If you’ve ever clicked on a random Tweet and discovered a video of an unrelated K-pop star in the replies, then you’ve seen a fancam. These fancams are short videos created by fans to promote their faves, share new clips or respond to drama. It’s a new type of online currency, getting people thousands of views and followers and sometimes, the attention of their chosen celeb. Fancams are as mysterious as they are ubiquitous, all sharing similar qualities that make you think there must be a simple app that instantly generates them. On the contrary, fans put a lot of work into crafting these videos, finding different styles and trends to make them stand out. Here’s everything you need to know about making a fancam for Twitter or Instagram.
What Is a Fancam, Anyway?
Like many internet trends, it started with K-pop. Fans would take videos of live concert footage and share them on Twitter, often focusing on their favourite idol. For example, you can find plenty of Blackpink fancams that highlight member Jennie, zooming in on her during group choreography. Fans would share these on social media to promote their faves or share the latest concert footage (back when concerts were a thing). Fancams are typically set to music, with either the lyrics of the song or the beat emphasizing the transition between clips.
Over time, fancams have morphed. They are no longer are strictly in the K-pop domain and can feature a lot more than just concert footage. Twitter fans create fancams for Marvel actors, Riverdale characters, rappers, comedians and more. They’ll include scenes from shows, interviews or even paparazzi footage, and be about someone as popular and mainstream as Tom Hiddleston’s Loki, or as niche as director Bong-Joon Ho’s translator Sharon Choi. No subject is undeserving of a fancam!
Getting Started on Your Fancam
Pick Your Star
The first thing you need to do is select your subject. While anyone can be worthy of a fancam, you want to make sure there are ample clips to choose from. It’s best if you choose a celebrity that you are very familiar with, so you already have an idea of videos and scenes you can use.
Once you’re settled on a subject, start assembling your clips. Most fancams use footage taken from YouTube, TikTok, Twitter or Instagram. You can use a free video downloading service like allSMO to download your favourite clips from social media to your phone or computer.
Find The Right Audio
The song choice for your fancam is very important! If you’re trying to portray your character as empowering or a badass, you’ll want a different song than if you’re trying to show how cute or sweet they are. If you’re stuck for ideas, you can search “fancam audios” on YouTube and find suggestions.
Once you’ve found the song you like, download it as well.
Start Editing Your Video
There are a few different ways to edit your clips together into one video. You can use video editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro, or free software like Davinci Resolve, Kapwing, or even iOS apps like InShot. Whichever software you use will be slightly different. If there’s one you’re already comfortable with, use that!
Import Your Clips
Start by creating a new project, and then importing your video clips. You can then drag the clips from your media library into one timeline, where you can trim off the parts of the video you don’t want to use. Make sure to remove any bits of the video that don’t feature your fancam’s star, as well as any title cards from the YouTube channel that were inadvertently part of your video. Keep adding clips to the timeline until you have all the moments you wanted to include.
For your video’s length, it varies. Twitter user Cloudy suggests keeping your video to 25 to 45 seconds, while ninetiescelined has a 1-minute long Celine Dion fancam (with almost five thousand views, it’s worth noting). Twitter allows videos shorter than 2 minutes and 20 seconds, so as long as your fancam is under that mark, you’re golden.
Add Your Audio
Once you’re happy with the number of clips you have added, it’s time for the music. Add a separate audio track and line your music up with the video. Make sure to mute any sound that came in with your video clips — you only want the music from your audio track playing.
Once the music is in, you want to try and line up your video with the song. You can start a new clip each time there’s a beat to create a dramatic effect, or try to line up certain scenes with the music. If your video clip is too long for the song, you can go back through the editing process and either remove scenes or shorten them. On the flipside, if your video is shorter than the music you want to use, you can slow down the video clips.
Resize The Video
When you’re using a video for social media, it’s best to resize it to fit the correct dimensions so it doesn’t look too small or blown out on your phone. For Twitter or Instagram, you can use Instagram’s standard square size of 1080x1080 pixels. However, if you want to post this on TikTok or Instagram Reels, 1920x1080 pixels is the way to go.
Note: Some editing software will let you resize the video once you’re done, while others will have you set the canvas size at the start. Either way, make sure to adjust each clip to fit the canvas so that your star is centred.
Once you’re happy with the video, you can export it and save to your device!
Adding Filters
Adding filters to your fancam is optional, but most popular fancams will use a few. Sparkly effects, particularly on the person’s eyes, are very popular right now, as well as the retro video camera appearance.
The Reddit community r/kpophelp recommends the app Prequel to add filters to your video. Just upload your video to the app and add whichever filters you like best. The filter ‘Disco’ will add those iconic fancam sparkles, while ‘Miami’ will give the video a pinkish glow and ‘VHS’ gives the look of a 90s home movie.
You can also up the contrast on your video, sharpen it or add text. Some users will watermark their fancams by adding their Twitter handle — this will prevent people from stealing your video to repost as their own, and help drive traffic back to your Twitter profile.
Upload Your Video!
Once you’ve played with the filters and settings, your video is complete! Head to your social media account and post away. Congratulations, you’re now a part of stan culture. Feel free to drop it in the replies to Pop Crave, regardless of what they’re tweeting about — everyone else does.
