How To Start Vlog. Beginner Guide.

Blogging Camera

Hey guys, what is goin on ?
In this Blog, we’retalking about how to start vlog the complete basics and the beginners guide to vlogging and some important information that you guys should know about, when you’re starting on your vlogging journey. I know there’s a lot to unpack in this blog, so if there’s anything specific that you’re looking for in the comment me. I’m gonna time code the different sections that I’m talking about,shooting, editing, posting,all that good stuff. Okay, so vlogging is kind of an important part of the YouTube culture,and it’s actually expanded beyond YouTube.

A lot of people just in general are vlogging to connect with their audience. Vlogs are an important part of businesses nowadays, it’s an important part of your brand. So to connect with your audiences, vlogs allows you to step into your world,and give your audience a kind of behind-the-scenes look at you, and your life.

The content you can start making vlog channel you can start vloging in which you have interest to do these are the example down.

• You can start a travelling YouTube channel and you can make the video of you trip and details to show the audiences.
• Moto vloging in this you can travel on bike or car and create videos and share on youtube.
• Food vlogs in this you can share recipe of make tasty food.
• Life style vlog.
• Tech vlog.
• Gaming vlog.
• Exploring vlog.
• Info vlog.

Now, with that said, not everyone’s gonna be vlogging and doing the whole daily vlogging thing. I think that’s a little bit crazy because it’s so much work to do a vlog every day unless you are a specific daily vlogger. I’ve had a lot of people recently ask me about how to vlog and how to create engaging vlogs. So that’s why I’m putting this Blog together to help my friends out and to help all of you out so that you can create better content. Okay, let’s get into the gear. That is the first section the tools. These are the things that you need to create your vlog. And it’s very core you just need a camera. Cause if you can tell a compelling story or give someone some insight into you as a person it doesn’t matter the tools you’re doing it with.

However, you’ve gonna wanna progress you’re gonna want to get better tools you’re gonna wanna get better cameras, microphones, all that as you get more and more into vlogging. So the essentials are a camera.And beyond the camera a stick or a tripod to hold the camera and a microphone to capture better audio. At the very basic that’s the vloggers setup and that is the essentials that you need.

Now personally, depending on the situation, I’ve had different variations of this. Sometimes I just use a camera by itself but that’s just because of the situation that I’m in. One camera that’s really good for vlogging is the GoPro it’s just an easy camera to have in your pocket and take it wherever you need to go. It’s also waterproof, shockproof and all that good stuff and it captures a decent image that’s wide. So you can hold it out,out away from your face and you can get at that good shot and there’s also some extra features on the GoPro which help a lot.

Another camera, which most of you have in your pocket right now is your phone and your phone is an important tool because you have it with you it’s there all the time and it captures good video and it captures good audio. So it’s a great camera to start with.

To learn how to vlog, and to do all that. But if you want to step it up and you wanna actually get better at vlogging you’re gonna wanna use a bigger camera with a microphone.

Personally, I use the PanasonicGH5, it’s an awesome camera. Before this, I was using the GH4.I’ve also use Sony A6500,A6300. I like to have a smaller camera something that’s not super heavy but something that I can also bring a microphone into and the microphone that i use is the “Rode Video Mic Pro”. This thing is awesome,it’s a great microphone to get good sound out of doing vlogs and doing videos on the go and the last piece is the stick.

A lot of people use like a JOBY Tripod one of those bendy tripods. I did that for awhile. I actually like a smaller footprint so I found a little mini tripod. It works well it allows me to set the camera down still have that tripod shot but then also i can hold it as a stick and it’s not as big as the JOBY. If you wanna check out the exact tools that I use,then you can get a sense of the cameras I’m using to create my vlogs. Like i said earlier at it’s very core,you just need a camera and then from there a stick and a microphone and that is your basic vlogging kit and one more thing about the camera that you’re using you just gotta use the camera that makes sense in the situation that you’re filming. So if we were doing something like river rafting were gonna be just using the GoPro because it’s waterproof it’s easy to have on me i attach it to my helmet attach it to a stick and then i can pull it off and also flog with it so if you’re in a situation where you don’t want to destroy your camera because you’re in water, snow who knows what it is you’re just in a situation where you know holding a bigger camera with a microphone doesn’t make sense it’s not a big deal just use a smaller camera something that works for the situation.

