Mobile Device Video: Best Practices

Many of us find ourselves quarantined at home, and thrust into the job of producing audio and video for various forms of presentation:  work, church, social media, family birthday cards, you name it!  I keep seeing many of the same questions repeated, and many of them center around shooting self videos with mobile phones.  So, I thought I would share some best practices that I have discovered over the past couple of months. Enjoy and share!

• Film yourself in horizontal orientation.  This will fill the screen on most devices.  

• Go to Settings ---- Camera ---- Record Video --- set to “4K at 30 fps” on iPhones or the equivalent settings on other devices.  This will give you excellent video quality.

• Film yourself with the back camera.  This will require a little doing to get it set up and aimed at where you will be standing or sitting.  The selfie camera on the front of the phone usually produces lower quality video and may make things appear backwards in the video.

• Film yourself in bright light.  Images from phone cameras look great in brighter light, so set up near a window, or in a well lit room.

• Don’t set up with a bright window behind you!  This will backlight you, and you will just be a shadow of your former self on screen!  Set up facing the window, or with it to your side.

• Set up your phone about level with your face or neck.  Low-angle shots look a little odd, and an eye level camera appears more natural.

• Get close enough that you fill the screen.  People want to see YOU!  

• A small tripod helps.  There are many available on Amazon, search for “phone tripod” and see what comes up.  Manfrotto makes really nice ones and they are pretty affordable - go HERE to check it out!

• Beware your background.  Backgrounds truly can make or break a shot, so in general make sure it is uncluttered and that nothing appears to be sprouting from your head or shoulder.  

• For audio, find the quietest place you can… turn off your dishwasher, put the dog outside, turn off the TV nearby, etc.  

• You can sometimes get better audio by using the headphones with built-in microphone that plug in to your device.  Give it a try!  

I hope this helps, and good luck with you mobile phone video adventures!

Film horizontal, from the back camera, and keeping the phone at roughly eye level will help you make a more attractive and useable video.

Recommended Manfrotto mobile device tripod - see link above.

Live Stream! Saturday, April 4, 9pm EST!

Hi friends. Come join me over on YouTube for a discussion about getting your home studio set up! I will discuss setting up a basic home studio with affordable gear, getting ready to teach music lessons online, as well as take some questions from the chat. I would love to have you!

Stay healthy,

Chris

How to Make a Record, Part 3: Choosing your Team

Let’s be honest.  Making a recording can be an expensive proposition.  It’s really easy to spend $5000 -10,000 on a good recording.  That’s not to say you can’t make one for less…you surely can… but, I’d like to think about what goes in to your project, and specifically what those people mean to seeing your vision through to its final form.

ENGINEER

Of course you need an engineer.  You might hire an engineer/producer, that can do it all… that can work.  For all but the simplest recordings, I strongly recommend a dedicated engineer.  You’re going to pay them for all the tracking days - likely a “day rate”, that allows for setup, a certain number of hours recording, and tear down time.  They might even ask for you to pay for an assistant engineer if your project is a large one, uses a lot of musicians or a complex setup, or includes video or other aspects of production.  In return for their day rate, the engineer will schlep all their many thousands of dollars worth of gear to the recording site, and figure out microphone placement that gets you the sound you have set your sights on in your pre-production stage.  Mic placement is key.  Get this part wrong, and you will not get what you set out to create.  “Fix it in the mix” doesn’t really work with classical music.  There are a few options, but mostly, you are married to the sound you all create in your sessions.  So, take the time to get it right.  It’s ideal for your engineer to have a sound check in the space, or at least some time built in the first day to get this part set, especially if it’s a new space to them and to you.  

A note about selecting an engineer… There are a number of good engineers out there.  It’s important to find someone you can trust, maybe someone that’s recommended by artists you respect, well, DEFINITELY one that is recommended by artists you respect!  Engineers are generally a really friendly crowd.  They love helping artists make stuff, and most of us know that if we’re not the right one for you, we would love to recommend another talented engineer we know.  We might know someone more local to you, or one that fits your budget, or one that simply has specific skills or capabilities that you need.  

I need to emphasize something here… YOU ARE ONLY MAKING THIS RECORDING ONCE…. DO IT RIGHT.  20 years from now, you will look back on it, and you will be proud of what you made, with no regrets.  

