Tips for filming myself throwing?

General Yo-Yo
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So, I’m not much of a videographer, but looking for tips on how to make my yo-yo videos look better.

Ideally I’m looking for advice to help to get the throwing action better on camera, and any tips around that. Currently everything looks a bit amateurish, and sometimes it’s difficult to see what actually is going on with the string etc.

Currently I can film on a high end mobile phone (on a fixed tripod), so if anyone has experience with this type of set up, give me your tips!

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Make sure your filming in 60fps this will make the video look much smoother. Also don’t film in front of a window, instead film with a window facing you. You can also buy a Blacklight to make the string light up more :slight_smile:

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dont have the camera too far away, focus the framing around the yoyoing area(hands,arms,torso for most people) and have little backround in the framing as it brings attention away from the yoyoing. and have some good lighting or fix the lighting and coloring in editing. but mostly the first one

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Sorry to flag an old thread, but how do you film closer but also capture the whole combo? I find a lot of the time I have to stand further away from the camera otherwise the throw goes out of frame (my sides).

If using a phone, do you film landscape or portrait, and how do you frame yourself (e.g. neck to knees for example)?

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If you are looking to take your videos to the next level:

  1. Make sure your light source is in front of you and aiming at you, not behind you and shining into the camera lens. When bright light enters the lens directly, the auto-exposure feature will close down the (virtual) shutter and make everything look dark except for a uselessly bright background. Always remember that when you use a camera you are “painting with light” and so you want to bathe your subject in light, not the camera. Study the principles of three-point lighting to get a good handle on the art and science of lighting for camera.
  2. Related to number 1 is to be aware of shadows and work to eliminate shadows that are obscuring the action. You may find it helpful to invest in some reflectors that can be used to provide fill light.
  3. Get someone to be your “camera man”, someone who can move around with the camera to find the best position(s) and compose the shot(s) so as to capture what you are doing. Being both camera operator and subject is needlessly time-consuming, frustrating, and error-prone.
  4. Shoot the action from several angles and then edit the footage together to better show off the action. If you have more than one camera available then you can shoot the same action from multiple angles simultaneously. But if you don’t, then just shoot the action more than once from different angles.
  5. Study the art of video editing. I’m sure there are lots of tutorials online for this, as well as countless books on the subject. As anyone who has ever worked in film or television will tell you, the story is actually told by the editing.

As for landscape vs. portrait, you’ll want to choose the orientation that best suits the trick you are trying to capture. But I personally recommend shooting everything in landscape mode and composing for that orientation. Portrait mode will betray the fact that you used a phone, and it will make it look as though you are just shooting a cheap, amateurish video for social media.

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I like the “neck to feet” framing in landscape, since that’s the general “yoyo zone” where 95% of the action happens. I think having the camera up at a higher angle helps a lot so you can look down on it and see what’s happening with the yoyo/strings still closer to the body.

Having the window behind the camera helps, but since it’s natural light, my videos are more or less visible depending on the weather/time of day. I need to invest in one of those ring lights for my tripod, but I’ve been too cheap to buy one since I’m not really invested in making yoyo content, I just want to share tricks.

My backdrop is kinda messy since I don’t have a great way to put up a black backdrop, but just choosing good days/time of day to record (and wearing dark clothes) made my videos a lot better.

Here’s an example of a video along with other examples in this thread. In this post when it’s a sunny day and I have direct sunlight beaming through the windows the string becomes extremely visible. It’s a dark-ish colored string too, if it was a standard neon yellow string it would be glowing. If I stopped being cheap and got a ring light I’m sure my string would always be this visible.

Right now I’m only using an iphone 11 in a 15 dollar tripod and relying on direct sunlight, but it works pretty well I think. I’m assuming you basically just wanna make trick videos so just dark clothes + direct lighting is the answer you’re looking for I think.

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Tip 1. Shoot 60fps

Tip 2. Make sure your shutter speed is at 1/120 or higher this will eliminate motion blur

Tip 3. Learn a bit about lighting. 3 point lighting is a great place to start.

Tip. Make sure you think about framing and composition

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