You've shot alone long enough to know the problem: you can't see yourself. Every fault you have lives in your blind spot — that's why it survived. A phone on a tripod is the cheapest pair of coach's eyes that exists, but only if the footage is actually readable. Most self-filmed archery clips aren't: handheld, half a body, three ends in one video, cut off right at the release. Five minutes of setup fixes all of it.
Safety first, always
Everything below happens from behind the shooting line, at a proper range with a safe backstop. The tripod, you, and everyone else stay behind the line whenever anything is being shot — no camera angle is worth bending that, and none of the good angles need to. Arrows only fly at a proper range. Full stop.
The setup that works
Tripod, not hands. A fixed, steady camera reads your body far better than a handheld one — analysis of your form depends on the camera not moving, and a friend's hands always move. A cheap phone tripod, or the phone propped against a quiver on a table, both beat any human holding it.
Whole body in frame, head to feet, for the entire shot. The story of a shot is written across the whole body — stance width at the floor, trunk lean in the middle, elbow line and head at the top. Crop the feet and you've deleted the stance; crop the head and you've deleted the anchor. Step back until everything fits with margin.
One arrow per clip. Tempting as it is to let the camera run across a whole end, a single shot cycle reads far better than six overlapping ones. One clip, one arrow, one clean story.
Start early, end late. Hit record before you raise the bow and keep rolling through the follow-through. The two most diagnostic moments in archery — the posture you set before the draw, and where your hands finish after the release — are exactly the moments casual clips cut off.
60fps if your phone has it. The release happens fast; extra frames are free evidence.
The two angles worth owning
Behind — camera directly behind you at shoulder height. This is the alignment angle: your shoulder line versus your hip line (the T of the shot), the draw elbow's line behind the arrow, and the follow-through. If you only ever film one angle, film this one.
Front-side — camera 45 degrees in front of you, on your bow side. This is the posture angle: stance, trunk lean, anchor area, and head stillness through the draw.
Each angle hides what the other reveals — behind can't see your posture lean or anchor; front-side can't judge your T or elbow line. Alternate them week to week and nothing gets to hide.
The drill — Video-Every-End Habit
Make filming structural instead of occasional: leave the phone on the tripod all session and film one arrow every end. Watching yourself between ends is the closest thing to a coach on your shoulder — faults get caught the session they appear, not the month after they've settled in. It's the habit that separates archers who plateau from archers who climb.
And those clips can do more than sit in your camera roll. Feed one to CoachVision and it reads the shot like a coach standing behind you — a measured read of your stance, alignment, elbow line, head stillness, and finish, from that single arrow. Tripod, one arrow, whole body, behind the line. Five minutes of setup, and your blind spot stops being blind.