Chris Goor was standing behind a camera at the Queen’s funeral, working for the BBC, when he did something the audience would never consciously notice. As presenter Kirsty Young delivered her final piece to camera, Goor eased the lens in ever so slightly, responding to the weight of what she was saying in real time. The viewer felt it without seeing it. That instinct, built over 25 years as a TV cameraman, is exactly what a phone on a tripod cannot replicate. And now he is teaching solo creators how to fake it anyway.
Why the same framing in every shot gives you away
The tell when someone films themselves is never really the camera. It is the framing. Same distance, same shot size, video after video, because there is simply nobody there to change it. A professional operator reads the emotional temperature of a line and lets the frame respond to it. When a subject leans into a secret, the shot gets tighter. When a scene needs establishing, it pulls wide. That push and pull is what makes professional footage feel alive.
Goor’s workaround starts in 4K. He shoots everything at 4K resolution and delivers in HD, which leaves him enough room to scale into a shot during the edit, easing in gently on a line that carries weight. He caps the digital push at 200 percent, beyond which the image starts to fall apart. Used sparingly, one or two moves in a longer piece, it replicates the feeling of a slow zoom without the background shift of a true dolly. As he put it about the edit-suite version of his BBC instinct: ‘That’s me being my own camera operator after the fact, when I can actually see the shot, which I can’t do when I’m stood in it.’
The same approach doubles as a rescue tool. Fluff a line and re-record it, then in the edit, jump into a tighter shot for a sentence or two before cutting back out. The mistake disappears and the cut reads as a deliberate shot change rather than a jarring jump cut.
The five shots that make any cut work
Beyond the 4K scaling trick, Goor lays out a framework that costs nothing but attention. Every shoot needs five shot sizes: a wide shot to establish location, a long shot from head to toe, a mid-shot from the waist up (which he calls the home position), a mid-closeup from the chest up for moments that matter, and a closeup where the face fills the frame. He recommends using the closeup almost never. ‘It’s very intimate,’ he notes, ‘and we’ve only just met.’
For creators shooting vertical content on a phone, he adds one rule that he says rarely gets mentioned: keep the eyeline at a consistent height across every shot size. When eyes jump from the top of the frame to the bottom between cuts, viewers feel fatigued without knowing why, and they scroll on. Consistency in eyeline is free and invisible when done right.
For framing accuracy when shooting alone, Goor uses the Camera Control app on his Apple Watch to see a live feed from where he is actually standing. Before that, he describes a cycle of setting a mark, recording a test clip, watching it back, adjusting, and starting again. For those without a smartwatch, a wireless monitor runs 60 to 70 pounds, or the free version: build a physical mark into the environment, a railing to lean on, a bench to sit at, a gate to stand beside. If that is the only place you can logically be, you know you are in frame.
The railing nobody leaned on yet
A wooden railing sits at the edge of the shot, positioned there specifically so a person leaning on it is guaranteed to be framed correctly.
The shot size should match the intensity of what is being said. A big point wants to be tighter. A light line shot too close feels, as Goor puts it, ‘a bit bananas.’ Get the five shots right first, then add the moves. Subtle wins.
