Filmmaking 101: Training for Scriptwriting, Camera, Shooting, Lighting and Video Post Production

what we're gonna do here is we're gonna do a filmmaking 101 class for you guys and if you have any questions or interest or anything like that please let us know along the way because if we don't have the answers we could certainly point you in the right directions for that my name is Craig canet and I'm one of the one of the founders of the festival it goes back 12 years we're really excited to to do this workshop again we did a workshop with our second event and now we're doing it with our twelfth event so it's been a little bit a while between the between the two things also with me is Tony really Tony why don't you tell people a little bit about yourself sure I'm a director of photography and director at creative edge productions I'm also an educator for NextWave DV which is one of our blogs and YouTube channel where we do a lot of behind-the-scenes video production and stuff like that I do have a film they'll be shown here as well and Craig asked me if I'd be interested in sharing just some of the things that I've learned over the years I started off as a very much an amateur filmmaker and no education and and then slowly building my way up so what I want to show you guys a mind of the stuff is just how to do it without any planning or any formal education and just making you know kinda as you go in and whatever works is what you do I think of some of my absolute favorite films and they're from when I was in high school because that was such a significant time of my growth and I'm a huge fan of the road warrior that's a movie that came out right at the right perfect time for me and and it means so absolut much as far as that as far as my life is concerned now the significance of storytelling in general are there anybody in here that's at an educator we had a teacher back there at school called sir I took a class last year on storytelling which I would recommend to all teachers every single teacher out there storytelling is a way of getting cos and a way of community that registers with the human brain for example they've done studies where they've taught people all these different facts it's like okay here's a fact here's a fact here's a fact and then they tested you on those facts they tested people on those facts and people did okay but then they worked those facts into a story they worked those all those different things into a story and told that story and by gosh those people remembered those facts so much more significantly the the ratio was so high that I'm like why don't teach us know this because if they knew that we would be able to reach kids and such a stronger pace by sharing stories every now and then because when you're listening to facts you listen to them in one particular mindset when you start hearing a story your brain clicks in a different way now Tony and I are gonna kind of team teach this but we've we want to try to talk to you guys about things to do and things to avoid to make a better production now the first thing that I want to share with you guys the very first thing and I think is pretty important is idea anytime you guys think you have an idea jot it down take the time to put it in a notebook take the time to put it on your cell phone whatever it takes to receive that idea because how many of you guys out there have already lost an award-winning short film or idea because you didn't write it down I know I'm in net I'm in that boat definitely in that boat you need to try to take that time and I even write that down ideas when I'm driving down the highway so you can do it and it doesn't you don't you have to translate it later because your pen your hand penmanship is not very good but it's there that information I want that information I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream and I'm like oh my god that was such a brilliant movie in my head that was such a great movie it was so good I will remember it tomorrow morning I will remember that don't have to write that down you wake up in the morning and it's gone you know it is absolutely gone so the importance of getting those ideas down I cannot stress that enough I truly truly can't now you've got an idea you've got seeds of different scenes what do you do with that start thinking about start thinking about how that would generate into a story and there's a lot of different ways of structuring your story sometimes some of you guys have probably heard of this three-act structure the three-act structure is pretty famous as far as if you want to write a Hollywood script you almost have to know the three-act structure verbatim and follow that pattern it to the letter there are books out there that'll help you with that structure big time save the cat is one and that same writer is written a couple of other books about saving cats so and it's actually based on the first couple minutes of your movie if you don't hook your attention of your audience you lost doesn't even matter if it's a fabulous story by H by page 50 if people don't get to that page it doesn't matter okay so getting this thing now in story form and that can jail in your head for a long time I've on I've had ideas one of the short films that I wanted to do years ago have to do had to do with singing one of them one of the short films that I did a couple years ago and had to do with a guy over pumping gas he had $10 in his wallet and he goes up to 12 bucks now what do you do what do you do after that and it's a problem that everybody I think can identify with so I had this seed of an idea in my head for a long time and it just sat there and gelled and gel that I'm like okay what would happen if this person happened and add a couple characters add this in there and it just kind of flopped and flopped and when I'm driving around and think about it and then finally one day everything just kind of went snap and snapped into the right position and that morning I had a teacher's in-service where I was supposed to be paying attention and I took that out of that that two hour period and I wrote out the entire script boom just like that it came