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Cinema Language

Lesson 6 from: Introduction to HDDSLR Cinema

Vincent Laforet

Cinema Language

Lesson 6 from: Introduction to HDDSLR Cinema

Vincent Laforet

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Lesson Info

6. Cinema Language

Lesson Info

Cinema Language

Uh good morning, everybody thanks for being here. Thanks for coming on the internet I think the coolest comments that I read yesterday uh we're from people who actually stayed up the entire nine hours from start to finish I know when gentlemen stayed up watched with his wife the entire day not stop the coolest thing to see is to see that there were three thousand people pretty much the entire day and some spikes up from nine a m to around six or seven p m and that's that's pretty exciting I think this whole thing is really quite fascinating for for all of us and um there was a gentleman in denmark if I remember correctly who uh uh kind of signed off with us when we ended it was three or four a m where he was he said you know thanks very much uh I've been here the whole day and I'm gonna crash you know, he had a great time as well as another person who you know was just getting up while we were all going to sleep start seeing the rebroadcast of this so if you miss a section of this it i...

s viewing broadcast one more time so let's go ahead and jump into this um you know, I used to say I think this is one of the most exciting things I've done uh in that um educating people has always been an honor to get the chance to do that. The best gifts I've been given by a mentor was to get asked to teach other photographers what it is that I had learned from other photographers prior to me who had shared their knowledge with me, and we've always found that traveling around the country with all this year could be really prohibitive in terms of the cost in time energy effort. I know I work with marcus del negro, my first assistant, and he spent an entire week packing for this and made a number of phone calls to get a lot of this gear you're seeing here, and if you'd like to see more of this, we appreciate your support to keep everyone here working, doing this, and we're trying to kind of change the economic model so that you don't have to fly out to these workshops, pay a significant amount of money to attend them, and also to pay travel expenses, etcetera, not to mention that we have eight wonderful people here attending the class, but when you think about the amount of time and energy we put into this for eight people, um, the return on investment in terms of time and energy doesn't quite match. Where is here? We're talking to a few hundred people, or lf it's over a thousand yet? Um but watching this streaming what's at fifty twelve hundred fifty I heard fifties twelve hundred people that think that's that's the way things should go so we're going to jump into the presentation uh these two say we appreciate your support um I'm going to start off with a little kind of geeky toy that I think is absolutely fascinating a lot of you probably have seen time lapse uh video and uh we've gotta cool toy here that I just want to just point out we've got a cannon one demark for here with the fish I have fifteen millimeter lens and it's photograph it's taking a frame every seven seconds over the next two hours um there's one camera down here you'll notice it's connected to something pretty interesting and what this is here is a kessler crane will go ahead and talk about this more later in the day and show you the slide and where you can find out more information about it but kessler is k e s s as in sam sam l e r and this is a fantastic tool and what it does is it allows you to move the camera on a dolly track over time and you khun time how fast it makes that movement you can also uh pan and tilt the head and when we get the time lapse photography will can't discuss why you might want to do that s o this is camera a camera b is up above us right there uh and it's looking down upon us and that is a fixed camera att the end of a slider that's actually not moving and that is also photographing a still image every I think seven seconds as well and I think what you'll learn about time lapse is the key to me to good time lapse is moving the camera during the time lapse so hopefully we'll be able to show you both versions and talk about it later in the day if not tomorrow depending on how much time we have to assemble these obviously you're taking still images uh refused every seven seconds but as you stitch those together you're going to end up with a movie uh because you play those at much faster speeds and you can see time evolving you've all seen time lapse photography so I'm really looking forward to seeing how these things come out so that's what's going on the back that's what you're hearing clicking for let's go ahead and jump right into the keynote presentation um here we go that's my name by the way, if you wanted to check out more of my work I've shared some of this information in the past on my blawg blogged dot vincent law parade dot com and you can also follow me on twitter at at vincent law ferree very hard guy to find it's basically my full name on the block, on my website and on twitter, I think we've already been introduced to the presentation today and the clickers asleep there we go, and we're gonna talk about cinema language so that as you talk to other people in the motion picture industry or the documentary mystery, uh, you know how teo talk to them in their language, so they understand what you're talking about a cz we spoke a bit about this yesterday, being language could be quite different between photographers and editors on the photography still side and, uh, and videographers are filmmakers and their counterparts a lot of times were saying the exact same thing, but it's, like one chinese person speaking to a japanese person, uh, the language is completely different, and while they're saying the same thing, there's absolutely no correlation doing on there, and that will kind of get into that the first thing we're gonna talk about his shot selection. All right, so this is a very important concept. Excuse me, and the idea here is to be able to communicate to your team, to the people you're working with that goes the earpiece, what it is that you're looking for in terms of a shot, all right, I'm going to show you the first little interactive piece here. Uh this is some of the work that I've done and as you look through this uh two minute clip uh look at the different types of way the camera moves and we're going to talk about how to explain that other people are howto ask your crew to help you effectuate that specific move uh and what language you need and here we go ahead and slide over to the presentation so as you watch this obviously you'll notice the cameras either stationary it's moving in one direction or another and it's moving on different types of devices on uh what we're gonna talk about is different ways of communicating the desired result that you're looking forward to your crew wears a beautiful time lapse shot stars way wait all right so there you go what we're going to talk about today is pretty much every single shot in that selection of shots with the exception of how to do it with a helicopter we can't fit that in this room um this is american language there's a different ways of saying the same things obviously in depending on what country you're in but we're going to go and make it simple and start off with the term locked off shot and we're actually going to go for each and every single one of these terms and show you an example next so I'm just going to kind of run it through the language and give you very a brief description of it locked off shot basically a locked off shot is a static shot that's when the camera does not move uh, the easiest way to do that is to put your camera on a set of sticks or a tripod, uh, with the fluid head, and if you don't have any equipment, just put the camera down on the table and don't move it in effect. That is the most basic way of telling a story in filmic fashion, in that the camera itself is not moving it's what's happening in front of camera that's moving one of the very first films by the lumiere brothers, I believe, um, was a shot of the train and locomotive coming towards the camera that was locked off, and the first time it was shown in the theater, people actually ran out of the theatre as a train was racing towards the screen, the silver screen, because, as you can imagine, back then that he'd never seen anything like it, and even though they were watching a projected image and black and white, it got such an incredible reaction that people just raced out off the screen. I've got a feeling I'm not sure if the lumiere brothers, I'm sure I'll get to be corrected on here yesterday was a very long day, it started it, uh six a m and ended at uh almost five a m for me uh the next morning so, uh I'm gonna do the best I can today to say chipper and awake um so that's what a locked off shot ends then the next most basic piece of language that we use is a pan shot it's very funny it actually took me almost six months to say move up or move left or right and start using pan and tilt correctly uh as simple as it is for a filmmaker for photographer I don't think we really think about uh that language and you've got to really train yourself to say pan right which simply means move the camera and rotate it clockwise so from left to right or pan left which is rotated counter clockwise that's that's simple as it is there's no other movement other than a left or right move on the camera, then there's a tilt which is to tilt the camera up so you look up towards the sky from a fixed point and then you tilt down tto look down towards your shoes so if you talk to anyone in the motion picture industry and you say I'd like you to pan right, they know exactly what you mean and they're going to the best that they can to onley pan right and not have any vertical movement of any kind if you say I want you to pan left and tilt up, they're going to know you're basically doing a diagonal line from the bottom right to the top left of the screen and that's just a clear and concise way to communicate your crew. Uh, if you're doing a documentary or a sporting event that's happening live, you need as a director or as any crew member to communicate very quickly and concisely to your crew members. You can't say what the camera up a little bit or a little bit that way or come towards me. People don't always have a frame of reference or where you are relative to them. Uh, you said you see anything up there, go get that, you know, it doesn't quite work. You have to say, I want you to tilt up twenty degrees and right ninety and, uh, that's, a very simple thing for someone who has that kind of mind. I was, uh, aided in doing that in that I was flying with lots of helicopter pilots, so I learned to communicate with pilots. They're flying a moving helicopter and tell ahead of time because there's a delay in between the time that the words leave my mouth and reach the pilots ear and he or she has the time to make that correction on the helicopter you're always trying to think ahead of time so that you could be aligned perfectly at the perfect moment and you have to be pretty much start thinking about thirty seconds in advance then perhaps one of the most common film techniques is a dolly move um for those of you that have not heard of a dolly it's generally some sort of device with wheels that operates on some sort of track at times it can operate on a perfectly smooth surface um they make things