6 CINEMATIC SHOTS for PROFESSIONAL contents | #ProTipChallenge

Let’s see a couple of tips and tricks for really professional shots you can use even in music videos, commercials and short films, not only in video blogs and your personal social media channels!

TIP #1 - BE THOROUGH

My first, basic tip for a cinematic footage is “always plan your scene”! And even when everything seems fine, take care of the shadows, too.

Shooting with a 360 camera we can capture really smooth wide angle shots, but we have to be careful with this wide angle, because it can easily capture the shadow of the camera and the selfie stick or monopod, too. A visible shadow of the selfie stick or the camera makes the shot look really unprofessional. But taking care of it, we can have really unique camera moves and camera positions.

TIP #2 - BE BOLD WITH UNUSAL ANGLES

Another advantage of the 360 cameras is that we can shoot in creative angles, even really low or high without using a drone. These low close ups and fake drone shots look very cool, but in every single case we have to avoid shadows, too.

TIP #3 - SPICE IT UP WITH POV SHOTS

Stepping forward let me show you some really special techniques, which ones are really hard to recreate with traditional cameras. One of them is the Point Of View shot.

I just take my Insta360 One X and (in this case) a small cold shoe adapter, which I hold in my mouth carefully. I can easily shoot POV videos, setting free both hands, which look great in horror movies, action scenes or even in certain commercials …

TIP #4 - BE CREATIVE WITH FPV SHOTS

Then, I have further Firs Person View setups for shooting b-rolls, while following certain objects. First, let’s see a paper plane. This can be a love letter, or whatever you want in your short film, and it’s quite a unique shot.

But of course we can try to play around with other, heavier objects, like model planes. In such a case, the quality of our footage depends on how realistic our model looks like.

TIP #5 - USE ACCESSORIES FOR BETTER HANDHELD SHOTS

Now, turning back to some special wide angle action shots, sometimes it would be better to film ourselves, or make the talent film himself, using a selfie stick. This way we could shoot with a constant distance between the talent and the camera. But it looks really crappy, seeing that the actor is holding something in hand.

Even if we are shooting with the so called invisible selfie stick, it looks unusable in a professional project, mostly because the hand position is a little bit weird and unnatural.

So I put something in hands, like a suitcase, a helmet, a balloon or a glass (depending on the scene), and this way it looks way better.

With the proper accessory in hand, these scenes look natural, and no one suspect that there’s a selfie stick in the scene. Of course we have to avoid of the shadows, in these cases, too.

TIP #6 - BRING BULLET TIME TO THE NEXT LEVEL

And now, let’s talk about a really cool effect, called Bullet Time. It’s a dedicated Insta360 effect, as we can buy bullet time accessories and there’s a dedicated function in the smartphone app, too. But this technique has a serious downside in professional use:

to shoot bullet time videos, our talent has to raise his hand while the camera is spinning around. In most of the cases it’s really hard to justify in a movie, why the characters are raising their hands in certain situations.

You know it’s quite unrealistic: Imagine Neo in Matrix rising up his hand time after time for the sake of the effect. It’s really hard to create a story line, when there’s any meaning of it. But of course, we need this movement to shoot bullet time with a 360 camera.

So I came up with a similar solution like in the previous case, and I started to put something in the talent’s hand. The first thing came to my mind was the air balloon, because people keep their arm exactly in the same position during holding air balloons, like swinging the 360 camera during bullet time recording.

Of course, we can play around with other objects (like this model plane in this case), and in another post I will share my further tips and tricks focusing on professional bullet time shots.

But until that, if you have any further ideas about what to hold during bullet time, to make it look natural, write me in the comment section below!