Day 2 - 14-Day Course

1 Frame Rate in Action

What's going on creators, Anthony here, and in this module we are going to do a deeper dive on frame rates. Having taught this concept for so many years, I know that this is a topic that can definitely confuse people until they see it happening in front of them. Both how the settings are changed, how it impacts the video.

📹 Practical Setup

We have a somewhat scientific setup here. We're going to be pouring water in and out of glasses, recording at different frame rates, so you can see how these things all look. I'm also going to link all the clips that we filmed today in the description beneath this video, so you can actually download the clips, import them on your computer, your smartphone, however you like, and play around with it yourself.

Quick Refresher on Frame Rates

Standard Talking Head Footage (24 fps): Remember that standard talking head footage, like the stuff that you're watching right now, traditionally that's filmed at 24 frames per second. That is the true-to-life frame rate.

30 fps Alternative: Now people also will film talking head footage in 30 frames per second. It gives you almost exactly the same look, albeit it's slightly smoother.

Above 30 fps = Slow Motion: Anything above 30 frames per second is what we use for slow motion footage. With all those additional frames in each second of footage, we can actually stretch out the footage and get a clean, smooth, slow motion look.

Using the iPhone Native Camera App

Now we can shift and actually look at the screen recording on my iPhone. You can see we are in the default camera app. Up in the top left-hand corner we have the 4k resolution and our frame rate is 24.

If I want to increase that, I can tap on it and it's going to go to 30. You'll notice it also just changed the lens back to the default lens.
We can tap on it again and it's going to go to 60 frames per second. This is what we would use if we wanted a little bit of slow motion.
Now if I tap on the frame rate again, it's going to go all the way back to 24 frames per second.

⚠️ Understanding Resolution vs Frame Rate Trade-offs

Now the iPhone in most phones nowadays can film all the way up to 240 frames per second, which is 10x slow motion. The thing though is we can't do that at 4k resolution and this is a really important thing to understand about how frame rates and resolution work together.

In a nutshell: Both resolution and frame rate take processing power. The higher resolution, the more power is needed by your camera, and the higher frame rate, the more power is needed by your camera. In order to film at higher frame rates, most cameras will have to drop their resolution.

Accessing 120 and 240 fps on iPhone

So with my iPhone, if we wanted to get to 120 and 240 frames per second, it's naturally going to drop the resolution to 1080p or standard HD.

How to access: I'm going to swipe down here on my camera and go to slow motion. Now you'll see in the top left-hand corner, it's HD and 120 frames per second. If I tap on that again, we've now gone up to 240 frames per second, which is even more slow motion.

Using BeastCam for Professional Control

Now, like I've said a few times before, it's totally fine if this is how you want to film for your slow motion clips. If the lighting is controlled, if the clip looks good, the white balance doesn't look off, you are totally fine to do this. But if you wanted more professional control of all the settings, especially for practicing because that's how we get these concepts kind of drilled into our brain, it would make sense to use a professional app like BeastCam if you're using your iPhone.

BeastCam App Settings

All right, so here we are in the BeastCam app and just like always, we have our focus square and our exposure circle. If we wanted to use auto settings, we would just leave those enabled, which basically means make sure that they're both white and we would have those centered on our subject.

Manual Control: If we want, we can tap on focus, which is going to lock it and then we can move it away because it was already locked and we can tap on the exposure, which is going to lock it and then we can take control of the manual settings at the bottom of our screen.

To change frame rate: I'm going to start by tapping on the video settings button and now we can see we're in 4K 60 standard quality and we're at 10 bit HDR. For the purpose of this video, we only need to focus on the resolution and the frame rate.

⚠️ Unlocking Higher Frame Rates in BeastCam

When trying to access 120 and 240 fps, you'll notice that we don't have those higher frame rate options. They're both grayed out. To unlock those, we have to drop the resolution from 4K to full HD.

Now you'll notice even though we're in full HD, those settings are still grayed out. And the reason behind this is on my iPhone, in order to fully unlock those, not only do we have to drop the resolution, but we also have to drop the bit rate from 10 bit to 8 bit. Now don't worry about that just yet. We have an entire video on bit rate in high dynamic range.

💡 Shutter Speed Rule for High Frame Rates

You'll remember that the rule is to set your shutter speed with the denominator being twice what your frame rate is. So right now, if we're filming at 120 frames per second, technically speaking, our shutter speed should be 1/240th of a second. 240 being double what the frame rate is, 120.