out that easy after having said and thought about it that long so the story is there and you know what story structure can be as simple as this a beginning a middle and an end that's super easy seriously they do a thing on the online called the five five second videos 5 second stories and in five seconds people can have a beginning a middle and an end that engages your mind tells you a story in that amount of time vini you've been making commercials forever you got 30 seconds to tell an entire story and you can do it it you have to do it if you really want to hook that audience you have to tell that story and that can contain the amount of time so we've got we've got the importance of telling that story and now that you have your story you want to start thinking about writing out a treatment and a treatment is something that can be I've seen treatments that were a paragraph long this tells you what my movies going to be about boom this paragraph I've also seen treatments I read I have the treatment for et2 remember that movie it never came out it never came out the movie was called et tu and it had like a 12 page treatment it was actually kind of an interesting little treatment it had a it had a and help I know et that would have been kind of interesting and he was kind of like this evil et hmm that would have been kind of weird but they never made it that treatment was there and you know what there's billions of treatments out there maybe not billions but there are tons of treatments out there for different stories that you guys can create and by having those treatments ready it boom now I've got that idea ready in case I ever get the passion to write it does that make sense because a lot of times getting those ideas down is key and somebody could come up to you and they're like man oh man I really wanted to do us a movie about a talking kitten that goes through his life wanting to be a dog she's making this up and and somebody somebody tells you that you're like oh my god I've got a story like that it's not fleshed out but I've got it I will give you a million dollars to write it here you go wow that's a great opportunity it won't work quite like that I apologize for giving you guys false hopes but but that's pretty much getting those ideas down and ready important all right treatment doesn't have to be long it just has to contain your story the next we get to go to that awesome little brute blueprint of a thing called your script all right we've got a couple screenwriters out there amongst us so if you have anything to add raise your hand and I will say wrong I will say and go ahead and add something but when you're writing your script the very first mistake that some people do is they get to detail-oriented now you'd think wait a second we want to have the details in the script we want to have that for example our very first line we start out we can start out with fade in which is um which is actually we'll start out with with a with a direction so we're starting from black we're fading into the story and now we have to decide are we inside or outside that's the very first choice you have to make well you know what let's start with an exterior shot ext ext okay and now we got to figure out where we're at well you know what I want to be at a seedy bar with low lights and it's and it's smells of garbage and it's and it's it's one of those places that looks like it it might have been popular in the 50s but now it's not popular anymore so now I got to write that down and we get all that detail in one line a bar now you can add a you can add a descriptive line in there certainly you can if you want it to be a seedy bar if you want it to be a dark bar if you want it to be something whatever but don't get too descriptive with it because someone will read this script and want to find that location you know what if you know your location as to where you want to go put that exterior joe's bar now you're writing this script for yourself so that's gonna mean something if you're writing this script for somebody else don't do that they're not nobodies a Nelson else is going to know what Joe's Bar is and now we need to decide what time of the day is it is it morning is it night a lot of times it's just simple as day or night but there are also many other descriptors as far as that's concerned you can put in there and under certain time you don't know what time it is okay you can put in there noon i noon we could put in there midnight all right so now I know exactly what time it is Joe's exterior of Joe's bar at midnight that is my slug line that is the line that lets people know where we are the very second thing you want to add is your action typically you start with an action people sometimes can cut right to dialogue but an action I think is for what I'm writing I always like to have some type of a describer so people know what's happening the second they see the screen so two guys sorry one write this for me two guys white cigars under a light alright here we go now we kind of can see that we can visualize having their head Benny it probably would be I could put that in there too I just wanted I just am NOT a fast writer so I didn't want to be so descriptive to guys like cigar under under a streetlight okay and I couldn't even put down who those two guys are at this point we might not know we might not know who they are it's still in the shadows next we're going to get to dialogue and I don't want to spend too much time on this stuff but if you guys have questions about it we can certainly talk a little bit more in depth on all this stuff later on but you're getting your script right is is key to getting that blueprint for your film started you really want to have a strong blueprint now we're gonna move into dialogue and dialogue is some people really have a flair for dialogue you'll hear Kevin Smith's name mentioned or you'll hear Quentin Tarantino's name mentioned those guys write interesting dialogue but a lot of times I don't know if it's necessarily real at times I've heard I've heard some of their stuff that's been yeah wow I can really believe those guys and I've heard other pieces where