r/FX3•
plastic_toast

How to make the FX3 look like a "phone video"?

Shooting on a Sony FX3 (and sometimes using my A7RV as a B-cam) mainly shooting DJs.

It's something I've pretty much cracked, and I'm normally in 24fps, 180deg shutter, adjust base ISO and ND filter to suit. Once done, edit clips, quick colour grade using a preset node tree (nodes for WB, minor exposure adjust, saturation, etc, then through a Phantom LUT) and it all looks good, nice and "cinematic". Clients are happy anyway.

Issue now is I've got someone asking me to do "UGC" (user-generated content) type videos that take things back to basics.

For some reason in the dance music world, over the past 18 months or so, DJs have become obsessed with the idea of multi-cam shoots with a cinematic look, perfect sound (directly recorded from the decks) all synced up. Me and the person in question (who is a social media ace in the dance music world) are in full agreement that this isn't ideal for audience engagement - it's like watching a professional film production or aftermovie, not an "in the moment clip".

So we're looking to buck the trend and make short "phone style" clips in-vouge again, but using a pro camera, because even a top end phone isn't as good as a "proper" camera.

Basically I'm wanting advice on settings for my FX3, to get straight-out-of-camera clips that can just be uploaded to social media right after, or possibly even during, a DJ's set.

So -

Resolution - obviously still 4k, though I'm open to hearing arguments in favour of 1080p.

Frame rate - what are we thinking is best here? 24fps is too "cinematic" so I'm thinking 30fps? 50/60fps even, or is that too far in the opposite direction?

Shutter speed - I'm guessing faster than 180deg/double-the-frame-rate? Advice needed there!

Picture Profile - normally I'm shooting in CineEI, slog3, 10bit 4:2:2, so not even using Picture Profiles. This is the big one I'm wanting tips on. Basically wants to be crisp, colourful but not too saturated, deep blacks, crisp whites, etc. As close to my normal colour grades without having to spend time grading, and instead getting decent results SOOC.

Sound - got this sorted but just mentioning it as someone will, quite rightly, say "remember for DJs, sound is the most important thing". Rode Videomic Pro on camera, and have a Zoom H4E that does 32bit float if I have the time to sync up audio, but even then we mainly want crowd/atmosphere/FX and pyro noise in there too. Again, we're moving away from clean productions and perfection. We want people to feel "in the moment" like they're on the stage with the DJ, or down in the crowd watching them.

Then I just need to nail my camera movement as I'm very much locked into the "DJ's videographer" style and again that's something we're trying to move away from, but that one is all on me!

Posted Jul 29, 2026, 12:59 PM UTC

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