Lifecasting 101
Everyone has a story. Lifecasting let’s you tell your story to the world. Using Qik live streaming video on your cell phone makes lifecasting easier than ever.
This page is designed to help you become the most effective lifecaster you can be. And even if when you are a veteran of the technology and of this community, please revisit this page occasionally to get updated on the state-of-the-art regarding new products, technology upgrades, and best practices by QikLife members.
The QikLife homepage should be self-evident. However, you may have a few questions about nomenclature:
The Qik Feed is a recent Qik video deemed by QikLife to be of particular interest to viewers. It may be breaking news, an interesting feature, or important event.
The Most Recent Feeds are live videos coming in from Qik users around the world in real time. If you miss something, just check out the recorded videos by subject category.
Join Kim Larsen as the new host QikLife’s daily Update, Breakfast with Kim. She produces daily features on the best of the previous day’s Qik videos, as well as a weekly round-up about the site, top videos and best practices.
Qik Stories are other stories, including recent Featured Videos that are deemed the best of recent in each of QikLife’s categories.
Qikkers are established Qik users who are also well-known bloggers, industry commentators, etc., and who regularly video important industry events and interviews.
Qik technology for real-time streaming video is currently workable on most phone models from Nokia and Qik is currently working on make the technology compatible on several more very popular phones.
However, there are currently some important limitations on which mobile phones will run Qik – in particular, only those phones that are G4 enabled and exceed a certain threshold of functionality (memory size, processor, etc.) Needless to say, and as you’ve probably already noticed, these are typically the premium models from most of these manufacturers.
While the number of platforms for Qik is certain to grow, the minimum technical requirements are unlikely to change. The good news, however, is that thanks to the pace of technological change, the number of Qik-enabled phone models is liking to jump every few months . . .until, within the next few years, essentially every new mobile phone will be capable of running Qik.
As you know doubt have already discovered, whatever the advertisers claim, taking a good mobile phone video is hardly just a matter of ‘point and shoot.’ Composition, lighting and other matters that used to be sole concern of cinematographers now become your concerns as well.
Here are some tips at shooting a great video:
1. Use the good lens – High end mobile phones, like the kinds that run Qik, often have two camera lenses; the traditional cell phone ‘pin-hole’ lens, and a much larger, digital camera-type lens. Always use the big lens. It gathers the most light, captures the most detail, and offers you the most control.
2. Rehearse self-portraiture – Shooting yourself is harder than it looks. How far out should you hold the phone – arm’s length? Or at some point nearer than that? Memorize that position. Also, you may be surprised to discover that the intuitive way to hold the camera also gives you an upside-down image. Can you hold the camera still without bracing your wrist?
3. Learn from television – The pros know how to properly frame a subject; so study how they do it. In a one person interview, get up closer than you might in everyday conversation (but not so close that your subject’s face begins to fish-eye distort). A good rule of thumb is to place your subjects eyes just above the mid-line of the screen, and then back up, or approach, until their breastbone is at the bottom of the frame and there is a small band of light above the top of the subject’s head.
On wide, especially outdoor, shots, don’t be afraid to use the zoom. Start with a wide shot that sets the larger context (stadium, race track, ballroom, conference hall) then zoom in on the subject. That subject should fill about 2/3rds of the screen. Don’t be afraid to pan the camera to also show context, and to keep the video interesting – but don’t overdo it, or pull or pan too fast; otherwise you’ll leave the viewer confused, dizzy and annoyed at your showboating effects.
4. More light – Cameras, at the normal setting, don’t pick up as much ambient light as the human eye. That means you will likely have to throw more light – think television studio — on the subject than seems natural. And that means light directly on the subject’s face. The biggest mistake most amateur shooters make is to assume that just because the ambient light is bright – sunlight streaming through a window, a brilliant ceiling light – that the subject is properly lit.
You can see the fallacy of that in hundreds of videos on Qik: shot in a hotel hallway or up against a brightly lit window, the subject is reduced to looking like the silhouette of someone in the witness protection program. The solution is often just to turn around: put your back to the window and have the subject face you – if he or she winces slightly, you’ve probably got enough light. If you’re using artificial light (say, a night shot) get up close to that light, or use multiple lights, and try to remove every bit of shadow off the subject’s face.
The best solution of all, if you intend to become a regular QikLife contributor, is to bring along your own light: attach a video camera light to your phone, or put it in your chest pocket, or set it on a table nearby and wash the subject with light.
5. Practice, practice, practice – Do enough test runs until you can anticipate what the final video will look like. Make it second nature to know how much light works on a one-on-one subject, how close to get to an event, how to set up the video with zooms and pan, and how to get out. And, like a good photographer, if you the chance, take a quick test video, look at the results and make the necessary adjustment.
This is almost always the deal-breaker on most Qik videos. High end phones these days have great camera, but they still suffer from the same old crappy microphones.
The problem with mobile phone mics is that they are designed to do everything adequately, and nothing particularly well. This makes them acceptable (marginally) for large events where you merely want to capture ambient sound. But if you want to pick out a human voice even a moderately noisy setting, it will get lost as the omnidirectional microphone pics up every other sound. The same thing can even happen in close-up interviews, where the mic captures not only the subject’s voice, but the various echoes of that voice as it bounces off walls, the floor and ceiling – creating the notorious echo-chamber effect.
There’s not much you can do about this with a standard phone microphone, except to find a quiet place with lots of sound absorbers (carpet, drapes, furniture) and then get up close. In noisy settings you just have to pick topics that don’t require a single voice, or get up really close.
The best solution of all is to change the microphone. Some mobile phone companies (and aftermarket suppliers) offer unidirectional microphones you can attach to the phone and point at the subject. An alternative, especially for one-on-one interviews, is to simply hardwire the subject: plug the wire for the handheld or lapel (lavalier) microphone into your phone and then hand the microphone for the subject to either wear or hold.
Context is king. Some videos tell their own story, but many, especially breaking news stories, do not. You can help your audience understand what’s going on – and perhaps get pick-up of your video by news outlets – by providing as much information about what is going on as possible.
One way is to simply narrative over the video what is going on as it happens. Better yet is to type the copy, as it will help with the spelling of names, etc. Needless to say, the best captioning answer’s the four ‘W’’s: who, what, when and where, as well as ‘how’ the event happened.
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