 Today I'll be testing 10 viral video hacks I've seen on social media to see if they actually work or just make you look ridiculous. Hey, it's Herman here again with Artlist and I've always been skeptical about tricks and hacks that would get millions and millions of views. But being a creator means learning new things and keeping up with modern techniques. That's why I'm willing to be the guinea pig today and spend my own precious time to find out if these work so that you don't have to. Oh my gosh, my camera. Now it's gonna be a mix of tricks that you can do with your camera, your smartphone, or both. Click that like button on this video and let's get into it. Yo, it's Herman here in the heart of Vancouver downtown right now. We have Emmy behind the camera. She's gonna be our BTS today. And we're gonna be trying trick number one, which is the viral phone hack where you change the exposure and it looks like the sun is going up, looks really sick, looks really easy to do. And we're gonna find out if it actually works as simple as it does. We're going to go into our camera settings, go into video mode, and we're gonna set this down and we're gonna hope that this is not gonna fall over the ledge because I cannot afford a new phone. I'm supposed to hold down and then I'm supposed to bring down my exposure all the way as low as I can. I feel like I want this to be darker, but I can't get it any darker on the Samsung phone, but we're going to actually just record it and give it a shot. So that didn't work out. And I think it's because of the limitation of my phone. Now in the TikTok itself, they do use an iPhone, so we're gonna use Emmy's iPhone. Thankfully, she is an Apple user and not like me who is not on the dark side. We hold that down and then we bring the slider all the way down. Oh, this is looking way better already. We're gonna hit record and then we're gonna bring that slider up very slowly. That is so much better. Apparently on iPhones, you can go much darker and I think that it really sold the effect over here. Would I do this again? I definitely would if I switched over to Apple. I'm not doing this again with my own phone. Now, last year I bought a motorized slider. The biggest mistake in my life because they're gonna just use a table, right? Well, let's find out. Let's fold this. We're gonna put our DSLR on top of it and I think we're gonna push it so it starts all the way over here and with one hand. Okay, two hands. I'm gonna grab the towel and then slowly pull it and I'll see how it looks like. It's pretty good. I think the only problem is that it will kind of like fidget a little bit. What if I just use the full length of the towel? Dude, this is solid. Let's see if it works shooting on my phone. Hit the record button and let's pull. That's so cool. I feel like I'm watching some sort of like professional real estate video from my own home. I'd buy this property. I can't hit. I'm still renting. But if you're looking for a cheap and efficient solution to add some camera movement while you're doing B-roll at home, then this is amazing. Be gone, slider. You will have been replaced. Let's not damage it. It was kind of expensive. All right, so for this next trick, we are gonna be feeling like we're back in kindergarten because we're gonna grab some color markers and draw all over a lens. Now, of course, we're not drawing directly on the lens because that would be insane. So we're gonna use plastic wrap just like what they're doing. Now, I'm not at home where it's convenient for me to go into the kitchen cupboard and grab some plastic wrap. So I just wrapped it around my water bottle and we're gonna put some over our lens so that it's safe to color in this harsh, windy, Vancouver environment. Just like this, so it's nice and secure. We're gonna grab the tool to make this trick shine. The set of markers that I always dreamed of having as a kid. Let's do half blue and the other half red. Let's record something and see what it actually turns out looking like. This is a really cool effect. I can actually see the hint of blue and a bit of the red over here. Honestly, I was expecting this to look a lot worse. I think this makes it a really cheap and easy filter that you can do at home without dropping money on actual filters, which I usually have on camera. Now, would I do this trick again? I think I would because this actually lets me change different colors depending on the marker I use. So I used red and blue, but you can always use something like green and purple and get a really stylized, dreamy glow effect. You should definitely try it out. This gets a Herman seal of approval. You can also use this hack for black and white photography where different colors accomplish different things. Orange can smoothen skin tones and red can darken the sky in landscape shots. Now, I don't normally shoot black and white, but this might make me reconsider. Now, this one looks simple enough to do if you don't mind your phone screen being cracked. Because what if I want to shoot this epic slow-mo with no beds around as my crash pad? If you've got a pile of bubble wrap, you can probably use that. If you've got a friend who's great at football, you can just ask them to catch your phone. If you're like me after losing an argument, you can use what you're sleeping on that night. OK, so instead of falling, I'm planning to throw these playing cards while I throw my phone because I'm just getting too old to be falling on my spine. We're just going to go to slow motion like that. I don't know how I'm going to do this with one hand on the cards, one hand on the phone. And then I just chuck it, right? Let's go. I'm a little nervous. I feel like when I drop this phone, I'm going to break the phone. I've got a crash pad. It's OK. I've got the sofa. Oh, I've got to stop recording. Well, let's quickly see how it turned out. Yeah, not so good. So, I'm going to play a little game called 52 Pickup. How about I just try it while I throw my phone? This will be my crash pad. Well, I didn't work out, did it? Maybe I'm just really bad at throwing. I was picked last in basketball all the time. At this point, I'm convinced that he had a friend help him just pull the phone back because there's no way you can just throw the phone and have it facing towards you the entire time. I think that this hack is not as easy as it looks. I personally would not do it again. This is how much money we are saving today by taping some fishing wire over our lens, assuming that it actually works. So we've got fishing wire, we've got tape, and this is my janky anamorphic lens. Let's find out if it'll flare the same way that the $40,000 lenses would as well. You see a little bit of flaring, which is nice. I wish it would run completely across the screen, but given how this is such a cheap and easy hack, I think this actually ended up turning out pretty good. So it worked on the camera, but let's try it on my phone camera and see if I can get the same results. I don't know if it's going to work. I've