1013 – More video options for your Phone: Tom talks Gimbal Part 1

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

In this episode of Screw the Commute, Tom Antion introduces the mobile phone gimbal—a handheld stabilizer that significantly improves the quality of your video footage by smoothing out camera movements. This is Part 1 of a two-part series focusing on beginner-friendly, stationary ("no-feet") gimbal techniques.
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🔧 Main Points:
• What is a Gimbal?
A gimbal stabilizes your smartphone or camera for smooth, cinematic video shots. It often connects via Bluetooth and may come with an app for advanced features like automated editing, face tracking, and shooting guides.
• Tom's Recommendation:
Tom uses the DJI Osmo Mobile 3, but newer versions like the DJI Osmo Mobile 7 are available and more affordable (under $90). These offer improved features, including off-center face tracking and better stabilization.
• Before You Shoot:
o Put your phone in airplane mode to avoid interruptions.
o Balance your phone on the gimbal to avoid straining the motors.
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🎥 "No-Feet" Gimbal Moves:
1. Selfie Mode:
Just hold the gimbal and talk. Great for vlogging and doesn’t usually require an external mic.
2. Push Through:
Stand behind a window or door and slowly move the camera through the opening to create a smooth, flying effect.
3. Slider Reveal:
Stand still and slide the gimbal sideways from behind an object (like a tree or bush) to reveal the subject.
4. Look-Up Slider:
Start low and slide the gimbal upward along tall structures like buildings or walls for dramatic vertical motion.
5. Fake Crane Shot:
Mount the gimbal on an extended selfie stick or light stand to simulate drone/crane footage—starting low and rising high.
6. Low Shots:
Hold the gimbal low to the ground to capture dynamic shots—perfect for sports like kids playing soccer.
7. Slow Orbit:
Move the gimbal slowly around a product (like a book) while keeping it at the same distance for a clean 180° rotation effect.
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📚 Additional Resources:
• Tom's free automation eBook: screwthecommute.com/automatefree
• Mentorship program: GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com
• Video training weekends: screwthecommute.com/videoweekend
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🔜 Coming in Part 2:
Tom will teach moving gimbal shots and a special walking technique to avoid shaky footage while in motion.

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Episode 1013 – Gimbal Part1
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 1013 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today we're going to talk about a really cool gadget you can get to really up your video game, and it's called a phone or a mobile phone gimbal. So you can still use your mobile phone. You can get gimbals for regular cameras too, but we do a lot on our mobile phones. So that's what I'm going to talk about today. This is part one of the simple things you can do to learn how to use this, because it does take a little bit of practice. And then on part two we'll give you some fancier stuff you can do and a special way to walk to keep things really, really cool looking. Okay. I hope you didn't miss episode 1012. That was YouTube crackdown, where they're really cracking down on low effort video. They don't want that. They want you to really do some stuff that's unique and adds value, and not just rehashing old stuff all the time. So that was episode 1012. Anytime you want to get to it back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. That was 1012. All right, pick up a copy of my automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. Make sure you get episode I mean, sorry, version 3.0 because it's got new stuff that 2.0 doesn't. So if you've got it in the past go get another one at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my mentor program at GreatInternetmarketingtraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org.

[00:02:03] And by the way, we teach all this video stuff at our VIP. It's not VIP anymore. Video weekend. It's video weekend. screwthecommute.com/videoweekend. About six years ago I bought a thing called a DJI Osmo Mobile three. I've had it for about six years. They're now currently on DJI Osmo Mobile seven. And the price is like half of what I paid for back six years ago. Now you can get kits that have a whole bunch of accessories, but if you just want to get a feel for this for less than 90 bucks, you can get started with a mobile phone gimbal. All right, so what the heck is a gimbal? Well, a gimbal is a handheld device. Or you can mount it on a tripod. That's absolutely one of the cool things Well, we'll tell you about, but you could. It's super stabilises your cell phone so you can do all kinds of cool moves. And it's I mean, you're going to have to, you know, since this is an audio podcast, you're just going to have to Google gimbal, you know, video gimbal moves or things like that to see some of the really spectacular things you can do with gimbals. But I'm going to tell you about some of them in this episode. Now, whenever you're shooting cell phones, I probably should have mentioned this on some of our cell phone tip videos. You should put it in airplane mode, because you don't want to get interrupted with a phone call or something.

[00:03:37] You're right in the middle of a great shot, so put it in airplane mode, and if you tie your gimbal to a lot of the lot of the gimbals provide apps, you can do even fancier stuff. For instance, this even six, six years ago, the app that came with my gimbal connected to my gimbal and my cell phone with Bluetooth. And it would say, okay, shoot 2.3 seconds of something, and then here, shoot this other shot at 2.7 seconds, shoot another one of 1.5 seconds, and then shoot another one at three seconds. And then it would edit them all together and add music and. All right, inside the app. No editing at all. All right. So so those kind of things are available if you get the apps with or if you download the apps with the whatever gimbal you buy. Like I said, I like DJI, that's the drone that I have very good quality. I hope they don't get kicked out of the US. You know, they they're getting a lot of heat because they're tied to China. Okay. So anyway, this first episode, uh, part one is going to talk about what we call no feet moves. So you can just stand. Because once you combine movement and trying to learn the the gimbal, now you can, you know, you can come out with a lot of crappy shots. So this first one is about what you can do just standing.

