Comment filmer et monter de beaux mouvements de caméra ?

In this video, we will see how to shoot and edit beautiful camera movements like a pro. Before starting, I specify that you do not need to take notes during this video because I will provide you with a downloadable PDF just below with a summary of everything I explain. We start with the shooting part, let's go! Before getting into practice, I would like to clarify some important notions. The first is that you should not overdo camera movements. I see too many amateur videos with 100% of the shots that are in motion, I think out of fear that the viewer gets bored, so they only put movement everywhere. In the end, it has the opposite effect because it moves in all directions and at no time can we go into it, we can immerse ourselves. So I would really advise you to go with parsimony and to place between 10 and 20% of moving shots in a video. Now that we've put that down, we can also talk about the speed of movement. That's the same, it's a big flaw in amateur videos, it's to have movements that are way too fast. The problem with too fast movements is that, once again, we don't have time to see what's going on. And what I'm saying here applies particularly to vertical videos. Most of the amateur videos we see, it's the person taking out his phone, hop, she launches the recording, she makes a very fast movement like that to show everything around her, hop, and she cuts the recording. The problem is that in vertical video, we have a very narrow viewing angle. So if we make a very fast movement, well, things will stay on the screen for a very short time. That's why you have to go very slowly so that we have time to see what's going on in the image. A tip to avoid having too fast camera movements is to film at high image frequencies to then be able to slow down my shot. Obviously, if I slow down my shot in post-production, for example by 2, well, my camera movement will go twice as fast. Third and last tip before moving on to practice, it's about the simplicity of the movements. Again, it's not necessarily intuitive. We could say to ourselves, yes, to be a pro, you have to make ultra-complex movements to show that you master it. Well, no, it's the opposite. Complex movements, or at least inconsistent movements in their direction, that characterizes an amateur video. To have a nice camera movement, you have to stay simple. For example, just go from left to right, or just from bottom to top. But if we start going from left to right, then go up, then make a rotation of the camera, get closer to the subject, then it becomes a mess, and it's very difficult to watch. So imagine that your camera is on a right, on a line, and that it stays on that same line all the time. In this video, we're going to talk about three movements that I like. The first is the horizontal panoramic. So the camera turns on itself from left to right, or from right to left. The second is the vertical panoramic this time. So the camera also turns on itself, but it goes from bottom to top, or from top to bottom. And the third is the forward traveling. So here, unlike the first two, the camera is not going to turn on itself, but on the other hand, it's going to move and go forward. For my examples, I'm going to do the images on the iPhone, but of course it works with any type of camera. Just for your information, I'm in the Filmic Pro app, and in terms of settings, I set the image frequency to 50 frames per second to be able to slow down my shot by 2 if necessary. And I also chose a 4K resolution, which will potentially allow me to zoom in on the image in post-production, since I export in HD. And that's interesting, for example, if you want to stabilize your shot in post-production. So personally, when I make an illustration shot with a camera movement, I always film in 4K, 50 frames per second. An important thing is that even if I think I'm only going to use one second of my shot in post-production, I still have to film more material, at least 4-5 seconds, I would say. In any case, the maximum, to have margin. Because I may want to keep my shot longer, or at some point in the shot, I don't know, there's someone who's going to go into the field, and suddenly it won't be exploitable, so I could take it before or after. Or simply, I would like to speed up my shot in post-production, and for that, of course, you need more material to be able to compress it. I always start recording before making my shot. Why? Because if I start making my shot, and I start recording during it, already, pressing the button will make a small vibration that is not negligible. And on top of that, it means that I have to focus on pressing the recording button, while there are already enough things to focus on in terms of movement. For the end, it's the same, I expect to have finished my movement, before stopping the recording. The first shot we're going to see is the horizontal panorama. If we look at this fixed shot of the park, which is pretty pretty, I think we feel a certain calm, a static side of things. If now we take the same shot with the same framing but in motion, it doesn't give the same impression at all, we feel more dynamism, and with the same shot value, we can see more things. So the horizontal panorama, it allows to show a little more context, and to add dynamism. Now let's see concretely how to do it. So I'm going to reactivate the stabilization, and I advise you to do the same if you have one on your camera, it's still much better for the movements. The idea, before even recording our shot, is to know what our main subject is. So here, my subject is the playground for children, so I know that even if I'm going to do a horizontal movement, I'll take my shot at about that moment. That means we're going to have to start well before and finish well after, so that it's completely fluid while we're on the subject. Once we've defined our subject, we're going to choose a starting point for the movement, so for example here, at the level of the wooden barrier, and then I'm going to look for an arrival point. There's a football field over there, so from the moment we have the field centered in the image. Now that I've defined my starting point and my arrival point, I'm going to do a whiteout movement to define my speed and see how it goes. So the idea is not to go too fast, because if I go too fast like that, well, as I told you earlier, we