The Secret to Filming Cinematic Videos like a PRO

and I always get asked the same question how do you make your videos well today I'm going to show you everything stories are the backbone to any cinematic piece when framing a story I like to focus on three main components and to break all this down I'm going to use a pot and a plant oh and a little bit of soil all right let's do this it's quite simple a good story must contain structure which is the pot a character or a subject which is the plant and development which is the soil when all three

of these things work together harmoniously you already have the makings of a cinematic story but Andrew how do you come up with your stories that's a good question let me show you I'm not going to lie coming up with stories is hard I often overthink stress and worry if any of it will make sense the process can be messy and long over the past year I realized I kept trying to write stories I thought others would want to hear constantly changing or explaining ideas based on what I assumed the audience would like recently I decided

to change that I wanted to focus on stories that I found interesting things that I was going through that being said the process can take a bit more time and then out of nowhere it'll all come together and you'll have an idea for a story that you're proud of I know this isn't a practical way to write but everyone writes differently so embrace the way you write there's a lot of Truth to that at the end of the day you have to follow your intuition write what you know and be willing to take risks and

if I've learned anything about storytelling it's that the thing you find uninteresting about your story is often what others find fascinating you got mail but how do you turn your story into a video that's a good question and the first thing you need is this a camera but first the shot list everyone does it a little bit differently but I'm going to show you what works best for me the goal of the shot list is simple match your visuals with your story and the best way to do that is to mix your camera angles start

wide and slowly go tight so let me break down how I would shoot this line of story I was tired so I listen to some music to unwind first let's get an establishing shot this gives your audience understanding of where your subject is you can get creative and add some movement or keep it static after that we'll show a closeup to communicate the emotion that he's feeling inviting your audience to connect with the main character then we'll introduce the action which is listening to music this can be a closeup show the relation between the subject

and the action this is where your creativity can show you can experiment with different angles movement or anything that you feel is important to move the story forward but how do you make your shots look so good believe it or not it's actually pretty easy I'll show you and while most people think it takes a long time and a lot of headaches to achieve it's actually a lot more simple than you think before we ever click record we need Lighting in a lot of ways lighting will be the determining Factor whether a shot looks cinematic

or a shot looks Bland lighting is ultimately one of the most powerful and most underrated Tools in all of film making so I want to show you guys how I would light a sing the first thing that I do is I use Haze to diffuse the light and make everything look a little softer next I'm going to set the background lights which are the practical lights these allow the audience to understand where the light is coming from after that I'm going to do what we call the Cinematic triangle so there we go pretty much what

is happening is I have a key light right in front of me and it's just a soft box it's the Zion 90d and that is Illuminating half of my face and there's a soft runoff coming right here which I could make Harder by closing my blinds there we go so there's no light coming so the whole goal here is to create contrast shadow side first I have my practical lights which aren't adding any like light to my face so if I turn it off it doesn't add almost anything to the way that I'm illuminated but

what it's doing is it's giving you the logical sense of this part of my face is being lit up by this when in reality it's my key light so if I turn off my key light you can't really see me there we go so you want to separate the levels of lighting you want your depth lighting which is your practical lights and then you want your subject lighting which is your key light and that illuminates the individual what does my editing process look like I'll show you editing is where you bring your video to Life

music color and Rhythm it's all put together in the edit everyone has a different editing style so you have to find what works best for you the first thing I do is find music music will dictate the pace the Rhythm and the emotion of the video it's important that you find music that fits your story once I have my song I'll edit each part to the rhythm of the music once my music is chosen and I have my shots I'll start on the narration process voiceovers are not easy and for a while my never sounded

good to help I put together a free audio preset that's Linked In My description below totally free and really easy to use so check it out if you want it once everything is put together in the timeline it's time to color grade color grading is the life source of your video it takes footage that looks lifeless and Well turns it into this color grading is difficult and it takes a lot of time to practice so I want to show you exactly how I color grade first I'll get my shot it's important to make sure lighting

ISO and picture profile are all working together for me I shoot in a low ISO using picture profile 8 using the Cinematic triangle for my lighting after that I'll import my footage into Da Vinci this is where it gets fun I created a preset set that mimics the depth of color related to film it's designed to be a oneclick grade to prove it I'll show you all I do is drag and drop sometimes I do have to change the white balance and exposure but most times it comes out exactly the way I want this took

years to develop and it's something I'm really proud of it's linked in the description below if you'd like to take a look hey so we're shooting the thumbnail Big R big soft box right here all right so the way I do my thumb Nails is I record a scene and then I just pull the stills from it and that's that's that that looks good all right I hope this is the thumbnail here we go you ready to see me like pose that's it so I just I don't know I just try different a few different

things I'm going put my arm like that so my big thing with thumbnails is getting contrasting color so green blue red and good lighting okay so for all those like panning shots some of you might have been wondering there we go um might have been wondering like how I did that and that's with this slider so I'll put the camera on and essentially I'll just slide it like that um this isn't the best slider I don't even know what it is I just found it at a thrift store so kind I just kind of grabbed

