- [Instructor] This is
the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro.
It shoots 8K video and
has 108 megapixel camera.
Alright, so this is
where you guys come in.
You're invited to enter the
Xiaomi my home movie competition
where you'll have to make your own film
under five minutes at home.
So here's the film that I
made using the Mi 10 Pro.
Hey, just checking in.
How you holding up?
This is a question I've
asked a lot of friends.
Funny enough, the one person
I never asked, was myself.
The answer, I'm better now,
been working on a few things,
not photos, not videos, not projects.
I've been working on myself.
It sounds so silly, but
if I'm being honest,
I've always worried way too
much of what people think of me.
It's been a common thread throughout
the better part of my adulthood.
I should wear this, say this and do this
so people will, like me.
It's extremely parallelizing.
I think I've always
understood the concept of
you can't make everyone happy.
But I was chatting with
a friend a few days ago,
and he perfectly summed it up.
He said, "It feels like
you've actually been able,
"to connect that message with your heart."
I'm still a work in progress.
But for the first time in a while,
I feel like I can be more of
myself in everything that I do.
For example, I was
singing and playing guitar
a few nights ago.
I actually got lost in the song.
Normally I'd be worried
about what Lizzie would think
of my singing.
Is it out of tune?
Am I singing the wrong lyrics?
Of course she doesn't care.
She's my fiance.
There's a great quote from
one of the world's best poets,
Dr. Seuss, "Be who you
are, and say what you feel
"because those who mind don't matter,
"and those who matter don't mind."
(lighthearted guitar music)
I've learned something,
people will always love
the real you.
Hi, everybody.
I hope you enjoyed that film.
It's something I've wanted
to share on this channel
for a while now.
Everything I talked
about was not just like,
oh, I just made a short film.
Like that's how, I've been
feeling during this quarantine.
It's something that I've been feeling
for, a long time now like
I mentioned in the video.
the better part of my adulthood.
And I feel like I'm finally
just getting to that point now,
where I can create without the worry of,
what will people think.
So hopefully that message
resonated with you guys at home.
It's something I've worked
on for a while, right here.
Can you guys also believe
that entire thing was shot
on, this guy right here.
That's the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro.
I think it looked great.
The image quality is absolutely amazing.
Also 8K video, this world
we live in now come on.
So to give you an idea
of what's gonna happen
in this video right now moving forward,
we're gonna have a behind the scenes look
at how we shot that film.
Everything from their
creative decisions on shots,
as well as the technical so hopefully,
you'll be able to take
that into your own films
at home as well.
There's a contest at the end.
So, let's jump into step by
step of how we made this film.
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to my closet.
We're doing the voiceover right now.
The reason why we're in the closet,
was because it's very quiet in here,
because there's so many clothes.
I think this is the only
time ever that I will say
Lizzy, I'm so glad you
have so many clothes
because it works for voiceovers.
The thing about voiceovers
that's really important
is that it can make or break a film.
So one of the things that I've learned
from the voiceover Queen,
Miss Lizzie Pierce,
is trying to do a voiceover
like you're having
a conversation with someone.
It's easy to always make it sound
like you're reading from a script.
What you wanna be able
to do is like read it,
then kinda put it in your own words.
I think when you're in your head,
and you're recording a voiceover
or you're talking on camera, you're like,
oh, I need to talk like
this, because this is how
presenters talk.
Talk like how you're
talking to a single person,
and that always comes across
better than you trying
to be like, "Over the land,
Simba raises from his kingdom."
You don't need to talk like that.
Unless the script is about Lion King,
but in this case, it's
nuanced, it's me talking.
So I'm gonna try to do my
best to have a conversation.
Here's a little behind the scenes of us
recording a voiceover.
I've also had to burp that
entire time, one second.
Oh, God.
Okay, let's record.
All right, getting the levels testing one,
two, three recording.
Speeding, hey, hey, hey, hey.
All right, so those
takes went pretty well,
I was happy with it.
We did about three takes
and by the third take,
I finally got into a good groove.
You know, we can go back
later and re-record anything
if we need to.
But I think we have it.
Now we're gonna get back to filming.
All right, welcome to our first shot.
So when you watch that
short film that we created,
you probably noticed
the big fancy transition
where we went through the door,
and now we're down by the water.
Also, by the way, this
is a part of the contest.