But, if you do have the bigger setup you’re gonna wanna use that as much as possible because you want to get the best footage you can possible no matter what situation you’re shooting so if you have a GH5, with a microphone and a stick use that as much as possible and then change over to things the GoPro or the phone its depending on the situation.

Okay, let’s get into shooting. This is the fun part this is shooting all the content going and doing the adventure exploring and capturing it.But there’s a lot more to shooting than just going out and just going for it and just shooting every little bit about your day. No one cares about your day. I’m just gonna put it out there. Nobody really cares because a vlog at it’s core is not just a follow me along and see what I do in a day. Some times those are interesting if you’re really interested in the person as an individual but a lot of times vlogs need to be more than just following someone around, When you follow someone around that’s a really boring vlog and that’s what a lot of people do, when they first start shooting vlogs because they think that that’s what vlog is a vlog is just following someone on their day do this is so cool look. I’m eating breakfast, I’m shaving my face, I’m gonna go down to the store today. Like that kind of vlogging is really boring unless you have a big following and a lot of people that are actively engaged with you as a person. It someone likes you then they’re gonna wanna watch your vlog. But if somebody doesn’t know you and they stumble upon that they’re gonna have no interest and they’re gonna click off.

So to shoot an interesting vlog you’re gonna need to have a story and you’re gonna have to have a journey of some sort or you’re gonna have to be funny or be going to an event. Like there’s gotta be some sort of story that goes through out your day and you gotta think of it as a film.

As Casey Neistat said,when he started vlogging he’s gonna make a film every day not a vlog and that’s the whole thing you gotta treat it as a film. When you’re shooting a film you have a story you have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and you tell your story through a plot and a plot could be a hero’s journey it could be a quest it could be a tragedy like there’s different ways to think about story and story structure. When I’m shooting my vlogs a lot of times when we’re traveling I’mjust going on a journey so I’m taking someone along on the journey and when I’m thinking about it, I’m not gonna vlog unless there is a trajectory from like, I’m starting here, I’m ending here, I wanna take people on this journey to see what it is that, I’m doing. So if I’m in Thailand and I’m gonna go see the elephants my journey is to meet the elephants do the experience and see the bigger picture of elephants by the end of the entire vlog and that’s what I did with the vlog, when I was in Thailand. I wanted to talk about the bigger issues with elephants as a whole and I wanna show a proper interaction if you are a tourist that is going to Thailand. There is some planning and there is some thought that goes in before you even start rolling the cameras. You just gotta think about what it is that you’re gonna wanna vlog about and try to come up with a bigger overall story to fit your daily vlog and with that you’re gonna wanna be able to have a beginning a middle and an end and you’re gonna wanna do the basics of story that you see in films, and you see in every book out there. You don’t wanna just start shooting and just think that you’re gonna have a cool interesting vlog just by spraying the camera everywhere you go okay a couple more points.

Besides the whole story aspect of shooting a vlog is the main aspect of a vlog is basically engaging with you as a creator so you’re gonna be filming yourself you’re gonna be that’s why you have a stick and that’s why you have a microphone and a camera just pointing at you as you’re filming yourself you’re giving your journey you’re experience to your viewers.

So you’ll turn the camera around and obviously show everything else that’s going on but at it’s core you’re filming yourself so you’re gonna either hold the camera out in front of you or you’re gonna set the camera down and walk up to the camera and talk to the camera you just gotta find creative ways to talk to the camera and be an engaged creator with your audience you’re having conversation back and forth. Find ways to talk to your audience and don’t just make them passenger on the train of your journey through the day or whatever it is that you’re filming you wanna be actively engaged with them you wanna have conversations and you wanna talk to them.