called the micro dolly where she'll get into we have that here which is a very thin set of rails that you can carry they're very light and you could just place down on any flat surface and moved the camera toe actually slide the camera from left to right in a very smooth fashion uh dollies are great in that um that could be really quick tow lay down if it's a micro dolly for example and pick up the problem with dollies is that you have to have absolutely even ground otherwise if there's any bump in the ground that will be translated into the camera move you'll see the physical bump and move during that smooth gliding motion that is the negative of a dolly on the high end dollies when you use a fissure dolly which is you know one of the best valleys along with chapman's that are used in the motion picture industry you could actually ride on the dolly yourself as the operator, and that means you can kind of the one with the cameras, the operator as you and the camera being moved, and you could actually pan and tilt the camera at the same time and pull off some pretty complex moves, then there's a slider move, uh, in effect, a slider move or a dolly move is the exact same thing. A slider is this device that we have back here that is basically two rails, and you can go ahead if I unlock these and slide the camera from one end to the other. No, so I didn't say from left to right because you can use this laterally at an angle to either do a push or pull so you don't say slide forward, you say push because you're physically pushing the camera or you can pull the camera back away from the subject or you can say would like a lateral move from left to right. This number ways of communicating this as you can see the advantage of a slider and we have another one over here. I'm not going to touch the table because we're doing, uh, this time lapse here, and then I'm gonna rule in time lapse is stay away from the camera. Wind movement will kill your shot, so we're not going to touch this slider here as you can see it's different in size from this ladder over here and we'll get teo each and every one of these different pieces of equipment today. And so today we discussed what they are and where they're made and who makes etcetera and, um these are two different sliders. The advantage of them is that they can work off of two tripod legs or monta pods with a sturdy tripod in between and you can work on uneven ground, so if the ground is uneven on pavement, uh or on gravel, as long as you can get that thing in there and balance it and level it, you can get relatively quickly a very smooth motion from left to right. Um, what we discussed yesterday is you can't forget the fact that with each tool there are, there are advantages and disadvantages wait the amount of time it takes to set it up the amount of times er you have to make adjustments to it the way it limits your potential move and also the fact that you have to lug this thing around with you so keep that in mind as we go over these different tools jib boof agip move is this contraption back here jib is a way to move a camera smoothly up and down left or right basically to make the camera hover in midair lot of you have seen these moves and mtv or in every start of every concert for the fans wave up to the camera uh it's one of my least favorite ways to use a gyp it's so overdone and um uh I think the biggest dangers of any one of these moves is that when you start to move the camera just for the sake of moving the camera we'll talk about that a little bit uh for those of you that were around yesterday we discussed a little bit a cz we started mohr theory and discussing that the way you move the camera khun really help people and your audience feel a certain way as a camera gets closer towards someone over time you are entering their world so if I am the camera right here and this is my subject if I'm doing a push in with a dolly I'm going to get closer and closer and closer to him I'm going to enter his environment whereas if I am pulling back I am distancing myself from him he is becoming more distant more removed and less connected with me I'm also finding out less about him and more about his environment as we pull back that makes sense it's a very key ways of communicating in terms of filmmaking and one of number one things that I see today with the prolific proliferation of these sliders, is filmmakers simply sliding the camera from left to right for absolutely no reason? And there should be a point a and point b had a minimum, your starting point and you're ending point and those points should be chosen for a reason. All right, you don't just move the camera from left to right here. You move it from this gentleman here and you end on that gentleman in one shot, and that will suggest a relationship between the two of them. When you do it in one shot, remember that you're disclosing information to your audience as a filmmaker. All right, you're not just moving the camera for the sake of making things look pretty. And that that's, really one of the key concepts will try to talk about today. The next piece of kit is a steady cam. Um, this is one of the most popular steady cam, um, uh, one of most popular pieces of equipment used in filmmaking today. This is a basically a vest that someone will wear with a spring device that supports the way to the camera and allows the operator to kind of move for a room and not have the camera move with them, so obviously, you could move for a room with a handheld camera. On your shoulder but as you know, you get a lot of balance and vibration when you do that when you use a steady cam uh you confess actually feel like you're floating for a room and it's one of the most common used tombs out tools out there then there's a giro giro giro um that allows you to basically, uh stabilize a camera when there's a very fast vibration so if you're in a helicopter in a moving car and you want the camera stay relatively stationary as everything bumps around he would go ahead and use a gyro system and lastly we've already talked about this quickly uh the time lapse devices that we're using right here in other words, are you shooting a bunch of still images or video and connecting together in post or speeding up the video and post to get a very special effect? All right, so let's go ahead and jump into this to have any questions yet from anyone here or um on the internet we're going to go ahead and actually go for these shots one at a time anything immediate popping off no alright good this is the first shot that we discussed this is a locked off shot the camera never moves the only thing that's moving in this is the person um or the object in the frank alright so quick language if you don't want with the camera tell your crew locked off shot on sticks right here ah locked off shots could happen on a slider uh because you don't have to move the camp on the slider the slider is basically a fancy set of sticks. It also has the potential for a lateral or a forward or backward move a pan very simply is a left to right or a rightto left move. Generally when you speak to an operator you say I would like you to pan from this point here and on that point here and you'll either put physical marks on the ground. You can also put physical amounts on the tripod, head on the fluid head for the piece of tape so it shows exactly where they start and exactly where it ends and that operator's job is too smoothly as possible go from a to b and hit their marks dead on at the same time you're going to coordinate that with actors or other vehicles and make sure that they hit their marks and the key just have everyone like on orchestrated event hit their marks and get their time down to get the perfect shot. One of the very first tilt I ever shot was this tilt up of alex in reverie, all right? And as we discussed yesterday for those who were not around uh this was the only piece of video gear that I had for every a fluid had that allowed me to very smoothly tilt from the ground up. This next shot is a dolly shot, so this is, uh, a non operator uh, that I worked with on this um uh opening tv sequence uh that is actually on a set of rails uh in brooklyn looking towards the brooklyn bridge and downtown manhattan on a dolly and as he is being moved from right to left or left to ride we'll see in the shot he is also panning the camera in the opposite direction. Okay, the reason he's doing that s so that the subject in this case um uh tinsley mortimer is staying dead center of your frame. Obviously, if you move your camera from left to right, the subject will move from right to left in your frame. Correct? If you want to keep the subject line up perfectly center someone is going to have to correct for that motion on the camera and that's where being on a dolly allows you to have an operator on the physical dolly actually handling the camera doing so from now when you're not on the dolly is significantly more difficult requires a lot more coordination, so here is a tracking shot from right to left twice over and you'll notice how it's one of the most basic techniques used in filmmaking to kind of engage the audience in a very surreal world where the entire background alleys these lights the book on the background kind of becomes a bit entrancing okay then they're in this case we use a slider this is a push uh push again as I mentioned is when you pushed in towards the subject and you pull away one very key point that I'd like to share with you is that in film for the most part but tends to on a general basis differentiate television from film in television it's quite common to zoom in her out with your lens okay uh the reason for that is uh production levels and tv tend to not be as high as motion picture it takes a tremendous amount of effort to set up a dolly track um or steadicam or whatever it is you're going to do to move the camera ford and back relative to zooming your video camera with a wide you know and tight version of that electric tonic zoom you'll notice that when use them into someone the lens is changing and compressing the image but you don't really see the entire world move around you and change in the same way that you appreciate it when you actually push the camera forward so in motion picture we don't tend to zoom as much we tend to actually move the camera forward while the old sayings we had as a still photographer is is zoom with your feet not with your lens get closer to your subject and appreciate the fact that the entire environment will change around your subject as you physically move your shooting position relative to it the same is absolute true in film and one of the most important techniques so here is a push towards luke er in this er take from not turn okay shoot you again real quick you can see how in a three dimensional environment that's really what makes a, um a video image different than a still you can appreciate the three dimensionality of that environment ah as you move the camera in a way you absolutely cannot in a still image then comes our friend the jib just back here and there's an unlimited amount of way ways to move egypt basically it's one of the um easiest ways to make the camera fly around without literally being mounted too a helicopter or a plane um steadicam is another way of describing that it tends to be on a x and y um basis x and wine of three d environment being forward and to the right or left uh versus z I'm completing that wrong exit wise hi exes sideways and z's front working backwards so for the non technical turn people is just a different way of talking about an x axis left to right a z axis which is front to back and a y axis we just talked