Preparing to Shoot With Your New Studio
Congratulations on completing Step One! At this point if your gear isn’t fully assembled and you’re having trouble following the instructions, just send us an email and let us know what you’re facing. We’re here for you.
Now let’s get to the good stuff, setting up your shoots! You’ll want to install a couple pieces of software to give you more options during your shoots, and we’ll link you to them below. Unfortunately we can’t buy them for you because then we would own the license, not you. But don’t worry, they’re super cheap, designed for novices, and give you a considerable advantage over everybody else shooting video.
AirServer – Remotely monitor your iPhone
This Mac/PC software lets you wirelessly view your iPhone’s display (or iPad’s) on your laptop screen. The possibilities here are limitless, but as you’ll see later, it’s worth the price of admission simply for the live self monitoring (like you’re looking into a mirror). Grab it right here.
MoviePro – Dial in settings like a pro
This iPhone app lets you take full control over the camera in your phone, so you can ensure much better settings than the iPhone would automatically select. We’ll be using it for manual white balance, focus, and exposure, which you’ll find makes a huge difference in image quality and only takes a couple extra seconds. Grab it through the App Store on your iPhone, and you can also find it right here and then sync the app from your computer over to your phone.
The Microphone – Pay attention, it’s your new best friend
The manual focus, exposure, and white balance are a huge improvement to your image quality, but let’s not forget about audio! Don’t ever let bad audio ruin your shoot. Make it an ingrained habit, like putting pants on in the morning, to always check that you’ve turned your mic on and dialed in the audio levels before you start a shoot. And when you’re done shooting and you pause the recording, don’t forget to turn the mic off so you don’t drain the batteries. If you forget to power down the mic when you’re done, your batteries are toast.
Once you finish this step, make sure your mic is switched off and you’ve stopped recording video. Then let’s move on to Step 3, Manual Settings Secrets.