Important Note: At the end of the day, you want to do what's best for the overall image. In other words, you can set the settings aside, look at your screen and ask yourself, how does this look? How does it mirror what my eyeballs are seeing in real life?

The One Hard Rule: I never want to go beneath 1/50th of a second. You'll remember that the lower your shutter speed is, the more motion blur you're going to have in your image. Once you get beneath 1/50, you actually start introducing more motion blur than the human eye is naturally used to seeing, which is a little unusual.

Playing Back Slow Motion Videos

The last thing that I want to talk about in this video is how to actually play back your slow motion videos and view the slow motion without needing to go into the editing software because I know we haven't touched on that just yet.

Native App (120/240 fps): When it comes to filming on the native apps, if you film in 120 or 240 frames per second, when you view the footage back in your camera roll in your photos app, it's automatically going to play back in slow motion.

Editing Slow Motion Directly on iPhone

Now if we want to edit that a little bit, we have the ability to do that in the camera roll. We can hit on edit and now you'll see at the bottom of my screen, we have this little area where we have lines that are condensed together and lines that are spread apart.

How it works: The area that's condensed together, that's regular speed footage. The area with spread out dots is where the clip goes into slow motion. This allows you to manipulate when the slow motion starts and stops so you can get your story looking as cool as possible without having to use a complicated editing app.

Android Differences

Now on your phone, if you're not using an iPhone, it might be slightly different. On most Androids, like the Samsung Galaxy series, similar to the iPhone, if you film in 120 or 240 frames per second, it's automatically going to play back fully slow motion, which is great.

Final Frame Rate Recommendations

For A-Roll (Talking Head): If you are filming talking head videos for a YouTube channel, an interview for a commercial, you're filming just Instagram reels where you're going to be talking, stick with 24 or 30 frames per second.

For B-Roll (Cutaway Footage): When it comes to creating your videos, the B-roll is commonly filmed at higher frame rates so you have the ability to slow things down. Most videos I film, all of the B-roll I typically film at 60 frames per second. It's a really good frame rate to get smooth, buttery clips without having so much slow motion that the clip is almost boringly slow.

For High Action (120/240 fps): The only time I really ever film in 120 frames per second or 240 frames per second is if I'm filming an action that I know I want to squeeze as much slow motion out of as possible. So doing a cannonball into a lake or a dirt bike riding through a puddle that I really just want to slow down as much as possible. It probably represents less than 3% of the total videos that I'm actually shooting.

That does it for this training though. Hopefully you found this entire exercise helpful.
If you want to download the clips that I recorded today, they're linked beneath this video in the description.
Other than that, thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one.

2 Understanding Focal Length

What's up creators, let's talk about focal length and lenses. You've probably heard of focal length before, put simply, the longer your focal length, the more zoomed in your final image will be.

Smartphone Multiple Cameras

Smartphones have fixed lenses, meaning we can't remove the lens from the camera body like we can with more expensive cameras. Luckily enough for us though, most smartphones actually have multiple cameras built in, each with a different focal length, allowing us to get a wider variety of shots.

iPhone 13 Cameras:

Primary camera: 26mm equivalent focal length
Ultra-wide camera: 13mm equivalent
Telephoto/Zoom lens: 77mm equivalent

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Cameras:

Standard camera: 24mm
Telephoto camera: 69mm
Super zoom camera: 230mm (10x zoom)
Ultra-wide camera: 13mm

💡 Additional Lens Options

On top of having multiple built-in cameras with their own individual focal lengths, certain companies like Moment have built modular lenses that can be attached over the existing lenses, allowing us to get even more looks with our content creation. We'll talk more about Moment lenses and other accessories like that in the gear section of this course.

Two Main Factors Influenced by Focal Length

1. Field of View: Low focal lengths, like 10-24mm, have a wide field of view. You can see a ton of space from left to right and top to bottom. As focal lengths increase, our field of view gets tighter and our image appears zoomed in, there's much less space in view from left to right and top to bottom.

2. Scene Compression: Low focal lengths have low scene compression, meaning the perception of space between the subject and the background is very spaced out. As focal lengths increase, scene compression increases - the apparent space between our subject and the background has decreased, almost as if the space has been squished in on itself.

Visual Example: Ultra-Wide vs Telephoto

Using the ultra-wide 13mm camera, the field of view is very wide. You can see there's very little scene compression, meaning the perception of space between the subject and the background is very spaced out.

On the 77mm telephoto lens on my iPhone, we've kept the distance between the camera and the subject the same, but our field of view is much tighter, and the scene is much more compressed. The space between my nose and ears seems exaggerated on the ultra-wide camera compared to the 77mm camera, where those same features are flattened with less distance separating them.

