Here are a couple of great YouTube videos that I came across. There are some valuable lessons here from some of the world’s greatest cinematographers.
Part 1 of the Lighting Segment from “Cinematographer Style” Directed by Jon Fauer.
The industry’s best talk about proper lighting and equipment know-hows. Films are much more than a good story or good laughs, its technique and supremely efficient execution is what makes our eyes wander the screen and our minds when we think about a great film.
Part 2 of the Lighting Segment from “Cinematographer Style” Directed by Jon Fauer.
The industry’s most talented and visionary cinematographers explain the importance of proper lighting and the techniques required for appropriate illumination.
Cinematographers in interview:
Vittorio Storaro: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005886/
William A. Fraker: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005710/
Fred Murphy: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0002320/
Bill Butler: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0124832/
Gordon Willis: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0932336/
Bill Dill: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0226778/
Remi Adefarasin: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001899/
Daniel Pearl: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0669050/
Denis Lenoir: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003631/
Richard Kline: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0459660/
Russel Carpenter: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005665/
Vilmos Zsigmond: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005936/
Stephen Goldblatt: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0003552/
Robert Primes: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0697543/
John Toll: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001799/
If you’re like most creative professionals, you probably use your computer for editing, graphics, effects, audio production, and any number of other tasks that require maximum performance from your system. You probably also use that same system for many other things that don’t require top performance.
My usual ritual when starting work for the day is to set my Energy Saver settings to never sleep the system because there is nothing worse than trying to play back a timeline and having to wait for disks to spin up. I spend the day working, then I restore my settings to something that is a lot more energy efficient. This lets me have the performance that I need to work, but gives me the lower heat, lower power consumption, and eco friendliness that I want from my system when I’m not working in a demanding application.
I was getting tired of making these changes manually, so I turned to Google. After a little bit of searching, I found a set of AppleScripts for changing Energy Saver Profiles. These scripts are easy to install and run from the menu bar. The days of manually configuring the energy saver twice a day are gone now.
There is a new podcast on the block for creative media producers called MacMediaTech. I was honored to be invited by the host, Kenn Bell, to be a guest on the premiere episode a couple of weeks ago. The other two guests were Paul Del Vecchio, and Matt Jeppsen. This is how Kenn describes the show:
Every episode will have four filmmakers discussing three topics. One about the Mac, one about Media (film, TV, Web) and one about filmmaking tech.
I get this question a lot from freelance editors that are just starting out. They always have a tough time figuring out how to price their services. Creative people tend to have difficulty with the business side of things and get themselves into undesirable situations all too often. Have you ever set a flat rate for a job then found yourself working for peanuts at the end when you did the math? I know I have. I learned a valuable lesson about this kind of situation way back in my graphic design days, and I still use it as a basis for pricing most of the work I do. The following formula doesn’t apply to all situations, but I find it a solid starting point. Here’s how I figure it out…
Step 1 – Mathematical Guesswork
The first thing to do is determine how much you would like to get paid per hour. It sounds simple enough, but this is a sticking point for many freelancers. There is a lot to consider here. A few factors in determining your hourly rate are your skill level, years of experience, location, overhead, market, education, and the clients that you work for. You don’t need a single rock solid rate. There is room for flexibility. For example, the rate that I charge corporate clients is different than what I charge independent filmmakers. But you should figure out a baseline rate, and work from there. Freelance Switch has a super-fantastic rate calculator to help you figure this out.
Step 2 – Creative Guesswork
Now that you have figured out your hourly rate, you need to try and estimate how many hours you will work on the project in question. Figuring out the amount of time you will spend on a job isn’t an exact science. Sometimes it’s nothing but an unlucky guess. But it gets easier with time and experience. I know this is vague, and may seem unhelpful, but only you can guess at how long it will take.
Step 3 – More Math
Once you have an idea of how many hours it will take… double it. That’s right, double it. It’s usually going to take you at least twice as long as you think it will.
Step 4 – Communicate
Let the client know that you work by the hour, what the rate is, and how many hours you think it will take. Make it clear that the total price is an ESTIMATE, and if you spend more hours it will cost more, and if you spend less hours it will cost less. This way it
is fair for everyone involved.
Sometimes you’ll have to do everything you can to come in under a certain budget because that’s all the client can spend. When this is the case, the client should know that because of the limited budget, you have limited time to accomplish what they want, so there will be compromises. You should work with the client on what those compromises should be and how to get the edit done under budget with acceptable results. All too often it is the editor that is making the compromise of time. Communicate.
This obviously does not apply to every situation, and there are many ways to bill a client. Some of my clients pay a day rate, and some pay a weekly rate. It all depends on the client and the scope of the project.
Setting rates gets easier with experience, but hopefully this helps a little. If you have any tips or ideas that work for you and would help, please share them in the comments.
I’m as much of a camera nut as the next filmmaker, and I am ecstatic about the giant leaps that camera technology has been making of late. Like so many others, I’m on the Amazon.com waiting list for two Canon 7D bodies, and they just can’t get here fast enough. But I have been noticing a trend in the independent film community lately. It seems that the most important thing to filmmakers theses days is the latest, greatest camera. Even worse, we speculate and obsess over the latest camera features and specs. The accessibility of high quality tools and the democratization of production is enabling filmmakers to do what was only a dream just a few years ago.
What is that dream for most filmmakers? Telling stories. Story is the reason that I got into this business. What is storytelling? Story is a combination of entertaining, informing and most importantly, manipulating and evoking an emotional response from an audience. Storytelling (the filmmaker’s dream) is not depth of field, sensor size, cameras, editing software, faster computers, microphones, codecs, camera stabilizers, or anything else. These are just the tools that we use to create our art . Surely, Salvador Dali didn’t sit around with other painters for days on end and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the latest canvas and brushes. Photographers are even bigger gear heads than filmmakers(debatable, but bear with me), but their discussions always come back to the photo. I have never seen a comment thread on Flickr that focuses exclusively on the camera that a photo was shot with. The critique usually runs much deeper than that. So, why is it that filmmakers endlessly discuss, debate, and lust after these items that are nothing more than our paint brushes and canvas? The tools are important, we use them to guide our audience, but what we make with these tools is infinitely more important than the tools themselves. What defines you as a director, editor, writer, cinematographer? Is it your camera, NLE, writing software? No. It’s your story.
There is a fantastic short film on Vimeo called “Perya” that’s getting a lot of attention the past few days. But I think it is getting the wrong kind of attention. This film has been blogged about over and over, and the only thing that anyone cares about is the Canon 7D that it was shot with! Yes, the images are stunning, but there is a substantial story there as well. It is a really great short documentary. Not because of the shallow depth of field or the 24P frame rate, but because of the story.
After viewing Perya the second time with a technical eye, I scrolled down the page to leave a comment. As I read the long list of comments I found myself having another emotional response. I was shocked that not a single comment on that page complimented the filmmakers on the story or the subject matter. Why isn’t anyone talking about that?
A recent post on ProLost, Stu Maschwitz coined the term Bokake for the all too common, slick, yet devoid of story, camera tests like Reverie. Perya is unfairly being treated like Bokake, but it is so much more. Perya is not a good film because it was lensed with a Canon 7D. Look a little bid deeper. Are filmmakers blinded by technology? If so, I think we need to make a conscious effort to try and focus on story, structure, character, tension, drama, lighting, action, dialog, location, pacing, performance, composition, and all of the other important things that make a good film.
If your dream has alway been to own a 7D or a Scarlet, more power to you. If your dream is to make a movie, you should start paying attention to the things that are hidden by the technology blinders that I think we have all been wearing lately.
