How and what to shoot VK clips | Articles | Photo, video, optics, Telephones, Audio and video equipment

VK clips are a rel­a­tive­ly new sec­tion of the social net­work famil­iar to every­one, which is worth pay­ing atten­tion to in 2022. Today, the total vol­ume of video views exceeds two and a half bil­lion per day. In fact, the clips are an ana­logue of Tik­Tok and Reels in the Impos­si­ble­gram. Read about what, how and what to shoot VK clips in this mate­r­i­al.

Start mak­ing clips before it becomes main­stream / Pho­to: unsplash.com

What are VK clips, why shoot them
What to shoot in VK clips so that the video gains views
How and what to shoot videos for VK clips
How to add a VK clip
How to get into the rec­om­men­da­tions of VK clips

Many social net­works today rely on video con­tent. VK is no excep­tion in this regard. He has been active­ly pro­mot­ing clips for the last year, and very suc­cess­ful­ly. If you look at the num­bers, in March, about a bil­lion peo­ple watched clips every day, today there are two and a half times more. This is a huge audi­ence, at least for this rea­son it is worth learn­ing how to shoot videos.

Clips are short ver­ti­cal videos. The allowed length is from 10 sec­onds to 1 minute if you work through the VK appli­ca­tion, and up to 3 min­utes if through the spe­cial VK Clips appli­ca­tion. The option is avail­able for both per­son­al pages and com­mu­ni­ties.

By default, the qual­i­ty of the video that the appli­ca­tion takes and with which the cam­era built into it will shoot is 60 FPS and Full HD res­o­lu­tion.

Before mov­ing on to the prac­ti­cal sec­tions, a few words about what to shoot for clips. With prac­tice, there will be no big prob­lems — the appli­ca­tion is quite intu­itive and easy to under­stand. Anoth­er ques­tion is what exact­ly to shoot so that the video becomes viral and pop­u­lar, gets into the rec­om­men­da­tions and gains mil­lions of views.

In order for the video to become pop­u­lar and viral, it is impor­tant to choose a clip for­mat that will be both pop­u­lar and suit­able for you at the same time. For exam­ple, videos with fun­ny pet tricks are very pop­u­lar among clips, but if you plan to shoot clips for your work page where you sell hand-knit­ted sweaters, then this infor­ma­tion will not help you. Espe­cial­ly if you don’t have pets.

What videos are pop­u­lar in VK clips:

• time laps­es and slow motion video;
• video memes (fun­ny videos from the series “me in the morn­ing, me in the evening”, “there are only two types of peo­ple / friends / clients / florists”, “typ­i­cal me / my hus­band / cat” and so on). Memes can be very dif­fer­ent depend­ing on the audi­ence you will be work­ing with;
• fun­ny pets;
• errors: a video where a per­son was car­ry­ing a hand­ful of box­es and acci­den­tal­ly dropped them will def­i­nite­ly be reviewed;
• instruc­tions on how to do some­thing with your own hands;
• back­stage (for pho­tog­ra­phers, for exam­ple, the for­mat “this is how the loca­tion looks like, and this is how the pic­tures from it” is suit­able);
• skits with inter­ac­tion between two peo­ple;
• cre­ation process­es: draw­ing, pho­to retouch­ing;
• med­i­ta­tive videos (the work of the milk pack­ag­ing con­vey­or, draw­ing geo­met­ric pat­terns with a stick on the sand, etc.);

Read also:

Time­lapse: how to shoot and assem­ble

It does­n’t have to be very direct. Mix sev­er­al ideas, incar­na­tions.

If, for exam­ple, you sell knit­ted sweaters, it is not nec­es­sary to knit them in every video or show them fin­ished. Such monot­o­ny can rather repel. But if you not only knit, but also breed cac­ti, you can knit a sweater for each cac­tus and record a video on how you dress them. Such con­tent is more like­ly to go viral.