When to Use Different Focal Lengths

Wide-Angle Lenses (13-26mm) are Great For:

Making things look big and immaculate, like gorgeous sweeping landscapes
Establishing shots where we give our viewer a great perspective of where the video is taking place
Making spaces feel larger than they actually are (this is exactly why real estate videos are typically filmed on super wide-angle lenses)
Creating immersive action shots when you can get close enough to a moving subject

Higher Focal Lengths (77mm+) are Great For:

Narrowing in the focus of our viewer on just one thing
Eliminating distractions and gaining absolute control over what we want our viewers to see
Capturing shots where our subjects are far away (animals, sports players, etc.)

⚠️ Why One Camera is Usually Primary

With smartphones, the reality with most manufacturers is they make one of the cameras the primary camera, meaning from a technical perspective, it's the best one to go with. When it comes to iPhones, this is the 26mm camera.

Aperture Differences:

iPhone 13 26mm camera: f1.5 aperture
iPhone 13 13mm camera: f1.8 aperture
iPhone 13 77mm camera: f2.8 aperture

Remember from earlier in this program, the lower the aperture, the more light gets let into the camera and the more background blur we get. All of these things improve the quality of our videos.

The Impact of Lower Aperture

For example, look at this video shot on the 77mm camera. We're in a relatively low-lit scene and the amount of noise in the shot is pretty bad. When I switch to the 26mm camera, all of a sudden the amount of noise decreases drastically. This is because the lower f1.5 aperture on the 26mm camera lets in a ton more light, allowing the ISO to drop down to more manageable levels.

💡 Sensor Shift Stabilization

On top of having a lower aperture, the 26mm camera on the iPhone 13 has what's known as sensor shift stabilization, meaning that as we walk or move the iPhone, the sensor literally moves within the iPhone, counteracting the movement of the phone, which has an amazing stabilization effect.

You can see here I'm filming handheld while I walk and the footage still looks incredibly smooth. It almost looks like I have my camera on a gimbal. If I were to try and do this on the 77mm camera, not only are movements and shakes way more noticeable on tighter focal lengths, we also don't have that sensor shift stabilization, which makes the footage look even more unstable.

Anthony's Recommendation

With the lower aperture and the sensor shift stabilization in mind, when it comes to cinematic content creation, I find myself using the 26mm lens the most as it has the best hardware built in. And that's not to say I don't use the other cameras. They're still great for capturing shots when the lighting is good and I don't need to rely on that stabilization. It's just worth remembering that not all of your cameras are built equally.

Key Takeaways for Content Creation

If you have multiple lenses on your camera, now you know specifically how each focal length impacts the way your final shot will look. You also know which focal lengths are best depending on what you're trying to accomplish with the stuff that you're capturing.

The Best Approach: Don't look at one focal length as being better than other focal lengths, but instead to always get a variety of shots in your videos using a variety of different focal lengths. Don't just rely on one boring shot to make up your entire story. Get in the habit of filming the same action or sequence multiple times, each from a different angle and different focal length. Mixing up wide angle shots, tight shots, and ultra wide shots will make your content 10 times more dynamic and engaging to watch.

How to Swap Between Lenses

iPhone Native Camera App: You can select between the three on the bottom of your screen by tapping on one of the numbers or simply pinch zooming in or zooming out on the actual screen itself, and the lenses will change automatically between the three.

Samsung Galaxy Phones: Same icons that you can tap to switch between the different cameras.

BeastCam App: Has a button in the top left corner that allows you to switch back and forth between the different lenses.

Pro Camera by Moment: Has a lens swap button on the top right corner of the screen.

That does it though. Thanks for watching this training on focal lengths.
I'll see you in the next one.

3 Practice Frame Rates

What is up creators, Anthony here for another fun and exciting practice exercise. Today's topic, fun with frame rates. We've talked a ton about frame rates up to this point in the training. You understand the theory and now it's time to turn it into real practical knowledge by taking out your camera and running through the motion so you can experience everything firsthand which is the most powerful way to learn a new skill.

Your Mission

Your mission is to pick a specific action sequence and film it multiple times once for every single frame rate that your camera has the ability to film in. Doing so will start to build those mental connections in your brain so when you're out there filming real projects for yourself, you'll never struggle figuring out how to change your frame rate or which is the right frame rate for filming the scene that you're currently working on.

