Well, that’s one question that pops up into the head of (almost!) everyone that wants to start his/her Youtube journey.
Very valid question.
Let me tell you this. Almost EVERYONE becomes a Youtuber with a phone, first. Other equipments follow.
And it makes sense. To set up a Youtube channel, you would need:
- Phone
- A basic Mic
- Niche and then topics
- Editing Software
- A Tripod
- and most importantly, PASSION that keeps you going, consistently.
Imagine, you spending hefty lakhs of rupees and 20 days later, it ends up in a dusty space of your room. Just lying there, forever.
So, logically, you must not be spending a lot money during the initial days of your Youtube journey.
By the way, after shooting 600 videos without my face, here was MY FIRST VIDEO shot on PHONE:
Clearly, I did not take care of lights and sound quality, and that is why the video looks medival and low-quality. In simple terms, I have made all the mistakes in the book that you must not.
Here is another piece for your reference:
Now, to answer your question of “How to become a Youtuber with a Phone?”. Its pretty straightforward.
Assuming you have taken care of everything else from the list mentioned above, just open up your phone and follow the following steps:
Feel Comfortable in front of the Camera
While you shoot a video using your phone, make sure you feel comfortable (and confident!) in the video. Because if you have 100 things going in your head at that time, people would be able to see THAT.
Therefore, if you are not comfortable, take a step back.
Go to the mirror in your place and start talking (let others know that you are practicing, else they might worry about you :)).
Talk for at least 1 minute in one go and do that for at least 10-15 mins, everytime. Keep an eye on the stop-watch (if you can) seeing how long you can keep talking without any breaks or without saying any random stuff.
While you talk, try to bring the emotion of the words that you are saying. It’s good to have laughs, confusions, anger with eye movements and so on.
See if you can use your hands. This must be done the way you generally use them in your normal human-to-human conversations. You can also imagine that you are addressing a set of audience while standing in front of them presenting something.
Although, make sure you don’t use the hand movement part a lot.
Now, transit to a phone instead of a mirror. Make corresponding adjustments to fit in within the frame.
Over a period of time (it varies from one individual to another), you would start feeling comfortable and this is the time you may go ahead for your FIRST VIDEO shot.
Audio matters a LOT
A video, even shot with a professional camera and a high-end lens, without an audio means nothing to your viewer.
We ourselves have learnt this by goofing up a few times.
Make sure you are using a separate mic. Invest in it, it is not an expense.
Once you have it connected, make sure the voice quality is high. A lot of content creators FAIL due to this and never get to realize the reason of their failure. They keep working on their strategy, topics, thumbnails.
In fact, a lot of our initial videos had a lot of ECHO, which is THE biggest enemy of the sound quality of your video.
You may use some audio editing softwares such as “Adobe Audition” that can help you to clean your background noise, echo issues, low sound and others.
Lights
You go to a cake-shop. You will find a lot of cakes beautiful baked but much-more beautifully kept on display with full-clean lights on them.
You visit a clothing-store in a mall, you’d find all-guns blazing lighting around.
Why?
If they don’t look good, they ain’t good.
That’s the perception they are fighting.
Similarly, a video looks good ONLY if there is ample light in it. Youtube was easier earlier, the expectations now have sky-rocketed.
You cannot have a mediocre looking video with the subject being shot, not getting seen properly.
At the onset, use a ring-light for that matter. Plus, any other basic light is not that expensive. Anyway, it is an investment, remember?
Video Production
First of all – Are you recording a long-form video, a short, a vlog? That needs to be known.
The way you produce (or shoot) the video has a long to do with the answer to that question.
If you are shooting a long-form, you got to set-up your phone with the tripod, make sure the shot is horizontally and vertically balanced. Only then you shoot.
For a short, the camera angle changes.
For a vlog, you hold the camera in your hand and move along. Just make sure you use both the sides of the camera properly. When you are facing the camera, you must be within the frame. Not too close, not too far.
If the camera is capturing the location, it must not shake a lot.
Do all of that, and put the final video on edit.
Publish it.
Don’t Chase a Perfect First Video
Have you seen a dog chasing it tail.
You may dare to put that same example in this context where you are not getting satisfied from your final video. You’d be thinking “I am going to publish my first video which when people watch, they should just say wow“.
First of all, not many people are going to watch your first video.
Secondly, you are not going to get a “perfect video”. There is nothing like a “perfect video”.
There is always a room to improve, even if you are sitting at 1M or 10M subscriber base.
Of course, you won’t go ahead and publish a random video. You must definitely make best of the efforts while producing, editing the video and also while make the thumbnail of it.
But, once you feel, it can go ahead. Publish it.
10 videos later, you would be sitting at a much better sense of video quality and 100 videos later too.
Once you understand that, the only thing that you have in your hand is “how many?”.
Make sure you are maintaining a set frequency – it could be once in a month or a week or a day. Hardly matters. What matters is your consistency and your discipline.
So, yea – hopefully, you got the answer to “How to become a Youtuber with a Phone?”.
Now go ahead and prepare for your first video.
By the way, here is my latest one:
Chao!
