This week some of The Feather staff are working in New York City so we can attend the CSPA convention at Columbia University. I’ve been recording some of our food stops in a vlog to recommend different eats around the city. In the meantime, I’ve picked up some must haves for filming a vlog when you’re away from home and only have a phone. So if you want to film daily on your phone, here’s a couple tips!

What you need

• Portable phone batteries

Filming will absolutely drain your phone’s batteries. There’s plenty of places to buy little charger stick batteries that fit in a pocket, backpack, or purse. Two of them can keep my phone running for two or three days. Whenever you start to lose battery life, plug your phone into the battery, and viola! More film time. You can find them in many tech stores, and here on Amazon.

• An idea of what you’re going to do

Vlogs are rather spontaneous, but try to pick out music ahead of time so you can form an idea of what type of editing you want to do. Once you have at least an abstract thought of how you’re going to put your vlog together, you can assemble the music and start thinking about what shots you’ll want to try and accomplish to make the vlog look nicer.

• Quick feet

Vlogs have cinematography decisions too, but they’re on the spot and hard to plan if you don’t know where you’re going. That’s where having an idea of what you want in mind is helpful. Just be spry and keep an eye out for good angles and shots that will fit your project.

If you want to check out my vlog post today, watch Big Apple, Big Appetite: Episode 2.

See you around the city! And Soli Deo Gloria.

If you want to contact me, I can be reached via Twitter @ejLadd or by my email, [email protected].

To see more from Frame Rate, check out Frame Rate: Relatable rookie moments.