Maximize your smartphone video quality with gear that won’t break the bank

Creating your home or mobile video studio can seem daunting, expensive, and overwhelming. There is a wide array of smartphone gear out there that makes the decisions about maximizing the quality of your videos even more confusing.

The good news is, it doesn’t need to be! We sat down with expert Eddie Garrison of Digital Media Creators Academy to discuss the gear you need to enhance your videos on a budget.

Top 5 takeaways:

1. Camera

“Take advantage of the 4K camera that you have in your pocket.”

You don’t need a four or five-thousand-dollar camera when you’re starting out. If you’ve bought a phone in the last few years, it likely shoots 4K. You can create quality videos with your smartphone; you just need to know how to utilize its power.

2. Stabilization

“Stabilize that camera or smartphone because [your videos are] just gonna look more professional.”

Keeping your camera stable is essential to creating quality content. A tripod can cost under $30 and make your videos much more professional. Eddie recommends a smartphone video rig like this one from Ulanzi that you can add a small light to and attach to your tripod at home. Chuck has one and loves it. You can easily take the whole setup with you when you’re away from home, or detach the holder rig from the tripod and add a light or a shotgun microphone for more mobility. The rigid holder helps take the shake out of your movements.

3. Audio

“If your audience can’t hear you, they’re not gonna stick around to watch you.”

Studies have shown that audiences will tolerate bad video quality but not bad audio. Sound is so important because you want your audiences to hear everything you say. An inexpensive single lavalier mic can cost as little as $20; even your phone earbuds will make a difference in your audio quality. We recommend the PowerDeWise Dual Mic Interview Kit as an affordable option because it allows you to capture audio from two people and it comes with plenty of cable (12 feet).

4. Background

“If you’re doing something like a talking head, you don’t want a lot of distractions going on.”

The most successful videos have simple backgrounds with minimal distractions. You want to avoid piles of laundry, distracting clutter, or dogs running through the shot. You want your audience to focus on your subject, not on what’s happening in the background. You don’t need to spend money on a fancy backdrop or green screen … any clean space you have will do.

5. Lighting

“Remember that you want the lighting source to be in front of you and off to the side.

Lighting can make or break a video. If you shoot during the day, you can utilize natural light in front of you. Natural light is free and works great, but if you’re shooting at night or in a room that does not have access to natural light, you could also buy a basic clip-on light or ring light for around $20. Eddie recommends the Lume Cube Mini, which comes to about $60, but you could also purchase a version from Neewer for closer to $30.

You can build an entire home studio on a reasonable budget by utilizing these tips and adding some of these products to your kit.

Our program, Online Video Mastery, helps you immediately start making quality videos with your smartphone so you can harness the power of video marketing. Get started today!

You can watch the video interview above with or without subtitles, or read this transcript (edited for clarity and flow):

CHUCK:
Hey there, Chuck Moran here with Online Video Mastery. I’m excited to be with you today because we’re continuing our series of folks that are doing really cool things with video. I’ve got a special guest with me today. This guy is a video creator. Like me, he started out as a graphic designer. The one difference between Eddie and myself is that when I got into the field, we called it commercial art. When he got into the field, they call it “graphic design.”

Anyway, Eddie Garrison is a friend who lives down in Florida, with 15 years of experience in digital and social media marketing. He’s the founder of Clover Media, which is a graphic design firm. His main thing right now is the Digital Media Creator Academy.

And Eddie is an award-winning live streamer, digital media strategist, course creator, speaker, and author. So he’s got a couple of things on me because I’m not going on stage and doing any kind of speaking. So with that, let me bring Eddie on here. Eddie, welcome to our show. Online Video Mastery’s very happy to have you here with us today.

EDDIE:
My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

CHUCK:
So what we’re gonna do is how to set up a video studio in your home or at your office without breaking the bank. I think a lot of people, and I have to say it was my case in the first place as well, when I got started in this, I thought, “Okay, well, you know, I’ve got some gear. I don’t really know what to buy next. I don’t know how to elevate the quality of my video production.”

And I thought if I do get into it, it’s gonna cost me an arm and a leg. So, I’m really happy to have Eddie on here with me today so that he can correct some of those misconceptions. And believe it or not, it’s purely coincidental that I have a purple shirt on and that Eddie’s got a purple background.