I'll tell you a little
bit about that more, later
on in the video.
I always think it's important
to put a lot of time
into your first shot.
They say that people make a decision
if they wanna watch your video or not
within the first 10 to 15
seconds, if you're lucky.
Honestly with attention
spans, now, I think
it's like two to three seconds.
So make sure your first shot is perfect.
So for this when we first shot it,
we had shadows everywhere.
We just had natural
light from the windows,
and the shot just didn't look that great.
So I was like, alright, well
why don't we bring in a light,
or bounce it off the ceiling,
add a little bit more light
to the room.
So we're gonna do two
takes, so if you look here,
this is without any lighting.
And then this is what the
shot looks like with lighting.
The nice thing is that it's more even,
a little less dramatic.
But one of the things is when
you're shooting on a phone,
you wanna try to get the
cleanest images possible.
So I like adding light.
In this situation, what
we're doing is we have
a big diffused light, it's
bouncing off the ceiling
and then kind of filling up the room.
So if you need to add
more light to a scene,
where it's soft and looks nice on skin,
what you wanna do is you
wanna point your light up,
especially if you have
like white ceilings,
the light will spread out everywhere,
and then it will add kind
of like a softer look
on people's faces versus like harsh light
when you point a light directly at it.
It's still like the dynamic
range isn't looking that good.
There's some like hot spots with white
and some darker areas.
So like well, how do we even this all out
so it looks better.
We have blinds, let's put the blinds down.
All right, that's looking
a little bit better.
These are all the little details,
until we got our final shot,
which then we set up the camera,
we put it on the wide
camera, I had my arm in it
so that it looked like a
POV of opening the door.
I put the camera down in my chest,
I brought my arm out so
that you could see it,
and I slowly walked up
with the steady stance,
do not move try to keep
this as steady as possible.
The camera also has embody stabilization,
which is really nice and will add to it.
But if you can also be another stabilizer,
it's an added benefit and makes
the shot look really good.
So do the stabilizer walk, arm out, POV
and now that we have perfect lighting,
we're just gonna do a few
tapes of getting the shot,
and by the fourth take, we had our shot.
Let's do a quick playback on that.
So again, to summarize all that,
make sure you spend some
time on your first shot,
'cause it's so important.
All right, so what you might have noticed
as we start getting through the film,
is that there was a locked off shot,
on a tripod over the shoulder,
looking at the computer,
while we're catching up with friends.
When you hear the word cinematic,
what are like the first
things that come to mind?
Generally it's like,
oh cinematic movement.
But I think we all forget that in film,
a lot of shots are just locked off.
I don't know if you guys
are fans of Matt D 'Avella.
He has an amazing channel, but
if you watch any of his films
or any of his YouTube videos,
most of the shots are just shot on sticks,
sticks being a tripod.
So if you hear me say
sticks again in the future,
I'm talking about a tripod.
So what we've done here is
we put the phone on a tripod,
which is something I think
a lot of people forget
when they're shooting with a cell phone,
because normally it's just in your pocket,
you busted out, you
hold it kind of steady,
and you're like this shot looks good.
But if you put on sticks,
it looks that much better.
And if you have a welcome post
shot, it can look cinematic.
So don't forget, bust out that tripod,
put your phone on it, try
to get some locked off shots
because that can still be cinematic
if you compose your shot nicely.
So if you guys don't
own, a slider or a gimbal
or anything like that, one of the things
that you guys can do is,
put your phone on a tripod.
In this case we can shoot at 8K,
so we're gonna switch to the 8K mode.
And what you can do, is if
you shoot a little wider
in post production after the fact,
you can actually create a
pan movement if you want
by keyframing that in.
So when you have your 8K footage,
let's say it's this big, you
can now zoom in on that clip,
you can pick this as frame one,
and then have a digitally
move across the frame,
and you can add movement
and post production.
It's a little pro tip for you.
Okay, so now we're in the part of the film
where we're showing a
sequence of me in the shower,
looking at my skin in the mirror.
The reason why we're showing
this set of sequences
is that it's generally pretty relatable.
And in the context of the film,
where I'm revealing to everyone that like,
hey, I'm really worried about
what people think about me.
One of those things that I worry about is,
what do I look like?
I think we can all kind of
connect with that a little bit.
