# How to get the right shot when Filming yourself!

## Three Aspects of Filming:
When filming in any capacity, three things that you need to keep track of are:
* Lighting
* Angle
* Shot Length

If you can get these three aspects of filming correct, you'll be making quality videos for your French 10 Portfolio!

## Lighting:
Before you begin recording yourself for this assignment, you need to make sure that your lighting is adequate! That means making sure that you are well-lit without being washed out! Be wary of having a large lighting source directly behind you, as this will make you backlit.
You also don't want to have a light source directly in front of your face, because this will cause you to look washed out!
Instead you want a sweet spot, with a lighting source in front of you at an angle!

## Angle:
The second aspect of filming yourself is the angle of the shot! You always want to make sure that the phone is held up to an appropriate height to make talking to it seem more natural! Imagine the phone as a person that you are talking to, you don't want to hold the phone at an unnatural angle, whether that is too high:
Or too low:
Instead, you want to keep it at face level

A tip here is to use the grid lines, lining up your eyes with the top grid lines like this:


If your phone does not automatically have the grid lines you can add them easily as follows:
settings > camera > grid lines

## Shot Length:
The third aspect of filming yourself that is vital is shot length! Shot length is how close the subject (you in this case), is to the camera. For the sake of these videos, you want to make sure that the camera is not too close up:
But you also want to make sure that the phone is not too far away, or else you will distract from your own words and instead draw attention to your surroundings, is not helpful in an assignment like this.
Instead you want to position the phone just right, so that your eyes are on the 2/3 line, this way there is room above your head to showcase the background a little, while still keeping the attention on yourself.