💡 Choosing Your Action Sequence

Quick tip: For filming at higher frame rates where we know there will be slow motion, the best scenes are ones with fast action, moving subjects, essentially stuff that will look cool slowed down. This is really important.

⚠️ Common Amateur Mistake

A lot of amateur content creators create their first few projects where they film everything in high frame rate, they'll go on a walk down the road and film it at 120 frames per second slowing everything down by 5x. Their final video will be extremely slow in pace with really nothing exciting happening, all in slow motion, essentially boring the viewer to the point where they just stop watching.

The solution: Use slow motion as just the icing on the cake, not too much because it gets very redundant. And make sure when you do use slow motion, it's during a scene where there's a lot of exciting movement and action.

Good Action Sequence Examples

Fill up a water balloon and pop it in slow motion
Have your sibling or child jump into a pool or a lake while you're filming in slow motion
That cliche shot where the girl throws the leaves up in the air in slow motion
Chase your puppy or kitten around the house

All of these are great examples because they have tons of action and they will look cool when you slow them down. At least a lot cooler than a random person walking in slow motion.

How to Change Frame Rates

Now remember the settings are the same no matter what phone you use or what app you use. It's just going to look slightly different depending on the interface that your camera uses.

BeastCam App: Hit the resolution and frame rate button on the left hand side of your screen. From there you can see all of the available frame rates. If certain options are grayed out, you just need to lower the resolution like we talked about in the previous videos and that will unlock the higher frame rates.

iPhone Default Camera App: In regular video mode you can switch between the resolution and frame rates options in the corner by just tapping on the settings. If you want to go above 60 frames per second, you'll actually want to slide into slow motion mode and then you'll see it unlocks 120 and 240 frames per second.

Samsung Galaxy Phones: Swipe over to more, then click pro video and then the resolution and frame rate settings is right on your screen along with many of the other important video settings. Keep in mind in that more tab prior to clicking on pro video, there's also going to be a preset slow motion in super slow motion mode which you can use as well.

Moment Pro App: The setting will be on the left hand side indicated by the letters FPS for frames per second.

Exposing Your Scene Correctly

I'll be honest, a lot of times I'm filming, especially in slow motion, I'll just use the default camera app, flip it into high frame rate and then just let the auto exposure handle everything. 90% of the time that's totally going to be okay.

But if you want to practice: Remember that our exposure is determined by our shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Aperture is fixed on phones so we can really only manipulate our shutter speed and our ISO.

💡 The 2X Shutter Speed Rule

If we want to follow the 2X rule for selecting our shutter speed, you'd make sure that the denominator of your shutter speed is twice your frame rate.

Example: If you're filming at 60 frames per second, your shutter speed would be 1/120th of a second.

After that: You'd choose your ISO, which remember we want to be as low as possible. Now if you've done all this and your scene is still too dark, you can increase the ISO. Just keep an eye on the digital noise levels.

⚠️ When to Break the Rules

Otherwise, you can also slow down your shutter speed to let more light into your shot. This is technically breaking our shutter speed rule, but in life, a lot of times the situation isn't perfect and it's okay to break a rule assuming you don't have other lights that you can actually add to your scene.

Especially in high frame rate mode: It's okay to actually lower your shutter speed to match your frame rate. So in this example, if we're filming at 60 frames per second, I'm okay dropping the shutter speed to 1/60th of a second in order to let more light in.

Important Notes Before You Film

High Frame Rate ≠ Automatic Slow Motion: Keep in mind that filming in 60 frames per second or 120 frames per second, it doesn't automatically mean that your footage will play back in slow motion. It just means that your camera is capturing enough frames in each second of footage so that you can slow down the footage down the road if you wanted that buttery slow motion.

We'll Cover Editing Later: We're going to talk all about how to edit and unlock all of that slow motion later on in the program.

Quick Preview on iPhone

But if you can't wait and you just want to see these videos play back in slow motion, you can do that by saving the video to your camera roll on an iPhone, at which point the phone should automatically recognize it was shot in high frame rates and slow the footage down.

If that doesn't happen automatically, you can hit edit and it will show you these dots that are either spread out or squished together. The spread out dots are where the slow motion starts and stops and you can move these however you want to showcase the slow motion effect.

Android Users: Since Android phones are a little different and spread out across the board, my recommendation would be to simply watch the editing training where we cover how to truly edit slow motion using a variety of editing software from phone apps to computer software and everything in between.

Final Encouragement

And that's officially everything you need to know to go out and crush this practice exercise. I will say that the first few days of this program probably cram in some of the most complex settings, but it sets the foundation for everything we talk about moving forward.

