An easy, beginners guide to making your iPhone videos more cinematic

If you're shooting people, hold the camera high to avoid the unflattering up-the-nose view

Given how much time I spend obsessively hate-watching crappy videos on Instagram and Snapchat these days, you’d think I’d be sold on the whole vernacular of smartphone video. In truth, I’m anything but.

Look, I’m fully aware that the off-the-cuff footage we record with our phones isn’t supposed to be perfect. I get that the shaky shooting style conveys immediacy and realism. But I’m also concerned that we’re trading our memories—hazy and fallible yet rich—for snippets of digital mush. We will end up with years of babies’ first steps, girls’ nights out and improbable holes-in-one preserved as nothing more than jittery