How to film a crypto trading reaction video

First, the line you don’t cross

Of every format in this category, the reaction video is the one most likely to be taken as real, because the genre runs on “this actually happened”. So say that it didn’t, in the video itself: a line of on-screen text, the title, the first words of the caption — not a reply buried in the comments. Don’t present the position as yours, and never put a referral code, a sign-up link or an invitation to join anything under a reaction to a trade that was never placed. Presenting a simulated app as a genuine record is against our acceptable use policy. On the free tier every screen, the share card and the order receipts included, carries a SIMULATED · POZER.COM mark, which does some of that work for you.

Decide what drives the numbers

The futures terminal can run on the real market or entirely on your script, and the choice shapes the whole video.

Live

With Live prices on, which is the default, BTC, ETH, SOL and the other coins the price feed carries are marked at the current spot price, with their real 24-hour moves. The position is still yours — side, size, leverage and entry are all typed — so the profit or loss is fiction applied to a real price, and you’re reacting to whatever the market does next. The app refreshes about once a minute and whenever you pull down on the terminal. Prices are cached for up to a minute, so pulling again straight away usually shows the same number. Live is for the watch-along, where the uncertainty is the content; it won’t do anything on cue.

Scripted

With Live prices off, each position shows a Mark price and a 24h change % field, and nothing moves until you move it, apart from take-profit alerts if you switch them on, which book into Realised PnL and equity. Script the arc as states — calm, worse, the reveal — and change the numbers between takes with the Edit button on your phone, which the installed app brings up when you hold two fingers on the screen. It’s the only way to react to a specific number: a liquidation, a round figure, a punchline. A market the feed doesn’t carry, such as a coin you made up, is never priced live whichever way the switch is set, which lets one scripted market sit beside live ones.

A scripted arc: the round trip

The most relatable reaction in trading isn’t the liquidation. It’s the winner that gives everything back, and it shows what 20x does in both directions. Take the default BTC long — 3.2 BTC at 20x from 71,400 — with live prices off, and film three marks, one per take:

1. 79,312. PNL (ROE) +221.62%, and +$25,318 on the card. The reaction is smug.
2. 73,000. +44.82%. The reaction is a man explaining that it will come back.
3. 70,500. −25.21%. The reaction is the video.

The slide from the first mark back to the entry is about 10%, and at 20x that’s the whole +221% gone. A viewer who trades will do that sum in their head, and it holds.

What can move on camera

A reaction needs a reveal, and the reveal has to be something the screen can do in the take.

• Pull to refresh. Drag down on the terminal and a spinner appears at the top. It holds for about half a second after the prices land, so it reads as a refresh on camera. It works on the terminal, not on the Markets or Account screens.
• A change of market. The Markets tab lists every market on your positions list; tap one and the terminal reframes around it — header, chart, ENTRY and LIQ.
• An order. Buy / Long or Sell / Short slides up a sheet with a keypad. The receipt waits for Done rather than disappearing, so you decide when the shot ends, and a close prints what it realised.
• The account. Balances, beside Positions, sums it up: portfolio value, deposited margin, unrealised PnL, margin used and account leverage.
• The share card, from the Share button on each position: the biggest number in the app, and a natural last frame.

What doesn’t move: the candles don’t tick between refreshes, the Trades tape doesn’t stream, and the funding countdown is text. A shot of someone watching the chart is a still screen, so cut to the face while you wait and come back to the screen for the change.

Three camera setups

Face cam and screen recording

The cleanest version records the phone’s screen with its built-in recorder while a second camera films your face, and puts them together in the edit: picture in picture, a split screen, or cutting between the two. The app makes no sound of its own, so sync on a tap: the frame where your finger lands on Buy / Long in the face cam is the frame where the sheet starts to rise in the recording. A recording also picks up your status bar, so check the time and the battery before you start. The Edit button won’t be in it: the installed app keeps it hidden until two fingers are held still on the screen, which a thumb resting on the glass can’t do. It does show, with a hint, for a few seconds the first time the app is opened, so do that before the take. Record from the home-screen app rather than a browser tab, where the button stays visible.

Over the shoulder

One camera behind you, the phone in frame and the side of your face at the edge of the shot. There’s nothing to sync and it feels candid, but the screen has to be legible to the lens: brightness up, the phone tilted away from lights, and a framing tight enough that the number you’re reacting to can be read.

Phone to camera

The classic: you hold the phone up to the lens — “look at this” — then lower it and react. Set the screen before you lift it, and hold it still for a full second so the viewer can read what you’re showing.

Build the reveal in four beats

Most reaction videos run the same way: the setup, the wait, the reveal and the reaction. The setup is the beat people skip, and it’s the one that gives the reaction its meaning. A viewer has to know the entry before they can feel the price move away from it, and the position card holds all of it in one shot: the LONG 20x badge, size, entry, mark, liquidation price, margin and PNL (ROE).

Then give each reveal one number and put it where the eye goes. The equity strip under the buttons — Equity, uPnL, Margin — is the one line that sums the account. PNL (ROE) at the foot of each position card is the percentage. The share card is the largest version of both. Pick one per reveal; a viewer reading three numbers isn’t watching your face.

And say the number the screen says. If the voiceover is “down forty grand”, the uPnL in the strip has to read something close to −$40,000; if it’s “up two hundred percent”, the card has to show it. A reaction that disagrees with its own screen is the quickest way to lose a viewer who trades, and the screen is the half you can fix before you roll.

When the reaction is to a liquidation

The most common reaction in this genre is to being liquidated, and the app won’t liquidate you: a position stays open at whatever price you type. You set the state before the line; closing the position books the loss to the account. The liquidation skit guide walks through those states and the three details that give a fake one away. For a reaction built on leverage itself — 100x and a one-percent candle — see the leverage parody ideas.