So we wanted to show a
sequence of me in the shower,
looking at the mirror,
checking out my skin,
checking out like my beard
shaving, picking out clothes,
'cause all of that connects
back to the storyline
and the main message of the video.
From a technical standpoint,
you might have noticed
in the shower scene that I
didn't just show myself taking
a shower.
We tried to be a little
bit more artistic with it.
So on this phone there's a macro mode.
We did a macro of the water
dripping along the glass,
so that it wasn't just like,
look at Chris taking a shower.
It's a little bit more
tasteful and artistic.
Alright, I feel like one
of the classic things
when we start shooting cinematic sequences
is we add the
those are black bars.
We find that little PNG on the internet,
we bring it into premiere pro
or whatever we're writing it
and we say black bar, black bar,
look mom and dad cinematic.
It's true, it looks more cinematic
because that's what we see in Hollywood.
One of the things that
a lot of shooters do
is that they just shoot in
normal 16 by nine aspect ratio,
and then they add the
black bars on afterwards
and they slightly reframe.
What I appreciate about the Xiaomi Mi 10,
is that in their camera
app, they actually allow you
to add those bars in,
while you're shooting
so you can frame properly
in that aspect ratio
rather than being like
hope this looks good
with cinematic bars.
So it's important to try to
capture it on set earlier.
If you don't have an app that can do this.
Just literally take black tape,
put a little strip at the top,
put a little strip at the bottom,
and then make sure when you're shooting,
you're framing accordingly.
That way you get everything
that looks cinematic
and you're not gonna miss
anything in post production.
All right, so we just finished the scene
where I'm playing guitar for Lizzie.
What you might have noticed
at this point in the video
is there's a lot more movement,
because we're starting
to progress through it.
At the beginning was a
little bit more static shots
because it's more melancholy,
but now we're starting
to see I'm opening up.
I'm getting more comfortable with the idea
of being myself around others,
so let's add some more
movements, lets add some color,
let's add some more
brightness to the shot.
So we did to add movement,
as we shot it on a gimbal.
A phone gimbal specifically,
and what you wanna do
in this case to get really great shots,
and one of my favorite
things to do is shoot
on the tele lens on your camera.
So on the Xiaomi Mi 10
Pro, there are a few
different cameras, there's a wide camera,
there's a medium camera and
then there's a tele camera.
I like shooting on the tele camera,
'cause it's a bit more compressed
looks way more cinematic.
And when you're shooting on a gimbal
and doing a circular
movement around your object,
the background moves very quickly.
That's called Parallax.
So when you have your subject,
you're rotating around the subject.
The background is really
epic and cinematic,
so that's when you shoot on a longer lens,
and the longer lens the
more dramatic movement
is in the background.
So that's a little pro tip, when shooting
with a phone gimbal.
Okay guys on a side note,
Luna was in the other room
and I was like I wanna
go take a photo of her.
This phone has 108 megapixel sensor on it.
Look at, look at you just keep zooming.
The quality keeps getting there.
What is happening?
What is going on?
Seriously, this phone is amazing.
We're super stoked.
Guys if you enjoyed this
video we're at the end now.
If you saw any value in
this, please press like.
It's right down there.
Just go over there and go (murmur)
and they go Chris, did you see I liked it?
I go, thank you.
Alright guys, we are at
the end of this video.
Hopefully you learned a little something
and you enjoyed my short film.
That's a message that means
a lot to me right now.
So hopefully that resonated with you.
On a side note, there's a
competition going on right now.
You guys can submit your
own cinematic videos
for your chance to win
one of these phones,
or some of the other Xiaomi products
that are available right now.
In order to be entered
into the competition.
You must have a door opening sequence
at the beginning of your cinematic film.
If you guys wanna go and check
out the rest of the details.
Links are below to be
submitted to the contest,
and your video will also be shared
on the Xiaomi social pages
get seen by millions.
I'm into , links are
where they always are.
I love you guys, we'll see you soon.
I wanna go take some photos of
Luna, because 108 megapixels.
Let's go.
(murmurs) back to sleep.
Oh, you actually listened no way.
Oh God.
The eye kinda looks a little weird there.
Go back to sleep.
Don't sleep with one eye open.
Oh my goodness, are you
kidding me right now?
Why are you so cute?
You're a little ball.
Look at this little (murmur).
Come on.