don't have time to see anything. We're not going too slowly either, because otherwise we're going to spend half an hour doing our movement. So we're trying to have something pretty fluid. In fact, we're trying to put ourselves in the viewer's shoes. We say to ourselves, OK, if I looked at this shot, would I have time to see everything? At the level of posture, whether with a smartphone or another type of camera, I advise you not to have your arms outstretched, because if you have your arms outstretched, well, your device is likely to move as much as possible. So I advise you to put your elbows here on your torso and come and take your camera like that, which means that then you will be able to do your movement and your arms will be in solidarity with your body. In fact, you're just going to turn with your legs and your body. The arms are not going to move at all. One thing I didn't say is on a movement like this one, we're trying to lock the focus on the subject we're going to have, that is, here, the playing area. So here I'm going to lock my focus on Filmic Pro and I'm going to do the same thing on the exposure so that I don't have a sky that's too burnt out. So now it's locked, I'm at the starting point, I start my recording and I do my movement. So I start it first and then once I'm launched, I keep the same speed. I really try to be as fluid as possible. So here I'm talking to you at the same time, so you shouldn't talk, of course. Now, if I look at the result, I think it's going too fast again. I think I was going too fast, precisely because I was talking to you and I wasn't focused on what I was doing. Same thing with breathing, you have to think about breathing well and not blocking your breathing. So I'm going to do it again without talking to you. And now we're going to do the second type of shot, which is this time the vertical panoramic. So from bottom to top, going up, or from top to bottom, going down. This type of shot can be interesting to create a discovery effect. For example, we start on the lawn, we don't know what we're going to see. And little by little, we realize the size of the park. And we can also leave the sky very well. So here we see that we have sky, we don't know at all what we're going to get to. And then we can go down. So here, it's true that if I go down right at the vertical, I don't get to the game at all for children. If I want to get there like that, here we can allow ourselves to make a panoramic, we're going to say diagonally, that is, half vertical, half horizontal. But for that, you have to keep this notion of a straight line. That is, we're not going to start going down, then go to the right. No, that's not pro. We're aiming for our starting point. We're aiming for our arrival point. So that's how we know that our movement is that. It's the interest of doing the test several times. We just got to the starting point. We launch the recording, so we're quiet at this level. And then we start the movement. And at the end, I'm careful to keep going. Here, I don't stop. Here, I keep going a little bit. I have a little bit of material. And hop, I stop. The third and last type of movement that I'm going to show you, it's the traveling before. That is, this is the camera that moves and it moves towards the scene. For this movement, we're also going to take our camera and come and place the elbows on our body. We're also going to bend our legs because we're going to have to move. If I'm completely stiff and I stretch my arms, we're going to have a movement that moves in all directions. Whereas if I come and put my arms like this and I bend my legs and I adopt what's called the Ninja Walk, that is, we dampen all the shocks so that the camera is as fluid as possible. Well, there you'll have a great camera movement. So already at the level of the exposure, we're also going to lock it. Except if you have a change of exposure moving towards your scene. But here, that's not the case. On the other hand, the focus, we're not going to lock it because we're going to change the distance between the camera and the scene. Well, it's better to recalculate it. And here, it's the same principle, that is, we position ourselves at the starting point and then we're going to wonder where we're going to move forward. For example, if I get closer to this little cabin there, what does it look like? Yeah, that's not bad. By keeping it in the center, or by keeping the one on the right here on the right side. Basically, with this cabin on the left and this cabin on the right of the image. So we're going to say that this is my point of arrival. And here, it's the same thing. That is, in terms of speed, we're not going to start running because if we start running, it's already going to shake. And on top of that, the shot will go too fast. So we're going to walk quietly. I position myself on my starting frame, which is this one. I launch and I'm going to take my shot. Here, quietly. I think about breathing. I'm really moving forward at a constant speed. I'm trying to keep my steps going. Of course, we're not talking. Here's an example. Well, that's not bad at all. It's true that the stabilization of the iPhone is very efficient, but I still have little frame changes, I think, due to the fact that I'm talking. So I'm going to do it again without speaking and I'll see you later. I made my shot without speaking and it's true that it's much better. So please don't speak during your camera movements. We're back to editing. So here I work on Adobe Premiere Pro, but everything I'm going to explain is valid on any software. For the example of editing, I created a little excerpt that we're going to illustrate. The park of the Saint-Etienne well, a playful and childish spirit. The reconnection with the present moment and the feeling of being able to go beyond. One of the basic rules when you set up a camera movement is that the portion of the rush that is selected is fluid and at constant speed from start to finish. I'm going to give you a diagram. We saw in the shooting part that at the beginning, once the recording is launched, there is a portion in a fixed plane without movement. Then we have the beginning of the movement, that is to say that we go from a zero speed to a constant speed. Then we have most of the fluid movement with a constant speed and direction throughout the portion. And finally, we have the end of the movement where we slow