it um but if you're wondering how I did it I literally would like let's see so if it's like this and the camera's on here I would literally just do this so it would just be off to the side and I would move it with my hand underneath so you couldn't see it and then just move it a lot of people have been asking me sorry I keep like changing the light um a lot of people have been asking me how I get that like warm light well I use this Sunset lamp and it's really

it's kind of cool but it's super easy um I just have it like this behind me somewhere kind of go like that so wonder if I did this how cool that would be uh not that cool okay so that's like $10 off Amazon you can definitely do that wow it's bright okay I'm wrapping I like that the light's green I'm wrapping the day Friday and again only got about 40 seconds of footage um filmed for about 4 hours but today was very much like I would come up with an idea I would try a lot

of different things and then a few things would stick a lot of video creating is that it's the same with music it's not that we have this idea completely fleshed out and it's going to be good but we have an idea we try it out and it's like trial and error you try something it doesn't work so then you adapt and you try something else and that's what cinematic footage is that's what cinematography is that's what storytelling is you try it you try to go down an Avenue it makes sense and so you build off

of that and then it doesn't work so then you have to go back and you build off something else and that's what these last few days have been it's been um a lot of time a lot of effort things have worked things haven't worked my battery is at like 1% so I should probably end this video but yeah it's been a fun process making this video I've kind of held myself to a higher standard cuz I want to do I want to do this video really well and I want to I want to share really

honestly um everything that I'm doing so guys it is pre-production day which is awesome so I'm pretty much going to plan out my whole video um that you just watched how to make cinematic videos and I want to show you how I put and organize everything together using a great platform called milanote pretty much milanote is an amazing tool for organizing creative projects I use milanote because it's essentially a digital whiteboard that you can kind of just throw everything onto however you feel fits your creative style so I wanted to show you what my storyboard

my script and how I curate everything to allow me to film in the most efficient way so one of the first things that I do is I'm going to try to find two colors that I like that contrast each other that I'm going to use throughout my video and milanote has an awesome feature that allows you to kind of pick and choose colors and it kind of has these little color cards that you can just place in your board I also love using the checklist feature that milanote has it allows me to stay on track

because I often find myself starting here moving over to something over here I have a very spaic brain so having this checklist in the middle of my mood board and script is amazing from there as you can see I like to really rely on visual inspiration I am such a visual person I get ideas thoughts I I I curate moods all from visual inspiration so Milano has an amazing feature where you can literally just drag and drop photos you can connect photos to these lines so if you get like a shot list you can kind

of connect your photos to your shots which is something I do and I just throw it all in one place so that I can get this idea and this feel of how this video is going to look and feel now again back to the color thing what I really like is I'll curate everything on my board and then I'll actually take a step back and I'll say what colors am I noticing I'm seeing a lot of Blues I'm seeing a lot of magentas I'm seeing a lot of Reds so then maybe that's where I'm naturally

leaning let's start to implement those colors so one thing I have is another board within this board that gives me color grade ideas so I'll click that and I kind of just curate all of my colors in one place and the great thing with Millan note is you can actually invite other people to the board and they can give and leave a little note if they like it or not so if you need advice if you think something's if you're unsure about something you can invite your friend to take a look which is what I

do with all of my colors another amazing feature that I use all the time is the fact that you can add music to your milanote board and I really suggest that you guys do this it is great to play the music that you want in your video as your script writing so that's why all of this is so great because you can have everything together all at once so as you can see I have my script here to the left I color code it and I will play my song as I'm writing and so I'm

able to kind of curate my script in a way that is on Tempo that's on beat with the song that I'm going to use guys I think milanote is one of the greatest creative platforms that you can use to implement and bring your ideas to life milanote is available for free with no time limit so if you want to sign up just use the link in the description below and guys I highly suggest that you check them out so guys if you've made it to this part of the video that means you are a part

of the 20% of people that have watched it all the way through statistically only about 20% of people watch YouTube videos all the way through so I always love if you did make it this far to leave a comment saying you are a part of the 20% so that I can connect with you if you want to make something creatively if you're a writer a musician you make videos whatever it is the greatest thing that has helped me in my creative journey is to allow myself to fail fail often fail a lot fail big the

more you fail the more you learn what you want to do and how you want to do it but trying to be perfect and trying to create and curate things that are perfect only allows you to play in the realm of things that you know if you fail it means you've done something you don't know how and it didn't work out the best but it's in that active failing that you start to learn how to do it a little bit better so in this journey of film making I have failed a lot and I've looked

back at my videos and I've asked myself what can I learn how can I get better and how can I fail again and then I embrace that so guys fail often and fail a lot and let me know what it is that you would like to be doing creatively and how this video has helped you so I'll see you guys all in the next one peace