Want to know how you should frame yourself when filming your videos? Here’s how to film yourself for your YouTube videos or other videos meant for social media.
If you’re new to filming, you might not think about how you should be framed when you’re filming your videos.
Actually, this video is going to be really short because you only need to know how to frame yourself for YouTube or for other social media.
In this week’s video we’re going to learn how to frame yourself in your videos. Don’t worry, I’m not going to make this complicated. It’s not like we’re filming a movie with multiple characters and different scenery.
How to frame yourself when filming
So we’re going over simple camera compositions. It’s sort of like photography, but I don’t know if they use the same terminology as in filming.
Distance
The first thing we’re going to talk about is distance. First let me show you a long shot. This has the subject faraway in the footage.
If you’re filming videos for YouTube or social media, you never want to have a long shot, unless it’s B-roll footage.
The reason for this is because you’re here to have more of a conversation with your viewers. For example, here I am having a one on one conversation with you. It’s sort of like talking to your friends.
If you’re having an important conversation, you’re not going to be way across the hall, the field, or a restaurant having a conversation. You’re going to be talking face to face, unless you’re yelling across your house to your family. It’s sorta rude, but acceptable.
Framing
Now let’s talk about framing. If you’re sitting face to face with a friend having a conversation, what do you see? You usually see the upper half of their body.
You definitely see their face.
Depending on the type of videos you create, how you frame you videos will be different. The main shots you’ll use are medium shots and medium close ups.
Here’s an example of both (watch the video to see the difference).
Pro tip: For our videos, we never want to do a close up or extreme close up, which is all up in your face.
The reason is it looks confrontational and makes people uncomfortable. Maybe I should say it’s too passionate. In films, you’ll see them to evoke emotion. In real life, it might be because someone is arguing with you.
Either way, in real life, we have a set bubble that no one enters except for people we know, like, and trust. You would feel really uncomfortable if a stranger invaded your space and came too close to you.
Ah, an extreme close up would be okay for beauty tutorials since you’re showing how to put on makeup.
Maybe I should create a whole video on this since framing would be different for interviews, beauty tutorials, and so on.
This video is specifically for conversational style videos.
Headroom
The last thing you should think about is headspace. It’s the space above your head. If you’re talking to someone in real life, you don’t really see a lot of space above their head, unless you’re talking to a child.
You can have little to no headspace, when you’re filming and that’s okay. When I film my videos, I actually leave room for headspace just in case I want to repurpose my video for Instagram Stories or IG TV. I don’t like to have tight headspace in those videos.
BUT for my YouTube videos, I don’t mind not having any headspace. Even if I have some headspace, it’s okay, I’m 5’2, well 5’1 1/2, so in real life you’d probably see headspace.
RECAP
So distance, framing, and headspace should all be taken into consideration when you’re filming your videos. To make things simpler, just ask yourself, ‘how would it look to talk to your friend face to face?’.
Do you think about camera composition when filming your videos? Type Y or N in the comments below and let me know.
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Until next week!