[00:05:10] And the first one is going to be the easiest. And things you probably do already is selfie. So this would be a standing selfie where you're just holding the gimbal with your cell phone attached to it and holding it out and talking, and you're so close, you might not even need an external microphone for that. Now, a lot of the gimbals, probably all of them nowadays, I would think, have face tracking or tracking mode. So if you move your arm a little bit, it'll still stay tracking on your face. Some of the newer models you can set the tracking not to be in the exact center of the screen. My older model, that's what it is. But the newer models, you can have the your face tracked off the center, which is a more pleasing shot and leaves room for throwing graphics in later or seeing more of your background or whatever you want to do. So that's the first one. No feet moves. You're just standing there doing selfies. Next thing is a really cool thing called a push through. And what that is, is you find something like a window or a doorway or something like that, and you just stand on one side and you start your recorder and you push slowly, push your hand through the doorway, but it makes for a really cool shot or through a window. It looks like you flew out the window, right? So so that's called a push through. And you don't have to move your feet on that.

[00:06:48] When you just stand on one side, push right through to the other side. Next is a slider reveal. These are very cinematic, very beautiful shots where you get behind something like a bush or a tree or something like that, and you slide left or right to reveal some great subject that's way behind wherever you are. So it's revealing it so you could start behind it and move to the right to reveal it, or move to the left of the reveal it. So that's a slider reveal where you don't have to move. You just stand there. Another one is a look up slider. So in this case, you might get next to a very ornate wall or something or something, a lighthouse or something vertical or a building, and you stand in very close to it And you slide up with your hands. I mean, if you really want to do a low to high, you could. I'm not good enough shape. Probably do it smoothly as you get down very low. Bend your knees or kneel down, and then slowly stand up. And then as you stand up, keep your arms move until it's above your head. And so it's this, uh, look up slider. Very, uh, very cool looking shot. Another one is called a fake crane shot. I know when we did our fatso tennis video, we had a portable crane. It's called. It's a. It's like a big, heavy duty stand with a big boom on it. And the camera was way out on the end of the boom, and you could make it go real high or real low or real and make it move left or right and all over the place.

[00:08:45] And on the on our end was a monitor so we can see what the camera was seeing and adjust the camera where it was looking. So that's that's really fancy expensive stuff to do that. But you can do a fake crane shot with a gimbal just with a light pole or a tripod. Yeah, as long as you can hold it. A lot of these lightweight, extendable tripods. So go six, seven feet out and you put the gimbal on the end of it along with your cell phone. And then you, you can make it start near the ground and go way, but it's way out in front of you and way goes way 7 to 8ft over your head. So it looks like a crane shot. Or sometimes if you do it, it looks like a drone shot. All right. So it's just basically putting your gimbal on the end of a really long stick, basically what it is. And it has. Most of them have a regular screw in, like the quarter inch screw that goes under a camera. And so you can, you know, easily find long light stands or selfie sticks that extend really far into like many tripods and use that for the fake crane shot. Then you can turn the gimbal upside down, either hanging it off of a short selfie stick or, you know, bending over and walking.

[00:10:21] Well, this remember, these ones aren't walking, but this would be where you held it towards the ground, and you can slowly move it forward as far as you can go with your hand. Or if you got a selfie stick, you can go even further out and you only use a short portion of these shots in your final production, so you don't have to go that far. Like I said, you don't have to move your feet to get some spectacular shot. So that's low shots. Uh, think of this when you maybe your kid's soccer game. Uh, a cool shot to include would be all the little kids feet, like, going crazy in the ball. You know, you don't see him from the from the knee up. All right. It's all low stuff. So it's a cool, cool shot. And then the last one I'll tell you about is. And this is great if you have books or products and things, physical stuff like that is a slow orbit. So this is where you you mount your book, you know, standing up or something and you get fairly close and you, you go as far left as you can or right, whichever way you want to orbit. And then you move slowly around your book or whatever product you're looking at, as far as you can get to the other side, you don't have to go 360 degrees, but it's easy to get 180 degrees right in front of you.

[00:11:47] Just try to keep it the same distance away from your subject, and that'll be a really cool shot for you. So. So those are some gimbal moves that you can do without moving your feet. Part two we're going to show you a way to walk so you can make some other really spectacular shots while moving with the gimbal. But you know like I said, if you jump directly to that, it's pretty tough because there's controls on the gimbal that make it do certain things, and you have to set the app properly. So it's good to do the beginner ones first to get a handle on these things that it'll do, or you'll be in the middle of a shot and hit the wrong button, or you won't hit a button, or you won't have a set up properly for that kind of shot. So I'm giving you the beginner stuff. And for all the major brands, there's tons and tons of YouTube videos showing you the shots, showing you the results of the shots and then showing you how to do the shot. So now we'll be glad to do it here if you come to our video weekend. But if you don't and you just want to get your feet wet with this. So like I said, the DJI seven by itself is on sale for 89 bucks or is half the price of when I bought the, uh, the mobile three and the seven will do more stuff. Okay, so, uh, another little thing about it, when you use a mobile phone gimbal, you have to before you start shooting, every one of them will have a way for you to balance your camera.

[00:13:18] See, because there's little motors in your gimbal that turn things. And so, uh, if your phone is out of balance, you'll you burn your motors out. So what you do is you hold on to your. In my case, anyway, you hold on to it, you put it in the cell phone clamp, and then you just move it left and right a little bit until it doesn't move it. If you move it too far one way, it just flops over and so you got to move it back the other way a little bit. And then when it balances, you're good. And you're not putting extra effort or extra work on those motors that are tiny but powerful, but you don't want to put extra strain on them. So that's balancing your cell phone. But anyway, whatever, whatever gimbal you get will have the instructions on how to do that for that gimbal. Okay. So check out my mentor program. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com if you want hands on training with this. Come check out my video. Weekends through the weekend and we will help you with all this stuff. All right. Next episode is part two is going to be the more fancy gimbal shots where you're moving. And you can do some really spectacular stuff. All right. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.