So in other words, it's okay if this feels a little overwhelming. The course is going to get much more easy to handle as time goes on and you'll be able to take everything that you've learned in these first two days and apply it to much more practical examples of YouTube videos, commercials, social media stuff, and everything in between.

Other than that, thanks for watching.
Have a ton of fun with this practice exercise and I will see you in the next one.

4 Dynamic Range and Bit-Depth

What's going on, Creators? Anthony here. And in this video, we are going to cover the last two camera settings you need to worry about, HDR or High Dynamic Range and Bit Depth.

⚠️ Important Note About Availability

Now, this is a tricky topic to cover because unlike the fundamental camera settings that we've been covering up to this point in the program that are all universal to all cameras, these two settings are not accessible on all smartphones and even professional cameras, but have no fear because they are absolutely not essential to capturing high quality content.

It's really just a little bonus feature that some people like to use. And I just want to make sure I'm doing my part to make all of you aware of all the settings that can benefit your content.

💡 Don't Worry If Your Camera Doesn't Have These

If you watch through this entire training only to find out that your specific camera doesn't have these features, do not get bummed out thinking you need to buy new gear to be successful.

Just as an example: My $5,000 Canon 1D X Mark II does not have the ability to manually control the bit depth or the ability to switch into HDR mode. But my iPhone 13 does, my iPhone 14 does, most recent Samsung Galaxy phones do, and that's just mentioning a few.

On top of that, even if your current phone doesn't support these features, which is fine, odds are the next time you upgrade, you will have these features and you'll be an expert already just putting you ahead of the curve.

Understanding Dynamic Range

Have you ever taken a picture of the sunset only to find that the sky is completely white or the opposite where the sky looks great, but the ground is basically black? This has everything to do with dynamic range.

Definition: Dynamic range is basically defined as the ability to capture detail in the highlights and detail in the shadows of an image at the exact same time.

Good vs Low Dynamic Range

Good Dynamic Range: When a camera is said to have good dynamic range, what they're saying is that the camera does a good job of keeping both highlights and shadows looking good without losing any detail. In the example of the sunset earlier, this would mean having both the sky and the ground look great at the same time.

Low Dynamic Range: When a camera has less than ideal or low dynamic range, it can only capture so much detail because the range it can cover is just lower. You basically have to prioritize for the highlights to look good or for the shadows to look good. Either way, you're sacrificing data in detail in the image.

Measuring Dynamic Range in Stops

Normally, dynamic range is just a measurement of how we rate a camera, similar to something like megapixels. The unit of measurement for dynamic range is stops of dynamic range with more stops meaning better range.

Professional Camera Examples:

Sony A7S III: 16 stops of dynamic range (really, really good)
Human eyeball: Around 20 stops of dynamic range
Canon EOS R: Around 12.5 stops
Newest iPhones: Around 14 stops of dynamic range (extremely impressive)

How Smartphones Achieve High Dynamic Range

The reason smartphones are able to achieve such impressive numbers is because they have a software enhanced mode that basically auto edits the videos as they're being shot. And it mimics the look of having a camera with much better dynamic range. The name of this mode is HDR, which stands for high dynamic range.

💡 Managing Expectations

Now, when you're filming in HDR, don't expect your videos to immediately look 10 times better. Like many of the settings we've covered so far in the course, nothing is by itself going to make or break your footage. It's just a subtle boost in the perceived dynamic range.

Real talk: Honestly, in most blind side-by-side tests, I actually couldn't pick out which clips were HDR and which weren't. The only times what was obvious to me came whenever I was filming outside in harsh sunlight.

SDR vs HDR Comparison

Standard Dynamic Range (SDR): The highlights are a little more overblown, meaning they're so bright we start to lose data in the brightest areas of the image.

High Dynamic Range (HDR): When we switched out of SDR and into HDR, those same clips seem to be a little bit more balanced between the highlights in the shadows, creating a slightly better looking video.

Now, you may be watching these side-to-side clips with no ability to tell the difference, and that's totally fine. It's something you'll start to notice the more you shoot and edit videos. And it just goes to prove my point again that these settings are not the secret trick to better videos. It's an understanding of how all these things work together that's going to make you a pro content creator.

How to Access HDR on Different Devices

iPhone Native App: It should already be on HDR mode. But if you want to double check, just go into the settings, then click on camera, select the record video settings, where you can then scroll down and see the HDR setting. There are some other helpful settings in here, like setting your default resolution and frame rate in the native app.