CHUCK:
Let me point out something that I think is really interesting. One of the reasons that I wanted to invite Eddie on today is that I love the backgrounds that he uses [for] studio shots. I follow him on YouTube, and he uses a lot of these sort of dark, moody backgrounds. And you can see how- I wouldn’t say mine’s washed out, but compared to Eddie’s, he’s got it over me. So Eddie, go ahead and take it away and let us know what you think about how we can set up a video studio without breaking the bank.

EDDIE:
Yeah, because that’s the big thing, isn’t it? You don’t wanna jump in. And, and I think a lot of people have this misconception about video creation and about creating video content. They think they have to go out and spend four and five thousand dollars on all this gear because they see some big YouTuber has, you know, four cameras, all these different lights, and they think they have to have that to be successful. And that’s simply just not the case for one of many reasons. One, most people don’t have four or five thousand dollars in disposable income to go out and buy all this in just one fell swoop.

If you do, I’ll send you some affiliate links, and we can be friends. But most people fail to realize that they already have a thousand-dollar camera in their purse, in their backpack, in their pocket. Which it’s one of these. It’s a mobile phone.

CHUCK:
How far away is the one for you guys watching? How far away is your phone right now?

EDDIE:
Exactly. You know, they may even be watching on their phone. Take advantage of the 4K camera that you have in your pocket. If you bought a phone in the past five years, it can shoot 4K video. That’s the biggest thing. When you want to start getting into video content creation, start with what you have.

There’s a learning curve, a massive learning curve in video creation, and it encompasses more than just shooting the video. It’s editing. It’s getting your sound, it’s getting your setup. So start with what you have, learn with what you have, and then naturally progress on two different options. So, number one for me is to start with what you have.

Now, when I say start with what you have, it also means more than just your phone. It means where are you going to actually shoot your video content? Now, if you’re working from home, that can be in your home office, that can be at your dining room table, whatever it is, you need to make sure that you’re gonna have a consistent look.

Don’t have dirty clothes piled up in the background. Don’t have something sitting on your desk that means nothing to the live stream. If you’re gonna be doing something like a talking head like we’re doing right here, you don’t want a lot of distractions going on.

You want to make sure that your audience is going to be able to hear you, see you and understand and absorb all the content that you’re giving them. Be able to find a place where you can set everything up and be consistent with your content creation.

CHUCK:
Okay. That really does make sense. And of course, that supports your brand. I recognize your background as part of your brand.

EDDIE:
Correct. This is obviously my home office here, where I run all my businesses from, and this is my live streaming setup at my desk. When I shoot YouTube content, I get a little closer to my background there because that’s the way that I want it to be framed for YouTube. That’s the look that I go for on YouTube. And that’s the brilliance of being able to have something. Not permanent, but if you can just set the same thing up every single time, then you can move around a little bit.

To your point, Chuck, every time you see me, you pretty much know what I’m gonna look like. If you saw a video, a 10-second clip of a video, you know that’s Eddie. That’s the color that he uses. That’s the mood that he sets with his color grading.

That all plays into your marketing and your brand’s identity. And what’s very important on social media is to be consistent with your brand and your look. It’s very difficult to do if you don’t have something in place.

CHUCK:
That makes sense. All right. So location, location, location.

EDDIE:
Same thing as real estate. Location, location, location. Number two for me is going to be to stabilize your camera. Now, obviously, this could be a DSLR (digital single-lens reflex), but we’re talking about mobile phones. Nobody’s going to sit there and watch a video with you shaking around, or your head is tilted because you’re propped up your phone on something. Take a little bit of your budget and invest in something like this.

This is a mobile phone video rig from Ulanzi. This thing is about $15, maybe $20. It’s made out of really, really sturdy, hard plastic. It’s got this little wheel on the back and this little clamp, and it has a slider on the front. All you do is take your phone, plop it in there and tighten it down. You can set this on a book. You can set this on a stool. If you want to get a tripod, it’s got threads on the bottom to mount it on a tripod.

And now your phone is 100% stable. The thing that I love about this, besides the price of only being $20, is it’s got two cold shoe mounts on the top of it. When you begin to upgrade your equipment, you can mount a light, you can mount a video. In one piece of equipment, you have your mobile phone, and video creation.

