5 Tips for Better Camera Handheld Movement

Published on June 6, 2017

Cinematography & Filmmaking

5 Tips and tricks, Camera Movement, Handheld

The way you shoot your video is an artistic decision you have to make before you can begin your project. Every motion has his own meaning and brings another atmosphere to the shot. So it’s very important which movement you use to tell your story. In this tutorial we give 5 tips to improve your handheld shots and reduce the shakiness in your footage.

Most examples you see in movies use stable shots with no motion. To achieve this stability, they use tripods or jibs. As there is almost no motion, except for maybe a pan or tilt, these shot are the easiest and most commonly used to tell a story. If you want more movement and dynamic in you stable shots, you can go for a gimbal or even a drone shot. This allows you to maintain stability but also to move around with your camera to give it that extra motion. You can follow your subject through the landscape and give the viewer a feeling of being right there with the subject.

Another movement that creates a strong feeling and atmosphere in your shot is handheld. This movement is often used in horror films and can add tension to the scene. But creating handheld shots isn’t as easy as it looks. Handheld allows it to have little trembles in you shot, but you still want to limit the shakiness to a minimum. To much shake would leave the footage useless. A good tip for when using handheld is by shooting with a wide lens. This reduces the visibility of camera shake in the frame. Try to use lenses with a focal length less then 50mm and with the right technique you should be able to get excellent results. Another obvious tip is holding the camera with two hands, keep you camera and arms close to you body increasing the contact points and stability.

It is also possible to fake a handheld movement. This simulated technique was used in the deadpool movie. Where they took stable shots and added a digital movement in Premiere Pro. The creator of this effect converted it in a preset, downloadable for everyone.

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