to bottom that's what you'll learn if you ever go and try your hand at three d um, so steady cam moves forward or backward left to right, it can boom up or down a little bit, depending on the size of the army, but for the most part that's, not while you go ahead and use the steadicam for you'll go use a steadicam to move around in a room to follow a subject, whereas a jib cannot move us far forward or backward or left or right as a steadicam, perhaps, unless you have a techno crane. Um, but it can move up and down effortlessly. So here is a jib down play that for you again. Notice how at the start of the shot, you can see dubai in the background, you can see the bird allora, the tallest building in the world behind the lamborghini, and you can see how, as the camera jeb's down, you see less of the city line in the background and maura the lamborghini, as you can probably understand, you're doing that for purpose. When you start off, you start off with dubai as your backdrop, and then at the end of your shop, the car is the star, so you're moving the camera to actually translate viewers I from the cityscape just give you a sense of setting. And ending up on the one of the most commonly shots ever done off a car pulling up light towards the camera where the camera's stationary all that you see a za car pulling up and getting closer you're not trying to communicate different layers of information in the same way a jib up is quite the opposite it's simply going from bottom toe low when you see the shot I'd like you to appreciate the fact that starts on the runner shoes and as the jib goes up and lets slightly to the right um you go, you could go ahead and see uh this is at the main media workshops uh in maine and you can see the city are the town at the base of the frame you see how as you jib up, you start off from the protagonist in this case the runner and her shoes, which is a very interesting way to cut the scene. So perhaps the previous previous shot shows a detail of her running and you go ahead and you start low at her shoes and as you jim up you're seeing where she's running too it's revealing uh, the town and the direction she's going in as a filmmaking technique it's quite important to do that so as you can see, hopefully there's one point I can get across to you besides understanding this year and every time you move the camera, you should move it with purpose. You should go from point a to point b at a minimum with a specific intent of helping tell the story with the specific intent of showing someone your audience where you want their eye to go where the where the protagonist is moving to, uh foreshadowing a certain event. But as you get more and more sophisticated, the filmmaker, you're going to use these tools as ways to communicate and draw out ideas, emotions and reactions from your audience. All right, then, that the next two we're gonna show is the steady cam and you'll see this is a very long, uh, three hundred sixty degree arc around uh this cab, so the steadicam guy is pulling backwards and starting to side step to the right while keeping the taxi driver in the center of his friend. This allows the audience member to appreciate the entire three dimensional environment you're no longer showing. Just one aspect of that scene you're making appreciate their environment and here they come back to the bear on the ground. This is from the video contest called beyond still that we launched five months ago that still ongoing this was the one of the opening shot of that short film I'll show it to you again real quick, so we're doing a pull back and then we start a lateral move to the right. You'll notice that the reason you start moving to the right is because the, uh, passenger with her luggage is crossing your frame and motivating the cameras start moving with her that's, a technique used to not make it as abrupt it's very important trying news, you know, extras or main characters to motivate your camera towards moving somewhere it makes it a lot less abrupt. Yes, vincent, just a real quick question from the chat room when you're doing these jib shots, how are you pulling focus that is something we'll discuss and there's the kind of hot, dark little secret about jj ibs and steady cams and sliders is depending on what lens you're using and depending on how much depth of field your you have, uh, focus is going to become absolutely critical, so if you're doing a jib shot um on a landscape focus of infinity, no problem, you don't have the change focus, however, even on that gyp shot and I'll go back to it illustrate that of the runner we started focused on her feet at about uh half a foot from the camera and we used a wireless focusing device to rack focus, which is to change focus from point a to point b we talked about that yesterday um and we went from about half a foot to infinity and we use also used our hyper focal which will discuss at the end of this which is a technique to try and carefully determine what's going to be in focus with that lens and that depth of field and know for sure how that's happening. So great question. So the short answer is you have to change focus the difficulty of it a lot. These devices especially a steady cam. You cannot physically touch it in any way and it just focus a steadicam is free floating so you must have a wireless focusing device if you have to change focusing during that shot and we'll get to that year later on today. All right, so here comes a gyro. I understand the gyro is probably not going to be, um one of the most common things that people use it's a very specialized piece of gear. It's definitely one that you would tend to rent what's beautiful about this piece of you hear the gyro again. We'll show you slides for all this later on. Um made by a company called ariel exposures, it has two kenyan labs giro's below at forty five degree angles. A gyro is basically a, um kind of looks like a tick tack. It has two wheels in it spinning extremely high speed at nine degree angles to one another and what that effect lee does is as you move left or right or up or down the gyro is kind of an inert force that tries to counter your motion so that it tries to keep the camera stationary gyro is used on almost every single video uh, of anything it's flying, whether it's a helicopter or a plane is vibration up in the air there's a tremendous amount of vibration in the helicopter and for still image is not a problem. I don't use giro's unless I'm shooting at night. If you shoot in the fast shutter speed, you won't get it, you'll get a sharp image I can attest to that dude having it on for about a decade shooter thousands of a second or above, you will always almost always have an extremely sharp image harbor and video it's not only about keeping the image sharper, it's actually about moving very smoothly for the year, especially if you see aerial shots of the helicopter flying down to truth downtown manhattan that sped up. If there is no gyro, you'll see the helicopter go up and down left and right and make different moves. Ah, one of the best ways to see if an aerial shot has been shot with a giro is you'll see the flare in front of lands moving extremely quickly when the camera's pointed towards the sun and you'll see the incredible amount of work that these gyros are doing. The giro's they use for most television and films are quarter million dollars to a few million dollars systems they have technology in there that basically is the same technology of defence department uses for targeting missiles uh some soon affleck systems that are, you know well in the six figures what you could actually dial into gps uh, location and you can fly the helicopter any angle whatsoever and that thing with a thousand mil emir lands will stay locked on to the spire of the chrysler building the entire time without any movement it's absolutely fascinating and I love to do that that being said it's not every day that I have access to a one million dollars plus system uh or at least a quarter million dollar persistent depending on what type of muse that's where this odd looking device uh that is definitely expensive it's in the twelve to fourteen thousand dollar range um becomes quite useful that's a lot of money for anybody but relative to a quarter million dollar system it's a bargain it's also small, relatively lightweight quick to install when you stole anything on a plane or helicopter you have to get faa approval if it's hard mounted onto it um helicopters a little bit different, but if its external to the helicopter same deal and it's expensive because you have to pay for the helicopter be grounded or make some sort of deal with the the charter so there's thie gyro from errol exposures I'm going schneck shot I'm going to show you is what it does as you watch one of the people I work with my guys are running for the streets of manhattan you will see the gate of the vehicle we're shooting from assuring us from a suburban four by four suv in manhattan you will see these suburban hit a major bump and what you should notice is how the gate moves and how mike moves if you do this handheld what's going to happen your camera is going to shake up and down and mike will move and your gate will stay relative to you but you also have some movement look what happens here there's mike running he was not too happy about this we didn't quite sign up for this look at that gait move and look at how steady mike is pretty awesome right so that's what a gyro will do for you it's not something you would want my mount on a motorcycle but it's because there's no real place to mount it but it's perfect for shooting inside a vehicle it's perfect for shooting from a helicopter from a ship a boat um I swear by this thing look at it again look at that gate on the bottom now and look at how it moves right here boom and look at mike rock steady pretty cool, huh? So that's a gyro not in everyday tool believes you know what exists and if you're doing a certain type of shot you know where you get minutes affordable? Uh if you're in a big production you can get the same thing the mountain helicopter west cam space campus in a flex and I've seen people mount that two snowmobiles to fast moving vehicles of all types and you could get pretty incredible footage um and uh it's quite a lot of fun to do then we're going to end uh I believe on time lapse uh the first shot here is a video time lapse so it's actually sped up video so you can let your camera roll video you'll notice that uh the problem with that is you're shooting at a fortieth uh forty eighth or a fiftieth of a second uh which doesn't love her that much motion blur when you speed things up, things look kind of jittery. Um you also knows this was shot off a reverie uh mrs shot of five hundred millimeter f or on a locked off shot correct so the camera wasn't moving and this was before we had exposure lock or manual exposure she'll notice that as the moon hides behind the roof of the building in brooklyn was the very last shot we made on reverie about four o'clock in the morning on saturday morning or sunday morning at that point um the lens opens up and normally it's a big disaster, but I actually like the effect it has here and the next shot is a series of still images and what you'll notice that's quite different is that shot of the much slower shutter speed so you can appreciate the streaking lights uh in uh um on twenty third street in manhattan so there's the moon moving you can see how it flares up. And, uh, that thing which I'll play again for you right here is, uh, serious of still images stitched together had a slow shutter speed and you can appreciate, uh, these really cool movements