The 3 Most Common Mistakes When Filming On Your Phone

On today's episode of Digital Champions, I'm gonna talk about some common mistakes that people make when filming a video on their phones.

1. Look Into The Lens

The first thing, and I see it all the time, all the time, it's absolutely insane. When you're filming a video, on your phone, don't look at the screen. Look at the lens!

When someone takes a picture of you, what do you look at? You're looking at the lens of the camera. However, we're in the realm of the selfie world and people have the tendency to just stare at themselves instead of looking at the lens on the camera. What does that do?

You're looking off-screen. If you wanna truly connect with your audience, you need to look directly at the lens. The same thing goes of just taking a selfie in general. Be sure to look at the lens because it makes a huge difference in connecting with your audience on a personal level. When you look at the lens it as if you're looking them right in the eyes. That's how you speak to somebody in person, so that's how you speak to the camera.

2. Film Horizontally

One of the other biggest mistakes that I see is people are confused about where and which way they should film and there may be some controversy and debate on this. However, hands down, you always want to film horizontally.

If you put your video on let's say YouTube, it's gonna look really weird if filmed vertically. Now yes, a lot of the mediums now with IGTV, and Facebook, they are trying to push this more vertical view. However, you want to be able to put your videos everywhere. So filming horizontally is going to be best for your distribution process.

So when you're putting it on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, IGTV, Instagram, all of them, horizontal is still going to be the best. Limiting yourself to vertical is going to be only on certain platforms, whereas horizontal is gonna work best for them all. So remember, film horizontally!

3. Plan Your Video

The third common mistake that people make is that they're not planned when they start filming. They just get on the camera, and they start going. And often, this happens with going LIVE as well, but the key strategy is really to just plan out what you're saying.

Now, that being said, I don't recommend scripts, because it often can come off fake. And off the cuff can often sound a lot better, more natural, like you're having a conversation with each other. So what does that mean?

Have a basic foundation. You have your intro, you have your body points, and then you have your conclusion or call to action. Keep it simple, it's that easy. Just have your subject lines of what you're going to discuss.

You can even attach it to your tripod if that makes it easier of the key points that you wanna hit on. That makes it smooth, keeps it interesting, keeps it focused so that you don't start wandering off on different topics. And it's gonna help with that retention that you're looking for when people are watching your videos.

So that's all for today, I hope that helps. And remember "let's keep growing together."