it's like hmm not sure I necessarily believe that my suggestion to you is to really really listen to people listen to what people sound like because not often do people talk with proper grammar not often not always when people use the exact right phrase for example do not go down there if I were to write that in a script I wouldn't put do not go down there hey hey James do not go down there unless it's a butler don't do not to go down there that might be appropriate otherwise I put in contractions don't go down there don't go down there so right as people would speak it'll make it much more concise quicker it'll make a lot more sense to the reader if that makes sense to you also and this is a really tricky one when you're writing your character dialogues be extremely careful this is one of the problems at beginning writers have is that a lot of your characters will sound like you exactly like you that's not a problem for one of the characters one of the characters might be derived from you but if all the characters sound the same you're gonna be coming from like this cookie cutter world and everybody doesn't necessarily have the same viewpoints in the same opinions and things of that nature so try to bury up the the tone of your dialogue the tone of your characters what they say I'm sure that if I go back and look at some of my older films and even some of my newer films some of my characters are always going to sound the same it's something that you always want to be working on alright so now we're going to go to the dialogue and when you're doing dialogue keep in mind if you there are certain formats that you can put your screen screenplay into you were from you took a class in screenwriting right Ashley you two about talking the guy in front of you but but anyway it's both of you guys there's certain formats right that you're that you're kind of strongly strongly encouraged to use is that true and and this sort of follows that but I'm not talking about the margins or anything like that they get into that much detail finding the margins this place this line should be spaced in here this actually fade in should be way over here when you start out Ashley I I use final draft myself too and there's a there's actually some free screenwriting software online too that you guys can get do you know what it is Celtics write that down you guys because if you want to get into some some some screenwriting free software I've never even heard that one you still can write this down you're going to probably end up with a page and a half to script because roughly translated your scripts go about a minute a page Vinnie you got some other details there's also when you see this right here this means that you're a new scene point and so from when I obviously I'm coming from production side if we were if Gregor has come to me and I say how many locations are we shooting at what are we going to be you know whatever and how many different times a day every every shooting because we may be shooting at the bar but there may be a daytime shout there may be a nighttime shot so soft script writing software well once you set up all of these it'll then break it out into cards and then you can then say these are all the different locations we're shooting at you can have notes for those to say simple things like you know there needs to be a fancy at Hearst there something bizarre you can write in there make sure that everybody is on the same page and break them out so that's that's big advantages to using script writing software you don't need it but it's gonna make your life a lot easier especially if you're doing anything of length and substance cool um I also want to add this you guys both know the screenwriting format it's very very important if you want to sell your script if you want to sell your script you better have it written right because if you don't be creative with that format in any way I have heard stories of people that are like you know what every character that I have I'm going to use a different font for the way they speak that'll be awesome it'll be creative and people will remember that you know what when that script gets into the office of someone that wants to write a spirit wants to buy a script they're gonna see that and they're gonna go whoops they're gonna not even really check it out get your format right and within the first page hook them it has to be done that way I don't want to spend too much more time on on the dialogue I want to get to Tony's stuff here slugline action dialogue and then you've got a basic blueprint of a script there in this particular first draft of the script do whatever it takes if you don't know the format and you're gonna be the director write it in a format that you understand just so that you get it done so so you're not worried so much about formatting and learning that you can learn that later get your story written so that you understand it because you're gonna be making this movie learn this later on and then apply it start using it I use this all the time when I'm writing but I didn't use it when I first started I didn't know it when I first started and also there are two there are there are a couple different types of scripts we've got our basic script that we would hand to our actors would look to see where all their lines are and let's just say Jake says hey man okay so we've got this this line Jake hey man it's all he says we've got this already there's another type of script called a shooting script or a director script when you get to that point and you're the director a lot of times I will write a shooting script right away I will write a director script right away because it's my movie I know what I want it to do I know I want a crane shot in there so I can work that into the script but if you get too descriptive on that stuff you tend to lose your readers if you're if you're trying to sell your script or you're trying to do something else with it so there's a shooting script and a basic script that you have and once you have your shooting script ready you can start casting your film and now for you guys out here that have have passions and want to