In our social media packages the editing, subtitles, music and script are ours; the raw footage is usually shot by the brand. This piece is for that shoot. A lot can be fixed in the edit, but three things cannot: wrong framing, broken sound and out-of-focus footage. These seven rules solve all three without buying any kit.
1. Shoot vertical, do not crop later
Cropping horizontal footage to 9:16 throws away about sixty percent of the frame. The subject ends up at the edge, there is no room for text and the resolution drops. Hold the phone upright and shoot vertical from the start. If you need both a horizontal and a vertical version, shoot it twice; cropping will not give you both.
2. Put the light in front of you, not behind
With the window behind you the phone exposes for the window and you become a silhouette. Face the window, or turn the subject towards it. Daylight beats most artificial light, and the best of all is a window on an overcast day, because it casts no hard shadows.
Do not shoot under ceiling spotlights: they cast shadows under the eyes and blow highlights on products. The wider the light source and the more it comes from the side, the softer the image.
3. Leave room at the top and bottom
The Reels interface covers the top and bottom of the screen: caption, account name and buttons below, status bar above. Keep everything that matters in the middle band. A practical measure: treat roughly a fifth of the frame at the top and bottom as unusable; the subtitles will sit in that space in the edit.
4. Stabilise it — handheld shakes
With no tripod, rest the phone on something, hold it with both hands and brace your elbows against your body. If you are walking, bend your knees slightly and shorten your steps. Shake can be corrected in the edit, but every correction crops and softens the image a little.
5. Record the sound close to the phone
Viewers tolerate poor images; they do not tolerate poor sound. Beyond a metre the voice turns into room echo. Get closer, turn off the air conditioning and ventilation, and stop any background music. We add the music in the edit; music in the recording creates rights issues and makes subtitling harder.
6. Shoot every scene twice
The second take is almost always better than the first, and it gives the edit a choice. It also means a mistake in the middle of a scene does not force a full reshoot. Start recording, wait two seconds, then begin speaking; sentences clipped at the start cannot be rescued.
7. Send the raw file uncompressed
A video sent over WhatsApp leaves a good part of its quality behind, and it does not come back. Upload the files from the upload area in your account instead: nothing is compressed there and the files go straight to the team doing the work.
The only thing an edit cannot fix is a shot that was never taken. If you are unsure about a scene, shoot extra.
These seven rules are about habit, not equipment. After the first few shoots they settle in on their own, and the quality of your raw footage rises visibly. If you want to go further, the next step is a small lavalier microphone; it improves things before a tripod does.