BeastCam App: The HDR setting is found by clicking on the main video settings icon, at which point you will see the option to film in 10-bit or 10-bit with HDR. If you don't know what that 10-bit part means, stay tuned because we're going to talk about that in just a moment.

Android/Samsung Galaxy: Navigate to your camera settings, which is the button in the top left corner. Click on advanced video options and you will see the slider for HDR 10+. That 10-plus also goes back to the 10-bit we saw a moment ago in the BeastCam app.

Note: Phones are constantly updating the layout of their internal menus. So don't freak out if your screen looks a little different than what I just showed. Odds are the setting is going to be right in that area.

⚠️ Should You Film in HDR?

To conclude this section on high dynamic range, I want to answer the question I'm sure you're thinking. So should I actually film in HDR? The logical answer would be yes, always film in HDR, even if it's just a minor improvement.

The Tricky Part: The only tricky part is that some professional editing programs haven't actually updated to work well with HDR footage. For example, Adobe Premiere Pro, which is one of the most popular professional editing programs on the planet, doesn't really interpret HDR footage all that well. And it will look as if you massively overexposed your footage when you import an HDR clip into Premiere Pro.

It's very frustrating, I know, and there is a workaround to get it looking back to normal in Premiere Pro. It's just a couple extra steps and you'll be fine. And we're going to cover that in the Premiere Pro section of this course for those who choose to use that editing software.

💡 Anthony's HDR Recommendation

If you plan on editing on your phone: Yeah, definitely film in HDR basically all the time because it does help a little. The smartphone editing app that we recommend in this course fully supports HDR footage and you will be good to go.

If you plan on using Premiere Pro: If you don't want to constantly have to modify the clips to get it back to looking normal, feel free to leave HDR off and you will be good to go.

You are now a freaking expert and it's only day two of the program. I just want to take a moment and say it's totally fine if this first day felt a little complex. It only gets easier from here on out. We've covered all of this foundational stuff, all of these little things here and there that are going to make you a more knowledgeable content creator.

Understanding Bit Depth

OK, celebration over. Now, let's quickly touch on bit depth. Bit depth has to do with the total number of color shades that a camera is capable of capturing.

8-bit: Most smartphones and entry level cameras film in 8-bit, which means there is a total potential for just under 17 million different shades of color.

10-bit: Newer smartphones, however, and more expensive professional cameras are capable of filming in 10-bit. This might sound like a small difference. It's only two extra bits, but it increases the total number of shades of color a camera is able to capture to just over one billion.

Why 10-bit Matters

Now, it sounds crazy, but despite that huge numerical difference straight out of camera, the difference between 8-bit and 10-bit footage isn't like show stopping. Most non-camera people would never be able to pinpoint the difference.

The real reason 10-bit is so much more valuable comes into play when we start color correcting and color grading the footage. With 10-bit footage, there are many, many more shades of color being captured and all that extra data in the videos. This means we're able to be more aggressive in the way we grade 10-bit footage. We can push the contrast, pull down the highlights, shift the color temperature and just play around with the footage a lot more.

8-bit vs 10-bit in Practice

10-bit Footage: More color means more flexibility to edit. It doesn't mean the image is just naturally going to look better straight out of camera. It's just that flexibility while we're editing.

8-bit Footage: Will again look almost the same straight out of camera as 10-bit. But in the editing room, if you were to try to apply the same color grade, the same level of effects as you did the 10-bit footage, you will more quickly start to see that 8-bit footage fall apart.

What "Fall Apart" Means: This is a term we content creators use to describe an image or video basically being over edited and starting to show excessive pixelation and banding between different shades of color. There are basically different stripes or bands of color shades next to one another.

💡 Don't Worry About 8-bit

It sounds terrible, I know, but 90 percent of smartphone content creators don't color grade anywhere near enough to cause even 8-bit footage to fall apart. So don't worry if you're filming in 8-bit. This explanation is just to prepare you for whenever you are exposed to this setting so you know exactly what it means and it doesn't stress you out.

How to Access 10-bit

Default Behavior: By default, when you switch your iPhone or Android phone into HDR mode, it is going to film in 10-bit as well.

iPhone + BeastCam: If you'd like to just film in 10-bit without HDR, you can do this using the BeastCam app by opening up the video settings and selecting the standard 10-bit option that doesn't have HDR.

Android Phones: Most Android phones, you can't actually pick and choose. So you're either in HDR mode, which enables 10-bit, or you're not in HDR mode, which means you're stuck with 8-bit. It's basically just one more reason to always film in HDR on an Android.

