How to Film a GRWM Video on Your Phone (2026)
Put the phone on a tripod at eye level, right beside the mirror and 60 to 90 cm from your face. Face a window or put one soft light behind the phone, switch the ceiling light off, then lock focus, exposure and white balance on your bare face before you start. Record the whole routine as one long take. A GRWM (get ready with me) video is a talking head that keeps changing: your hands move, products go up to the lens, the colour of your face changes on purpose, and a hairdryer drowns your voice. Every setting below exists to stop the phone reacting to those changes.
Where should you put the phone to film a GRWM?
Mount the phone at eye level, as close to the side of the mirror as the tripod allows, with the lens 60 to 90 cm from your face. The position matters because a GRWM creator looks at the mirror for most of the video. If the phone sits 1 m to the left of the mirror, the viewer watches the side of your face for twenty minutes. If the phone sits on the mirror's edge, every glance at the mirror lands a few degrees off the lens and reads as eye contact.
- Height: lens level with your eyes. A phone on the desk looking up at you is the most common GRWM mistake, and it shows the underside of your chin while you blend foundation.
- Distance: 60 to 90 cm on the main 1× lens. Closer than about 50 cm and the wide lens stretches your nose and forehead, which is the last thing a makeup video needs.
- Angle: do not let the lens see the mirror. A mirror in frame shows the phone, the tripod and your light, and autofocus will try to focus on the reflection.
Should you use the front camera or the back camera for a GRWM?
Use the back camera when you have a mirror, and the front camera only when the phone screen is your mirror. On almost every phone the back main camera has the larger sensor, so the back camera holds skin texture and colour better in indoor light, which is exactly the light a GRWM is filmed in. The front camera's advantage is that you can see the frame while you film, and that matters more than image quality if you have no mirror at all.
A practical split: do the makeup in the mirror with the back camera recording beside the mirror, and check framing with a two second test clip before the first product goes on. Some Android camera apps apply skin smoothing or face retouching to the front camera by default. Switch it off before a GRWM, because smoothing blurs the exact texture a foundation review is trying to show.
What light makes makeup look the right colour on camera?
One large soft light in front of your face, from a single colour of source. Face a window during the day with the phone between you and the glass, or put a softbox or ring light directly behind the phone at eye level or slightly above. Then turn off every other light in the room.
The rule about one colour of source matters more in a GRWM than in any other talking head. A warm 2700K ceiling bulb mixed with blue daylight from a window makes one cheek look a different shade from the other, and viewers will read that as your foundation being the wrong match. Overhead light is the other problem: a ceiling light puts shadows in the eye sockets, so the eyeshadow you spent ten minutes on reads as tired eyes. Lighting a video in a room with no windows covers building a soft light out of household lamps when the bathroom has no window.
A ring light gives the round catchlight people associate with beauty content and a flat, even face. A ring light works, but it flattens contour, so pull the ring light 20 to 30 cm to one side of the lens if the video is about sculpting or contour.
What camera settings should you lock before filming a GRWM?
Lock white balance, exposure and focus, all three, on your face before any product goes on. A GRWM breaks the phone's automatic settings in three predictable ways:
| Setting | Lock it at | What auto does wrong in a GRWM |
|---|---|---|
| White balance | About 5600K for daylight or a daylight LED, about 3200K under warm bulbs | Shifts colour when you hold up a coloured palette or pull on a bright top, so your skin changes shade mid-video |
| Exposure | Set on your bare face, then locked | A white towel, a white tub or a pale outfit in frame makes the phone darken your whole face |
| Focus | Locked on your eyes | Jumps to the brush or product every time one comes towards the lens, then hunts back |
| Frame rate | 30 fps (25 fps if you edit in 25) | Auto frame rate modes can drop the frame rate in dim rooms |
| Shutter | 1/50 or 1/100 on 50 Hz power (Australia, UK, Europe), 1/60 or 1/120 on 60 Hz (US, Canada) | The wrong shutter under LED or fluorescent light rolls dark bars across the frame |
On an iPhone in the built-in Camera app, touch and hold your face in the preview until AE/AF Lock appears; that locks exposure and focus. Locking a white balance number and a shutter speed takes a manual camera app. Manual camera controls explained goes through ISO, shutter and Kelvin in plain terms, and filming workout videos has more on the flicker bars that LED lights cause.
How do you show a product close up without the focus hunting?