Remem­ber that clips are a place where peo­ple come to have fun: relax, down­cast, laugh. Most like­ly, a seri­ous video on how to fill out tax returns cor­rect­ly, even if you give super-use­ful infor­ma­tion there, will not work. And here is a video about how you wash the tile with some home rem­e­dy, and it starts to shine — it will go with a bang.

These two ques­tions are close­ly inter­twined. First and most impor­tant: VK clips only pre­fer ver­ti­cal videos. This means that you can, in prin­ci­ple, add hor­i­zon­tal videos, but such videos are less pop­u­lar with the algo­rithm that makes rec­om­men­da­tions for users. Less peo­ple will see such con­tent — VK does not hide this.

The sec­ond fea­ture of the clips: The appli­ca­tion inter­face allows you to edit videos direct­ly inside the appli­ca­tion. That is, you can safe­ly shoot 5–10 frag­ments, and then com­bine them direct­ly in VK, with­out addi­tion­al edit­ing pro­grams. This is con­ve­nient in the sense that clips are sit­u­a­tion­al fast-con­sump­tion con­tent. Spend­ing a week on com­plex shoot­ing and post-pro­duc­tion is not very cost-effec­tive here. There­fore, very often filmed on a smart­phone.

Best of all, of course, if you use a phone with a good cam­era. For exam­ple, Huawei P40 Pro or iPhone 12 Pro Max. A selec­tion of the best cam­era phones can be viewed here. There are inter­est­ing mod­els in dif­fer­ent price cat­e­gories.

And the third fea­ture — very often the authors of the clips shoot them­selves. For these rea­sons, VK clips are often shot on a smart­phone. There­fore, it is often impor­tant that the front cam­era is good. For exam­ple, Xiao­mi 11T Pro and One­Plus 10 Pro. More infor­ma­tion about smart­phones with a good front cam­era can be found here.

Of course, you can shoot clips on cam­era and edit them in a famil­iar edi­tor. But the prob­lem is, most cam­eras are designed for shoot­ing hor­i­zon­tal video. This gives rise to sev­er­al dif­fi­cul­ties with work­ing with ver­ti­cal. First­ly, most DSLRs and mir­ror­less cam­eras do not record infor­ma­tion about the posi­tion of the cam­era in the meta­da­ta, they have all the video hor­i­zon­tal by default. This can cause some dif­fi­cul­ties dur­ing edit­ing: each frag­ment of the video will have to be turned over. Only a few mod­els of mod­ern mir­ror­less cam­eras record the posi­tion of the cam­era in the meta­da­ta. For exam­ple, Pana­son­ic Lumix GH 5 II.

In addi­tion, not all cam­eras have a built-in sta­bi­liz­er, which is nec­es­sary for shoot­ing with­out a tri­pod. And when work­ing with a steadicam, it is not always pos­si­ble to bal­ance it for shoot­ing ver­ti­cal video. There­fore, it is bet­ter to choose the option with a built-in sta­bi­liz­er. For exam­ple, Sony A7S III or Fuji­film X‑T4.

Although in video clips it is pri­mar­i­ly what hap­pens in the frame, and not how it is filmed, still try to do it with high qual­i­ty. Do not shoot against the light, if it is dark, use LED lights, turn on the sta­bi­liz­er. If you shoot a lot and tech­ni­cal qual­i­ty is impor­tant to you (for exam­ple, if you are a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, it would be strange to post frankly low-qual­i­ty clips on your page), you can pur­chase an exter­nal sta­bi­liz­er for your phone. If you are shoot­ing your­self, you should choose a good tri­pod with a smart­phone mount. Or it could be a self­ie stick or a mono­pod.

Have you cho­sen your equip­ment? You can start film­ing / Pho­to: unsplash.com

Remem­ber that clips allow you to edit video direct­ly on your phone, so you can safe­ly shoot sep­a­rate takes — then glue them togeth­er.