CHUCK:
Yeah, that’s really cool. In my Online Video Mastery training community, I teach stabilization right off as well. And I tell people, you know, you can lean your phone up against a stack of cookbooks. But don’t let it jiggle. As you upgrade, you can move to a tripod and that kind of thing or a gimbal.

The other thing is that if you don’t have anything to put your phone in, you can pin your arms next to your side and just freeze yourself as you move around. It looks awkward, but who cares if you’re getting nice, steady video?

EDDIE (08:55):
Exactly. Even vloggers like to have some kind of stabilization because they don’t want the video to be bouncing around like this all the time. So the second thing for me is stabilizing that camera or smartphone because it’s just gonna look more professional.

If I’m having to hold my phone, now I can’t express and show all the emotion that I want to convey. So if I didn’t have my phone or my camera mounted on something, I’d have to hold it with one hand, and it would just look very awkward and not professional.

CHUCK:
So, it’s stabilized now, we’ve got our location, we’ve got stabilization. What’s next?

EDDIE:
Sound. Your audio. I cannot stress this enough to anybody: what separates bad video content from good video content is being able to hear the person talking. There’s been so many surveys and polls about this. People will actually tolerate poor video quality, but they will not tolerate bad audio. If your audience cannot hear you, they’re not gonna stick around to watch you.

Phones have decent internal mics on them, but if you’re doing a talking head where you’re just [like this] or you’re interviewing somebody, and you’re a ways away from your phone, they’re not gonna be able to hear you, and you don’t want that.

I’m going to give you two options here; both are very budget-friendly. The first one again is gonna be about 20 bucks, and it’s a lavalier microphone from Boya. The one thing I like about this mic is that it doesn’t have to be powered. It runs off your mobile phone, so you don’t have to worry about putting a battery into it. And the cord length on this thing is seriously like eight meters long. You don’t have to worry about being right on top of your phone, or if you’re creating content where you’re shooting somebody else, you can place your subject matter a good way away so you can get the framing and the look that you’re going for. It’s a wired mic, but it’s still only $20. And the good thing is, if you upgrade later to a DSLR, it’ll also work on a DSLR.

CHUCK:
Oh, sweet.

EDDIE:
Or you could go with an option like this. This is the Deity D4 Mini, and it’s basically a miniature shotgun mic. The cool thing about this is it works with a mobile phone, or it can work with a DSLR down the road, and this will never take a battery. It’s either powered by your phone’s power or powered by your camera’s power. So I’ve got my phone stabilized, and I can just pop this mic in there in one of the cold shoes. And now I’ve stabilized my phone and upgraded my audio.

CHUCK:
Wow. That’s really cool. So what kind of range, if you were interviewing two people who are sitting next to each other on a picnic bench or something like that, and they’re talking to each other, how far back from them can you get and still get good audio quality?

EDDIE:
I have tested this, and I would say you are good anywhere from being a couple of feet up to maybe five, almost six feet away, and you will still be able to capture quality audio. Now, obviously, if you’re outside, you want to put what they call a dead cat on there. If there’s wind or background noise, it’s gonna kind of filter some of that out.

But you have to realize, too, once you start to put anything over the mic, you wanna start getting a little bit closer because it is going to cut down on the responsiveness of the internal components of it.

CHUCK:
Gotcha. Yeah, that’s good.

EDDIE:
And this mic is great because these mics have really come to popularity from the Rode VideoMicro. That used to be the only one that you could get, and it’s still a quality mic. The only thing that you may run into with the Rode VideoMic is it’s about $15 more than the D4 Mini.

The other thing you have to realize too with the Rode VideoMicro is that it doesn’t come with all the proper cables you need. So you’re gonna actually have to buy a cable to use it with your smartphone. And that cable itself is $15. So now you’re up to like $75 for this mic. Or you could go with something like the Boya, which is $20, or this Deity D4 Mini, which is [currently] $45.95. And it comes with all the cables you’ll ever need.

CHUCK:
Yeah, that’s really amazing. I have one of the PowerDeWise mics, which I think is really great. It’s about 40 bucks. They’ve now come out with a two-mic version with a splitter so that both mics are wired. They go into a splitter and then back to the phone, and those two come with about 12 feet of wire.

So you’ve really got a lot of range between you and your subject. And it makes great quality and comes with a foam cap or a dead cat type of wind noise cutter. But yeah, if you look around a little bit and read reviews, you can find some really great stuff.

You know, I think you can get this gear for under a hundred bucks, right?

EDDIE:
Oh, easily. Let’s just say that you went with the most budget-friendly [things] I’m talking about. So this Ulanzi phone rig … you can get it sometimes for $15, but let’s just say it costs $20 because that’s usually what it goes for, right? The Boya mic is $20. So we’re at $40. So we’ve stabilized our phone, and we’ve upgraded our audio for $40.

CHUCK:
Amazing.

EDDIE:
Now, the next thing you want to do is make sure that you have quality lighting. Now there is one piece of lighting gear that I can give you right now, 100% free. And no one’s ever gonna be charged for it. It’s called the sun.

CHUCK:
Oh yeah, I’ve got one of those right here!

EDDIE:
It’s a great lighting source. It’s about natural lighting sources you can get, right?

EDDIE:
Yeah. If you have a home office, or you’re filming wherever, make sure if you don’t have access to your own lighting that you are in front of a nice big window, a sliding glass door, whatever.

But you want to remember that you want the lighting source to be in front of you. You don’t want it to be behind you because all it’s gonna do is you’re gonna look like those old FBI things, where the person’s blacked out, where they can’t see your face.

You wanna make sure that you’re placing your lighting source in front of you. Yeah. Now, if you’re going to look at unnatural lighting, you know, artificial lighting, you might wanna look at something like this. This is called the Loom Cube Mini. Now, this can get a little pricey. I think this one is like $50. But you can look at something like the Neewer 160s or any of the Neewer lights. They’re gonna be about $25 or $30. And again, you can clamp them right onto this [holder rig].

CHUCK:
That’s cool.

EDDIE:
So let’s just say you buy the $30 light, the $20 Ulanzi rig – that’s $50, the $20 Boya. That’s $70. So now you have created a mobile video content creation station for $70.

CHUCK:
That’s pretty amazing.

CHUCK:
Another little contraption you can use for that free lighting source that Eddie’s talking about is a window clamp with a suction mount. You just stick this on the glass inside your studio or office. You press that down, and now it’s really stuck well to your window.

And you just put your phone into this part of the clamp. You always want your camera angle to be at or slightly above eye level. Then you’ve got the sunlight coming in around it. You’re not backlit, and you can just create your videos with that little device. And those are $14-15 as well, something like that.

EDDIE:
Like I said, for under a hundred dollars – I mean shipping and everything – for under a hundred dollars, you can get any of these setups, and nobody is gonna know if you’re shooting it on a mobile phone or a $3,000 DSLR camera because they just simply don’t know.

CHUCK:
Yeah. That’s really great, excellent. That’s good stuff. So what’s next? What other little enhancements do you have?

EDDIE:
Not so much enhancements, but I like to use what’s called a “run of show.” So it doesn’t matter if I’m doing a livestream show, I’m doing a product review, or I’m doing anything for an edited YouTube video.

I follow a formula every single time that I do a video because it has structure. And I keep that structure in all of my videos because consistency is going to pay off right now. I structure my videos with a hook right at the beginning of like five to maybe eight seconds long. I’m gonna be like, “Hey everyone! Are you looking to create video content on a budget? Well, in this video, I’m gonna show you three things that you can get for under $70.”

And then I have a bump video that has my title and everything. And then I roll right into my intro, which is what I’m gonna talk about. I go into the main content of the video, and then I have a call to action at the end. That’s how I do every single one of my videos.

CHUCK:
Yeah. And then it’s just like branding. I’ve always said that when you develop your brand, sticking with it is easy and reinforces your brand. Every time you come out with something that fits along with the consistency, the consistency makes it easy.

EDDIE:
Exactly. In the beginning, it may take you three hours to shoot a video. In about six months, if you stick with it, you may cut it down to being able to do a video in under an hour. And I mean, setting everything up, shooting it, editing it, and uploading it to wherever.

So the more that you can be structured and stay consistent with that structure, once you find one that works, you’re gonna be doing it every single time like that. So every piece of video content you do just kind of gets a little bit easier, a little bit easier, a little less time, a little less time.