of the people it's almost like a study. Um, if you have not seen a movie called baraka, I highly recommend you do so yesterday, um, one of that why's it filling the frame it's very odd. I'll show this to you again. Um, and then I'm losing the name the coppola film that was shot years before that, uh, what's it called it's not kowalski, but it's something like that it's an ion, a squat see corner jonas qazi there's three of them, yeah, coppola shot this in the seventies, I think and it's not the same technical quality as baraka is which was shot you know in large format uh with almost effectively I'm max cameras or I think they're actually where I'm max cameras and it's stunning uh if you think you work hard, you should watch the behind the scenes of baraka and how they basically work twenty four hour shifts with a dp director lining up the shots and showing them at night and the programmer with computer programming the way that the device is these a time lapse cameras and sliders moved over time it's absolutely fascinating all right, how we doing? Good we're staying awake excellent. Uh I think it would be a good time teo asked him questions from our audience before we move on to depth of field yes. Okay, well, this is burst from uh in the chat room and we've got some questions um going back a bit uh what's the best way to not have equipment reflections in your angles just catching those kinds of things. Yeah, the easiest way is to, uh have some sort of black tar uh in effect you're gonna want want, try and eliminate all reflections of yourself and the simplest way um you know, what we use is you know, these type of devices here these flags um that will go ahead and mount on a bunch of c stands around the cameras of professional way of doing it uh do a teen and um or black flags and you in effect create a box around you so that there's no light reflected in front if you don't have fancy tools uh blocked by a black duma teen uh blanket or black sheets and cut a hole through it the only thing he's gonna go for that whole is your lens and that's the best you free much can do you don't want any light hitting you as the camera operator or the camera or silver tripod because you will see in the reflection the other thing is you have if you have absolutely nothing go in the shade and don't get hit by life because obviously you'll still be there in the shadows but if she exposed for the highlights of your subject matter itself is being hit by light you will be too dark to notice and then the most obvious thing to do we're always trying to limit your reflection it's a shoot at an angle relative to the piece of glass or reflective material that's kind of old school technique but if you want to be like perfectly perpendicular or parallel to your subject parallels the good one um you want teo used nicotine or you know black rapper whatever does it you khun group yes um someone would like to know about the difficulties on time lapsing from daylight tonight invite vice versa yes so daylight tonight is one of the most difficult things to do in time lapse as your exposure as the sun rises your exposure is going to change dramatically from nighttime daytime and uh there's a variety of specialized of isis to do this my recommendation is to never ever leave the camera on aperture priority or programme mode in a time lapse ever because if someone flashes a flashlight into your camera if a car drives around all you need is one frame out of these three or four or five hundred to be incorrectly exposed and your entire time lapses shot one of the people I've worked with is named tom lowe ah he has a site called time scapes I'm going to show you some of his work later it's some of the most beautiful work that I've seen since baraka and he spends he's actually working on a full length feature film right now uh, you know, roaming around the us shooting time lapse photography uh with the canon cameras and other cameras as well I believe he's using a red and uh the quality of being produced by these candid five you mark twos because you're shooting still images twenty one megapixel frame you know every few seconds is stunning it's unlike anything anyone has seen and um check what will show tom's work in a little bit he's a great resource to go to he's got entire forum entire site dedicated time lapse photography and the only reason that I play with this is thomas playing with his uh is not playing he's actually working ah this entire year on his on his film otherwise I would just work with tom because uh the guy knows what he's doing and doesn't mind staying up from two a m to six a m and uh sleeping me one hour during the day and getting started again yes well we're on the subject of time lapse how do you calculate the interval for time lapse simple arithmetic you've got to figure out how long is the event that you're you're shooting happening how long is your exposure need to be are you shooting wide open? Are you sure enough twenty two because you want incredible depth of field uh how fast the stars moving do you want to try and pan or tilt with them in that way the world appears to be rotating around the stars just pretty fast anyway of doing and I'll show you some of tom's work a little bit later today um so simple math how many exposures do you get for second let's say you get ten you shoot a picture every ten sec guess that means you get six images per minute okay if you shoot ten minutes you get sixty frames with me so far at thirty frames a second that's two seconds of footage and that's how you keep breaking it down so you know that uh that's a much math as I could do this morning but that's how you break it down and when you're shooting time lapse like we are here are you shooting raw? Ru shi, nj peg you're shooting raw always because if there is some weird deviation and light, you want to have the most incredible original to try and save your time lapse with and make a correction uh also you can get stuff out of a raw still image you absolutely cannot out of any camera in the world today and that's why it makes so much more sense to shoot with a still camera, then a video camera because you're not wasting, you know, thirty frames per second for no reason you're actually shooting still frame video cameras will take still images but it's not a raw image so it's back to the canon versus red thing you affect let me have a red equivalent here why not use that? And a zoo I mentioned shooting in manual uh, changing aperture on the fly is a much more complex thing. Um if I were to do it today, I would get his ice compact crime that has a ring on it and I put a motor on it and allow it to change over time requires a lot of math and practice was not something that if you're not good at arithmetic you're gonna wanna jump into um and that's how I would tackle that one yes from the chat room a few people are asking which stabilization system would you recommend for the very budget film maker um there's uh on office chair will work it'll dampen some of your upward and backward movement uh it's a poor man's dollar I mentioned yesterday ah lot of big name film makers have used a wheelchair all right uh if you don't have that uh some sort of trolley that you push to move either furniture uh or equipment you can stand on it or sit on it uh I've had people um I'm losing the word where you have the the things you stack boxes on the ups guy driver drives a dolly well yeah but what a hand cart a dollar hand cart you actually have the filmmakers sitting on apple box on the hand cart if someone pulls him away the key is to have something attenuating every bump basically every bump and every every you know dip that you hit gets translated into the camera movement so as silly as it sounds they have someone being pushed by a dollar a wheelchair if this wheelchair has springs or gives where if a car has shocks is going to try and absorb that motion as is a human being an operator they're going to move their body and with the inertia on the weight going to try and dampen that whereas if you mount a camera to any surface that's moving around the vibration translates directly into the camera it's solid all right uh the gyro that showed you has to effectively big rubber bands so the camera's floating and it has rubber bands so it's kind of free flowing so there's an endless wave of say blast your cameras and in this way of creating ways of doing it and uh I have no no more respect than for anyone that figures out how to pull off a fantastic camera move with no budget that's the goal uh why do we have study camp's because you know when you have a hundred crew members and you've got to hit that shot on the first try you do we're gonna have a steadicam operator coming today um and as I think I mentioned yesterday it's an acquired skill it's nothing you just pick up and do overnight but I work with steadicam operators that air hollywood veterans and you tell them I want to start here move over there rotate the camera embassy fly for the room and hit six or seven different spots you could never do with the dolly that would take you a very long time to program and a techno crane or do with the jeb and they will hit it on the first try with a good first day cia focus puller will hit every marcus you go and on the very first shot you'll nail it that's why you have work with a professional yes so are you using image stabilization on your cannon lens while using the gyro or no I am not uh keep in mind that the image stabilization built in on the canyonlands is at least I don't have experienced in icons was not intended for video these air stabilisation systems that are intended for still imagery the on ly lens today that works with great civilization for video is that new one hundred millimeter macro lens that I showed to you yesterday yes so uh differences between I guess the the uh comparisons of ah giro versus a steady cam uh when when is when should you use one over the other and you can't you know like can you use a steadicam on the back of a truck type thing you can absolutely so you we have always had operators uh riding in the back of golf carts uh they it can actually have a hard mt on uh the back of the vehicle actually mount the steadicam arm into it and uh there have been some very original ways of using a steadicam in that you can have a crane come down from the sky fifty feet to the ground and then a steadicam operator actually walks off of the crane and keeps moving right some incredibly original ways of doing it so yes, you can use a steadicam the big difference we know gyro and a steadicam is when you have a big fast jerky movement like this a big bump a gyro is gonna tend to absorb that very quickly. Fast movements and vibration is where the gyro excels slow bumps uh in a state of fast bumps in the steadicam you'll see the camera takes the move and you'll see it make a small bump um it depends I mean depending on the way these things are rigged but they are quite different tools not to mention a steadicam is mounted on human beings or a vehicle as well. It is meant to walk around a room and change direction very quickly a gyro is nothing you would hand hold and walk through a room with its heavy also here's a key difference between a steadicam and a giro giro's spin up I think thousands of rounds per minute and they make a tremendous amount of noise they require electricity to power them up big battery packs and they have to be charged they heat up the more than anything they make a tremendous amount of noise. Every high pitch whizzing sound it's absolutely impossible to do shoot dialogue which I rose or any available natural sound whereas a steadicam is dead quiet that's a