In this article, we will talk about 7 Easy Ways to Instantly Make Better Videos in 2021 that you can start doing today.
They don’t require money, and it doesn’t require buying a camera or extra gear. There are just seven things that you can do to instantly update up that video quality.
7 Easy Ways to Instantly Make Better Videos!
1. Lighting
Lighting is the most important thing when it comes to photography, cinematography, and filming videos, lighting controls all.
Not just talking about forced lighting or stuff that we’re going to set up or lights that you have to buy or DIY lighting setups.
Window light is the best light for run-and-gun. Get it done right and it will have an amazing result.
If you can get a nice soft light coming in, it’s not too harsh but it illuminates the subject nicely, makes it nice and clear which means it’s easy to understand and focus on what is the message of that video or photo is all about.
Because the shot is so clean, it really gives you a good wide range of capabilities when it comes to color correcting.
Try to move away from the window in the same room, you can see how that light loss is significantly different. If it’s darker by placing the subject in a different area means it will lose some details.
Dark shots are going to be more difficult to color drain, it’s probably going to come out a little more grainy because it doesn’t have enough light on the image as a whole.
You will see the difference that makes by moving closer or moving further away or shooting in the corner of a room.
These make all the difference in how the quality is going to be perceived in your videos.
The same thing goes if you’re actually setting up using your lights or using the light that’s just in your ceiling, the difference is substantial.
Just think about where you want to shoot in your house, where you want to shoot in whatever building that you’re in.
Your videos will be tenfold better if you just think about the lighting first.
2. Use Clean Background
Be deliberate about the background you use for filming. Nothing looks less professional than a messy or distracting background.
One easy way to get a professional look for your video is to use a solid-colored background. A wall, a bedsheet, or a large sheet of backdrop paper are all good options.
Make sure your subject stands several feet away from the backdrop to avoid casting shadows on it.
It’s also a good idea to shoot a video in a “professional” environment: the place where you actually work or spend time.
3. Proper Music and Sound
Having the proper music and sound effects will 100% change the way people view and see your videos including yourself.
If you use the wrong track for some incredible footage, that footage could be very affected. It won’t be 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 you use some gangster rap, probably you won’t get a better result.
Set the tone and make it a little more family-friendly works as well. If you have footage of some people skateboarding and you insert 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 going to be viewed and the piece as a whole is going to be viewed as cheesy.
If it’s really an epic song but the footage doesn’t match the epicness of the music then you’re making it imbalanced and disconnected. Try to edit the video to match 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.
One thing to have great music is to edit your video to the beat, but when you have sounds of the forest, or you have the ambient noises of cars drilling, or you have that egg cracking, typing, 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. There are things that are often overlooked but having proper sound effects makes all the difference.
You will have a much better result you’re shooting something random and mundane or normal, the task can sound a lot better when you have good rich audio to it.
4. Learning Your Software
Look up tutorials, watch different videos, or attend seminars. Do everything you can to learn that software.
It will be going to help you when you’re shooting in the field, it means that you want to plan those shots ahead of time but you know how you’re going to edit them.
So if you’re going to film your friend walking by the screen and then you’re going to do a transition that masks him out into the next clip for example, then you’re going to shoot accordingly.
This way you can bring them into your editor and then edit that transition to make it actually come to life.
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.
If you have a mistake, maybe something happened like you forgot to pan up and pan down, zoom in and out, you can do that in your editing software.
Know you’re editing software as best as you possibly can and this skill aside from a camera will really help.
Learn that software, just get into it, dive in, lock the door, crack a red bull, and just go!
5. Keep Your Editing Simple
Trying out different effects can be fun during the video editing process, but don’t go too crazy. A simple, clean editing style generally looks most professional. A few things you should be sure to do during the editing stage include:
- Clean up any background noise.
- Adjusting the light to get the desired result.
- Cutting out awkward pauses and silences.
- Adding simple background music and transitions.
6. Motion
This probably one of the most overlooked things by people who are just starting or beginners.
A lot of people will just set their camera up on a tripod, film whatever is they need to film, and then move to the next shot, but then you’re left with a sequence of static still shots.
If you’re filming an event a lot of people just throw the camera on the tripod, they hit record and record for five minutes, they move the tripod somewhere else, hit record again, but you’re really not filming anything. You’re not inviting us into that atmosphere.
Motion in shots is so important, it could be the most mundane things but if the cameras moving, it’s helping you move the story along.
More emotion is going to give you, more cinematic results. When you have moving shots, it looks like you put more work into it. The results are definitely a massive improvement over someone that just puts the camera on a tripod.
7. Time of Day and Location
If you have an incredible landscape in front of you or you’re standing at the outlook over the Golden Gate Bridge, yes that’s what is just going to look good apparently because where you are is just insane magical landscape looks incredible.
However, these rules still apply even if you’re just shooting in your own office. The angle of those shots in those locations is important as well.
The time of day is also very important. The best times of a day to shoot is early in the morning or in the evenings to later at night.
The light is usually the softest at this time of the day. The Sun hasn’t come all the way up, the light isn’t harsh yet. The colors are usually really nice and in the evening you get that nice sunset, you’ve got Golden Hour right after sunset where that residual light is still kind of illuminating the sky.
You’re not going to have any shadows but the colors you’re going to get are going to pop significantly better than they would if you were shooting at 12 o’clock or 1:00 p.m. on a really sunny da