Final Thoughts on HDR and Bit Depth

Now, that does it for these two somewhat advanced video settings. I will repeat for the 50th time, even though you probably hate me at this point, these settings are not going to be the individual things that make the difference between amateur or pro content.

A lot of phones nowadays have both HDR mode and 10-bit, but do not worry if your phone doesn't. Focus on the composition, the lighting, the movement, the storytelling and the editing. Those components of this course that you're watching right now are going to be the thing that level up your content like crazy. And we are just about to roll into those topics, which is very exciting.

This initial content is just the framework. It's the foundational knowledge to truly understand the art of content creation and how cameras work.

⚠️ A Note About Phone Models

The absolute final thing I will say in this training is that there are a thousand different phone models available on the market right now. It would be impossible in a training like this to cover every single setting for every one of those different thousand phones.

So if I didn't address your specific phone model in this video, now that you know what the settings mean, you can very quickly go to Google and just do a quick search. Does my phone have XYZ setting?

Hopefully you can see that the value of this course is teaching you what everything is and how it impacts your videos. Every now and again, it's totally fine to do a quick search to figure out the exact settings for your specific phone.

Hopefully that makes sense. But other than that, thank you for watching this video and I'll see you in the next one.

5 How to Get Blurry Background

What's going on, creators? Anthony here, and in this video, we're gonna talk about how to get the blurry background look with your videos that were shot on a smartphone.

Four Major Factors for Background Blur

Okay, so diving right in, there are four major factors that you need to be aware of that all allow you to control the blurriness of your background in a different way. With some of these factors, we run into limitations due to the fact that we're filming on smartphones, but I want you to be aware of them either way. There's always ways to work within the limitations, and over time, as you potentially upgrade your gear, you're gonna be an expert because you know everything.

Factor #1: Aperture

So factor number one is aperture, and if you remember the exposure training in this course, we talked a lot about aperture. It's a setting that can control how much light enters our camera, making the video brighter or darker, but on top of that, aperture actually has a huge impact on the blurriness of our background.

If you remember, aperture is the setting that controls the little diaphragm within the lens of our cameras.

Low Aperture (f1.8): Diaphragm is wide open. We're letting a ton of light in, and on top of that, a low aperture has a huge impact on increasing the blurriness of your background.
High Aperture (f5.0 or f10): Very small diaphragm letting little light in, and it's also going to cause your background to be tack sharp with no blurriness whatsoever.

⚠️ Smartphone Limitation

The kind of bummer right now is that all smartphones, for the most part, have fixed apertures, and we can't control them, which in a sense is one less setting that you need to worry about because it's always fixed. Needless to say, though, it's a crucial aspect of content creation that you should be aware of.

Factor #2: Focal Length

Now, this brings us to factor number two, which we can control on our smartphone, and that's the focal length. Simply put, the higher your focal length, measured in millimeters, the more zoomed in your image is gonna be.

Low Focal Length (16mm): Ultra wide. We're not zoomed in at all, and at low focal lengths like this, we don't have a blurry background at all.
Higher Focal Length (30mm or 85mm): That background blur is gonna increase like crazy.

On smartphones: We typically have at least three cameras. One is an ultra wide, usually around 13 millimeters. The next is a standard wide at around 24 millimeters. And then finally, there's usually a telephoto lens around 55 to 75 millimeters.

Knowing what we now know about the impact focal length has on background blur, technically speaking, increasing the focal length you're filming at will give you a blurrier background. So long story short, don't film with the ultra wide lens and expect to have a blurry background.

Factor #3: Sensor Size

Now, with all that being said, this brings us to factor number three, which in some instances can contradict factor number two, and I'll explain it in a second. Factor number three is sensor size.

And again, to try and explain this very simply and quickly, just know that all cameras basically consist of a lens and then a sensor behind that lens. The light goes through the lens, hits that sensor, and that sensor is what does all the magic converting that light data into the final image you see.

Sensor Size Impact: Sensors come in different sizes. Most modern expensive cameras are full frame sensors. And then as things get more affordable and smaller in the case of smartphones, that sensor is also going to get smaller. You can typically think of background blur getting cut in half every time that you cut the sensor size in half.

💡 The Smartphone Advantage

So smartphones are at a slight disadvantage compared to larger cameras due to the fact that they have smaller sensors, but there is a way that we can use this to our advantage. It's understanding that each camera on our phone has a different sensor size.

