3 Tips for More Cinematic Church Video
by Dalton Davis
There’s more to making video content look more cinematic than just buying a nice DSLR or Mirrorless camera, unboxing and then pressing record. Here are three tips on how to make your footage look more cinematic when shooting films and video for your church.
1. Shoot in 24fps
The main factor in making your videos look more filmic is to shoot in a frame rate that looks less like “video” and more like a “film”. With the few exceptions here and there, nearly every Hollywood film we see in the theaters is shot in a 24p frame rate, so dig into your camera settings and change the frame rate of your video to 24p. If you want to shoot in slow motion, record at a higher frame rate like 60p or 120p and conform it to a 24p timeline to get nice smooth slow motion.
2. The 180-Degree Shutter Rule
When shooting cinematic video, you’ll want to utilize the 180-Degree Shutter rule. It sounds really complicated, but I promise it’s not — all you have to do is set your shutter speed to double the frame rate you’re shooting at. For example, if you are shooting at 24fps, you need to have a shutter speed 1/48th, which, realistically won’t be on most cameras, so take it to 1/50th. We do this so that the video’s motion blur looks the most natural to the human eye. There are times where you can take creative liberties to break this. For instance, to bring out more exaggerated motion, you can crank the shutter speed up to get more crisp, clear motion in your footage.
While I believe you can break the rule by going up in your shutter speed, I tend to find that going below double the frame rate almost always yields poor results. Keep in mind that to keep a 1/50th shutter speed outdoors or in high intensity lighting, you’ll need an ND filter (like sunglasses for your lens 😎) to keep the shutter speed down while maintaining the shooting condition.
3. Good, Intentional Lighting
The biggest offense I see when people create video content is a lack of good, consistent lighting. Lighting is the most important part of creating cinematic video and honestly, it’s the hardest part to master. Consistent, intentional lighting makes all the difference when shooting church video. You don’t even need expensive, professional lights. Start with some basic soft boxes and cheap lighting kits to try and learn some lighting techniques that can amp your films up. Make sure all your light is the same temperature (i.e. 3400K, 5600K) so your white balance looks correct. Good light will make your videos look so much better. It’s good to keep in mind that our cameras don’t see subjects, they see light.