kind of a key factor there as well yes again from the chat room, what do you think about the do it yourself? Things that are out there on the internet like the there's, a twelve dollars poor man's steadicam and and other devices? Uh, I think they're great. I think what you need to understand is what we discussed yesterday. If you are a young filmmaker working with your friends, you can afford to use a twelve dollar steadicam and try that shot sixty times in a row until you get one that works. If you have fifty nine bad shots, you can try and keep going as many times as you want, as long as your friends will stick with you when you have an entire crew around you, a large budget and especially big time stars, they're not gonna wait sixty times for you. Just try and get nailed the same exact shot. The reason? Use a steadicam verses a fifty dollars or twelve dollars system is because you have to execute on the first take. So if you have a steady cam move in the middle of fake war zone when explosions going off in helicopters, the amount of coordination it's costing to fly ten helicopters imagine apocalypse now with all these helicopters in the air, you're spending fifty thousand dollars an hour in helicopter time, god knows how much time we're spending for the crew you have to and explosions they only go off once. Are you gonna do it with twelve dollars system that might get a shot? Are you going to spend one hundred thousand dollars for a well equipped steadicam that's kind of that's kind of the concept you, khun do anything originally with your your intelligence, your creativity and that's awesome! Go for it while you can as young filmmakers, when the stakes are not so high, please do it that's what makes it fun when you start to get paid? And more importantly, when you're paying other people large amounts of money on a movie set or commercial, you can't afford to experiment as much you can't afford to have hiccups, you can't afford to have a steady cam that doesn't quite work suddenly the much more expensive model makes a lot more sense that a good answer yes, uh, what are you doing to handle more? Uh, alias ing and uh d s l d slr uh, there's we went over that yesterday, we didn't directly address it, so I will kind of adventure off base here. Uh, one of the things that the canon cameras do right now is they're actually shooting off a twenty one megapixel image a tremendous amount of pixels, which is significant larger than a ten nineteen twenty by ten in the frame so they're not lines skipping which would be to skip every other line to make a smaller image there actually pixel skipping ah, and what that means is it takes you know every other pixel in a strange pattern to create the nineteen twenty by ten any image what happens when you do that is you get this weird thing called binning and winning is away a fancy way to say that weird moray affect the anti alison affected you get so you see a straight line and you could see his weird little patterns across these jagged edges. What do you do? Um the short answer is not much that is one of the biggest, uh, deficiencies or problems that's holding these cameras back from being on the silver screen in hollywood is that there's no great way to manage that. If you're shooting at half twenty two with a brick building behind you, you're going to see the brick buildings dance and different colors when you use these cameras. However, if you shoot at a shelled up the field and blur the background out and keep moving the camera, you will stop seeing the moray or noticing inasmuch so it's in the way that you shoot shout of the field and keep the camera on motion uh, make sure you tell your subjects never toe wear pinstripe jackets or shirts or ties or polka dots you would never ever want to bring a five d mark two and shoot an entire scene on black and white tiled floor it would look atrocious, alright it's that's where the camera is going to fail in terms of quality eso no your camera and avoid those uh dangerous spots yeah again from the chat room uh remote controlled helicopters and giro's are their combinations that are available uh there are some versions of that that are available they're quite expensive and like I said yesterday, you probably should hire a pilot that knows what he or she is doing and also inquire with them uh this gentleman that I work with named tab for sean doesn't seattle actually and he flies for national geographic, uh and discovery and many other television channels and is doing motion picture work with a remote control helicopter. He has different heads that stabilized the image and classified as weapons. Is that a more budget conscious way of doing it rather than hiring a helicopter? And it is and it's also, um an issue of being able to get the helicopter much closer to the ground or through a tunnel or beef trees that you couldn't fit a physically large helicopter but like I said, if you're learning to fly a helicopter it's absolutely not a question of if you're going to crash it, but when so mounting a two to ten thousand dollars camera package under the helicopter and you don't know how to fly is basically donating it to um the trash both the camera and the helicopter so you know, keep in mind the pile that I flight with has twenty years experience flying really helicopters okay, so we're gonna hit the next part of this section and talk a little bit about depth of field um this is one of the most basic but incredibly important parts of filmmaking um one of the main differences between still photography and video or film is that with a still photograph you have to control as one with film the amount of light hitting your censor your film playing and as a still photographer or a filmmaker you can choose the sensitivity of your stock of phil or in our case these days the air I s so we said our sensor too one hundred s say up to three, two hundred say and up and up and up these days okay, but you can't go below one hundred uh sometimes for most cameras uh I know in the cannons you can go down to fifty yet and, um the other way as a still photographer that you khun control the amount of light hitting uh your your film or your sensor obviously is your shutter speed okay, that is something that doesn't really affect anything and still image other than whether the subject is blurry or sharp in as we discussed yesterday motion picture your shutter speed is almost always constant at a fiftieth or forty eighth of the second so any any h dslr camera you have I would recommend you set at one fiftieth of a second and leave it there forever that means that depth the field the last thing the aperture ring on your lens is the last control that you have all right and that's one way of looking at how you use your appa chewing on your camera I really have to say that as a photographer and filmmaker to me depth of field and the aperture you choose is one of the most important creative decisions you ever make as either a photographer or filmmaker determining how much that the field you want whether you want foreground or the background the being focus is absolutely critical it's going to make an absolutely different image if you don't know this shoot the exact same landscape and have twenty two order of two point eight it's an entire different image through the exact same portrait left twenty two told at the field where you can see everything behind the person you're photographing everything in front first shooting it at one point too but only their eyes aeryn focus everything gets blown out of focus in the front or back it's in a very important korea decision most of us are still photographers are used to choosing our depth of field or our aperture uh as still photographers because we're freezing a moment in time so any sports photographer will tell you fifty percent of what makes a good foot sports photograph is your background okay you need to keep a very shawl that revealed the sports on average and completely blew out the background if you see this amazing picture of a picture and you see a thousand fans behind that picture the picture kind of test to get merged with the background whereas if you shoot with a small amount of depth of field these fans in the background go completely out of focus and you all seen these images were absolutely gorgeous right something you need to consider when you go into video is that two little bit field can absolutely be your enemy okay uh when you move the camera uh if you move the camera laterally so parallel to your subject is depth the field as important as if you move it forward or back anyone speak up if you move the camera parallel to you the four of you on this couch right here. Okay if I moved my camera from left to right and go to camera one and go real light on the camera to show real light on them and me if as I move laterally from left to right relative to the four of you is depth of field or focus a big concern of mine why not you want to pick up the micro quick distance from the subject to the cameras and changing is you're moving ladder that's a very key concept right obviously what you want to be careful of when you move any camera this is one of the questions with the chibs is your focus point is constantly changing so as I move the camera towards you I have to simultaneously changed my focusing distance on the lens at the exact same rate as my movement that is not the easiest thing to do that's a learned process were as if I don't have a focusing wheel or the perfect lens or let alone a focus puller I'm going to try and move the camera laterally relative to the subject because guess what the focusing distance never changes in the same way that if I have a subject in the center of the table here on a steady cam or dolly if I do a perfect circle where that object isn't debt center of that circle this is not change it's like holding a piece of tape between me and it and making sure this thing stays constant all right, that is a quote unquote poor man's way of dealing with focusing issues as you move the camera keep your camera equal distant to your subject at all times and you don't have to worry about focusing changes all right that's what you do when you have a steady cam and no way to change focus as you go we're talking about hyper focus a little bit and talk about also adding more depth of field we'll jump into it now um hyper focal is a concept I'm gonna jump into a little bit later lose like ninety percent of you if I don't show you slights on that one but obviously, uh depth of field is a range it's going to be in focus relative to your focus mark okay more that the field means more of the information is in focus so if you're moving a steadicam around the environment not equal distant fashions here within closer and further away from the subject do you want to try if you can't touch focus to have more or less that the field more rights obvious. So are you going to want to shoot this scene where I have someone sitting here and then the other person there and I can't touch the focus at f ate or have to have faith ok, which means you're getting more like okay uh and or jack up the butt that fate if I pay attention my hyper folks we're gonna get there in a second there's a certain that the field it's what hyper focal is that's going to keep this subject and that subject in focus at all times all right that's a great trick for keeping uh you're focusing issues at bay when you don't have fancy equipment however what's the beauty of these cameras shout out the field all right so it doesn't quite make sense to shoot some of these cameras of that fatal half eleven you're kind of you know shooting yourself in the foot uh and we'll get to that