never tried it before. I've never tried any of these hacks before, actually. So hopefully it's going to be as simple as taking the fishing wire and tape from my camera and just transferring that over to my phone. I do feel like there's a little bit too much of flaring, but if you're going for a dreamy effect, I think it doesn't hurt to try it. So if you're looking for anamorphic flares without breaking a piggy bank or taking on a mortgage, then I think this is a hack that is definitely worth trying. Give it a go. All you got to do is buy some fishing wire and tape and you've got a Hollywood look. Man, I'm excited to try this next one because it looks like such an easy way to add texture to your background with just a light source. The hack is to make your own Cucolores. Cucolores? Cucolores. Everyone just calls them cookies. And today we're going to be making it out of a cardboard box. Time to find out if this thing actually works the way that it is intended. We're just going to mount it on the C stand. We have a light. Oh, that is very, very bright. Cardboard was a little bit heavier than I thought. And if I sit up here, honestly, it looks really good. I'm really impressed just looking at the monitor. I feel like I'm definitely going to keep using this. Now, the only gripe I have is that because it's handmade, you can see how crooked the lines are. But if you actually take your time to cut it out and make it nice and neat, I can see this being a great, practical way to save a lot of money. And I hope you're as impressed as I am. So we're on to our next hack. And this one also involves your phone. I have not used the panorama mode before on my phone. But this trick has convinced me that it could be my new favorite mode if this hack actually works. Let's switch over to panorama mode and then we're going to pan all the way up. Let's take a look at this photo. It's not the most flattering angle. So I don't think I will be using this trick again. I'm going to call this a pass. Maybe it just has to do with my phone. That's the fun in trying these tricks out, right? We find out that things work and that they fail miserably. This trick uses a simple match cut in which you cut during the motion to hide the cut. But I imagine that this is going to require a few attempts to get it looking right. I've got huge respect for the amount of patience behind a lot of TikTok videos that use this technique in a sequence. I mean, it seems simple enough. I just have to mount this onto my tripod and let's back that up. So if I jump over here, the phone just fell. Phone's going to be over here. The light's going to be over here. I know where I'm going to jump. So let's throw the jacket a few times. That's one, two, three. Am I even throwing it high enough? I think I should do like variations, right? So some of them are a little bit higher. Some of them are a little bit lower. So I have a range. I'm going to keep this rolling and not touch it, not move anything. But I'm going to wear this jacket now. I can find the other sleeve and we're going to jump in that spot where I've been throwing my jacket. I think I pulled something. Let's see how it turned out in the edit. So does this hack work? You tell me in the comments because I'm fairly happy with it. I feel like I would definitely do this again. I've done match cuts in the past, although it does take some patience to get the right shot. I think that it's a cool and simple trick that you can do with just your phone in your pocket. You set it up wherever you are and you can do this for your next take talk. I am kind of skeptical about this. I'm mostly concerned that I'm not going to tie this properly around my camera and it's going to fall, it's going to break and we're going to be recording a very unhappy crying Herman. How's this going to work? I'm going to do something that's a little bit safer. We're going to put the handle on like this and we're going to make sure that the belt will at least loop around this handle a little bit. So I think it goes around like this and we'll do it around the camera. Is this secure? Oh my gosh, my camera. It's a little crooked. That's okay. We're going to hit record where we get then you know what, if I put it on this dirt at least there will be a little bit for it to fall. We got a belt cam. Okay. I don't think it was meant to do that. So I'm just going to do a really simple slider shot. I don't know how to feel about this. It could be the technique that I lack or it could be the hack. I wouldn't do it again but you guys can try it in the comments and let me know. That was a really weird hack. So if you ever find your shots looking really bland and boring then adding reflections is your quick and fastest way to make your shot look interesting. All you have to do is pretend that you drink a healthy 3.7 liters of water a day. Because we're in Vancouver, I don't even need this. There are puddles literally everywhere that I can use as a reflection but if there's a specific spot that you want reflection like for example, maybe like over here somewhere we're going to just create a reflection on our own by pouring some water like this. So now we have a lovely little reflection over there. Record. So unfortunately, I feel like the puddle was drying up really quickly so we don't get any cool reflections anymore. So with a water bottle it really depends on the climate and temperature you're at. I would say just have like a lot of water pour it out and then quickly get your shot for a video. I think you need something a little more rounded. So this is the biggest puddle that I can find and I think that it covers more surface area and it actually looks a lot better and I don't have to worry about it drying up because it's quite wet. That's a pretty cool shot. Now we know reflections always make things look cooler on camera. Would I do this again? Definitely. I would definitely get something bigger than what I was using earlier. You're just keeping your backpack and you're ready to make cool looking shots. There you have it. Hacks tested in the real world to find out if they're actually useful to you. Now let us know in the comments if there are more hacks that I should try out. Whether these worked out the way I thought it would or wouldn't it was a lot of fun to try out and I think that's the most important part of being a creator. Even if these tricks look really silly at first this must look so stupid. I think it's important to know them just in case your plan A fails. We constantly problem solve as creators and sometimes it calls for improvising on the spot. There have been countless situations where I had to get crafty because the proper equipment was out of my budget. This lets you learn what the tools accomplish and act as backup for super sticky situations. Now if you wanna see more videos like this or tutorials or challenges that we take on then make sure to subscribe to the Artless channel so that you don't miss the next video. Thank you all for watching and I'll see you in the next one.