How to ACTUALLY Film Yourself (Cinematic too 😉)

Wow, what a nice day. You packed your camera bag, grabbed your gear and your favorite snacks, all set for a fun day of shooting with your best friends. But you forgot one thing. You got no friends. Crap. The good news is, is that you actually just need three friends. You're gonna need your tripod, me, and me, an AI voice over by Artlist. But we'll talk about me later. Let's first talk about the things that we wanna bring with us when we're filming ourselves. Now, honestly, we can make this as complicated as we want. We can bring a bunch of gear, but I don't like to complicate things for you. So honestly, just bring whatever camera you have, bring a good microphone if you wanna record audio. And the three things that you do really wanna bring with you regardless of what camera system you're using is one, a tripod. Yes, a tripod is very uninteresting, but this is your best friend when you're filming alone. So go get yourself a good tripod. I'm using the one from SmallRig, which I like very much, but honestly, any tripod will do. Then you also wanna bring a lot of SD cards or just really big SD cards. The reality is is that you're going to be going back to your camera, you're going to be doing a bunch of takes. So you wanna make sure that you have enough space because the worst thing is, especially if you're shooting on location, that you find out that you have no more storage space, but you're still not done shooting. This brings me to number three, and that is bring enough batteries. Because again, it's going to take longer than when you're filming with someone else. Honestly, I do not wanna spend too much of your time talking about what I brought to this shoot. So if you are curious, I've compiled two lists and I put them in the description. One is whatever I use to film that sequence. And then another one is whatever I use to film myself, film that sequence. Also a little side note, I actually really underestimated how hard it is to film yourself filming yourself. When it comes to shooting videos, especially if you're shooting videos alone, having a proper plan in place is going to change the game. Otherwise it is just a losing battle and take it from this loser who thought she could do it without a plan. The difference between the two days, the one day where I shot without a plan and the day that I shot with the plan, if you're filming by yourself, it's already gonna take so much time and effort and energy and patience. Having a plan in place is just making things so much easier and more efficient. So the way that you could plan your video is either in two ways. You can have a storyboard ready, which is basically a visual representation of all the scenes that you wanna shoot. But personally, for me, this feels like too big of a hurdle to overcome. So what I do instead is, because I already have this video playing in my head of what I need to produce, I just write down in words the shots that I wanna take. And it's not like every single shot. It's like the overall storyline. And then when I'm on location, I will come up with new ideas and different angles on how I want to fill up the gaps within that sequence. For this video, I do not just wanna give you a bunch of tips. I wanna give you the tips, but I also wanna give you an insight in how I go about shooting such a sequence that you watched at the beginning of this video. So to brainstorm this idea, what I always do is, especially when it comes to more like sequences, like what you saw at the beginning, I try to find the music first because that really helps spark an idea. And that actually completely changed the idea that I had for that intro. Because initially I wanted something a lot more cinematic, a little bit dramatic with like a soft voice. I was already sold on the idea of using a voiceover, right? I felt like that was really going to tie it all in together instead of just using music. I was actually looking for music and I found a song that just sparked a whole different idea in my head. And that's when I was like, no, I need to change this whole thing. And then because I was already sold on using a voiceover, I decided to do that beforehand as well to really like make sure that I got the vibe and the mood because that's really gonna help you with what kind of shots you're gonna shoot and how you're going to be shooting those shots. The one issue I had though, is that I am terrible at voice acting. I mean, I tried. Wow, what a nice day. Wow, what a... Instead of getting discouraged and changing my whole idea again because I do not know how to do this voice. Like I simply do not have the skills. I actually tried out Artlist brand new AI voiceover generator. They now offer a variety of realistic AI voiceovers for different moods, different purposes and different projects like these. So last night was a total disaster. Every child deserves someone who believes in them. Amidst the serene beauty of sunlit ice. Since we're talking about pre-production, we're talking about compiling a list of shots that we want. But if you wanna narrate the story like I want to, then you also wanna have a script. So I had some version of a script already ready to go and I just wanted to try it out. So I popped it onto the website and then I hit generate just to see what it would sound like. Ready for a great day of filming with your friends. Oh wait, you got no friends. They also have voice settings that you can use such as emotional range and style boost just to get it closer to the delivery that you're looking for. But I usually just hit generate to see what it already comes up with and then I take it from there. Artlist actually offers exclusive voices that are recorded by professional voice actors to get the most realistic outcome possible. Having access to these AI voiceovers that actually sound realistic and produce... I just cannot get over the breaths, okay? And your favorite snacks, all set for a fun day of shooting with your best friends. It just opens up a door to new possibilities because if you wanna shoot something and narrate it but you're like me and you're not that great at narration or if you wanna make a tutorial or a commercial, whatever it is, you can just go onto Artlist and use these voiceovers. The best part is probably that you can do this literally at any time of the day. Like I created this voiceover at almost 1 a.m. at night because that is when I finished the script and because you can. The best news is if you already have an Artlist Mac subscription, it is already included in your plan so you can start using it right away. If you're only interested in this AI voiceover generator, you can actually get a voiceover plan for 11.99 a month. And if you sign up using my link, which will be in the description, you actually get two months for free when you sign up for an annual plan. So now that the pre-production is done because we have our music, I've got my narration ready and I know what kind of shots I want, let's get to shooting. The key to telling a visually interesting story when you're filming