the second so on a more simple level here's a shot taking it at one point two you'll notice um that the foreground subject the benches are quite out of focus as is the background this is a fifty millimeter one point to at one point two on an overcast day our subject is tack sharp but the foreground and background is falling out of focus relatively quickly here is the exact same shot with a little bit of changing toning apologize for that and half two point eight notice relative the previous image how the foreground bench and the background is significant more expensive is one of the most basic lessons that the field I'm not going to go to much more into it but look at how your image is changing when you go to a five point six everything is much sharper and to me looks much less interesting you know one of the ways I think I ended yesterday's classroom session was by saying learn all these rules and break everything one of them that's how you're gonna make great photographs uh so when I tell you that I like to shoot with child in the field that's a rule that you probably should break it some point and have fun with uh it's a stylistic choice but he was a very important consideration because your camera and your subjects are in constant motion in a motion picture in general you're going you're going to want to shoot with more depth of field then you're used to as a still photographer because as a still photographer we've all been there where we're praying for the subject to be perfectly sharp as you and here she and your business is change and your one job is to nail that moment where the subject is perfectly in focus so you can preset your focus onto a certain spot and you wait for a runner to run into you and as a still photographer you have to time it perfectly so that as they cross that focus plane they're sharp simple technique right? We now have auto focus so not to worry about that as much but years ago that's kind of how you did it or you would follow focus with your hand and pray and just concentrate intensely that and you'd wait for the pinnacle moment and hope you were sharp or it was a very, very tight image you would just follow as much as you could and whenever you saw the image sharp, you press the shutter in film, you have to stay constantly and focus with your subject. Alright, so to make a long story short in general, you're not gonna want to shoot a fifty millimeter lens on the five demark, too. At one point, two he's gonna love too, too weird and even the most experienced first day see the most experienced focus puller is going to say, you know what? I can't do this in effect, no human being in the world can stay in focus with a moving subject that's, you know, fewer than fifty feet from them and keep them in constant focus and at one point to its pretty much a superhuman feat. So as you become a director or dp, you're gonna want to say and realize that every first day see that you work with every other human being is going to try and help you focus has their limits and shooting a fifty millimeter on a fifth on a full frame ship. At one point, two is begging for disaster and there's nothing more distracting in the narrative scene that having your subject constantly going out of focus, all right, so you're going to find that too, eh? Is tends to be on the shallow depth for a full frame sensor f four is a much more comfortable aperture to set your video camera sat on a full frame sensor and five six start to be quite comfortable obviously the longer lens you have the last of the field you have and we'll talk about that a second all right so just a quick piece advice um while a lot of us are shooting these dslr is at one point two or deaf too because we like to shoot them in low light um you may find that not only is it impossible to keep the entire scene and focus it just also looks like just a little bit too shall in terms of that the field that makes it look a little bit off hyper focal I believe this is one last sections of this this part right? Anyone know what hyper focal is do you know what so hyper focal is the depth of field with which you work at a certain f stop so at f eleven you've got a much greater range of focus forward and backward exactly so that it that's pretty much it hyper focal describes the technique of knowing exactly what that range is alright it's become significant more difficult until iphones came out to know what that is because most of your lens is um let me go ahead and marcus can I get any cannon lens and he can land twenty four seventy seven two hundred uh this is a zeiss lens and let me go ahead and have you do a macro shot of this range right here you see these members as f sixteen have fate for the centre line center lines where your focus right now what this is telling you right here is that f ate your focus from this point to f eight over there. Okay there's actually a hyper focal scale on your lenses this used to be standard every single still lens that was sold years ago and now let me show you what a can land shows you these numbers refer to infrared focus points I believe there's absolutely no hyper focal information on your lens is what I'm trying to show you on the average still ends today for some reason they've stopped marking them probably because some marketing executive decided was too confusing for people the problem with that is you know, on every lens every manual ends we've had up today um usedto have you scales printed on your lens let me explain to you on the keynote how to use those numbers you will see that what that lens is what that uh that scale on that lens looks like a thirty five millimeter like a lens is showing you is that at f uh f two point eight you're going to be in focus in that range um that's between the number two and four on the slide, all right? And you look up at the distance measurements on the focusing ring on top of it, it's basically telling you that between six and a half feet to about seven feet, you're going to be sharp all right, it's a very simple scale here is the exact same image at f sixteen it's going to show you that from five feet to about eleven or twelve feet everything's in focus. Okay, this is a printed scale on the lens that shows you ahead of time, what you're ranges are so if you come back to me real quick, you are focusing a measuring your camera and you realize this is five feet and that there are eleven feet. As long as you never got closer than five feet with your camera, I think that was sixteen or eleven. Everything will always be in focus that is, effectively how you used the hyper focus today if you don't have those scales there any number of iphone aps that calculate hyper focal foryou hyper focal is one of the most commonly used, um, techniques in film to basically predict what lens you can choose, and you'll know by looking at this scale this calculator and saying, you know what, I know what twenty eight is the lens I might want remember the wider lens you go the more depth of field you have the same given aperture you're going to see that it with twenty four millimeter lens you have just a little bit more than the field to not have to worry about a focus bull all right so you're going to start to make some sacrifices and realize that doing a steadicam move from here to there with a thirty five millimeter lens is required to be a half eleven or so whereas the twenty millimeter lens randy you're complete change your image at f four maybe to wait you can pull it off and you can tell that off of a hyper focal calculator on your iphone or you could buy this and tables it's going to be relative this the lens that you have in the size of the sensor it's a mathematical formula and as a filmmaker you're gonna try and use that to your benefit to not have to worry as much about marking your focus all right before we leave this think about besides keeping things and focus why you'd want to use a hyper focal in a dramatic scene on one actor in a very lively scene where the actor is screaming or shouting or animated it's not a visual technique at this point if used the hyper focal and you tell the actor hit his or her mark right here and deliver one of the best performances of their life if you shoot that after f two and the actor delivers the key line of any film and leans forward toe, add drama to it, you're out of focus. Your shot is unusable, so maybe you have a first a c is one of the best in the world and can correct for that as you go, maybe it's a little smarter that a bit more light and shoot that scene in about four or five six instead of f to and no, you're hyper fogel that on this given lens, anything between here so back here is always going to be in focus. So instead of having your first day see freaking out, you're going to tell that person, don't touch the lens less you need to as long as the actor hits his or her mark between here and all the way over here on that given lens at that given aperture, hear what she will be in focus at all times you understand that? I hope it really gets fruit, because when you do a very intense drama scene, especially if you're a director, let's let the camera roll and that the actors go wherever they want. Do you want to shoot that with two hundred millimeters to maybe, maybe, but shoot a camera b a second camera with a wider angle lens? And maybe a third camera with super wide angle lens where you're shooting in hyper focal so that you know that the actor is going to go in and out of focus on two hundred amir lens constantly. But all you need is that one snippet that you can cut too, because you've got a camera be running at all times from a different angle that has maybe, perhaps if you're really smart it's not, uh parallel to the actor it's actually perpendicular and the actor you know is gonna move forward or backward but never left or right. You tell the actor you move this for much forward or back as you want, just do not take a side step left or a side step right? And you know that camera will be in focus at all times. In fact, you know what? That camera dolly and have it pushed forward and backward with the actor always staying parallel and tell that actors don't worry about my technical limitations of filmmaker don't worry about that the field don't worry about lens choice that's not your job deliver the best performance you can and be smart as a filmmaker and say all right, I've got twenty five to during the type shot I've got a thirty five millimeter off to the side that's lateral at f for as long as he stays within a five foot range here she will be in focus and then I got a third camera when things really screw up from above that shooting straight down and he could move or she all around the stage and you've got coverage and then you can tell your actors do your job I've done mine all right? This is hopefully introduction into directing in filmmaking it's an introduction into blocking off a scene not only in terms of how the subject matter subjects move through a scene but more importantly how you'd block a scene to deal with technical matters perhaps is more of a d p a director probably is not going to think about that the field challenges a dp has two that's his or her job it's teladoc director I love the look and the boca and have to but given the amount of drama and the scene and a difficulty let's say it's an actor it's crying on cute not the best time trying pull that shot off the former too ate to it maybe um if you do tribe at least set off set the backup for yourself yes, I think that really famous example of that and still photography is cartier for stones shot of the guy in venice who was jumping over a huge puddle of water and I think it was could be paris