Ten Phone Habits That Make Your Footage Look Intentional

Shoot horizontally. Turn the phone sideways so the picture fills a cinema or television screen. Vertical video leaves black bars when it is shown in a theatre or on a classroom projector. Clean the lens. Pockets leave smudges. Wipe the lens with a soft cloth before every session, and your pictures will look noticeably sharper and less hazy.

Lock focus and exposure. Press and hold on your subject until the phone locks. Without the lock, brightness can shift in the middle of a shot whenever someone walks into the frame.

Use the same settings everywhere. Pick one frame rate and one resolution and stay with them for the whole film. Mixing settings causes headaches in the edit.

Stabilize cheaply. Rest your elbows against your body, lean on a wall, or set the phone on a stack of books. A steady shot looks far more professional than an expensive shot that wobbles.

Move closer instead of zooming. The zoom on most phones simply crops the image and makes it grainy. Walk toward your subject instead. Use the light you have. Place your actors facing a window and keep bright windows out of the background. Soft daylight is flattering and free.

Record sound separately when you can. A second phone placed near the speaker, out of the shot, often captures cleaner dialogue than the camera phone does. Clap once at the start so you can line the two up.

Free up storage. Clear space the night before. Running out of room halfway through a scene is a lesson nobody needs twice. Back up that same evening. Copy your clips to a computer or a drive before you go to bed.