Key Point: With almost every major phone on the market, the standard 1X lens is gonna have the largest sensor by a pretty good margin. So the reason I said this factor kind of contradicts factor number two, which was we wanna film at a higher focal length. Technically speaking, because the 1X lens, not the telephoto lens, but the 1X lens on your smartphone has the largest sensor, that's actually the lens we wanna film in if we wanna get the blurry background.

The Cheat Code for Maximum Blur

Now, the cheat code here to get the most background blur out of the largest sensor on your camera, which is the 1X lens, is to actually use a third-party lens sold by ShiftCam, Moment, Neewer. Those are all brands that we like.

By getting one of these lenses with a higher focal length and placing that over your 1X lens, you're going to get a much blurrier image than you could using any other camera on your smartphone.

Factor #4: Distance Between Subject and Background

Now, finally, this brings us to factor number four, which likely has the biggest impact on the amount of background blur you have. And that is the distance between the subject and the background.

As you increase this distance, you're going to increase the amount of background blur. This is why I always tell people, don't film in front of a wall where it's like a foot behind you. Try to find the biggest room that you can, film diagonally in the room to actually create more space. That's going to give you a better background blur.

⚠️ Managing Expectations

Now, I'm not using a third-party lens here, so my background isn't crazy blurry. And I also want to add that if you're using a smartphone, I don't want you to anticipate that you're going to get this incredibly dreamy background blur with your videos.

That is one of those things you kind of have to pay for out of more professional cameras to get that look.

The Software Solution: Cinematic Mode

But there is a little software hack that most major smartphone brands are adding in the form of a video mode in their cameras. And that is cinematic mode if you're on an iPhone or portrait video mode if you're on an Android like a Samsung.

How it works: When you switch into this mode on your camera, it essentially maps out the different layers of your video and it determines who is the subject or what is the subject. And then it also determines what is the background. From there, it adds a digital blur to the background layer, mimicking the look that you'd get from a much higher end camera with a huge camera sensor and a very low aperture.

💡 Anthony's Take on Cinematic Mode

In my eyes, this is one of the coolest features when it comes to smartphone video. And with every new smartphone that's coming out, cinematic mode and portrait mode video is just getting so much better. To the point where if you're watching video on social media on a small screen or you're not really paying close attention to the details, you almost can't tell the difference.

Now, I will also add, if you blow that video up on a TV screen or you're really looking for it, you'll see little glitches where maybe around the details of your hair, the blur doesn't look proper, but I can tell you this is an incredible feature and I highly recommend you use it.

⚠️ The Trade-off: Manual Control vs Cinematic Mode

Now, what you're gonna learn throughout this entire course is that there's not one exceptionally perfect way to film videos. It's always gonna change depending on the certain situation you're in along with the type of video that you're trying to shoot.

The Limitation: Just like fine wine, people have tastes and preferences and you're gonna discover yours throughout this program. So cinematic mode and portrait mode video are great, but there is a slight limitation and that's currently you can only film in these modes using the native app. What this means is you're not gonna be able to control the exposure settings we talked about in this course like shutter speed and ISO.

💡 Quick Exposure Lock Hack

This is not the end of the world by any means. What I recommend you do if you're filming in cinematic mode or portrait mode video is to hold your finger on the screen and lock the exposure. This will ensure that the exposure of your scene doesn't change drastically while you're filming, which is typically a telltale sign of a beginner content creator.

The Decision You'll Face

Aside from that small hack though, you are gonna be faced with a decision anytime you hit record and that is, do I want to use the third party apps, go into the pro camera mode of my Samsung and actually manipulate those settings like shutter speed and ISO or do I want to essentially film in all auto mode, but use the cinematic mode or portrait mode video where we have that blurry background?

Anthony's Approach: I can tell you that I do both all the time and one isn't necessarily better than the other. You just have to ask yourself, what do I care more about right now?

Want blurry background? Use cinematic mode or portrait mode video
Want specific control over settings? Forego cinematic mode and use third party apps

Key Takeaways

I wish I could tell you to always do this way or always do that way, but different situations require different types of filming. But now you officially know all of the different factors that influence a blurry background and some of the modes that you can use on your smartphone to kind of fake the look and get an incredible video.

The Four Factors:

Aperture (fixed on smartphones, but important to understand)
Focal Length (higher = more blur, but...)
Sensor Size (1X lens has largest sensor on most phones)
Distance from subject to background (often the biggest factor)

So hopefully you found this valuable and I'll see you in the next one.

Day 2: Advanced Camera Techniques

Lesson 1: Frame Rate in Action