but it was I think it was okay anyway thank you if I remember yeah got famous really, really famous for some picture but my guess is that he had noticed people jumping over the puddle he set up his hyper focal distance so that whenever people were we're making the leaf and it looks like he got the absolutely exact guy jumping over the puddle, you know, in the air but I bet you that was ah hyper focal uh, figuring that person did, it might get definitely was I'm not sure it was necessarily hyper folk. It was definitely a focus point that was set. Uh, that image is the very definition of what we call the decisive moment uh, where the subject is perfectly suspended in mid air and his reflections birth correct like beneath him um and what I think a great point you made, cynthia, is that, uh what bruce on did is he used his technical knowledge because back in the days that we shouldn't get a like a it's, a range finder camera and the way you focus, you line up to images it's not a sports for talk it's not an slr reflex camera where you can actually see if it's in focus or not you pre focus in that one spot where you hope that that subject is going to jump on that one little block of what he's going to hit and I'm sure you book on twitter can probably find this image to share it with one of the most famous uh images of all time um and uh I do that all the time in sports so without the laboring there's too much if you have a finish line at the one hundred meter final uh and you have a remote camera what what is the easiest thing to do to shoot a camera looking straight at the runners as they cross the finish line or to shoot it parallel to the runners as they cross the finish line think about this for a second parallel so long with the runners if you're sure enough two point eight you're going to shoot parallel to them correct at the finish line there I believe seven lanes my write in track and field eight so which lane is gonna win lane one, two, three, four, five, six, seven or eight at two point eight you don't know the only thing you do know is someone's gonna cross that finish line at that one point and where can you guarantee that that is going to be sharp on all seven or eight eight lanes front view directly perpendicular to subject that's what we have sports photographers and film makers predict and we say you could put the longest legs in the world as tight with the most unbelievable sheldon the field and focus on that finish line perpendicular and you will get the finish line image no matter what happens as long as you triggered the camera put it parallel to the runner. You've gotta choose which lane crossing, how you going to predict which lane wins its actual? It'll be easy because I've had to put the runner's toward the center, but you know, it's a little bit of like witchcraft try and figure that out, so you're gonna start to think about this and, uh, we can't get in this too much in this lecture, but as a director and it's, a filmmaker or a photographer, you're gonna use depth of field an intelligent way because you can't predict where the action is going to end, but in certain sports you can predict something big is gonna happen at a certain point physically on that field, home plate is a very important field position in baseball. People strike out at home plate and lose the game, people slide into home plate and had the game winning run, so if you're above and you focus on home plate, chances are with a remote camera it's not man you will get an amazing image. Football is not a very good sport for remote because anyone can run in anywhere in the end zone and unless you're directly above where the focus is not changing it's gonna be hard to pull off a remote track and field the finish line is an excellent place to predict the remote and same with horse racing so I think that's where hyper focus always concepts come in I think I really come to light uh with filmmaking uh, two things left lens choice I hit on this a little bit yesterday, all right? And we talked about how we do the same example really quick. I'm gonna walk up to this camera over here, go as wide as possible as you can. All right? If I walk up to that lens with my fist cut to that on on that camera is my fist uh, twice as large as my face. No right that's what a wide angle lens does it exaggerates the subject is closer to the camera and makes that bigger relative to the syndicate's further away here is the exact same shot with a very long lens and other proportions are much more accurate. Correct? Right. That looks a little hot on the video. Little little little overexposed but, um simple concept. So when you use a choice uh when you choose a lens understand it's not just about how wide other coverage you want it's about the compression you want as well and I understand that that's going to have a very big uh, impact on your creative decision as as a filmmaker or photographer that relationship between your foreground and background subject so one more quick example john, can you go ahead and frame that slate with uh my face behind it with a long lens I had cut the john and you'll see my eyes behind it. I lined up correctly with you. All right? I know that the field issue he has right longer the lands left that the field you have so this shot kind of portrays me as being involved this late either it's in focus or I am um is there any sort of relationship between a slate of me in terms of kind of a suggestive power of like you know I'm bigger or smaller than the slate right now? No right, right comets close as you can in slate with a wide angle lens with a little crushed your face thing you do that I'll squeeze you all right. Is there now a relationship between a slate and meet the slate is dominant the slate is overpowering. Okay. Besides being a fun gag this is filmmaking one on one guys maybe no to a one that slate is dominant relative to me I'm a small person relative to the almighty film thirty seconds ago with a long lens I was equal to that slate okay, so when you choose a lens it's not just about wide or long it's about this is one of the most important key factors and filmmaking it's about the relationship of one person another one last example can you stand up quick stand in front of me if you would and look towards the camera long lens shot long as you can go who is more powerful do you know why don't you go ahead and, um bend your knees a little bit you know, just just a camera who is more powerful currently foreground subject who is more menacing? No, I'm more medicine. I'm going to appear from behind him. Okay? I'm the killer that surprises you right now go ahead and, uh this this sounds dangerous, but uh can you stand on that chair who is more powerful now? Probably me I'm taller and maya's menacing now absolutely not there's no mystery you see me the entire time, okay? And last example, john, we didn't carefully walk off of that chair come closer to us with the wider angle lens. Even closer is why as you can go, who is more powerful probably the much bigger subject in the foreground. Okay, now we're not blocking us off. Exactly. But I think the point I'm trying to share with you is that, um this person in the foreground not only looks more powerful, but depending on how you shoot it may also look more vulnerable because of the wider angle lens because you're very close into his personal space that gets a lot of different ways of interpreting stuff, but there's some basic rules. Um, of showing that exact same scenes, you can cut the camera one we have not moved. This is a completely different relationship between subject a and subject b there is no power relationship whatsoever. That's communicated via lens choice and that's a very important point where you place the camera volunteers let relatives your subject will imply certain relationships of power weakness. Fear um and the lens choice is just as important as, well wide angles will exaggerate the size of the foreground subject and minimize the sounds of this small subject in background. There's some famous orson welles shots where you guys going to take a break? Thank you very much. Very famous. Orson welles. Shots where? Uh, we might try and do one of these uh, tomorrow you guys remember this when you shoot your scene of two people sitting in the foreground table arched over talking about the person's life in the background, not orson welles shot that with the wide angle lens to make the person in the background looking very, very small and to imply that the two people talking about that person's fate in the background we're so much more powerful than he was in the background very simple technique, very effective course as a subject in the background walk closer and closer to the camera. The size ratio even doubt and eventually you can also pan the camera up tohave person the background now fill the frame and minimize people in the foreground it's a different way of showing how let's pretend we're in the middle of an argument or discussion. You guys all know that who is in power changes based on what set and that a conversation that relationship can change with the conversation. This is a way of telling that cinematically one of my very favorite films by steven spielberg and a vp named alan davey. Oh is the color purple and I highly recommend you watch this film tomorrow or tonight because as you look at the relationship between the two main characters, you will see how um whoopi goldberg and danny glover change their relationship during the film she is being abused by him. Started the film she is a much weaker person. He is domineering, abusive the entire first half of the film. He is always for the most part in the foreground with a wide angle lens with her in the background small. He is absolutely dwarfing her in terms of size as the film progresses, noticed that lens has become more compressed and they become more equal to where eventually things flip around entirely and she becomes the person in the foreground towards in the film and there is an implied relationship in terms of the two of them together during that film and how it changes and the director spielberg and dp on daddio we're very effectively able to show that in a very subtle way and this is what's key here we now as we become filmmakers are starting to pay attention to these things were starting to pay attention the fact that how you place your camera one lazar choose and the height of the camera to the two subjects the distance and the angle are going to help foreshadow and tell certain relationships and how they evolve and that can become extremely effective tools of communicating emotion sensation and trends all the time all right uh there goes that part very basic terms when you speak your crew say would like a close up of set person that is a close up shot okay, you can see on the scale there there's actually specific lines that they refer to sew that you know the easiest way for me to communicate with most crew members because most people have different definitions of close up extreme close up is I want a close up so you put your hands from here to there so the top of the frame and the bottom the frame I would like an extreme close up on the eyes okay, fill the frame with the eyes then there's a wide close up out here and then um the cowboys shot from my belt where my guns are in my head I want a cowboy I want a locked off cowboy perpendicular to the subject and I want you to pan right that's how you communicate to an operator clearly they're going to immediately you want to shoot from here to here locked off initially and when you yell action on the camera they're gonna pan from left to right or I would like a medium full