I shoot all my church videos with my iPhone!
Let me share something with you that is simply amazing. I shoot all my videos for my church with my iPhone. In fact, I just got done shooting two videos over the weekend. I’m excited to share that the videos looked GREAT.
I shot these videos with a little shotgun mic to achieve better audio and an app that I really enjoy which is called Filmic Pro.
Why is Filmic Pro better than the stock App?
Filmic Pro vs iOS Camera App
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Now Filmic Pro is so much better than a normal app and let me explain that a little bit. There are a few things that makes Filmic Pro a lot better than the app that already comes with your iPhone, in this case, the “camera app”. You might ask what could be the difference as it’s using the same camera. Well, the Filmic Pro app has a couple of different buttons which also do different things to make videos better. There are a total of four buttons to be more specific.
Using The LED Light On Your iPhone
First off, a button that looks like a light allows you to turn a flashlight on and off. If your shooting inside, often your shot will look better when you have the light on.
NOTE: Be careful if you use a cover for your iPhone, sometimes the edges reflect the light giving a hazy look to your video.
White Balance Your Video
Another button that you’re going to see is your white balance. Now for those of you that don’t know what white balance is, it is a setting that allows the camera to look for something white in the scene and uses it to adjust so the colors look correct. If you don’t do that, there is a possibility that you will have a yellow scene or a blue scene. So, the bottomline is, white balance tries to bring white into white. If you are having a hard time setting your white balance, the best thing that I suggest to do is grab a white piece of paper and put your shot there to get it in focus.
Setting The Brightness Of The Shot
Another thing that you are going to see on the monitor of your camera is a circle that controls brightness of the picture. So as you move the circle around a subject, it lightens up the darker spots and when you come over to a lighter spot, you will notice that it doesn’t do much for the picture. But with the kind of videos that I shoot, nine times out of ten, I’m just putting it on the face of the subject so that the face looks good as it is kind of the central point for most of my shots.
Focus Your Shot
The last button is the focus button. When you move the camera around, it kind of takes in and out of focus. This feature is going to help keep what we want in focus “in focus”. It would also allow to hold you lighting conditions pretty well even if you move the camera around.
Cons
The only thing that you’re not gonna get, feature-wise with the Filmic Pro app and with your iPhone or your iPod Touch is the ability to zoom your pictures in and out. But overall, Filmic Pro is a great app, and by far better than your normal app.
Conclusion
Alright, I’m not going to go over every detail so I suggest that you play around with those settings once you get the Filmic Pro app. Well, one thing I can tell you for sure is this app is what I use to record every week so this is not a theory. This is actually what I use to record every week and we’ve replaced our cameras at the church with this.
Learn more on the Filmic Pro website.
Joshua Jones says
I’ve toying with the idea of using an iphone for all video production. Gonna have to try it out, supposedly beats the Sony FS100 and the Canon C300. For the price, it’s definitely worth it. Thanks for the heads up!!
How Church Media Works says
We find the iPhone the easiest and fastest way to shoot video. Let us how here how it works for you.
Clay Kitchens says
How are you connecting a boom mic to the iPhone? Do you have a particular model that you recommend?
How Church Media Works says
The best way I know how to answer this is to do a shameless plug for our blog by linking to the article we just released – Two iPhone Accessories That Would Help You Create Films Like a Hollywood Mogul!
Link: http://www.howchurchmediaworks.com/two-iphone-accessories-that-would-help-you-create-films-like-a-hollywood-mogul/
This covers how to connect a small boom mic to your iPhone. Another product that may help is the iRig pre. Ive used this on smaller mics with xlr and 48volt but for some reason, my larger shotgun mic will not work with it. We are still evaluating and working with the manufacturer to get the bugs worked out.
http://www.HowChurchMediaWorks.com
Sean Morales
UMJeremy says
What brand/kind of shotgun mic do you use?
How Church Media Works says
We use a Belkin LiveAction Mic, We cover this in great detail here – Link: http://www.howchurchmediaworks.com/two-iphone-accessories-that-would-help-you-create-films-like-a-hollywood-mogul/
It works great for shorter distance.
http://www.HowChurchMediaWorks.com
Sean Morales
Jurriaan says
Witch steady cam you used on the first picture?