down and cut the recording. Keep in mind that if you put in your editing a portion of the shot that starts on the fixed plane, then the beginning of the movement and that stops on the fluid movement, we're going to have a not professional rendering at all because it's like we're seeing the flaws of the shot. In the end, it's not successful. We can do the test here. For example, if I take this shot where at the beginning it is fixed, then we have the beginning of the movement, then the movement that advances. I'm going to take this portion. I'm going to slide it on my excerpt. I'm going to start it, for example, here after the first sentence. And we're going to see to finish it just before the last word. The park of the Saint-Etienne well, a playful and childish spirit. The reconnection with the present moment and the feeling of being able to go beyond. So here we have the impression that the person who made that shot at the beginning, she thought she was making a fixed shot. And then in fact, finally, it can be nice to make a movement. We're between the fixed shot and the moving shot, but we're not doing either of them fully. In the same way, I think it's up to you. But if we take a portion that's too late in the shot and we see at the end of the portion that we slow down the movement, well, the rendering will be ugly too. So here I'm going to do the example with the end of the traveling before. I position it so that it's the end of the rush that comes here. The park of the Saint-Etienne well, a playful spirit. So at first it works, even if the movement doesn't go very fast. And we're starting to get too close to the subject. And at the end, there you go. We have the camera that starts to sting the nose completely. So that's the same. It's really not professional at all. We say to ourselves, but what happened? There was a bug. You'll understand. The idea is to have, if we go back to the diagram, a portion of the shot that is 100% in the green part of the fluid movement. Here, for example, I'm going to keep the same length of the shot, but I'm just going to shift the portion that we select with the Y tool in first. To take a moment that is earlier in the shot. So, for example, about here. The park of the Saint-Etienne well, a playful and childish spirit. The reconnection with the present moment and the feeling of being able to go beyond. And here it works very well because at the level of the first image, we are already on a high speed, the normal speed. And at the level of the last image as well, we have a camera that moves forward and does not slow down. So if we do the test now with this shot. So we said that the moment we wanted, it was the moment when the air of play is in the center of the image. So we're going to take a little bit before and we're going to go until a little bit later. Like, for example, this one. I'm going to put it on top of the other one to mask it. And we only see this one. A playful and childish spirit. The reconnection with the present moment and the feeling of being able to go beyond. So here it works well. We always have the same speed. On the other hand, I find that it goes a little too far. That is to say that at the beginning it is good because we have the air of play that is good on the left and we go towards it. But I think here we went too far. I don't necessarily want to see this bench or at least not as much. I would like us to go, for example, up to here. So for that, I said that I had filmed at 50 frames per second. So I can slow down my shot. So here I'm going to apply, for example, a speed effect of 75%. The reconnection with the present moment and the feeling of being able to go beyond. So we're even going to slow down even more to 50% to really have something very soft. The reconnection with the present moment and the feeling of being able to go beyond. So here it is. In fact, slowing down already makes a much smoother movement. So what I was telling you was that we often go too fast and we rarely go fast enough. Well, here it applies. That is to say that here I am twice as fast as the movement I was doing with my arms. In terms of the duration of the shot in motion, here I made it last almost six seconds, which is still quite long. So I would say that there, for example, I could have started it only at the next cut. So I'm going to remove this one because it's useless. And finally, the reconnection with the present moment and the feeling of being able to go beyond. So there you go. For me, it's the minimum duration for this shot in this context. That is to say that we show nature. There's not a lot of movement. Not much is going on. If I made it last that long, for example. Infantile. The reconnection with the present moment and the feeling. So it could have lasted that long. Basically, if there were other shots behind in motion that might have shown these elements more closely, it could have happened. But if it's the only shot, for me, you have to make it last. I would say at least four seconds. I encourage you to make your shot last according to its rhythm. Since we have a movement that is very slow we make it last quite a long time. If it's a fast movement, we make it last less long. And of course, it also depends on the duration of your video and the destination format. If it's for TikTok, it's not the same as if it's for YouTube. Be careful, however, if you slow down by two. Here, I don't have any human activity. But if that's the case, it will inevitably be seen on the people who do their actions in slow motion. So unless you're in a slow motion sequence where it doesn't matter to see people doing things in slow motion. Otherwise, it will be better to stay at real speed and have done the movement at the right speed. That's it for this video on camera movements. If there are two things to remember, it's that when shooting, it's better to do simple and slow movements to get a better rendering. And when editing, you have to be careful to take a portion that is fluid from start to finish and that lasts long enough. I didn't talk about other movements like the back traveling, the vertical traveling or the circular traveling. The video would have been too long. But I put some information on these movements in the PDF that you find just below. And you have a recap of everything I said in this video, including the diagrams. Thank you all for watching this video. See you soon on the channel. Bye!