The iPhone Project

Producing high-quality video content on the iPhone 6

 The Brief

 I was recently asked to help a charity- Hospice North Shore - produce some video messages in support of an annual awareness week. They wanted to record a selection of celebrity ambassadors writing on message boards at different locations and reinforcing the message of “living every moment”.  I was happy to help as it would also give me an opportunity to try something I’d always wondered about.

Because I'm in the video industry people often ask me for recommendations on consumer video equipment and editing software. It's something I'd not been able to help with because my experience has always been using professional video production and post-production equipment. But I'm also a believer in the adage that it's not what equipment you have but how you use it (behave...), and that a  well thought out project with a clear message and engaging story will always be effective no matter what technology you use to deliver it- the story's the thing (to paraphrase Master Shakespeare).

The hospice wanted to produce a series of videos to post on their Facebook page each day during Awareness Week. The idea was to get people thinking about hospice and how it supports the community and, hopefully, want to support it financially or voluntarily.

I realised that this idea, along with the messages and endorsements from the personalities, was going to be strong enough without the need for high production value. We simply needed production values that didn't distract from the message. As I was producing the campaign pro bono it was also in my interest to incur as few costs as possible; but that was a bonus rather than an imperative.

So I presented them with the idea of producing half-a-dozen 30-second messages along with a short teaser video and an additional EPK made up of the finished messages plus b-roll footage acquired during the recording. This could be supplied to the media along with their press release. The point of difference was that I also wanted to attempt to produce this material completely within my iPhone 6. Although this would mean some limitations to what I could deliver it would also force me to focus on the content.

I recommended a format/script for the daily 30 second messages that would deliver a consistent message but with the content tailored to each celebrity and blackboard location. By doing this I could anticipate the equipment required for the recording, along with the most appropriate editing apps for the project.

Preproduction

I'd already chosen Filmic Pro for the camera app as I'd previously used it to record a small project for a friend and knew that it offered great manual operation capabilities and HD recording quality on the iPhone 6.

My next consideration became getting stable handheld images, along with the best possible sound recording and lighting. I wanted to use the minimum amount of equipment that I could manage myself, though from earlier experience I knew that a spare pair of hands is invaluable for holding a reflector or boom pole, carrying a light, etc.

I trialed using my Joby GripTight Mount on a small stills tripod I had, and, along with a shotgun mic rig clamped to it, this gave me enough weight to hold the tripod either at the top of the centre tube or, resting one leg against my waist, holding the other two like a more traditional handheld rig. I considered trying to borrow a KumbaCam stabiliser system from a friend but in the end rejected this because I didn't want the videos to have an overly-high production value. Also, because I was going to have an audio cable plugged in I wanted to keep the rig as simple as possible to reduce the amount of things that could go wrong.

I had a TRRS to XLR Mic & 3.5mm Monitoring Jack Cable that I'd had made for the earlier project so just needed a phantom-powered shotgun mic to mount to the tripod using my Rode shockmount and a Manfroto clamp. A soundie friend provided a Sennheiser ME66 with internal AA at no charge; and a friendly lighting guy offered a battery-powered Area 48 LED punchy soft and stand. I hoped I wouldn't need this but didn't want to be caught out. As it happened the flexifill I brought along ended up being sufficient to fill light when necessary.

I tested this camera and sound rig and knew that it was going to get me a good, clean result in the majority of recording situations, both interior and exterior.

The next step was to identify the most appropriate editing software for this particular project. I knew that I’d need top and tail titles plus a lower 3rd to identify the personalities. I also knew that I’d want a music bed underneath the recorded audio, and want to add cutaways over the top of the interviews and pieces to camera. I trialed four apps, which I've provided a more detailed breakdown of below, but these were Adobe Premiere Clip, VideoShop, Splice, and iMovie.

iMovie I already had on my phone ; Splice and VideoShop had been suggested in a recent comparison I'd heard Peter Griffin give on RNZ National’s “This Way Up”; and I chose Premier Clip because I use Premiere Pro on my PC. Each app has its strengths- Auto Mix, lower third titling, cutaway importing, so knowing what capabilities the project required made it simpler to decide which features were most important.

In the end I chose iMovie for this project, and that was before I discovered some of its deeper features as I carried out post-production. Suffice to say the more you use these apps the more you discover how to push the limits of their capabilities!

As with any project I created a full call sheet and production schedule so that everyone was on the same page, and to reduce the opportunity for miscommunication about any aspect of the shoot. This included a shot list table, ensuring no important shots were missed while I was doing the various jobs of an entire crew as well as liaising with the client and talent. As it happened, two of the personalities went to wrong locations anyway, but that was through no fault of mine or the client- just not reading the call sheet! The client also provided an intern to act as production assistant on the day.

