5 simple camera & editing effects you should definitely try

Coming up with new and different camera & editing techniques for your videos is challenging. There are millions of them out there, that Hollywood has been using for decades. But now they’re accessible at home, with just a little crafty camera work and some editing. But it’s easy to overuse the same handful of techniques.

Well, Jordy at Cinecom is here to show you 5 cool camera & editing tricks you might not have tried before. They’re straightforward techniques that anybody can master with enough practice, but they may require a little planning ahead.

Bullet-time effect

Ever since The Matrix, people have been trying to create bullet-time style effects. But most people don’t have a few dozen DSLRs laying around, so we have to think about things a little differently.

Here, the trick is to just try and keep the scene as constant as possible as you move around it with the camera, shooting as you go. You can improve the smoothness of such shots using various stabilisers and frame interpolation methods in After Effects.

Infinite zoom

This is a pretty cool effect and can make for a great transition from one shot to the next. Or, you can bang 20 of them together and just keep the zoom going on for ages. I’ll definitely be giving this one a go for some of my own content.

Flying Harry Potter effect

This is a bit like bullet time. Essentially you’re creating stop motion. And, yeah, it’s not quite as smooth and seamless as actually filming somebody flying on a broom might look, but again, there are things you can do in After Effects to help smooth things out.

Forced perspective

Forced perspective is the act of making things appear larger or smaller than they actually are. You see it a lot in movies like The Lord of the Rings to make Gandalf appear huge next to the small scale hobbits. But it’s been used in plenty of other movies, too.

Hyperlapse

Hyperlapse has taken off pretty big in the last couple of years. With advancements in software stabilisation, they’re no longer as difficult as they once were. You still need to put some thought and planning into your shooting sequence, though.

If you want to find out more about shooting hyperlapse, check out this post.

None of the above techniques are particularly new or groundbreaking. They’ve been around for years. But they’re a lot easier to do now for ourselves than they ever used to be.

So, if you haven’t already, give these techniques a try.