yourself is shooting a lot of different shots from a lot of different angles. And the main reason is because we cannot leverage any camera movements. If we do not have any programmed gimbals or sliders with us, the best thing we can do is make our video visually interesting by shooting from a lot of different angles. You wanna film an establishing shot because this shows the viewer where we're at. Then you also wanna shoot a variety of wide shots, medium shots, close-up shots. And where you can introduce camera movements is the environmental shots because those are the shots where you do not need to be in frame and where you can get really creative and leverage those camera movements to make your video and your sequence a little bit more interesting. So that is what I did for this sequence is I did not only shoot the establishing, the wide, the close-ups, but I also shot the same action from different angles. We have me driving up, we have me getting out of the car, we have a shot of my feet hitting the ground. And now this is all of the storyline of I'm arriving at this location and I'm going to see my friends, which I don't have. But we can unpack that another time. Getting all of these shots is one thing, but framing these shots well is another thing because that is what we can leverage. We can leverage composition. This is the hardest thing as well because you have no one to help you. You have no one to help you review the shots as you're shooting them. You have to go back and forth to your camera and find out. But actually a lot of cameras nowadays have these connection apps. So for example, if you're in the Sony ecosystem like me, you can use the Creator app that'll allow you to watch whatever is on screen right there on your phone. This also allows you to record from a distance, which is nice because you will not have to walk back to your camera every single time to hit record. So if you're using the app, you still need to figure out how to frame it properly. I'm not really gonna go into composition. I'm just gonna give you one very simple tip and I'm simplifying the whole theory about composition here. So I know a lot of filmmakers are gonna come for me if they watch this, but just turn on the rule of thirds grid on your camera and make sure that whatever is most interesting, whatever you wanna draw attention to is in one of these spots. Now this is oversimplifying things. There's a lot more to it. So definitely learn about composition, but this is what I do when I frame my shots and this just makes your shots a lot more visually interesting. Another technique that you've seen me use throughout this video is using manual focus. Now I know that this sounds super contradicting because filming yourself means that you need really good auto-focus, right? And although that's true, especially for shots like this, there is a lot of power in manual focus and there is a lot of visual storytelling in using manual focus, even if you film yourself by yourself. Let's take this shot of me getting out of the car as an example. I wanted the focus to be exactly where my feet were going to land and I didn't want the focus to change as I was doing that. Now in order to manually focus on yourself, the best thing you can do is just bring something with you, whether that is the camera backpack that you probably already bring because you're bringing all of your gear or something as simple as this little shopping bag that I found in my car. I just put this on the ground and then I manually focused on this exactly where my feet were going to land and that is the easiest way to use manual focus. This is not only the easiest way to manually focus on yourself, but also the easiest way to help you frame your shot. If you have your camera backpack with you, which again, I think you will, you can just put it down and then just frame your shot accordingly. That is exactly what I did with this wide shot where I wanted the focus again to be on me and not on the foreground. I wanted the foreground to be blurry and I didn't want the camera to jump in between me and the leaves. So I put my camera back down, I focused on that camera bag and then I stood right next to that camera bag. Now that again will also help with the framing of the shot. So these two tips are golden if you film yourself. Another way to use manual focus and the way that I've been using manual focus in a lot of my videos, including this one, is to actually not focus on myself. I wanna be in the scene, but I do not want the focus to follow me or have any focus on me. Instead, I wanna focus on something that is in that scene to give a little bit more information about the scene or about the environment that we're in to the viewer. This is another great way to use manual focus. So instead of just turning on autofocus, try out manual focus. I'm gonna say something to you that I think should go without saying, but I also know myself and I know that I don't do this, which is why I'm telling you to do this. And that is to review every shot that you take. Now, this is a lot of work. This requires patience as well, but you're gonna wanna make sure that you've got it right because there's nothing worse than coming home or going back to your studio and figuring out that you actually didn't get a shot that you thought you got. Especially if you're using manual focus as well or autofocus, make sure that you just review everything so you're happy with the result, which will make editing so much more fun. And if at the end of the shoot day, you do feel a little bit defeated, just know that you're not alone. I felt very defeated after my shoot day. I shot for a few hours. It was a lot of work and I was tired. It took me a few hours to actually get to the edit because I just needed to decompress and I just needed to chill for a bit. So if you feel that way, just know that you're not alone. We all go through it. After some much needed decompressing, it was time to edit it together. Now, let me know in the comments if you wanna see a dedicated video because I'm just going to show you the timeline for now. This is the song that I chose in the pre-production process and basically what most of this whole idea was based on. Then I just added the clips to the timeline and I cut up the voiceover to time it properly. I did actually go back to Artlist and regenerate that first sentence to get a few different options. As you can see, I kept most of the original audio that was recorded in-camera, but I also added a few sound effects from Artlist to build out the scenes even more. For example, it was a sunny day and when I think of a sunny day, I think of bird chirping. Now, there weren't any birds where I was at, so I just added the birds in. I add a little bit of bark. I added some sound effects of water and this is basically all I did to create that sequence. If this video helped you in any way, please give me a lot of external validation by liking this video, subscribing to the channel, leaving a comment, and of course, check out Artlist AI voiceover generator because it is wild. Thank you.