make a movie here is another suggestion that I have for you make a list of your life and what you have access to in your life if you have access to somebody who has an old car take note of that take note of that and keep that file the way in your head if you have access to somebody who owns a laundromat who would let you shoot there without a question take note of that lock that in somebody has a camper that you could use all these things can kind of come in to be utilized in a movie someday or in a story someday it's smart to craft your movie around what you have access to because if you can do that my buddy has a speedboat for example making this up my book your body has a speedboat all right well you know what what if we could work that into our movie and not make it super jarring that all of a sudden they're in that speedboat but that could be part of your movie and it would increase your production value of your film it would make it look like you spent a million dollars but you didn't spend anything on it you just bought your body a case of beer and that was it so look at what you have access to and shape your story around that casting I kept notebooks filled of people when I'd meet them and I'd think about what possible Parts I could put them in I was working a years ago on a film called Stonecutters quest which was an epic Viking comedy and talked about biting off more than I could chew everything was gonna be set in medieval times every costume was going to be in medieval times all the weaponry all that stuff was going to be done in that particular time zone and all your locations were set in that time period as well so I have this really fun script that's broken down into all these little scenes that never got made because of the scope of things try to keep your scripts something that you can manage something try not to maybe with your first piece tackle a timed period what do they call that period piece yeah a period piece try not to make a period piece with the very first movie that you're going to make you know that might be a really good idea also you might be casting your friends or you might be casting actual actors we're going to speak about actors in a little bit probably with the production aspect of things but Dave I'm going to ask you to add something a little bit later props and costumes all right you need some you need some late ray guns for this scene make them you need some you need some costumes for this scene so um up learn how to do this stuff you can save a little bit of money and you don't have to you think about the coolest thing about making movies is that everything is a facade everything is just there on the surface it doesn't have to look fantastic on the other side of it in fact if you go and look at some of the studio's out in LA and look at the backs of things you'd be surprised like oh my god I thought that it was a brick no it's not it's a it's just a piece of canvas so all that stuff it and what do you start thinking about that it makes things so much easier to kind of start problem-solving all right well I want to make this look like a the inside of a castle how do I do that will you start cutting foam up and gluing it on a wall and then you paint that foam and it sort of looks like a castle wall and then you light it with lights that is going to create shadows so that it doesn't look like foam anymore and all of a sudden boom you've got a castle wall which is which is convincing locations to like I mentioned before really take note of those locations and as far as where you can go to get your movies made if you've got access a we've shot in state parks here and sometimes you need sometimes you need paperwork to do that but if you're quick you don't you it's always best to ask permission first when anything you're doing but the nice thing about shooting movies in Wisconsin is a lot of times you don't need to get the permits that you'd need to get in California for example that that is one of the benefits of being here in the in the state I want to talk to you guys a little bit about storyboarding as well and then I'm gonna turn it over to Tony why would you possibly need to storyboard something anybody have any ideas first of all go ahead what do you got fantastic that's that's perfect yeah one of the reasons that I like the storyboard is because I need to be concerned about my actors and I need to be most of the time let me draw a chart for you real quick here and this is gonna this is something I want you guys to take strong note of because it's gonna be it's something that someone shared with me a long time ago and it really has stuck here's a pie chart of all making movies okay and here we've got a section that's good and here we've got a section that's fast and here we've got a section that's cheap all right you can only pick two of those things you cannot have all three you cannot make a good fast cheap movie it's not possible you can only make you can only make if I need to make a movie that's good and fast it's not gonna be cheap if I'm gonna make a movie that's cheap and fast it's not gonna be good and if I'm gonna make a good movie that's cheap it's not going to be fast that right there is that is the category that most of you guys should fit into okay we want it good and we want it cheap we're not going to be able to make it overnight we're not going to be able to make it fast that means that you're going to have to kind of look at your talent that you got and a lot of times you're going to get actors that are going to be doing this for free doing it out of their passion for the story their passion for performance so you want to get them hooked in but you don't want to take advantage of them and I really strongly encourage you guys not to take advantage of your talent people are there to help you but make it a good positive experience for them be concerned with the amount of time that you're going to they're gonna be on the set for you alright I've got this window of opportunity now I've got this I've got I'm going to shoot at the sports corner and appear from 10 o'clock until 4 o'clock I've got this window of opportunity I've got my