Peter Mickinnon here, and today

we're talking about five ways

to instantly make better videos.

(cool rock music)

Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of

whatever it is that we're doing here.

I wanna tell you guys about five ways

to instantly make better videos

that you can start doing today.

They don't require money,

it doesn't require buying extra gear.

They're just five things that you can do,

five things that you can think about,

just to instantly up that quality,

up that video game quality.

Not the actual video games, we're talking about video,

like your game in, you get it.

Number one, lighting.

Okay, lighting is the most important thing

when it comes to photography, cinematography,

film, videos, photos.

Lighting controls all.

I'm not just talking about forced lighting,

or stuff that we're gonna set up,

or lights that we have to buy,

or DIY lighting setups, outdoor light,

just lighting as a whole,

be it that it's from natural light,

or that it's from something that you've bought

that you've set up in-studio,

nailing that and locking that down

is one of the most important aspects

of what it is that we're doing here.

And I've mentioned this before,

window light is the best light for run-and-gun,

get-it-done, have it look amazing, reliable.

You wanna shoot near a window, okay?

So, for instance, watch this.

Now, this is a great example of good window light.

The window is literally right here.

It's a nice, soft light coming in.

It's not too harsh, but it illuminates me nicely,

makes me nice and clear,

which means it's easy for you to understand,

and concentrate, and focus on

what it is that I'm saying.

Now, because this shot is so clean,

and the light is so even on my face,

it really gives me a good, wide range of capabilities

when it comes to color correcting this footage

and grading it, because it's lit so evenly and so nice.

Opposed to if I moved away from the window

in this same room,

you can see how that light loss is significantly different.

It's much darker over here,

which means you're gonna lose detail,

it's gonna look a little bit more muddy,

opposed to just standing close to the window

and having the whole scene well-lit.

This is also, this clip right here,

is gonna be more difficult to color grade,

and it's probably gonna come out

a little bit more grainy because

we don't have enough light on the image as a whole.

You see what a difference that makes?

We're in the same room right now,

lit by window light,

but just by moving closer to it,

or moving further away, or shooting in the corner of a room

opposed to closer to the window

makes all the difference in how the quality

is gonna be perceived in your videos.

And the same thing goes for if you're actually

setting up studio lights or using the light

that's just in your ceiling.

The difference is substantial.

If you wanna see more on how to do a DIY lighting setup,

I'll link the video below that I did.

Super budget, you can go to Home Depot,

buy everything you need for less than $50.

But being able to lock that down

and just think about where you wanna shoot in your house,

where you wanna shoot in whatever building

that you're in ahead of time,

it's gonna make your videos easier to watch,

it's gonna make that color grading easier.

The overall outlook of your videos

will be tenfold better

if you just think about the lighting first.

Use those windows.

Point number two is proper music and sound.

Now, don't worry, I get asked about 500 times a day

where I find my music, how I get music for my videos.

I'm going to do an entire video on that,

so don't worry guys, it's coming.

However, having the proper music and sound effects

will 100% change the way people view

and see your videos, yourself included.

If you use the wrong track for some incredible footage,

that footage could be very well perceived as

not as good, or not as epic, or not as sad.

It's all in the song choice.

If you've got some home footage

of a baby crawling across the floor

and it's some gangster rap,

probably not gonna set the tone as well

as something a little more family-friendly.

And vice-versa, that works as well.

If we've got footage of an R8 ripping down the streets,

or some people skateboarding,

some soft, happy piano might not be the way to go.

So song choice is a huge factor

when you're thinking about your videos.

If it's a cheesy song, your footage is gonna be viewed,

and the piece as a whole,

is gonna be viewed as cheesy.

(cheesy music)

If it's a really, really epic song,

but the footage doesn't match the epicness of the music,

then you're gonna have a disconnect.

(epic music)

That brings me to my next point is,

you wanna actually edit to the music.

A lot of times, in music,

there are some incredible things that happen audibly.