Highbridge Brass: Chris Martin, Mark Ridenour, Chris Tiedeman, Hiram Diaz, and Nathan Miller… soundcheck before a live concert recording

Next up, you have your Producer:

"Why hire a producer?  I mean, I’m already paying this engineer a ton to record my sessions!”  Yeah, that’s true.  Your producer is there for quality control, and guidance.  An engineer can have the greatest ears in the world, but when she’s getting noise in a microphone line, or trying to set levels on her backup recorder, or simply listening to something that is NOT “how many times is the trombone player going to miss that note”, then you need a producer there to make sure you cover everything with multiple takes.  You are going to have to edit your recording together in post production.  It’s a real letdown to spend multiple days recording, not to mention all the practice and work that goes in to preparing to record, and find in your editing stage that you simply don’t have a good take of the third measure after letter C.  Bummer.  Hire a producer.  Someone you trust, that likely either plays your instrument (really well) and/or that has produced a number of recordings and knows what they are listening for…  The producer will keep the sessions on schedule, making sure that you don’t hit your last hour of recording and realize you haven’t even started recording that horribly difficult third movement of the sonata you are tracking.   Most producers operate on a “day rate”, like your engineer. Some producers can even do your editing for you! I’ve written on this, previously, in my blog as well…

Oh, hey, remember back in the Pre-Production stage, you got your producer and engineer a copy of your scores?  Thank you for that, it will be much appreciated and it will help them produce a great recording with mapped out takes ready to go.  More on this in Part 4...

Engineer and Producer’s view… lots of time and concentration spent here to make a great recording!

Photographer/Videographer

Do you plan to document your sessions?  With just a little bit of planning and time devoted to some documentation, photos and video of your sessions can generate behind the scenes social media content that will literally last for years.  It’s worth it to pay a photographer or videographer to come in and take some informal photos and video footage.  Having a large library of stills and video clips to draw upon will come in very handy when it’s time to promote your album.  This can also be a huge help for Kickstarter campaigns, submissions to your university for tenure, and for your Facebook page, blog, and email list.  

Graphic design

Don’t forget this!  Spending the money to have a real designer come up with a unique graphic, colors, or art for your album cover is still a great way to distinguish your creation.  There are plenty of great freelance designers out there, and companies like Discmakers have their own designers on staff that you can use as part of your CD and download card printing.  

Piano tech

No kidding.  Because who wants to have to listen to out of tune piano, forever in perpetuity, on that recording because someone forgot to get the piano tuned…???

Catering/Gopher/Coffee

You may not have the budget for every single thing here, which is perfectly fine.  Many of us don’t.  Many of these roles can be covered by a single person, and you can have overlap among your team.  You may have friends that want to hang out for a day and help you with one of these.  Your budget may not include enough (nor need) an assistant engineer.  It’s super helpful to have a person that can be there to make coffee, order food, run to home depot for extra lights (Yep!), and generally take care of all the minutiae that can occur over a multi day recording session.  Heck, your mom would probably LOVE to come hang out and help! 🙂  Think of ways you can make the entire experience easy on everyone - sometimes all it takes is bottled water, fresh coffee, and a timely food delivery or take out for lunch to keep the sessions rolling.  

PHEW!!!  That’s a lot, I know.  Do you best.  And remember, you’re going to all this trouble, so let’s do it right!

Helpful Links for Music and Mental Health

Hi everyone,

Wow, what a week! (Understatement of the year…)

As I’m sure you have, I’ve come across a LOT of information this week: articles, videos, blogs, social media posts…. some of it has been helpful, some of it not so much! I wanted to share a few links that have been especially helpful to me, or to my friends and colleagues…. So, in the interest of brevity, here you go!

---

From the Recomendo newsletter - link to the newsletter HERE

• How to Not Let the Coronavirus Steal Your Mental Health While You’re At Home (This was emailed to me by my therapist who got it from a professional/therapist networking online group and was told that it could be shared) — Claudia Dawson

Noe Kagayama and Rob Knopper did a good webcast the other day with Australian pianist and teacher, Tim Topham, about how to be more effective when teaching online. It was a good discussion - if you find yourself in this situation all of a sudden, check it out!

• BulletProof Musician - webcast with Tim Topham

Headspace is great - I meditate as regularly as a I can, which I’ll admit isn’t as often as I’d like. Part of the attraction of meditating for me is that it’s not something you’re supposed to be “good” at. You just do it. The point is the practice/process, and what that does for your mind. They have some resources available for free during our current crisis.

• Headspace - Covid-19 free resources

We ALL try to be good!

Finally, also on the Recomendo newsletter, Youtube has a channel that is professionally curated (actually by Youtube), and contains what they consider to be some of the best How-To video collections on the site. There’s some awesome stuff there!

• Youtube Learning Channel

Friends, if you have anything you think I should see myself, please forward it on to me! I hope you are having some quality time with you loved ones, and don’t hesitate to reach out if you need to chat, have a question, or just need someone to talk to.

Also, if you or someone you know is in dire need:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (1-800-273-TALK [8255])

Peace and love to you and yours,

Chris