actors that are going to be there and I got a hundred and twenty seven shots that I need to get in that amount of time that's ridiculous but that's your window of opportunity that's when you start to storyboard my goodness you almost have to you almost have to make your movie beforehand in your head on paper so that you can translate that to your the people that are helping you and that's what I did right here for that same exact thing and now I've really studied a bunch of different storyboarding techniques and storyboarding formats and those do vary whereas scripts are always the same storyboarding varies big-time what there's a lot of films that do that there really are and if you if you really are interested in learning more about that yeah check out the behind the scenes stuff watch the the comparison between there and now there are also places like any any place that's got bigger budgets they'll do animatics instead of storyboards which are moving storyboards and I look at these and I'm like oh my god that's a great movie just in itself and then they're like no that's just our animatic holy crud it's amazing but I'm gonna I'm gonna let you guys take a look at these one of the reasons that I do storyboards is because all of a sudden one two three four four shots are all the same location is from the same angle so I put those together and I shoot them kind of not in the right order out of sequence but I can get them like that and again especially if your time is is that in essence if your time is super crucial to you storyboard or get somebody to help you and they don't have to be extremely artistic when you do that in the past I was wrong even if it's I've been on sets where it's just stick men stick man in pictures but you know what that communicates with the people that are setting up your camera that communicates with the people that are setting up your lights they know what to expect that and they can prepare for that Tony the storyboard also breaks down to a shot list - yep you when when you have the storyboard you know what shot you're gonna do then you go into your shot list and that's where you definitely break it down like you're saying you know these are all same angle let's do that so you're not shooting continuity you're shooting for lighting and framing and everything is running us fishing and what they don't know if you're gonna mention this Bob I'll bring it briefly is you're gonna be working with a lot of volunteer actors you may not pay them but always feed them number one the priority if you have if you're gonna get people that want to work with you feed them and they'll be happy for a long time yeah and actually to jump on what Tony said there were there were four different things you wanted to give your actors four different things I try to give my actors I've tried to feed him I try to give him a credit for their what they've done I try to pay for their gas and there was one other thing that I can't remember huh oh yeah a copy of the movie try to give them a copy of what they've done and if you can do those four things you're gonna be somebody that the actors want to work with again and you know what let's throw on a fifth thing try to be trying to let them have a little bit of fun here's another secret for you let's make it a sixth thing if you can give them a seed of creative input into what you're making and it doesn't even have to be something that you necessarily are going to use or not use it's like okay Laurence you've been in my movie now you've done the scene I want to see just you do a take now that you can whatever you want to do to get that same emotion through do it take with that and all of a sudden Lawrence is like oh my god okay geez I don't know what I was gonna do but hey give me that money kid or you're a goner Lawrence that was brilliant that's the one I want to use and now he's invested in my project because he actually had a teeny spark of creative input no one talks about that no one talks about how important that can be just that little bit of input that you let somebody else have I've been on sets work with some with some directors where it's like well can I can I manipulate the script to say so it sounds a little bit more believable no you don't change my words my words are the Bible just asking you know but then any time I'm doing something with the exception of maybe one or two specific specific lines I'll say all right let's see that line a couple times and see if it's believable if it's not believable let's maybe change it to how you would say it and giving that that actor a little bit of that input is really going to make a huge difference I think in your end result and the fact that people are going to want to continue to work with you I hope that makes sense to you guys all right I've covered a ton of stuff here guys is there any questions so far because this is all pre-production stuff and anything that you can get done in pre-production take advantage of it because it's gonna help right here with the cheap part of things if you get that stuff ready it's gonna be you're gonna be saving yourself some dollars for example you want to have all of your planning done your production planning you want to help make sure that you've got all your cables and whatnot because if you're out on a set and all of a sudden you got it going running some of your tasks run to the hardware store to get an extension cord that you could have bought at a hardware store for you or you could you had at home you have it in here you have it hanging in your garage but getting there and getting back is not going to be time conducive to your shoot so you got to go and buy a whole darn new extension cord I've heard I've heard tales of filmmakers going in and making a purchase on something and then as soon as they're done shooting it they return it to the store shame on them that is something I don't encourage but man if you get in a pinch it can be Donna again I do not encourage that that behavior but if that's what you have so be it Before we jump into production I'm going to turn it back over here on Dave Davis as an actor Dave are you s s AG saying no afternoon