5 Amazing Tips On B-roll And How To Film Yourself

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When you’re filming YouTube videos you end up filming by yourself a lot.

These are tips from Alex Gassaway and Jake Frew. Both are super talented filmmakers and YouTubers.

Here are their favorite tips for filming yourself:

Table of Contents

The same scene from many angles

The way to level up your videos is to get many angles on the same action on the same scene and the same sequence.

When I say many I mean more than you ever think that you’re going to need.

When you're filming YouTube videos you end up filming by yourself a lot.
Jake Frew / YouTube

“I like to think about how many different ways I can film myself. I’ll set my tripod and walk past it, walk away from it. Then walk towards it, set it in a different position, and do the same thing walking past it and towards it. I’ll even pick up my tripod or my gorilla pod and point it at myself as I’m walking, going at my feet as I’m walking.”

Jake Frew / YouTube

Do it as many times as you would do it, or you would have somebody do it if you were shooting them.

A good way to look at it is to consider yourself as a videographer and model at the same time.

If you were filming a subject, you would ask them to do a certain action a couple times. It’s no different when you’re filming yourself.

You should expect to be walking past the camera many times.

Establish the location (Establishing shot)

When we have many angles on our b-roll and we’re trying to captivate our audience with all that. The next tip is to always get an establishing shot.

B-roll should always Drive your story but you need an establishing shot. Your audience needs to understand where you are and what’s happening.

Capture raw emotions

Another good tip is to capture some of the raw emotion you’re having. I know it’s scary and that’s the common mistake beginners make.

When you're filming YouTube videos you end up filming by yourself a lot.
Jake Frew / YouTube

Cutting out raw emotions from your shots you can lose a lot. Those are the golden pieces for building a connection with the audience.

Keep it even if you don’t have anything to say, do something fun, smile and laugh at the camera.

Zoom In

For certain kinds of b-roll is pretty awesome if you can make it feel like you’re not shooting yourself.

One easy way and the most effective way is to do that by zooming in a little bit so that your arms are not visible on the video.

Fake camera motion using static shots

While you edit the video you can make a motion effect even with your static shots. You can do that by using keyframes to fake camera motion and here is how.

When you're filming YouTube videos you end up filming by yourself a lot.
Jake Frew / YouTube

Since a lot of your shots are going to be static shots, you set up your camera on a tripod and then go film yourself. You can add a little bit of motion so that it looks like the camera is being moved even though it’s on a tripod. 

I won’t go into the software details right now.

The idea is that you can take a static frame and either slowly zoom in or slowly pan from left to right with a static shot. That trick adds a little more life and energy into the shot.

I hope some of those tips are gonna help you and spark your imagination to create amazing videos. Here is the original video where you can see those tips visually.

Until next time!

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