How To Record YouTube Cooking Videos Part 2

Hey guys, in response to some of the questions asked in the comments on how do I film my cooking videos, I realized there were a lot of things I didn't touch up on in my last video. My first video mainly focused on the camera equipments, but this video will focus on the actual filming and the struggles for cooking vloggers. Also, there are couple of things I learned along the way since then that I decided to make a part 2! Thanks for the love and support everyone! - Kim

How Do I record My Youtube Videos Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzCY7PPfap4

Video/Photo tips:

Background
Sometimes for whatever reason you don't like the background of your pictures and would like to change things a bit. Using a poster board, food trays, fabric can create some personality for your photos. Using a plain white poster board will give your pictures a professional look and the simplicity  of the background will make your food stand out more. A poster board at most can cost $1 at the dollar store. You have to be careful with it to keep it clean. Using fabric at least they're washable and you can just throw it into the washing machine after each time you cook. Seems a little weird to do this, but I've really gotten tired or seeing my counter tops in the same videos after two years.

Props
I like to use little teapot, leaves, flowers, laying around the house to use as props. But it really depends on the theme of your videos what you should use. I'm going for the more simple, cute, pink, girly look of course.

Lighting
Turn on all the lights in the kitchen, and if your kitchen light isn't bright enough, I recommend filming during the day to get as much as that natural free lighting you can get.

Tripod Placement
At first I kept my tripod on top of the kitchen tabletop with the tripod/camera facing down. But I ran into problems with tripod legs showing in the shot. Nowadays I don't use this angle unless I'm doing very detailed decorating. The second way is placing the tripod in front of me and leaning against the table. It gets in the way of course of cooking, but I've learned to get used to it. I would either straddle the tripod or stand on the side of the tripod and worked. But standing on the side would give the camera a bad angle and sometimes your hands will block your work.

Camera man
I am my own camera woman, I do all the recording and editing by myself. It's a lot of work to film and cook, and you have to be able to time things and pay attention to all the details, be prepared by having all the ingredients and mentally already knowing what you're going to do. But doing all this on your own will give you 100% on how you want things to look and  you will feel very proud of yourself in the end after each video.

Actual camera equipment
I use a Samsung Nx Mini, but in the past I used an iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy 4-5 phones. I love my samsung mini, but there's problem using a phone to record. Except the space on your phone may be limited.

Voiceovers vs Text vs TV host

You can either just edit in your voice overs and just focus the video on just your hands doing all the work and never show your face. Or you can just have text with no voice overs. Or you can stand there and talk and have a full shot of your body. I don't know if there's the right way you should do it or anything. I've tried doing different ways and I settled for what made me most comfortable. At first I only did texts added to the videos with the directions, I was a bit more shy to do any more. But adding texts for each step, depending on how detailed you get, you have to be careful of typos. Once you have a typo you can't really go back, and the most you can do is add in annotations, which most people have turned off. I tried editing in voice eventually, but that was kind of difficult to do without a real mic, but once I bought a Snowball mic I started doing them all the time. Nowadays I just settle for texts with directions, voiceovers, and a shot of me speaking in the end while I'm not cooking or a little bit of my face in the beginning so people know its a real person cooking. I can't really multitask, and I don't have enough cameras, or the space to do a full body shot of me talking and cooking, or someone to record, me so I just stuck with this set up. It really depends on you how you want your videos to be. The way I've done things have changed over the years and I feel like it'll just get different after each year.




Social media:
Twitter@hungrymoomoocow
Instagram@hungrymoomoocow
Blogger@hungrymoomoocow
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/hungrymoomoocow/960420374008109