Example :

Alright so we picked up our friends, Autumn and Katie,they are back there they’ll say hello in a bit because they wanna shower but I have Katie’s bag. She had a little bit of an accident. She flipped her motorcycle like two days ago yesterday she’s pretty beat up okay.

Another key point about shooting is don’t be afraid to vlog. If you’re out in public people are gonna look at you it’s just it is what it is you’re holding a camera in front of your face and you’re pointing at yourself people know what vloggers are nowadays like you’ll be in situations where people will be like “Oh it’s a vlogger” just don’t be afraid and that’s like a key thing here when you’re being a vlogger, you can’t be afraid to shoot things you just gotta shoot everything and if something happens something happens if someone tells you to put down the camera well put down the camera but don’t be afraid to put up the camera and shoot to begin with i’ve been shutdown plenty of times where I’ve been shooting in situations where you know they just didn’t want cameras there so i was in an airport in Hyderabad or Dubai, I was shooting myself talking to camera, I’ve definitely have had security tap me on the shoulder and be like, “You gotta put this away,”what are you filming? “,and start questioning me. I gotta get outta here so I’m for sure getting out. So I’m headed over to the other airline a little bit later at city Airport all day. But you know it is what it is, I’m gonna get home tonight. I’m not playing around that was a mess. United get someone else to (garbled words). But it just is what it is you just gotta own it and you just gotta go for it.

Stop caring about what other people think because as a vlogger you’r putting your content out there for other people to look at you so you’re gonna have to just not care at all about other people.

Is really own it really believe in what you’re doing is something that is entertaining and enjoyable to watch for your viewers okay some vloggers don’t do a lot of this,but I personally think this is a key ingredient and that is capture a ton of B-roll and make it cool cinematic B-roll so I’ve done a ton of videos on my channel about how to get cinematic footage.

Watch those, if you’re looking for ideas on ways to get cinematic footage. But for me what I do is I capture a ton of slow-motion footage a capture a ton of drone shots a ton of just B-roll in general and the importance of B- roll but B-Roll is essentially the stuff that ties everything together. So you have your story you have all your talking bit soft you and now you’re gonna want the B-roll to make your project more exciting to make your video more engaging to see the location that you’reat to just make the vlog a more exciting thing to watch so lot’s of B-roll shoot a lot or B-roll.

Just shoot everything that you’re doing and shoot B-roll around it come up with new cinematic creative ways to tell the story and not just talking to camera all the time and going along with this is just shoot more than you think so this is also your story line and also you’re B-roll everything just shoot more than you think.

Because when you get into editing you’ll realize that you use a lot more footage than you think to edit a vlog. I’ve shot multiple days and trimmed it down to a five-minute vlog because the story line only fit the five minutes that I actually captured within those days. Even though a shot a ton of footage and so that brings us into editing.

So now let’s get into editing and let’s talk about how you edit a vlog so it’s more impact and so that your viewers want to watch it you shot all this awesome content you have a idea and a story line that you want to put together create a vlog for your viewers so the key to start any edit process with a vlog or a film or anything that you’re doing in general is that you just need to know your footage so before you even start cutting bring all your footage into your software.

I use Final Cut X and what I do is I scrub through all my footage just to see what I’ve shoted to see all the things that I’ve captured through out my day or through out my week whatever it is that I’m vlogging about just so I know all the footage I have so if there is major gaps if there is something I didn’t even remember that I shot I know about it so when I start editing it makes it a lot easier to be like yes I have that I’m gonna put that in the edit or, I gotta figure out a creative way to jump from this to this and now it goes into the second part which is editing and editing is fairly easy.

Most vlogs are beginning to end and the way you shoot is in the way you edit so you’re starting at the beginning of your day and you’re ending at the end of your day. So it’s very easy to edit a vlog, Me when I use Final cut because of the magnetic timeline I’ll take all the footage and literally drop it into the timeline and just start at the beginning and work my way through and that’s because everything is basically time of day starts at the beginning and it ends at the end like I was saying, I’m able to just dropit all on the timeline and just start working through and cutting it all up. It makes it go really fast and I can cut my vlogs in like an hour or two hours depending on what the situation was. Obviously some vlogs take a lot more effort but some of the more basic ones, I can chop them up super quick by just dropping all the footage into the timeline and just going for it an important thing to realize when you’re editing your footage is this concept, I learned way back in college one of my professors taught me this.

