A film look? How about proper SHOT DESIGN?

Lloyds said:
Since the original Youtube tutorial had to do with just what you're talking about--shot design--I have a question.

Besides film school and the school of experience, are the any other resources to learn this kind of stuff that you guys can recommend? I tend to be a "Ok, looks pretty good" kind of guy without dedicating the proper time to set up the shot to make it just right. From following this thread and the video, I see that a lot of my shots have been very boring, and would love more practical info on this.

Books, videos, etc.... Thanks.
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I'd recommend getting a reasonble still camera, perhaps even one that does do the HD video, like the GH-1, or the Nikons (I'd recommend Nikons because of the number of Nikons and lenses I've had over the years... Canon lenses are very sharp, but because I've been using Nikon, I've never really been able to justify the expense of re-buying everything...).

In that way, you would develop your 'eye', for composition, lighting, and the like, without a lot of requirement for setup, additional paraphenalia, etc.

As for books and DVD, I think there are some recommendations in the various 'sticky' threads at the front of this forum.
 
tmnt said:
HCW is pretty good for anyone wanting to learn more. Gets fairly detailed and is easy to follow.
I just purchased 'film directing: shot by shot', anyone here read it?
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I thought that was pretty good, but as with most things, mileage may vary.

In fact I'd recommend people look at a number of the other books published by
"Michael Weise Productions", here's an Amazon search list:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=michael+wiese+productions&x=14&y=17
 
Hi Guys, I just posted the second tutorial on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5587PORymWI

I just now checked back on this forum and read all the replies to my original post. It's given me some great ideas for my next tutorial. In a way I wish i had checked out this thread before i did the second tutorial... but I will for sure be posting a lot more videos soon. Thanks for watching!
Tom Antos
 
ProfessorU said:
It seems like a good place for someone to start. The narration would be less distracting if you took what you've said, wrote it down, and re-read it with some light edits. Right now it feels a bit helter-skelter.

For beginners, you may want to talk a little bit about headroom and what is a natural camera height.

Also, that bright white flower pot in the upper left corner would bug me if it was my shot. That's a personal thing, tho.
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You might be onto something with regards to my constant ranting. A script might helpful, but until I get more time to do this I'll probably just have to record the these voice overs on the fly. Right now I do these on my own time, late in the evening when I get a bit of time off. I hope though that in the future I'll get more time to do a properly narrate one. Thx for the idea though!
 
Finnegan said:
There is a little bit of a misconception about 35mm adapters and their ability to make footage into footage worthy of being called "cinema", but I think most experienced shooters realize that adapters are simply a tool to control one element of image making. I don't necessarily believe that in the tutorial video is he suggesting that something needs to be out of focus for it to look cinematic. And many times framing something in the foreground when your target is in focus in the background serves as a stylistic choice in composition and not necessarily just to burden the frame with information that isn't even really looked at by the audience.
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Hi, I posted the original tutorial video and yes, I also think people over do with the shallow depth of field. I think it's great if you can use a camera that has a bigger sensor since it allows for that creative decision like narrow DOF (when it makes sense) and it gives you better low light reception, BUT to think that you should always throw the background out of focus is a mistake. I will actually be doing another tutorial in the future about large landscape photography I did in my older WW2 film. In many cases i try to keep the whole scene in focus to let the viewer enjoy the scenery, while at the same time i use lighting and color composition to help separate the background from the foreground and give the shot some depth.

Here's my next tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5587PORymWI
 
Gohanto said:
Backtracking a bit to the original question...

I like a lot of the issues that you brought up, but you might want to consider breaking down the scene from "Casper and Clover" you open the video with. Pausing and replaying the video to point things out. As I think that's a much more polished product to aspire to.

- Foreground elements
- Changing shot composition (from moving around the foreground element, two-shot moving into an OTS) [It's surprising how often people just want to keep the camera on sticks or only using camera movement to follow motion]
- Lens height
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I will do a tutorial hopefully with "Casper and Clover" as an example as soon as the film is released, until then i can't show more of the film. Legalities. I will however be working on a lower budget short film in the near future where I will be able to post the entire film online and I can for sure use those shots as examples. Thanks for noticing the camera work in this example though... that's also something that I feel a lot of cinematographers forget about... and something you can learn a lot about by reading books like Film Directing Shot by Shot (my favorite) or the Hollywood Camera Workshop DVD's... available online i think.

Here is my next tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5587PORymWI

Enjoy!
Tom
 
JonathanLB said:
Hmm, ok? I thought that was the best image! haha, it's certainly the nicest looking and most clear.
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30 years apart, right?

Both have their appeal. We're slowly losing the organic feel of imaging, in 50 years the only way will be to emulate it or achieve it in digital ways.

Perhaps a breaktrhough on digital imaging will introduce better noise structure that resembles grain and images with gain will look better than today.

Who knows, digital is in its infancy and will last much longer than film :).
 
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