, so you’re kind of stuck with what­ev­er the auto white bal­ance gives you. Remem­ber that if it’s close, you can use Pre­miere or Resolve to dial in the appro­pri­ate col­or settings.

Once you have your frame/​focus/​exposure set, push the red cir­cle but­ton to start record­ing. Push the red square to stop.

Transferring files to your computer

If you have a Mac, the eas­i­est way to trans­fer files is prob­a­bly to Air­Drop them to your­self. Make sure you have Air­Drop enabled on your com­put­er and your phone, then open up the “Pho­tos” app on your phone. Open the clip you want to trans­fer, tap the share but­ton on the bot­tom left, and then tap the Air­Drop icon. You should then be able to select your computer—you may need to approve the trans­fer from your computer—and then the file will trans­fer to your Down­loads folder.

If you have a Win­dows machine or can’t use Air­Drop, you can also trans­fer files via USB, but the process is a lit­tle more complicated.

Once you get the video files on your com­put­er, you can edit them in Pre­miere or your edit­ing soft­ware of choice. Remem­ber to use appro­pri­ate file structure!

Android phone

I don’t have an Android handy to walk through this in detail (and process­es will vary based on the make of your phone), but the shoot­ing process should be sim­i­lar to the instruc­tions for iPhone.

Transferring files to your computer

You can trans­fer files from your phone to your Win­dows or Mac com­put­er over USB using the free Android File Trans­fer app. You may need to do a lit­tle dig­ging in the fold­er struc­ture to find your videos; if you use a third-par­ty app like Filmic Pro, the videos will save inside the fold­er for that app.

Shoot horizontal video

Unless you have a very spe­cif­ic rea­son to shoot ver­ti­cal video, turn your phone side­ways to shoot in stan­dard widescreen format.

Avoid using the selfie camera

The front-fac­ing cam­era on your phone is low­er res­o­lu­tion, and some­times does not offer as many man­u­al con­trols. Avoid it unless absolute­ly necessary.

Take advantage of different lens lengths, if you have them

My iPhone’s stan­dard cam­era is pret­ty wide-angle for film­mak­ing pur­pos­es (equiv­a­lent to a 26mm lens on a DSLR), but I have a sec­ond tele­pho­to lens that’s equiv­a­lent to a 52mm lens, which ren­ders close-ups much more nat­u­ral­ly. In my stock cam­era app, I just tap the “1x” but­ton to switch to tele­pho­to mode.

For this exam­ple, I stayed in the same place and took two dif­fer­ent shots: one with my default lens, one with my tele­pho­to lens, to demon­strate the magnification:

Using telephoto lenses to change perspective

Your cam­era may also have a super-wide-angle lens for extreme wide-angle wack­i­ness! Worth exper­i­ment­ing with, if you have the option!

Full manual control: Filmic Pro

If you’re will­ing to spend a few bucks ($15, which is steep for a phone app, but I’ve found is worth it), Filmic Pro, avail­able for both Android and iOS, gives you man­u­al con­trol over your expo­sure (ISO and shut­ter speed only; phones don’t have a vari­able aper­ture), white bal­ance, audio lev­els, even your res­o­lu­tion and frame rate. If you want your phone to behave like a dig­i­tal cin­e­ma cam­era, this is the best avail­able option.

I’m not going to include a guide here because there’s just so much in the app, but it’s well doc­u­ment­ed on their web­site: Sup­port page | Quick start guide | User man­u­al | Tuto­r­i­al videos

Camcorder

If you hap­pen to have access to a cam­corder (e.g. a Sony Handy­cam or sim­i­lar) that shoots dig­i­tal video, don’t under­es­ti­mate its capa­bil­i­ties! Most new-ish cam­corders have good sen­sors, excel­lent lens­es with vari­able aper­tures, and may fea­ture opti­cal image sta­bi­liza­tion and full man­u­al exposure.

If you want to shoot with a cam­corder, your first step should be to find the man­u­al. (Most man­u­fac­tur­ers make their man­u­als avail­able online; Google your camera’s make and mod­el and you’ll prob­a­bly find something).