He said “Kill your babies”, which is a really horrible thing to say. It’s one of the things that will destroy a project because people spend all this time and effort to get these awesome shots. Well if they don’t fit the story if they don’t fit the vlog then you just need to take them out and it’s one of those things. Because you’re shooting editing and doing everything you can’t put weight on shots just because of how long or how complex the shot was when you were on set shooting or out in your day shooting you have to think about the project from a different standpoint and when you’re editing you just need to look at the footage objectively and that’s the key is if that shot maybe took two hours to do this cool time lapse and it has all this movement but it doesn’t fit the video at all you’re gonna just have to take it out and you’re not gonna have to get emotional about it and that’s one of the things about film making that’s tough and one of the hardest things when you’re shooting and editing your own content is that you are removing a ton of stuff that you put time and effort into and you know that this shot is so epic and so cool but if it doesn’t fit the story line if it doesn’t fit the overall thing that you’re doing with your vlog then you just gotta cut it out completely and it’s tough but it’s something that you just gotta do and then one last tip when you’re editing just always be on the lookout for a hook and a hook is basically a really interesting 10 to 15 second piece within your entire vlog that will get your viewers attentions to keep watching and that hook you’ll put at the beginning of your vlog whether it’s a sentence that someone said or an action where like you’re falling off a slip into a water like some thing where people are like, I wanna know more of that what’s gonna happen what’s going on? You’re basically setting up the video so that people so it could be somewhere anywhere in your vlog and it’s basically just a moment or an idea that captures your viewers attention and that is an important part of a vlog because it gets the people in then they watch your vlog you have your beginning middle and end you tell your story and that’s how you keep people on your channel and get them to “subscribe”.

Alright let’s go over the final touches and this is the upload process.

Now you have a awesome vlog everything’s done with it you’re like ready to share this Personally, I just put all my vlogs on YouTube other people will use other social media outlets but we’re talking YouTube here.

What you’re gonna want to do is create a compelling title and a compelling thumbnail so that people want to click it because people if they don’t even have that compelling element of a thumbnail and a title they’re not gonna click on your video. So a good way to do this is look a bunch of vloggers and just look at the different styles in which they do their thumbnail and they do their titles and think of ways that you could do your title and your thumbnail so that someone will click on your video but on the other side of it you don’t want to be click bait where you have some obnoxious thumbnail or obnoxious title that someone clicks on and the video has nothing to do with what that is you gotta be engaging but you can’t be click.

So another good tool that I use a Chrome extension tool and it allows you to give a lot of analytics and a lot of different things when you’re uploading your video it’s a great tool to use for sure. But I use it all the time to figure out key words, titles, to just get a general sense of how my past titles and my past icons and things like that are working so that as, I move forward and shoot more vlogs, I can create more engaging thumbnails, titles ,keywords, tags,and descriptions so that people click on my videos and stay actively engaged and become a subscriber and someone who actually follows my content on the regular.

One more thing is that once you post you don’t wanna just let your video die.You wanna share it if you have other social networks that could get more views on the video. So if you just post it on YouTube you don’t wanna just let it die there you want to reach out to your Instagram and Facebook followers and say “Hey check out my video. Just getting more views to your video as a whole is gonna help get it more attention and hope fully make the algorithm put your video in other places and that’s what’s happened with some of my video sin the past you know, I’ve posted ’em in different places, I’ve posted things on Reddit or Facebook Groups for stuff that makes sense and people will actively engage with that and I’ve driven a lot of followers from say a Reddit post where it fits with what ever Reddit that I’m posting it in so think of different ways that you can get more views on your video that are outside of where you posted it okay and let’s go over my final thoughts. So I’ve done almost 100 vlogs up until now. I started out doing daily vlogs because I thought I wanted to do the whole daily vlogging thing and the daily vlogging thing is tough and it’s hard and like I said unless you can come up with a unique film everyday daily vlogging does not make sense at all and it’s really hard to do and it puts a strain on everything in your life.

