The Secret Formula for Cinematic iPhone Videos

[Music] oh now it's time [Music] you're right in front of me the answer with the answer this video is sponsored by music bed so a couple of weeks ago my family and I actually took a trip to Disneyland and last time we went to Disneyland I had my C70 with a couple of lenses huge mistake by the way if you have kids and you have a huge camera it's it looks good the footage looks good but it's often just not worth it this time I decided I wanted to be a little bit more compact but I also didn't want to have like a bunch of accessories on my phone because in my opinion having an Indy filter and a huge like chunky case and the grip and all these different attachments on your phone kind of defeats the purpose of using your phone which is so convenient so I wanted to see what I could do with just the bare iPhone 15 Pro Max and actually I've split this video up into three different steps first one is going to be your settings the second one is going to be things that you do while you're shooting and the third step is things you can do while you're editing and by the end we're going to be taking your footage from this to this so let's dive in okay now the first thing and probably the most important section of this video is actually diving into your camera settings there's probably lots of settings you don't even know about a lot of these I didn't know about until I really started to hone in on shooting on my iPhone and I'm not talking about the obvious you know tap to focus and you know tap and hold to lock your exposure and your focus and all that we're diving into some of the bigger settings that actually set the stage so that you're shooting in the right codec the right frame rate the right resolution and a few other things so if you dive into your settings let me go over to camera the biggest and probably the most important setting you can change if you have a new iph iPhone 15 is changing it to prores log that you don't want to shoot prores log all the time if I'm just shooting quick little videos of my kids being funny or whatever like I'm not going to shoot that PR reses log but if I'm really intentional about no I want this to be a very cinematic clip and I plan on color grading it later I don't mind that it's a big file size then prores log is the way to go everything you saw in that Montage was shot with prores log so let's dive into formats then we'll scroll down Apple prores just make sure that that is selected and the encoding is on log next thing we're going to do here in that same menu is changing it from high efficiency to most compatible most compatible is basically going to give you files that are just easier to work with generally speaking and if you're shooting like HDR then you have to use high efficiency cuz it basically makes that HDR image look the best when it's being viewed on an iPhone but if you're taking cinematic video and you're going to go color it and manipulate it and you want to edit it you want a file that's going to be compatible with your editing program so most compatible going back to the main camera menu going to make sure that record video is at 4K 30 there's a reason I'm using 4K 30 and not 4K 24 I think a lot of other people who are shooting on iPhone could probably back this up but 4K 24 especially at prores log just looks kind of choppy it really shouldn't but it just is so 4K 30 is going to give you a much smoother image and you can still take that file pop it on a 24 frames per second timeline and you're good to go and if you want to you can also slow down that 30 frames per second clip to 80% and suddenly you have a semi slow motion clip and then in that same menu we're going to go over and lock our white balance if you're shooting professionally hopefully you're not using Auto white balance at least not too often generally you want to lock that wide balance so that the color temperature isn't shifting between the beginning and the end of your clip if it is it just makes color grading a lot more difficult then we're going to go back we're going to dive into The Preserve settings tab and then we're we're going to make sure the exposure adjustment is turned on so when you go into your camera you'll see in the top left right here I can actually control my exposure so I have it set to . 7 with that setting selected here it's going to actually keep that . 7 setting all the time unless I change it now the reason you want to do that is because when your iPhone is looking at any thing through the camera it's trying to balance the exposure all across the board and a lot of the time it's trying to balance out the exposure Ure in the shadows it's trying to bring those up which in turn makes your highlights look blown out and if your highlights are blown out it's going to be a lot harder to actually bring that detail back once you go into color grading so when you pull your exposure down to .

7 it's kind of a safeguard to make sure that your iPhone isn't automatically blowing out those highlights and when you're shooting I'd still recommend you know tapping on those highlights and trying to lock your exposure just in case but this is something I always have set no matter what okay now the second step in making your iPhone footage look more cinematic actually isn't in the settings it's about the filming itself now when you're filming I'd really recommend just using the main 1X lens even if your camera has other lenses it's not that they're terrible but nothing's going to be nearly as good as the 1X I mean if we were to like order my favorite lenses just on the iPhone 15 Pro Max it would be the 1X the 5x the 2X and then the 5x the 0. 5 is great especially if you want to capture like the wide landscape whatever is happening around you I use that one a lot when I'm doing like a a follow scene like I'm chasing my daughter running down the sidewalk the 2X and the 5x are good if you want to just punch in a little bit tighter but generally speaking with all these lenses even the 1X you need a good amount of light for them to look good and actually something else that I've noticed is that depending on your subject like what you're filming the 2X and the 5x don't look very good they actually look kind of Muddy and probably the biggest Factor here is going to be your lighting but I especially notice it with portraits like really really tight shots of faces so something to keep in mind the 1X is always going to be better but feel free to punch into a 2X or a 5x the next thing here is actually just shooting in the best possible lighting now when we were at Disneyland what was kind of nice is that I didn't plan on shooting midday so in the morning when we got there at like 8:00 a. m.

9:00 a. m. I shot a few Clips because the sun was lower the lighting was just a lot more pleasing but once it got midday the sun was directly overhead the the lighting just didn't look very good so I put the phone down and I actually enjoyed the rides and everything we were doing and then once we got into the late afternoon evening it was about 6 6:30 p.

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