a couple different pieces why don't you tell us a little bit about come when you've been on set before how long is rehearsal been it varies for the bigger films first the small films so you'll see more of the independence were telling what you get for the site which you get for script and some of the directors like you said that the lack the bigger films it's you're gonna stay with what's in the script you have to remember you have to have an emotional independence I see more than flexibility which is more what I like where it's I think you get right on it if you can get an actor that's somewhat engaged to it if they feel like they're a part of it it's gonna be more enthusiastic it's gonna be more sincere you're gonna get more of what you're looking for as a director that's just my take on it where it's give them a little piece so I have their spark let them put their emotion into it as an actor you're only as good as a person opposite you and I've seen directors say we can't get it this guy's messing up on his role we're typically it's the opposite person because you're trying to get emotion out of them if you have a blank stare if you have nothing there it's extremely challenging to work with and I kind of gave you a trick question - when you're doing an independent film at the level that a lot of us get to do rehearsal isn't is it is something that is a luxury you never it's like I don't think I've ever gotten a chance to have an official rehearsal on a film a lot of times it's like you give the actor the script ahead of time by all means and then they can study it and learn it but then as far as alright we're gonna meet on Wednesday and we're gonna practice them lines whatever it's not it's just it doesn't always happen that way and I've been on a lot of shoots where all the stuff you practice we changed it now here's the new sheet that we want you to do in the morning and it's like oh my god and a lot of times go ahead yeah exactly your rehearsals the first date but that's the luxury of doing things on video it can be cheap to reshoot it you just can make make a number of takes and be careful because when you get to like you're your 12th take on something your actors are starting to get tired of it and they're losing some of their their their passion for that particular scene you want to make sure that that there's still some freshness to it and you might have to make some exceptions along the way I can't tell you every movie that I've made you have to make adjustments you have to have some creative some creative problem-solving skills to adjust as you're making something because all of a sudden boom the plan that you did in storyboarding isn't gonna work for that particular shot figure it out right there on the spot and make it quick and make it something that's gonna work you got to be ready for that or you miss some shots oh boy I missed the shot where we get his eyebrows going up well I can I can have him come back in you might not have that luxury now you got to cut away to something else all right with the acting thing what about people that don't have a background in acting what can a director do to help them oh I think for shorts it's fine somebody at the writing process I think you should be looking for your actors find people letter excited about what you're doing I had friends do some interesting one of the films is called poof and it was about a guy that went around it as a poop collector and I saw this was one of the first shorts I did I knew the guys let's do this and I thought alright it looks funny but let's clown around there's no budget in this this is just screwing around the small camera this is a number of years ago but I think if there's if they're involved if it's something they like whew or doing a film on cars find people that enthusiastic about cars it shows through as opposed to kind of fake it through and if there's no budget it's a lot harder when it's you're just there you're doing it in shorts because you really enjoy it either you believe in the actor you prefer that producer you believe in the director you believe in what they're doing it's a lot more fun it's not as stuffy as when you do the bigger films there's a lot more money in that but it's so scripted and everybody's more about themselves and I'm not taking anything from the industry it's just the shorts or a true passion it's a true you can see the fun in it so I always say find the people that are is enthused about it as you are you'll see some amazing things and synergies that come out with that and it's not for the money that's just dude it's not work you're enjoying it that's what Craig was saying it's your change and then you're improvising as you go along so it's not it's not as nervous it's not as stopping for lack of words but it's and I think you can bring it out as as a direct right so you find the right people when you can and it's a lot harder without a bunch of self but it can be done I mean it's Tom Craig I'll sit here wait and I had a casting thing come through for a couple days and Yonkers New York that that one's decent pay they'll cover travel but it's not you know it's not a lot of money you still have to practice your trade so someone like me we were talking about this out there I'd rather be in front of a camera working on shorts of people that want to be there that enjoy it as a director you're doing this because it's your passion as opposed to making well it's 500 thousand bucks you know if you're making five thousand you're gonna be pretty excited matter what you're doing but it's fine find the people I guess is the biggest part and they're out there I'd rather be in front of the camera working on like crap then saying I'll turn this down I'll turn that down I know weather actors saying I won't my time is money I won't do it for nothing I think they're losing out I really do why do you not believe in your I live here I live in Appleton here most of the time this is my community if I'm gonna see you guys absolutely show me what you're pitching you got a script might be a fun script let's do it three days or four days whatever you're doing I can put my arms around a lot