You look at some of these big daily vloggers and they only do it for so long before they crack before something major happens before they do something that’s just really ridiculous and dumb and they just completely are oblivious to it because they’re so wrapped in this world of daily vlogging.

However i think that all of us as filmmakers can benefit from doing a period of daily vlogging because putting that pressure on yourself to create a film everyday gets you to be more creative and gets you ways to create new stories out of basically nothing as a filmmaker as a YouTuber i think everyone should try daily vlogging for a couple of weeks maybe a month and just go for it and see how you can create compelling stories when you’re pressured to do it day in and day out and that practice is what gives you the knowledge so that when you’re creating vlogs in the future you create interesting vlogs and not ones that are just boring and dumb.

Now, I’ve definitely created my fair share of boring vlogs in the past i’ve shot 100 which in the grand scheme of things there’s other vloggers out there that have done thousands for me it started outdoing the daily thing i started doing then just travel and now I’m realizing more and more that it’ sevent it’s specific things that I’m gonna capture and that’s when I’m gonna vlog. I’m not gonna vlog all the time. There’s just no reason to vlog all the time it just doesn’t make sense for me but if i’m doing something really cool like for example i was just in New Zealand and me and Rachel did some really awesome hikes. Well I’m gonna vlog the experience of that hike so someone can come on that journey with me as I take on a mountain and that’s a really interesting vlog and there obviously is a lot more story that goes into it the main story is obviously the journey from the bottom of the hill to the top but there’s more that goes into it. So you have your micro-stories that go within each vlog and that’s one last thing. I wanna talk about and touch on is that you’re gonna have your big overall story what it is that your vlogging about. If you’re a comedy vlogger it might just be that you’re you know you’re just showing a bunch of different little skits or things like that different things within the vlog itself.

If you’re like me and you’re a travel vlogger you’re gonna be doing an experience and that is your overall story but within every vlog you’re gonna have little mini stories so for example when I was in Belize with my buddy bigger overall picture of the vlog was about scuba diving and learning how to scuba dive but there were these micro-stores that I told within it and one of them was about the taco stands we found behind our hotel and it was like an awesome local tacost and and I made a little mini story out of it in all of your stories no matter if they’re the big overarching story or theyre the micro-story within they need to have a beginning a middle and an end and to do that you just need to be more vocal and explain things on camera and so a lot of times what I’ll do is before I go into asituation.

I’ll explain everything that’s going on like okay so one of the guys in our hotel told us that there’s some fabulous tacos right down the street we’re on a taco run and C.S. wore his special shirt (dog yapping). What I’m doing where I’m going what I expect to happen just talk a lot about it. I’ll do the experience that’s you’re middle and then at the end i wrap it up and kinda sum it up and talk about my experience or find some way to wrap it up what it is that I just did. So these tacos are amazing C.S. what’s your verdict Delicious Definitely when you travel it’s all about eating locally eating from the local tacost and is much better than you know eating tacos from the overpriced restaurant.

Now you’re not always gonna use this footage but always having something before and something after the event that it is that you’re doing gives you the ability in your post-production to be able to cut a beginning middle and end if there’s not another way to cut it. I always setup stories and I always end ’em even if I’m not gonna use that footage in the edit.

Something to think about when you’re going into situations just set things up do your vlog do whatever and then wrap it up at the end of the day. I always do this I always try to sit down and have a conversation with you guys as the viewers about what just happened wrap up the day say goodbye do all that stuff and you do that with each situation that happens with in your vlog that could be a story and a key element to something that’s going on and we are back in L.A..What is up. So I’m sure you’re wondering what happened with the drone because that’s where.

I last left you off in Nicaragua but we got the drone back and it ended up being a bigger hassle than expected you might use the footage you might not but it’s always good to have more footage than to have less alright guys that wasa lot of information.

This is everything that I’ve learned over the past couple of years of shooting vlogs and I hope that this information will help you become a better vlogger in your future vlogging journey.