If you match the visuals to the audio,

you can enhance that tenfold.

It's one thing to have great music,

it's one thing to edit to the beat,

but when you have sounds of the forest,

or if you have the ambient noises of cars going,

or you have that egg cracking,

the typing, the shuffling of cards, paper being ripped,

it doesn't matter.

When you have those extra ambient sound effects

on top of the great music and great footage,

it's the full package, it's the full experience.

They're things that are often overlooked,

but having proper sound effects makes all the difference.

Okay, so what I've done here

to show you an example real quick

is plug this Road Video Micro.

I've mounted it to this external monitor arm

that I've clamped to the desk.

So in a second, I'm gonna bring that camera closer

and plug this directly in,

to give me a more rich sound source

to show and prove a point to how much better

even something random and mundane

or normal of a task can sound a lot better

when you have good, rich audio to it.

Now I'll show you a few of the same clips,

but without a microphone to show you that

you don't have as much immersion

into the clip that you're watching

when it does sound as rich.

Point number three is learning your software.

Look up tutorials, watch different videos,

attend seminars, buy training, find training, free training,

friends that know how to use the program better than you,

ask questions, do everything that you can

to learn that software,

because that's only gonna help you

when you're shooting in the field,

and what I mean by that is

you wanna plan those shots ahead of time,

so that you know how you're gonna edit.

So if I think to myself, okay,

I'm going to film my friend walking by the screen,

and then I'm gonna do a transition

that masks him out into the next clip.

So I'm gonna shoot accordingly to get those clips,

so that I can bring them into my editor,

and then edit that transition

to make it actually come to life and happen.

Now, if you don't know how to do that kind of stuff

in your editing software,

you might not know that you need to

shoot those clips ahead of time.

Or, if you have a mistake,

maybe something happened where

you forgot to pan up and pan down,

you can do that in your editing software.

Maybe you forgot a slider,

but you can digitally fake sliding moves

in the software.

So when you know your editing software

as best as you possibly can,

and the skill aside with a camera,

it really, really helps you figure out

how to get the most out of what is is that you just shot.

So learn that software, people.

Just get into it, dive in.

Lock the door, crack a Red Bull, and just go.

Point number four is motion in your shots.

This is one of my favorite things,

and probably one of the most overlooked things

by people who are just starting or more beginners.

A lot of people will just

set their camera up on a tripod,

film whatever it is they need to film,

and then move to the next shot.

But then you're left with a sequence

of static, still shots.

They may as well be images.

Or, if you're filming an event,

a lot of people just throw the camera on the tripod,

they hit record, they record for five minutes,

they move the tripod to somewhere else,

hit record again.

But you're really not filming anything.

You're not inviting us in to that atmosphere.

I don't know how it feels, I don't know what it looks like,

I'm just watching it from a distance.

I may as well be an outsider just looking in,

trying to see what's happening.

Oh, that looks fun.

Does it look fun?

No, not really.

Motion in shots is so important.

It could be the most mundane thing,

but if the camera's moving,

it's helping move the story along.

More motion is gonna give you more cinematic results,

more motion is gonna look more professional.

When you have moving shots, it looks like

you put more work into it,

and that's because you did.

And the results are definitely a massive improvement

over someone that just puts the camera on a tripod,

or you're only cutting from

static shot, to static shot, to static shot.

Point number five and the last point for this video

is the location and time of day.

Now, obviously with locations,

if you have an incredible landscape in front of you,

you're standing at the outlook

over the Golden Gate Bridge,

if you are in the mountains,

if you're canoeing through Lake Louise,

if you are at the tip of a volcano or deep in the jungle,

yes, that footage is gonna look good inherently

because where you are is just insane.

It's a magical landscape, it looks incredible.

However, these rules still apply

to even if you're just shooting in your own office.

Now, the angle of those shots in those locations

is important as well.

If you're in a nice jungle and you're shooting way too low

but you're missing all the nice trees above,