An impor­tant thing to keep in mind when shoot­ing videos is three sec­ond rule. VK clips are a small genre, you should not waste time on pre­am­bles, intros and cred­its slow­ly float­ing on a black back­ground, but imme­di­ate­ly start with the most inter­est­ing. You have three sec­onds to engage the view­er before they scroll through the video. So even dur­ing the shoot­ing you need to think about where you will start your video.

One of the main schemes of a suc­cess­ful video for clips is this: an intrigu­ing begin­ning and an unex­pect­ed denoue­ment. For exam­ple, you can work on con­trast:

We glue two video frag­ments: first, autumn leaves fly to clas­si­cal music for a cou­ple of sec­onds, then we show an assis­tant who col­lects these leaves on the near­est lawn in order to put them in the frame / Illus­tra­tion: Alisa Smirno­va, Photostore.Expert

If you shoot your­self, check out this text about shoot­ing self-por­traits. Many tech­niques are applic­a­ble when shoot­ing video.

You can add a clip to a per­son­al page or com­mu­ni­ty from a com­put­er or lap­top, or from a smart­phone.

When work­ing from a smart­phone, the icon hangs next to the but­ton with which you cre­ate a new post, from a com­put­er, you must first go to the desired sec­tion in the left menu / Illus­tra­tion: Alisa Smirno­va, Fotosklad.Expert

After that, the inter­face of the cam­era built into VK for shoot­ing clips will appear. It has a lot of pos­si­bil­i­ties:

In the set­tings item (1), you can dis­play a grid to make it more con­ve­nient to shoot and select the video qual­i­ty / Illus­tra­tion: Alisa Smirno­va, Fotosklad.Expert

The sec­ond icon (2) is respon­si­ble for enabling and dis­abling ges­ture con­trol. This func­tion is use­ful for those who shoot them­selves. You can start and stop the video by show­ing the cam­era two fin­gers.

Then you can set a timer (3) so that the cam­era auto­mat­i­cal­ly stops record­ing video after a while. This is con­ve­nient if you are, for exam­ple, film­ing your­self doing a som­er­sault or oth­er trick. Such a video will obvi­ous­ly not take a whole minute, you can set a timer for 20 sec­onds, so that lat­er you can trim the video less. You can also set a delayed start in this menu item.

The fourth icon (4) opens the video speed set­tings menu. The speed can be changed from 0.3 (slow­ing down by three times), to 3 (accel­er­a­tion by three times).

In the fifth para­graph (5), you can imme­di­ate­ly select music from the built-in library of sounds for your clip. Music can be added lat­er when edit­ing the video. The sixth item (6) allows you to add a ready-made, pre-record­ed video by select­ing it from the gallery, the sev­enth (7) turns on the flash­light, the eighth (8) changes the main cam­era to the front cam­era and back. The ninth one (9) brings up the mask selec­tion menu (10).

After you add a video from the gallery or shoot it, the clip edit­ing menu will open. First, the edi­tor will offer to trim your video, if nec­es­sary.

You can trim unnec­es­sary begin­ning and end using the blue slid­ers / Illus­tra­tion: Alisa Smirno­va, Photosklad.Expert

After you trim the video, you will be tak­en to the next edit­ing menu (in the illus­tra­tion above on the right). Pay atten­tion to the icon with a “+” sign — it is present in both menus. It allows you to add anoth­er video to the future clip.

In the sec­ond menu on the video, you can add a free­hand draw­ing (1), stick­er (2), text (3), one of the prod­ucts of your com­mu­ni­ty or per­son­al page (4), music (5). Also here you can mute or com­plete­ly remove the sound of your orig­i­nal video if you do not like it.

