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/
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’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.
Adobe Kuler is an indispensable tool for anyone that works with color. No matter what variety of media you work with, if you need to whip up amazing color schemes you should be using this tool.
If you work on a Mac, this just got easier. Using the Mondrianum 2 plugin for the Apple OS X system color picker, you have access to Kuler from virtually anywhere in your system. Just change your preferences in any app that doesn’t use the system color picker by default (Adobe apps), and you have one of the most powerful design references available on the web right at your fingertips.
Is it possible to speed up your film or video editing and become more efficient without spending truckloads of cash on the latest bleeding edge hardware? Yes. You can edit faster without spending any money. Increasing your editing efficiency can actually make you more money.
With the amount of time I spend working in non-linear editing software, I like to be as quick and precise as I can while staying creative. Speed and efficiency is important for a variety of reasons if you make a living as an editor. You’ll get more work done in a shorter time. You will be able to take on more projects. You can charge your clients more on these new projects because you get more work done in an hour or day or however you bill your clients.
This isn’t about rushing through your work, it’s about having more time to put better quality on the screen. If the technical parts of editing are second nature, it leaves more time to do the part of the job that you actually want to do. It doesn’t matter what kind of material you work on, speeding up the way you work can only be a benefit.
This series of posts will outline some of things that I do to keep up to speed and even stay ahead of the curve on fast paced jobs with tight deadlines. I work primarily in Final Cut Studio, but have recently come back to Avid Media Composer after a few years away from it, thanks to John Flowers. I also play around with Premiere Pro CS4 a little bit, but this series of tips is mostly editing platform agnostic and should apply to any software you choose. Some of it will even apply to other applications.
Part 1 – File Organization
Being organized starts at the Finder/Explorer level. If you have a messy desktop or any other catch-all or repository for random files coming in and out of your work then this is for you. If you have media offline and don’t know where it is, read on. If you need to do frequent searches to find some bit of media that belongs with a project, then you have some organization to do.
You should know the file path to anything included in an edit project that you are working on. In other words, everything needed for a project should be organized in a central location for that project. I can look at anything that I have edited in the past few years and identify the folder that contains any graphic, sound effect or music used in it. It sounds a little bit crazy or obsessive compulsive, but it’s not. If you use the same procedure for organizing all of the assets for every project that you work on this should be no problem. I use a project template directory that looks like this
I keep a copy of this template directory in each of the folders that hold my projects. I use the underscore at the beginning of the folder name to keep it at the top of the list for quick access. When I start a new project I simply right click and duplicate the template directory and rename it. But how long does it really take to make a few folders for a new project? Not long. But to be truly efficient, you’re going to want to save time everywhere you can. If you’re are messy computer user by nature, this will save you more hassles than you can imagine over time by giving you a place to put everything. If you are pretty organized to start with then this saves you just a little bit of time at the beginning of a project, but every little time saving technique adds up.
Once the project directory is set up for the new edit job, everything related to the project gets copied or moved here before importing into a project. The operative word in the previous sentence is before. This isn’t entirely necessary with Avid because of Media Composer’s rock solid media management, but I do it anyway because my Avid Media Files directory is on a RAID 0 array and I don’t trust it. And when I have a hard drive catastrophe, everything I need to rebuild the project is in one place that gets backed up daily. Everything except for the source video files or tapes of course, that’s another article entirely. This organizational procedure is the same whether I’m working in Final Cut Pro, Media Composer, or Premiere Pro. I wouldn’t even change if I were cutting in Media 100, Speed Edit, Sony Vegas, or Windows Movie Maker.
Being consistent is the key with organizing your projects. This whole organization business is most crucial when your edit is being passed on to another editor. Whether the show is getting an online, or you are collaborating with another editor on your cut. Any other editor or assistant should be able to take your project and pick up right where you left off. Your organization method should be logical and easy to understand. With everything in one place, your project becomes much more portable and will cause less headaches for you and the people you work with.
How does all of this help make you a faster, more efficient editor? Simple. If you know where a file is then you’ll never have to spend time looking for it. Find a system that works for you and stick to it. If you come across something that works better than your current system, give it a try. But for the love of all things post production, don’t go back to that messy desktop and media scattered over 6 external drives. It’s not a good way to work.
If you get as many of the left-brained activities associated with this job done in a methodical fashion then you have more time to be a right-brained creative type. Creativity, after all, is what the client is paying for when they hire you. Isn’t it?
