All courses / Shooting, story and sound
The camera in your pocket is better than the one in the office
Modern phones shoot material that holds up on any platform you are likely to publish on. What they do badly is sound, stability and being operated on automatic — and all three of those are fixable.
One to three days on making publishable video with the phones your team already has, plus whatever accessories you already bought and never quite worked out.
- Length1–3 days
- FormatOn site only
- LanguageNorwegian or English
- CategoryShooting, story and sound
After the course you can
Video on a smartphone
- Get control over exposure and focus instead of letting the phone decide
- Get sound that does not give away that it was shot on a phone
- Hold a shot steady, with or without a gimbal
- Conduct an interview alone, operating the camera and asking the questions
- Cut and caption a finished piece on the phone, and know when to move to the desktop
What we cover
The program
The phone as a camera
- The settings that give you more control, and which settings matter
- Exposure, focus and white balance locked rather than drifting
- Frame rate and resolution: what to shoot for which destination
- The lenses on your phone, and which one is actually good
- What a phone genuinely cannot do, so you stop trying
Sound
- External microphones: wired vs wireless
- Placement, and why the phone's own microphone is the last resort
- Monitoring sound on a phone, which is harder than it should be
- Wind, rooms and the situations that need a plan
Holding it steady
- Grips, clamps and rigs
- Gimbals: setup, and the movements worth learning
- Handheld technique that looks deliberate
- When a tripod is simply the right answer
Shooting alone
- Interview technique when you are also the crew
- Vertical, square and horizontal — shoot for all of them at the same time
- Coverage on your own: getting cutaways you will actually use
- Filming yourself while talking to the camera
- Working fast in public without becoming the story
Editing on the phone
- Cutting a finished piece on the device
- Moving the project to the desktop when it needs finishing
- Getting the files off the phone and into the archive
The honest bit
A phone will not replace a professional camera for everything, and the course says where the line is rather than pretending it does not exist. Everything on the near side of that line, it does well enough that the audience will never ask.
Who it is for
Communication staff, content producers, journalists and anyone expected to produce video quickly without carrying a camera bag.
Prerequisites
None. Bring your phone.
Bring
Your phones, and every accessory anyone has bought — microphones, gimbals, clamps, lights, the lot. We'll make that pile actually work.
Open courses
Prefer a fixed date for one person?
Also runs as an open course at Qross Kurssenter — classroom in Oslo and live online on the same dates.
Questions
About this course
iPhone or Android?
Both, and mixed groups are normal. The apps differ and the principles do not, and we set up whatever is in the room.
How long should we book?
One day covers the basis of shooting. Two adds practical shooting sessions, and you get to try editing on the device. Three lets each participant produce a finished piece and get it taken apart, which is where most of the learning happens.
Why is this on-site only?
Because it is a practical course with equipment in hands. Adjusting somebody's grip on a gimbal or their microphone placement is not something that survives a video call.
Related courses
Related courses
1–2 daysCamera and shooting technique
The edit is where the trouble shows up.
1–2 daysLighting for video
A new camera costs a month's budget and improves your pictures slightly.
2 daysStorytelling for social video and short formats
A good story never goes out of fashion, but the patience your audience arrives with has collapsed.
Want this for your team?
Tell me what goes wrong today and you get a written plan and a price back. Two sentences is enough.