Production

The weather forecast was fine, which was lucky, because the majority of recording was going to be at temporary blackboards mounted outside the Hospice and various Hospice Shop locations, a combination of roadside, car parks and a small shopping mall.

Recording went smoothly with all the equipment working as I'd hoped. I used the reflector to bounce fill under the personalities’ faces when getting close-ups at the blackboard, and for some of their to-camera pieces when in full sun. But for all the interiors- both the b-roll and pieces to camera, and the second day's recording under flatter, cloudy conditions- I was able to get a perfectly useable result without any additional lighting.

The audio recording went better than I was expecting. The highly directional, cardioid polar pattern of the ME66 gave a great result from every subject with minimal room atmos. This was particularly handy when I was asked to capture an impromptu interview during a rather noisy morning tea at one of the shops. As I was monitoring the audio through headphones I was able to hear how close I needed to be to the interview subject to hear him clearly. This meant a fairly tight shot but I covered it with an extremely wide establishing shot and reverse noddies from the interviewer to use as cutaways.

The biggest nuisance was knocking the buttons on the iPhone and accidentally switching the camera off during setups. It was only in hindsight that I also realised I could've had the camera mount around the front of the phone rather than over the screen at the back where it sometimes covered the focus and exposure reticles...

I had to double check the recording app settings each time I turned the phone back on as Filmic Pro sometimes reset these. Annoyingly, this app also creates random file names for each clip, rather than any form of sequential ones. This didn't matter when I was editing on the iPhone as I could easily identify clips by the order I'd recorded them. However, when I backed up the clips to my PC and then converted them to constant frame rate* for later editing in Premier, there was no way of automatically sorting the resulting clips by record sequence as they then all had the same creation date.

With regard to app settings I chose to record in 1080p 50mbs @25fps, with PCM 48kHz audio- the latter for no scientific reason, it just test recorded OK. I also chose to automatically save to camera roll, rather than just to Filmic Pro and then having the additional step of transferring all the files to the camera for backing up to the PC.

*The iPhone records in variable bit rate which means clips are out of sync when you try to edit them on the Premier timeline. The easiest way I found to batch convert them was using Handbrake.

Postproduction

I’d initially made up the opening and closing graphics in Premiere's titler on the PC and imported these as images via Dropbox. But I really wanted to have created all the elements within the iPhone so, after unsuccessfully searching the App Store for something suitable I eventually realised that an existing app like PowerPoint or Keynote would probably suffice.

I eventually settled on PowerPoint- in this case first creating a white 16 x 9 background that I imported into my Camera+ app to add a light vignette, then reimported into PowerPoint as the background. PowerPoint seemed to have the largest selection of available fonts and good manipulation of text and images including being able to import a PNG file with alpha channel, plus I was already familiar with it, although Keynote was another option.

Having already created some test projects I was fairly familiar with how I was going to create these videos in iMovie. However once I begin editing and got more familiar with the process and features I found it worked even better than I’d hoped. Adding and trimming clips was straightforward as I wasn't using any transitions (except for a fade to Black for a few frames at the end of the sequence), and overlaying cutaways was simple. I’d already figured out that you could import audio-only from recorded video clips as well as adding music.

I’d auditioned and selected an appropriate music track from a production library but, apart from a very small selection of preloaded tracks, iMovie would only offer the option of selecting music in my phone's iTunes library- couldn’t import from, say, Dropbox. As the track I'd downloaded was a WAV file I had to first figure out how to convert it to an MP3 that iTunes would accept and in the end was able to do this using VLC. (only later did I discover I could have downloaded the track is an MP3 too...), then I just synced my phone again. Creating a specific iTunes playlist with this track in it made it faster to access the track when editing.

Adding all the graphics I created, both the titles and a plain black clip, to my favourites folder in Photos made it faster to access these too, rather than scrolling through dozens of subsequently recorded files to find them each time.

I'll admit that it was fiddly and sometimes frustrating to manipulate the iMovie timeline on the iPhone 6 screen with just my thumbs- either in portrait or landscape mode. I'm sure working on the iPad would've been easier but then I would've had the additional hassle of first having to transfer all the files I needed to that device. It would also have cheated on the original challenge of the project which was to see if I could create everything with just an iPhone.

My biggest revelation while using iMovie was the discovery that you could detach the audio from a video clip once it was on the timeline. This unlocked the ability to utilise fades at either end of the audio clip in the same way as you could with clips that had been imported as audio only. Up until that point it had been the one aspect of the videos that I'd been most disappointed with- a lack of smooth transitions between clips with and clips without audio, and clips with different background atmos levels. Being able to smooth out the audio transitions was a delightful discovery.

Having said all this, I did rather get used to editing while reclining comfortably on my bed with a pair of headphones on. In fact I got so used to it that when I was in the office and received an email requiring a revision I automatically grabbed the headphones and headed towards the bedroom before realising that I could actually do it at my desk.

