Recording for Social Media – desres25.designandcommunication.net

One part of my process this semester is selecting relevant topics for the videos I intend to shoot, while the other part is defining editing styles and effects I would like to use / base my videos on.

For this purpose, I took a deep-dive on social media and watched a LOT of videos, successfully training my algorithm to show me more and more creatively edited videos. 😉 Furthermore, I tried to find accounts that focus on science topics to gain inspiration on how to break down knowledge for short form video content.

The biggest challenge will likely be combining these editing styles into a concept that not only looks good but is useful for conveying information. A lot of the videos on social media with styles I found appealing don’t necessarily have the aspiration of actually teaching the viewer something, so I will happily accept the challenge of merging educational content with FX-heavy videos.

Since I plan on producing videos that are mostly intended for social media, there are a few aspects that should be considered for recording and editing the footage.

Resolution and Framerate

Probably most important for getting started with the video recording process is defining the frame rate and resolution.

While videos on social media usually play back at 30 FPS with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 px, the ideal recording specs for creating content that is mostly meant for social media platforms would be recording the footage in 4K UHD (which means a resolution of 3.840 x 2.160 px) and 60 FPS (60 Frames means generating 60 4K images every second). The reason for this is having more flexibility in the editing process. The bigger resolution will help with fixing framing mistakes in post production while the 60 FPS can be stretched for time remapping purposes such as creating slow motion effects.

I will most likely be using my Sony A7IV for my recordings, however, it would also be possible to just use a phone for recording, since many phones are capable of recording in 4K and 60FPS, so for our use case, a big professional camera setup would theoretically not even be necessary.

I would really like to find out how I can create a home setup and maybe even a mobile setup that allows me to effectively record and edit videos of the planned scope flexibly and thus also be suited for i.e. a setup on expeditions or field trips.

Further topics to be researched / discussed for video recording and editing

Lighting Setup
Camera Setup
Editing Setup

Topics surrounding the editing process

Masking / Rotoscoping / Keying
2D/3D-Tracking
Time Remapping
Texturing (Texturelab)
Text animation
Greenscreen

Inspiration and Moods

I have collected inspiration and resources (inlcuding tutorials) and spent some time just watching videos and analyzing their styles. Out of alle those videos, I put together some moods and visual styles that I might want to try out. Especially the first three creators I listed have been relevant to me for quite some time, as I have been following them have been very impressed with the look and feel of their videos. Hopefully, I will be able to adapt some of their ideas to fit my own.

Style / Edits: