Recording your side
Five minutes here is worth more than any setting in the studio. When a video refuses to sit, the cause is almost always the lens or the light at the moment you recorded. No slider fixes that afterwards.
The camera
- Main lens, never the telephoto. Interior photographs are wide. A tele lens on you against a wide room is the single most obvious giveaway, and it is the mistake people make most.
- Vertical, on a tripod, locked off. No handheld, no panning. Every bit of camera movement in the finished video comes from the world around you, and yours fights it.
- Lens at chest height, roughly 48–52 inches. Interior photos are usually shot near eye level. Put your camera much higher or lower and your eyeline sits off the room's horizon.
- 4K if your phone offers it. 24 or 30fps.
The frame
- Full body, feet in shot, a little headroom. Feet matter more than they sound. They are what lets us plant you on the floor of your backdrop. If they are cut off we anchor you to the bottom edge instead, which works — but it is the better result you are giving up.
- Stand a couple of steps off the wall. Close to it and your own shadow lands on it, and that shadow comes with you.
The wall behind you
- Plain and evenly lit. A blank wall is ideal. No green screen needed: we cut you out by finding the person, not by keying a colour.
- Light yourself from the same side as your backdrop. This is the one that quietly ruins otherwise good takes. If the world you are going into has windows on the left, put your light on the left. We measure both and warn you before you spend anything, but we cannot fix it.
- Avoid a bright window directly behind you.
The performance
- Stand still. Feet planted. You never walk. The camera moves through the world around you; if you walk too, it reads as a treadmill.
- Talk to the lens, gesture naturally, keep your hands in frame.
- Record 10–30 seconds, and shoot two or three takes. Cheap now, annoying to come back for.
Audio
Phone audio is fine and carries through to the finished video. A lav mic is better. Either way, kill the HVAC — room hum is not fixable later.
Choosing your backdrop
- Wider than the video frame. The camera move is a crop travelling across your picture, so the extra width is literally the room it has to travel through. A narrow photo means a shorter move.
- Visible floor where you want to stand. You are always drawn in front of the furniture — see what it cannot do.
- Shot near eye level, which almost every interior photo already is.