CHUCK:
That’s really great. Excellent. Let’s see. So I’m just trying to think if there’s anything else, is there anything I haven’t asked you about, Eddie, that you’d like to add here?

EDDIE:
I’d like to just talk a little bit about editing for a moment. Okay?

CHUCK:
Yeah, let’s do it.

EDDIE:
Yeah, because that, that’s that thing or one of the things that a lot of people don’t really know a lot about, right? Like it’s easy to hit record and start going. Maybe not easy for some, but I mean, the “easiest” part is actually just hitting the record button and going, right? That’s the easiest part of everything.

But what do you do with these video clips once you have them? I mean, you can’t just post them like that. On your phone, I would recommend quite a few different apps. InShot is a very easy and user-friendly app for editing videos.

Video-Rama is very easy to use. And then once you get a little bit better with video editing, Chuck, both you and I, coming from graphic design or commercial art backgrounds, are Adobe guys.

So they have Adobe Premier Rush. That’s a bit more robust mobile editing or video editing piece of software. But you want to look at something that is basically easy and can import clips, rearrange them, trim them, maybe put some text overlays, do a few transitions, etc.

And you don’t want to just go all nuts on transitions and making things spin. That all looks pretty, and it looks really cool. But if it’s not adding value to the end audience, if your message is getting lost because you’ve got so many things spinning around and glitter filters, are they really getting value from your content? They’re probably not. They’re like, “wow, it looks cool, but I don’t even remember what he was talking about.”

CHUCK:
Yeah. What they’re getting is distracted.

EDDIE:
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, in something like Video-Rama or InShot, it’s very easy to bring all these clips in and arrange them into the order that they need to be, trim them down, maybe add some dissolve transitions or just a fade transition or something like that. And then have some text at the bottom regarding what you’re talking about.

If we were doing one for this video, we would say, you know, “number one, start with what you have.” Then we could have that text come up. Have it stay up for 10 or 15 seconds and then move away. And then, you know, your next point, you have a text overlay. So you need to ensure that your editing is very tight because you don’t want much space between each clip. I’m a very cut happy person. So that’s what I like to do, but that’s gonna take a practiced hand.

Editing, in the beginning, is going to be the longest process of video creation for most people.

CHUCK:
That’s why a lot of people send it out. I wouldn’t want to trust it to somebody I hadn’t met, but I’m pretty protective of how my videos look in the end. but I think it’s also really important to say that published is better than perfect.

EDDIE:
Always. To quote Sean Cannell.

CHUCK:
Yeah. He’s another guy we should all be following on YouTube. But just starting is the key right now.

If you’re thinking about getting into video and video marketing and harnessing the power – because you know, every year, since about 2014, 2015, it’s been “the year of the video” … and 2021, 2022, those are no different. The thing is that we’re watching more and more videos, and we’re learning more and more about products and services from video than ever before.

There’s actually a study, I believe it’s from Google, that shows that 6 out of 10 people would rather watch a video than television now. And for a kid that grew up with Mickey Mouse, we couldn’t imagine a future where people would prefer to watch something else other than television, but it’s really the case.

And there’s a preference for learning about products and services in a video than any other form of content delivery. So if you’re not harnessing this power, then jump in and start. Make mistakes, do it messy. And just, you know, as I say, published is better than perfect.

EDDIE:
It is. There’s another quote from a good friend of mine that runs Podfest here in Florida, Chris Kreitz. He wrote a book and the title of his book is Start Ugly. That’s it.

CHUCK:
Yeah, exactly. And if you set a goal of getting yourself just a few percentage points better with every video you do and give yourself forgiveness, if you backslide a little bit, that’s okay. Just, you know, get back on your horse and keep up with it.

But there is not a YouTuber out there that didn’t start somewhere. I mean, Francis Ford Coppola started somewhere. So just start.

EDDIE:
Just think, no studios wanted to produce Star Wars, and that seemed to work out for George Lucas.

CHUCK (24:29):
Yeah. Somebody finally said yes. And look what happened. That’s great.

Well, Eddie, this has been a real pleasure. Is there anything else you’d like to add in?

EDDIE:
Get started. Get out there. Just remember those four pillars of video content creation:

• start with what you have
• stabilize your camera
• upgrade your audio
• upgrade your lighting …. and stay consistent with it.