of different things and I know there's other people out there like that too so don't think it's just me the ones that won't do it that are looking for money and everything Craig's like those six things he said one of the more talented not together one of the one of the more talented actors I met that actually had a conversation with because I'm always curious about this two directors and I just I'm an organized person so I like to see the details like to see how its scripted what can I learn as a director what are you trying to convey sites are one thing to me that's bigger than the script a lot of times we couldn't provides on that what are you trying to convey but one of the bigger actors I met and one of the pieces I got that surprised me was with Johnny Depp when he was saying I said which films do you like doing the pirate once he made money on that once the enjoyer with Tim Burton and you watch them in there and I think Alison Wonderland one of my favorites I think it's just brilliant the way that it's put together and a lot of people say I don't got it it doesn't make sense it's a weird cartoon he's on LSD or something I don't know what he's doing but I like that and a lot of the films he did with Tim Burton because those two see each other it sounds like Tim Wood given the script and say run with him do what you think he's doing what he wants and that's what you're seeing and that's how the Pirates Thingiverse and this you've seen him in different films and you've seen different roles but it's that's what he enjoyed doing and that guy's making 30 million a film so he can pick and choose what he's doing but it's I think if you you give your actors the credit let them have some freedom to do some different things to me especially in shorts I think sides are critical what are you trying to convey in that well motion what kind of feeling some people look at it and just pick it up say this is awesome this is easy to do awesome I want to jump on to what Dave said too and as far as as far as the side note some things like that but you want your your actors to take note of let's say that you've got your grandfather's got this great look it's got this great look to me could be this great character but when it comes to delivering lines many of you guys see mark portraits film American movie uncle doing lines and it was terrible it was just like you know I don't know he just delivered it so bad it's alright it's alright it's okay there's something terrible but he had this poor old guy doing that line about 30 40 times and he never was gonna get it right but almost everybody that you know if you ask them to act for you in your movie they're like oh man I can't do it maybe they can't deliver lines but I bet you a dollar that they could show a motion and that's where I think you can get a lot done a lot of my movies that I make are oftentimes silent I love it when I can tell a story visually with emotion and and situation rather than is having somebody come up and say hey how are you doing brother it it depends on how people can deliver those lines if you can get you can get a little kid to give you an emotion you know grace look worried right now okay now don't look so worried let go worried only a little bit and they can do a really good performance on that and also here's another little tip for you guys as far as directing is concerned if you ask somebody well I need you to do as I need you to speak from that door to that door when they sneak they're gonna look like they're acting they're gonna look like it's gonna be a cartoon they're sneaking that's not what you want when you're directing tell them what I want you to do is I want you to go from that door to that door without making any noise and now all of a sudden they're not thinking about the sneaking aspect of things they're actually doing it so those are some things to that I mean when you're making movies with your with your with your kids or with people that you have access to they're not going to be trained actors you're gonna have to try to pull these performances out of them that that will make it believable and real all right I apologize for rambling on so long I'm gonna add a little bit to Tony's stuff but I'm going to turn it over to Tony now he's going to talk about the actual production of the movie thanks great great job and I always say that there's three things to a good film it's good acting good story and good production and Craig you both elaborate on that the need for that and how much goes into that there's a time that goes into pre-production there should be much more time that goes in a pre-production than in the production and so with that when when Craig first came to me and said you want to do this workshop we were titling in filmmaking 101 and I was going to do the production side of things I was trying to figure out what to talk about is you know this there's a lot to film production and I don't want to turn this into just a really a bridge to filmmaking class so rather than that I thought well we would go into is is try to avoid the common mistakes of amateur filmmaking I as I said before started off very very you know no education no professionalism no nothing I bought a camera off of ebay that had a broken LCD screen on it for $27 and the viewfinder still works so I was able to like really I up to it and point that stuff and just start shooting video and that's just where I started really falling in love with it the problem was it looked like crap and and I just I I really appreciate Craig for his desire to run out and just pour out stories I got exhausted trying to do that but what I really cared about was making video look like film then make it look like it's close to Hollywood as possible so I'm just gonna while I continue rambling shortly I'm going to play our current demo real for our production company Creative Edge productions in the background the the visual effects on here by Shawn Bowers and scimitar fees by myself this is stuff I literally went from shooting like crap to doing stuff like this in was it five years yeah only about five years since we since we started playing around with it I think