Have you ever read a blog post when you would have preferred to watch a video instead? That’s essentially why vlogging was created.
YouTube Video Lighting for Beginners: What Actually Works (From Someone Who’s Lit 50+ Shoots) I screwed up the lighting on my first short film so badly that my lead actor looked like a ghost having an existential crisis in a poorly lit bathroom. We shot “Going Home” on a $2000 budget. I thought natural window … Read more
Why Choose a Mirrorless Vlogging Camera? I learned the hard way that your camera matters more than your ego. Three years ago, I showed up at the Soho International Film Festival with “Going Home“—a short film I’d shot mostly on mirrorless cameras, mixing footage from a borrowed Blackmagic Pocket with some Fujifilm X-series work. Sold-out … Read more
Best Phone Tripods for Content Creators: Real-World Testing from 50+ Shoots I learned about tripods the hard way. Middle of shooting “Going Home” in 2019, balanced my iPhone on a stack of books because I “didn’t need a tripod.” Three hours of footage. All unusable. Shaky. Amateurish. The kind of content that makes viewers click … Read more
Why Your Morning Routine Matters More Than Motivation The alarm screams at 5:30 AM. I used to hit snooze seven times, stumble to my desk by 9, and spend the first two hours of my “workday” scrolling through other people’s content while my coffee went cold. My creative output? Maybe one decent idea by lunch, … Read more
5 Important Steps To Be A Successful YouTube Video Creator I was three months into my YouTube channel when I realized I’d been doing everything wrong. I’d uploaded twelve videos. Decent videos, too—stuff I was proud of. But my view count looked like a phone number from the 1950s, and my subscriber count? Let’s just … Read more
10 Indoor Lighting Tricks To Transform Amateur Footage I’ll never forget the first time I watched playback from “Going Home” — my short about a homeless hard of hearing women trying to return to her small town. I’d spent weeks planning shots, rehearsing with actors, and fine-tuning the script. The performances were solid. The framing … Read more
Key Lighting for Beginners: What It Actually Is and How to Use It Without Screwing Up I still remember my first time lighting a scene for “Blood Buddies.” Had a single work light from Home Depot, no diffusion, and an actor who looked like he was being interrogated by the FBI. The shadows were so … Read more
The Three-Minute Disaster I spent three hours writing a script for a short film promo. Had all the details: camera angles, lighting notes, dialogue that felt clever. Hit record, followed it word-for-word, and uploaded the next day. Twenty views in a week. Seven of those were me checking if it was live. The script wasn’t … Read more
Travel Videography Mistakes That Kill Your Footage (And How I Learned to Fix Them) I was three days into filming in Iceland when my main camera died. No warning. Just… dead. And because I’d convinced myself that “real filmmakers travel light,” I had no backup body. I spent the next four days shooting everything on … Read more
The First Time I Saw My DSLR Footage on a Theater Screen Three years ago, I shot a short film called “Beta Tested” entirely on a Canon Rebel T8i. Nothing fancy – just 2 DSLRs, three actors, and a story about what happens when an AI hologram knows everything about you in your own house. … Read more