A recent smartphone will provide excellent picture capabilities. But a third-party App, like Filmic Pro, will allow you more and better. On iPhone or Android.
Filmic Remote can be used on a second smartphone as a remote control for your main camera-smarphone, this is a big plus for solo production. While tripod, or a stabilizer if the camera must move, are essential accessories. Then it is all up to you the artist in charge to create or use correct framing, distance lighting conditions, etc. For more on this topic, there are interesting blogs available, such as:
https://wistia.com/learn/production/shooting-video-with-an-iphone
https://www.cultofmac.com/476821/pro-iphone-video-tips/
Depending on the conditions and the desired result, a video capture directly in your laptop is also possible. Soapbox, an online all in one tool is made just for that.
Note 5
Target specs destination video format today are HD 1920 x 1080 pixels mpeg4 with AAC sound 48kHz, and 25 or more frames per seconds (fps). So for production you want to be at least in that format. Every modern camera or phone can do that. Not much use for shooting in higher definitions though, like 4K or more ( ~ 4000 x 2000 pixels). Unless you intend to reframe your shots in post, which could be nice in some situations.
Note 6
Watch out for brightness and white balance. With the help of measuring tools, adjustments in your camera and possibly additional lighting, you will want to make sure during the capture that the light is adequate, in intensity and in color. And even if the artificial light of the place seems OK to you, you will see on the camera that there are notable variants, from the orange of the urban lighting to the cold blue of some LEDs, or the white of the daylight.
Post production
Once your source files are ready for import and sync you will want to edit some moments here and there, add some transitions or overlapping, do a bit of colour correction, mix music in with dialog and put some titles at the beginning. More or less all video editors offer the same basic “timeline” concept. Here are some examples:
Apple iMovie, nice lean simple, offered with Macs
Adobe Premiere, the de facto standard
Black Magic DaVinci Resolve, a surprisingly cost effective, or even free, solution
And some examples of audio editors only, for podcasts or other, or for offline audio editing:
TwistedWave, for Mac, IOS or just online with a browser (so Windows too)
Audacity, for Mac, Windows, and Linux, open source and free
Adobe Audition, available in French, monthly rate, for Mac and Windows
Of course you can also choose to edit directly with an App in your smartphone….
Note 7
As your production goes on the Web, you will want to make sure that all video, photo and audio content is “royalty-free”. So either created by you or acquired legally.
For example, Shutterstock (paid), Pixabay (free), Adobe Stock and others offer images and videos. Premiumbeat (charge) offers sounds and/or music …
This post is also available in: French