Hold the product beside your cheek, at the same distance from the lens as your face, so the locked focus already covers the product. Pushing a lipstick 15 cm from the lens puts the product out of the locked focus range and leaves a blurred blob on screen. If the product label needs to be legible, film the label as a separate insert afterwards: phone 20 to 30 cm from the product, focus on the label, 3 to 5 seconds per product. Inserts also give the edit somewhere to cut when you fumble a step.
How do you get clean audio while doing your makeup?
Film in a bedroom, not the bathroom, and get a microphone within 30 cm of your mouth. Tiles, glass and a hard ceiling make a bathroom the most echoey room in most houses, and the phone's built-in microphone at 80 cm records more echo than voice. A clip-on lavalier on your top works until you change outfits, so for an outfit change either re-clip it on camera or switch to a small shotgun mic on the phone. Lavalier vs shotgun mic for phone creators compares the two.
Two habits fix most GRWM audio. Stop talking while the hairdryer or straightener is running, because no phone microphone separates a voice from a hairdryer, and the edit will speed through those sections anyway. And if talking while applying eyeliner wrecks both the talking and the eyeliner, film the routine silent and record a voiceover afterwards in a quiet room. Plenty of GRWM creators work this way.
How do you frame a GRWM so one take works vertical and wide?
Keep your head and both hands inside the centre third of a wide frame, and leave a hand's width of space above your hair. A 9:16 vertical crop taken from a 1920×1080 wide frame keeps 607 of 1920 horizontal pixels, which is 31.6% of the width. Anything outside that centre strip disappears from the vertical version: a hand reaching for a product on the bench, a hairdryer held out at arm's length, a curling wand at the side of your head.
The other direction loses more. A 16:9 crop from a vertical 1080×1920 frame keeps 31.6% of the height, so a vertical GRWM cropped wide cuts off either your hair or your hands. Why cropping vertical to horizontal looks wrong shows the maths with examples.
A GRWM is a natural fit for two platforms at once: a long, chatty version for YouTube and a fast cut of the same routine for TikTok, Reels or Shorts. If you know you want both, record both in the same take. That is what I build ContentCam for: one recording saves a 9:16 vertical file and a 16:9 wide file, on iPhone and Android, so neither version is a crop of the other.
How do you film a long GRWM without the phone stopping?
Start with a full battery rather than charging during the take, take the phone out of any thick case, and record at 1080p at 30 fps rather than 4K. Charging adds heat, and heat is what stops a long recording. A full routine runs well past the length of most short videos, and 4K roughly quadruples the pixels the phone has to process and store compared with 1080p, so 4K is the setting that fills storage and warms the phone fastest. Check free storage before you start and close other apps. Recording long video on iPhone without overheating has the full checklist.
What is the check before you press record?
- Phone at eye level, beside the mirror, 60 to 90 cm from your face, mirror out of shot.
- Ceiling light off, one soft source in front of you.
- White balance, exposure and focus locked on your bare face.
- Shutter matched to your mains power: 1/50 in Australia, 1/60 in the US.
- Microphone within 30 cm of your mouth, hairdryer sections planned as silent.
- Products lined up within reach of the centre third of the frame.
- A two second test clip recorded and played back with the sound on.
Common questions
What is the best camera to film a GRWM on a phone? The back main camera, on the 1× lens, with the phone beside your mirror. The back camera has the better sensor on almost every phone. Use the front camera only when the phone screen is the mirror you are doing your makeup in.
Why does my makeup look a different colour on camera? Usually automatic white balance or mixed light. Auto white balance shifts as coloured products and clothes enter the frame, and a warm bulb mixed with window light tints each side of your face differently. Lock white balance and light the face from one source.
How do I stop my phone focusing on my makeup brush? Lock focus on your eyes before you start. On an iPhone in the Camera app, touch and hold your face in the preview until AE/AF Lock appears. Then hold products beside your cheek rather than out towards the lens.
Should I talk while doing my makeup or add a voiceover? Either works. Talking live feels more natural for a long YouTube version. A voiceover recorded afterwards gives cleaner audio and lets you concentrate on the eyeliner. Never talk over a hairdryer.
Can I film one GRWM for both TikTok and YouTube? Yes, if both versions are planned before you film. Keep your head and hands in the centre third of a wide frame so a vertical crop works, or record a vertical and a wide file at the same time so neither version loses anything to a crop.
Try ContentCam free. Records vertical and horizontal at the same time, with manual white balance, exposure, ISO and shutter, so one GRWM take covers TikTok and YouTube. On iPhone and Android.
Related: filming a talking head at home · lighting a video with no windows · filming UGC in vertical and horizontal from one take · lavalier vs shotgun mic