shot down to my knees ok where the fifty millimeter lens so as a dp you know where that camera you don't miss aly knew where you want to place the camera if you tell someone I want a fifty millimeter lens where the kabo shot they're going to figure out where to place the camera as long as I give you that frame where you have from here to here on a fifty and you know what that the field it is and it's better like that and in a full shot full body shot ok, I hope you learned some important language uh in terms of cinema and how tonight or this afternoon and tomorrow as fellow crew members you can communicate and never ever say could you move to that direction? Can you shoot a uh you know, a long lens shot of that person, that person that get their face in the frame no no no no I want an extreme close up on the lips extreme close up on the eyes from uh that direction uh from camera right? So in other words the cameras seeing something so the camera moves in that direction uh and I want you to tilt up twenty degrees the mathematical formula how you won knows what twenty breezes I want you to go twenty percent slower don't tell someone I want you to go a little bit slower. I want you go faster it's very confusing to an actor or an operator give me twice this fast please do it half assed slow or half his fast he's into it means start slow and go in okay uh we've gone close up screen close up, medium shot establishing long shot and master there's a kind of different terms establishing thames refer to and overall you get an idea of your sense of place a long shot is a long telephoto shop and a master shot is gently describing the overall shot regards to the lands that shows you uh scene all right and we're not going to do too much lighting but in general when you light things you always want to start with the master shot light for the overall environment, shoot that first and then move in and bring lights in closer with tighter shots that's how you kind of shoot a scene think about it if you start to light with a very specific details on your tiger on someone's, face lights may come closer. They may be in the frame, the stands or in the frame. You start tight and then moved back and shoot wide after that, the lights aaron, your friend. Okay, and it may be very difficult for you replicate that lighting while pulling the lights away. So in film, master shot first details after coverage refers to the idea of shooting more than one thing at once or at the very least, excuse me, uh, giving your editor choices at it from. So if you shoot entire scene with just one take after the other and you miss one or it's out of focus, theater has nothing to cut, too. So in terms of coverage, you're gonna want to shoot a multitude of shots either simultaneously or in sequence. That could be a strong together from a variety of lenses to give your editor options. You know, ed described to me the idea of a farmer walking up this tractor waking up in the morning and going up can shoot linearly. Um and you can shoot it all. One shot, he followed the farmer from his bed through his doorway up to his tractor. Every single bump and move that you have in there is gonna be a problem for the other doesn't know professional however, have shooting the more sequential matter have a shot of him getting up in bed cut to a shot of him putting his shoes on cut to a shot of him butting his shirt up cut to a shot of him walking for his doorway cut to a shot of him stepping up onto his tractor a wide establishing shot the tractor in the form lam a beautiful sky a tight shot of him turn the tractor on another tight shot of the exhaust coming out of the tractor and then a final shot from behind as a tractor leaves the scene. Hopefully you're starting to see how you think in a very different matter as a filmmaker that as a still photographer it's not about that one beautiful shot it's about how all the shots come together help tell a story to get help you get from point a to point b in a beautiful, entertaining and most importantly purposeful way to help make your audience not just see a farmer that's waking up and going to his tractor but to feel something the entire time to feel that danger is coming to feel this is the last time this gentleman will ever step on tractor has a horrible crash is coming the only way you're gonna build up the suspense he's either, by the way, you cut it together by building up scenes that foreshadow what's going to happen or something it's happening simultaneously or by the way, you shoot it, just the angles you choose, we'll let your audience feel a certain way. Okay? Um, master shop, close ups get details. So what we're gonna do today at the end of the day, is we're going to shoot a fake documentary and interview on people who run this workshop. I have had people, uh, students in this workshop shooting what we call b roll or close ups inserts they are random moments in time that note nicely stitched together make any story there detail shots. Uh, but what we're going to do is while we hear the interview of the person being interviewed, we're going to try and find shot, so they took that speak to what they're talking about, and instead of having to stare it someone talking for two minutes straight, you're going to cut from the time lapses we've been shooting to the b roll back to the subject matter, so when they make a very important point that's emotional, you're gonna want to cut to their face to see the emotion on their face. However, if you have the role that shows what they're talking about, you're going to cut to that and in general with the beautiful power of editing that ed will show us um you're going to be able to see this all come together that's it for part one questions in the classroom bueller anyone I think of one good people are just asking you to discuss in the chat room about one hundred eighty degree rule she couldn't talk about later, okay? We're definitely gonna hit that. Okay, thank you. Is your depth of field scale the same when calculating hyper focal uh depending on using a full frame sensor or a crop sensor no um the larger the censor the left of the field you're gonna have these same given lens and aperture so obviously less hyper focal depth of field uh with, uh bigger sensor which is why it's easier perhaps is you were the one d mark four thirty percent smaller sensor for video that five demark too and even easier with seventy. So the same exact lens and aperture do you get that? The sensors smaller, more depth of field also one very important a basic rule. Um when you have a hyper focal distance we can cut the camera two on a stationary shot of this late um if your camera is over here there's always gonna be let's say one times the distance in front of that subject and focus and twice that in the back rights not equal distant your focus is always one to two ratio relative to the subject that's why it's very difficult to get things in focus in the foreground verses in the background very simple uh lesson about depth of field was one in front two and back okay, the other questions yes so in the chat room uh somebody asked if you shoot at one sixty it that for thirty frames per second and one fiftieth for twenty four I should have one fiftieth period because the closest thing to one forty eights of a second. All right, so uh people say that's always best at a multiple of your frames per second in terms of shutter speed I personally disagree I shoot everything whether I'm shooting thirty or twenty four or twenty five and powell had one fiftieth of a second because to me it's about matching that blur and making it look like film which for the most part of shot one forty eighth and this is one of those discussions of like srg be versus adobe ninety eight that people will never agree upon that's my choice yes uh is a tilt shift lens ever used for us to establish anything? It absolutely can be um and I can not I can point you to some of my photography the question was specifically about a term I don't under I don't know shine fluke, shine flu swine flu I don't recognise shine told sheriff lenses ah totally different beast and er mei I'd probably want to entire workshop on at some point yes so there's a question about pre planning in hurt locker were the director obviously wanted the feeling of um you know there's a huge amount of suspense but you were always feeling like the audience was a part of the I don't know in the bomb field so when she was um doing her shots interment in terms of the cutaways do you think that she had that in mind or was that a choice that she was made in the editing process? I would absolutely bet that the choice was made in the way she chose to choose to shoot it uh and I'm well sleep deprived but what is the academy award winning director his name or catherine uh bigelow um and um basically, uh I think she had not having ever spoken to her about it but I would assume that she chose to shoot certain scenes with a wider angle lands where the camera's much closer to the technician to make the audience member feel like they might explode along with that person whereas shooting the same scene with a four hundred million lens you're like looking in on someone and you're safe so it's absolutely part of that deal has a filmmaker lens choice goes back to what I was talking about a great example um you want this? The the audiences other point of view to feel like they're involved and they're at risk with the subject, whereas if they're washing from one hundred feet away with a long telephoto lens, you feel removed from it? Yes, in the chat room people are asking if you're going to explain a role and when to use it for storytelling a rule that's what they're saying a roll a b roll b roll yes b roll we will talk about this afternoon when we do the documentary and the interview b roll uh get a better idea that when we do it thank you a role is the interview your main content b roll is the other stuff it's less important, but that it's like the stuffing in the turkey? Yes. Is there an alternative to using neutral density filters when you're shooting wide open during the day? We spoke about that yesterday and yes that's a way to get shelled up the field. So alternative to andy filters. I heard the question is using nd filters air eyes are an alternative to use the not if you mean lord s a yugo the left of the field you have you're gonna hit a certain point where you're gonna need it in the filter, right? All right, I think it's a good time to take a break

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

DSLRCinema01-01_Intro.pdf
DSLRCinema01-02_HDDSLRS.pdf
DSLRCinema01-03_Audio.pdf
DSLRCinema01-04_VideoGear.pdf
DSLRCinema02-01_ShotSelection.pdf
DSLRCinema02-02_SupportLight.pdf
DSLRCinema02-03_FilmCrew.pdf
DSLRCinema03-01_ShootWorkflow.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

I would recommend this class to anyone needing a refresher on video in a DSLR world, but I would imagine that some of the technical topics might be a bit too much of a deep dive in an introductory course like this. Not everyone is going to be creating staged events and so the attention paid to blocking and focus might be less interest. Overall, for someone who graduated in film/video a while ago, it was great to get up to speed on today's cameras and hardware.

Marvin Løvenfeldt
 

Seems like an update to this class is needed. he talks about the Canon 5D mark II. Several better cameras have come on the market since including several other brands, many better options in 2017.

Johnnee Lin
 

Why should I buy the class again to see it since I have bought the package ?

Student Work

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