This is how the menus for adding music and stick­ers to VK clips look like. Among the stick­ers, it is pos­si­ble to add a hash­tag, a geo­t­ag, tag anoth­er user / Illus­tra­tion: Alisa Smirno­va, Fotosklad.Expert

Impor­tant things to keep in mind when edit­ing clips:

• Remem­ber the three-sec­ond rule and start with the essen­tials. If you can’t start with the most spec­tac­u­lar and inter­est­ing, add text like “wait for it”, “watch to the end” on the video to intrigue the view­er;
• Use cap­tions: if a per­son says some­thing in the frame, it is bet­ter to dupli­cate it with text. Some users watch such con­tent with­out sound. It is eas­i­er for them to scroll through your video than to turn on the sound;
• Geo­t­ags and marks of oth­er users are impor­tant, they should be added, this will help to gain addi­tion­al cov­er­age;
• Trend­ing music also helps to gain views — some­times users are look­ing for clips that were made to a cer­tain song.

After the clip is ful­ly assem­bled and designed, click the “Next” but­ton and you will be tak­en to the last menu for cre­at­ing a clip. Here you need to cre­ate a descrip­tion for it.

In this menu, you can come up with a cap­tion for the video, tag a user and add hash­tags and change the cov­er. Any frame from your video can act as a cov­er / Illus­tra­tion: Alisa Smirno­va, Fotosklad.Expert

Next, in the “Author” col­umn, you can choose where the clip will be pub­lished: on your per­son­al page or in one of the groups that you admin­is­ter. Here you can also choose whether to pub­lish the clip on the wall, and whether to allow duets.

A duet is when anoth­er user can take your clip or part of it, add some­thing to it and do some­thing of their own. Oth­er users, when watch­ing such a duet video, will see a link to the orig­i­nal.

Rec­om­men­da­tions are the main free fea­ture for pro­mot­ing clips. 97% of short video views come from rec­om­men­da­tions, so it makes sense to try to get into them.

The algo­rithms that make up the rec­om­men­da­tions work like this: they mon­i­tor the behav­ior of each user (whether he watched it, whether he began to review it, whether he liked it, whether he repost­ed it) and then offer him con­tent sim­i­lar to the one with which there were inter­ac­tions. In addi­tion, the algo­rithms find oth­er peo­ple with sim­i­lar inter­ests and show videos to them.

There­fore, it is impor­tant to receive a response from the view­er: likes, com­ments, repeat­ed views. The more of this there is, the more like­ly it is that the video will be viewed by more peo­ple.

Be sure to post your clips on the wall. This will help to get the first reac­tions among your already loy­al friends and fol­low­ers. Then the video will be more like­ly to get into the rec­om­men­da­tions;

Here are some tips to help you get rec­om­mend­ed:

• do not use water­marks in the video. If you use a ready-made video from anoth­er social net­work, get rid of the water­mark. Water­mark — a direct way to fly out of the rec­om­men­da­tions;
• video view­ing is very impor­tant — it is bet­ter to make videos short­er, but more inter­est­ing. The same applies to repeat views. Think about what con­tent your audi­ence will want to watch over and over again;
• turn to uni­ver­sal top­ics. Almost all peo­ple are inter­est­ed in fam­i­ly and friend­ships, chil­dren, ani­mals, mon­ey;
• cap­ture trends. In the clips sec­tion, there is a “trends” tab. There, the most pop­u­lar videos of recent times are laid out by top­ic. For exam­ple, now (rel­e­vant for Octo­ber 2022) there are videos on the top­ic “teacher of the year” among the trend­ing ones. There are all sorts of fun­ny videos about the hard life of teach­ers. And “sticky” — they col­lect videos about how peo­ple mow their lawns, squeeze cream on cup­cakes, cre­ate draw­ings, con­duct sim­ple phys­i­cal exper­i­ments, mix paint. You can go in there and not go out if you like to watch how some­thing hap­pens. A liv­ing illus­tra­tion that you can look at how oth­ers work for­ev­er;
• post con­tent reg­u­lar­ly. When your sub­scribers get used to the clips, they will be more will­ing to respond to them.