Each time I finished a video I’d save a 720p version (these were just for posting on Facebook after all) to my camera roll and then also export directly to my Vimeo account from where I would share the links with the client for review. I typically use the fantastic Wipster for client review and approval but in this case it would have slowed the process down and I couldn't do it directly from the iPhone anyway. I did discover that for some reason it wasn't possible to export to Vimeo without being on Wi-Fi and I'm still not sure why.

In the end I was able to create and deliver all seven videos using just the iPhone. If I was more talented I could also have created the music track on it as well!

Because I had to sort through so much footage I decided not to attempt creating the EPK on iMovie as well. This was just as well because with the random file names that Filmic Pro created it was enough of a hassle trying to do it on the Premier timeline. I also wanted to retain and export the finished result in 1080p so that the broadcasters had the option of the highest possible quality.

Both the client and I were extremely happy with the final result. Hospice got impactful promotional and awareness messages and I was able to prove that you can produce broadcast quality video communication pieces with pretty much just the phone in your pocket.

 Reviewed iOS Video Editing Apps

My project requirements.

• Minimum 720p
• Fine audio mixing: - individual clip level adjustment,

- mixing of background music underneath vocals,

- ideally , ability to add cutaways

- Add music track of correct duration (30)

• Ability to key lower thirds
• Graphics editing capability if possible.
• Don't need transitions.
• Ability to add white and black frames would be an advantage.

 

Adobe Premiere Clip -free

Pros

• Multi-clip import.
• Clean, intuitive interface with sub-menus.
• Auto mix automatic music level fade under clip audio. Also ability to fade in and out.
• Large selection of looks, but only across the entire project
• Fading in and out of audio on individual clips.
• Wizard edit function that allows you to automatically sync clips to the audio soundtrack at a variety of paces

Cons

• No voice-over/cutaway capability.
• Very limited graphics and titling, and no lower thirds overlay capability.
• Not great for fine editing work as no dynamic timeline (timeline doesn't zoom in when held)
• Can only add motion (slow zoom in) to stills
• No transitions between clips
• Edits with phone held in portrait mode only.

 

VideoShop -NZ$2.99

Pros

• Multi-clip import
• More edit settings displayed on the main screen
• Dynamic timeline
• Transitions
• Very basic voice-over capabilities
• Nice selection of title themes and filters, though the novelty ones- like the VHS and security cam- are the best.
• Tilt shift effect!

Cons

• No ability to add cutaways
• No individual, or even project-wide, audio fading in and out, except on the voice-over
• No Auto Mix or looping audio on music tracks, mute video only
• Edits with phone held in portrait mode only.

 

iMovie –NZ$7.49

Pros

• Multi-clip import
• Edits in portrait or landscape mode with more editing features displayed on screen in the latter
• Ability to import audio only from video clips
• Ability to do cutaways by importing video over another clip. However if you have a lower third over the first video this also appears over the cutaway
• Limited Auto Mix audio function (background or foreground)
• Nice selection of title animations though unable to edit font or text size of L3rds or reposition on the screen

Cons

• Very limited and unimaginative video looks and filters
• Appears to only have individual clip importing
• Stills can't be dropped in as a cutaway over video
• No ability to fade out music tracks (if longer than project duration).

 

Splice by GoPro -free

Pros

• Simplest, cleanest interface
• Transitions
• Dynamic timeline
• Ability to overlay graphics
• Ability to fade in and out the music track
• Ability to manipulate the Ken Burns movement on individual clips- stills and video- as well as set the duration for stills in 1sec increments.

Cons

• No audio mixing or Auto Mix
• Only the most basic picture adjustment/looks
• No durations on timeline so very hard to accurately identify duration of clips.
  

In Summary

 Each app has its strengths- Auto Mix, lower third titling, cutaway importing, so you need to decide which features are important to your project before choosing the one that’s best for you.

Decent end titles or graphics still need to be created outside of these apps and imported as stills or video.

All seem to import from Dropbox (as well as other sources), allow you to record a v/o while watching the video, and all give some movement to still images though with differing amounts of manipulation, from none at all through to start and end frame position and scale on even video clips.

Notes:
Convert WAV files to mp3 using VLC, essentially creating an MP3 with a WAV wrapper:
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/2719/how-to-convert-video-files-formats-to-mp3-with-vlc/    

If editing in Premiere, convert iPhone footage from Variable to Constant bitrate using Handbrake before importing (or it goes out of sync).

Create simple graphics using PowerPoint. You can also use Keynote but this has less font choice.

 Steve has over 25 years’ experience in the corporate communication and video production industry, producing and directing hundreds of corporate videos and television commercials all around the Pacific Rim.