You’ll want to find out how to:

• Adjust your frame rate and resolution 

If you can, avoid shoot­ing in an inter­laced for­mat like 1080i or 480i. A pro­gres­sive for­mat like 1080p/​720p will be far eas­i­er to edit.

• Man­u­al­ly con­trol your exposure 

Some cam­eras may com­bine every­thing into a sin­gle “expo­sure” con­trol, but if you’re lucky, your cam­era will give you indi­vid­ual con­trol over shut­ter speed, aper­ture, and ISO/​gain.

• Man­u­al­ly con­trol your focus
• Man­u­al­ly set your white balance
• Dis­able “dig­i­tal zoom” functionality 

Dig­i­tal zoom arti­fi­cial­ly enlarges your image, pro­duc­ing pix­e­la­tion, alias­ing, and oth­er unfor­tu­nate arti­facts. Dis­able it if you can.

Webcam

If all else fails, you have a cam­era in your lap­top that you can use to record video. These cam­eras only allow for auto­mat­ic expo­sure and white bal­ance, and are often cal­i­brat­ed to focus only on sub­jects about 2–3 feet away. Because of this, they are extra­or­di­nar­i­ly lim­it­ed. Kind of excit­ing, isn’t it? What can you make under such strict lim­i­ta­tions? How can you sub­vert your webcam’s intend­ed purpose?

Recording from your webcam: Mac OS

You may be tempt­ed to use Pho­to Booth, but there is a bet­ter way! Open the Quick­Time Play­er appli­ca­tion and select File > New Movie Record­ing.

A win­dow will pop up that shows you a live pre­view of your web­cam. Click the lit­tle down arrow next to the record but­ton and make sure that the qual­i­ty is set to “Max­i­mum.”

You may notice that the image gets a lit­tle flick­ery if the fram­ing or light­ing changes. If your expo­sure is too light or too dark, try nudg­ing around the frame a lit­tle bit to get the auto expo­sure to change to some­thing more desirable.

Click the red cir­cle to start record­ing; click it again to stop.

Once you’ve stopped the record­ing, you can review it. If you like it, select File > Save to save the record­ing to a Quick­Time file. Again, be sure to fol­low prop­er fold­er hierarchy!

Accord­ing to my exper­i­ments using a Mac­Book Pro run­ning OS 10.15, this pro­duces 720p ProRes 422 video files with a 16kHz mono audio track and the tru­ly infu­ri­at­ing frame rate of 29.1 fps. But it’s a video, it looks pret­ty good, and Pre­miere can edit it!

Recording from your webcam: Windows 10

You can record video from your web­cam on Win­dows 10 using the Cam­era app. I don’t have a Win­dows machine handy to test this out, but here’s a tuto­r­i­al.

Recording Sound

The voice mem­os app on your phone is a great way to record audio if you have no oth­er choice. The only short­com­ing is that I haven’t been able to find any audio record­ing app for iOS or Android that allows for man­u­al gain con­trol, so you’ll have to make do with auto levels.

As with any oth­er micro­phone, the most impor­tant thing is to get your micro­phone as close to the audio source as pos­si­ble. If you’re record­ing voiceover, that’s easy! Just hold up your phone and talk direct­ly into the micro­phone (from a few inch­es away, to avoid plosives/​mouth noises).

But you can also use a phone the way we talked about using a ded­i­cat­ed audio recorder, to record sync sound! This is great if your cam­era is far away but you still want to record clean dialogue—conceal your phone some­where just out of shot and start record­ing, then start your cam­era and clap your hands to pro­vide a ref­er­ence point so that you can syn­chro­nize audio and video once you import the files into Premiere.

Advanced recording/​editing on your phone

iOS: Though pri­mar­i­ly designed for music, Garage­Band gives you some more advanced con­trols for voice record­ing, audio pro­cess­ing, and mul­ti­track edit­ing, and may pro­duce bet­ter-qual­i­ty record­ings than the stock Voice Mem­os app.

Android: Auphon­ic Edit is a great audio record­ing and edit­ing app.

Editing video

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe offers edu­ca­tion­al dis­counts on Cre­ative Cloud subscriptions.

DaVinci Resolve

If you pre­fer a dif­fer­ent edit­ing expe­ri­ence, DaVin­ci Resolve is a free, full-fea­tured edit­ing pro­gram for Win­dows, Mac, and Lin­ux. It’s a lit­tle tricky to pick up if you’re famil­iar with Pre­miere (and it may not run on old­er or low­er-specced com­put­ers), but it’s a very reward­ing way to edit once you’ve learned how!

Editing video on your phone

Com­pared to edit­ing on a com­put­er, edit­ing video on the tiny touch­screen of a phone or tablet can be a pret­ty frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ence. But it is possible!

iMovie

If you’re using an iPhone, Apple’s free iMovie app for iOS is quite full-fea­tured, and should allow you to do even mod­er­ate­ly-com­plex edits on your phone. Here’s a detailed tuto­r­i­al.

Once your edit is done (tap “Done” at the top left), you can tap the share but­ton and select “Save Video” to export a Quick­Time video file that you can then trans­fer to your com­put­er or upload to a video shar­ing site like YouTube or Vimeo.

Premiere Rush

Adobe’s free Pre­miere Rush app for iOS and Android allows you to edit video and export videos, although it lim­its you to three exports unless you have a Cre­ative Cloud sub­scrip­tion (not sure if the afore­men­tioned stu­dent license works), or you can pay a $5 month­ly fee for unlim­it­ed exports. Booooo.

Other considerations

Lighting

Just because you don’t have pur­pose-built film lights doesn’t mean you can’t con­trol the light­ing of your envi­ron­ment! You’ve got lamps… com­put­er screens… the sun… here are some things to consider:

• Start by turn­ing out all the lights. Usu­al­ly, flu­o­res­cent or ceil­ing-mount­ed lights pro­duce kind of ugly results.
• Move lamps around to achieve dif­fer­ent light­ing effects.
• Use white bed­sheets or poster board to bounce/​soften sunlight
• Flash­lights can be sur­pris­ing­ly use­ful tools for adding a lit­tle light in a very spe­cif­ic spot.

Camera support

If you don’t have a tri­pod, think about oth­er things you can mount your cam­era to. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly easy and fun if you’re shoot­ing on a smart­phone! A lit­tle mask­ing tape, some string, a cou­ple rub­ber bands, etc. can help you attach your phone to a shelf, a chair… maybe the end of a broom han­dle, for a dra­mat­ic jib shot!

Cast

If you’re iso­lat­ing with your fam­i­ly, I bet they’re incred­i­bly bored. Recruit them to be your actors! If you’re on your own, think about inter­est­ing ways to shoot footage of yourself.

Think about social con­nec­tions in this time of phys­i­cal iso­la­tion. Can you tell a sto­ry that involves actors con­nect­ing via video chat? (In addi­tion to record­ing your web­cam, Quick­Time Play­er can record your desk­top)

Being forced to work entire­ly on your own can be very restrict­ing, but it can also be free­ing. I made this film, The Depo­si­tion of Lawrence Pat­ter­son, over the course of a few late nights many years ago, while every­one else in the house was asleep. Apart from a lit­tle light­ing help from a friend one night I did all the pro­duc­tion, act­ing and edit­ing entire­ly on my own, using my Canon T2i and a few lamps I found around the house. The result is… unpol­ished, but it was also deeply sat­is­fy­ing to make.

This is all to say: be open to the cre­ative pos­si­bil­i­ties of soli­tary work. Oth­er modes of solo film­mak­ing could include:

• Man­i­festo films
• Per­son­al essays
• Aut­ofic­tion
• Tele­phone dramas
• Non­lin­ear self-deceptions
• Dream reen­act­ments
• Mys­ter­ies of inan­i­mate objects
• Video let­ters
• Imag­ined misdeeds

Give your­self per­mis­sion to be less ambi­tious; to make work on a small­er scale. What is the small­est, sim­plest film you can make that still says what you want it to say?