about two begging 2006-2007 and and for me like instead of going to school I bought camera gear and I play with it and then I sold camera gear and then I bought more and I sold it and I just kept doing that as an endless cycle and I got to play around with a lot of different things and see what I really enjoyed about it so yeah I will turn that all the way down because that's the lowest I can go but if you want to see more of that you can go to our website create a prototype out but that just gives you a couple things that I've worked on and done and let me jump back into my presentation all right so there's five things I wanna talk about camera choice blocking and Composition camera motion audio and lighting I'm not gonna go into these in super depth this is not going to be a high school or college program but I'm going to cover these from the perspective of a person that did this wrong and now person that tries to do it right and the things that I wish I had known back then so first question anyone that ever goes on ebay or looks around for a camera is are all cameras created equal I mean they all shoot video they all absorb light they all create images and obviously the the basics of that is no not all cameras are created equal but where does that in life you if you're not a person that looks over every single speck of a camera and wonders what do these things all mean how do you break it down to actual layman's terminology these are things that I've shot each one of these have shot with a different camera and at this size they look pretty good right I mean not too bad so these are the three different cameras I shot these top two and that's a Sony this is the one I currently shoot with on the bottom and they're all this one was they're all HD that's a DSLR that shoots video but that they're all video cameras that shoot HD so they're all HD right great perfect well problem is if you magnify those images and you start looking you'll notice that the top camera being the oldest doesn't resolve the detail as well you can see his you can barely make out his eye these are these are blown up about 400% and then you move on to the DSLR you can see more detail in her hair but not as much detail as the camera on the bottom which you see if you know in the sideburns and in his eyes you can see a lot more detail there so these are none of these are shooting 4k or beyond High Definition this is all high definition but not all cameras are created equal and along with that you have something this dynamic range and I don't want to get into this too much because is a very technical thing but dynamic range is basically what your camera can detect between pure black if you're white and consumer cameras right now have an average of six to eight stops of dynamic range that means from pure black all the way up to pure white you have stops of light sensitivity and what that basically means for every single stop it's a double the previous black so if you're shooting at you know 50th of a second shutter speed one stop difference would be 125th of a second you're letting and twice as not a light so it's that's the difference so camera that consumer cameras have a lower sensitivity film is around 12 to 14 stops of dynamic range so when you look at film you say oh my god there's all this detail in the sky there's a lot of detail in the shadows and I point my consumer camera at something and it's not showing any of that detail it looks you know like it was shot with a handy camera this is one of the reasons professional video cameras are starting to bridge that gap and they're starting to approach the dynamic range of film and really high-end cameras are even surpassing the dynamic range of film but for on a layman's terminology if you say why does film look like this and why it is my not look like this chances are this is one of the fundamental reasons your dynamic range EO camera is not high enough to get that detail and so you have to light within that dynamic range if you're seeing pure black like Craig's can you come here a second just for an example Craig's wearing a very dark shirt there's shadow in this shirt and we have you know there's detail here if you're not seeing any of this you know like we don't we don't see the texture and shirt and the folds and stuff like that what you would need to do is bring in more light so that your camera can detect that and so knowing that that's something that you can do exactly now we have why thank you good alright so next thing is composing and blocking your shot one thing that I've seen so much in amateur filmmaking is a fear of getting close to a subject stories are told from here when we are dialoguing between two people you don't stand ten feet away from them or twenty feet away from that you're usually within a normal talking distance and this is where stories are told and you will notice that traditionally in most movies when there's any level of a dynamic conversation happening it's happening fairly close to a lot of independent filmmakers amateur filmmakers this is a close-up that's about obviously not a close-up so the point is just to get through your head that you want to be able to use all those different shots as a close-up there's a medium there's a wide those are all things that you should be comfortable using who's ever heard of 180 degree roll well and I won't go into it too much but the hundred and eighty degree rule is simply saying that if you start shooting on one side of two actors or a series of actors you have to stay on that you draw an imaginary line between them but whatever you start on you stay on the only way to break this roll is if you transition between there so if you have a dolly move or you have an accurate cross frame you can break it but that's true as a transitional element that breaks it I'm going to jump back over here and show you a scene that we shot this is from our film and come on be nice right so this is a Dalek scene we have the wide shot which is an establishing shot we're doing a little bit of a Dali move to add some depth now we're moving in for the close-ups and we're using some close-up for elemental shots we have the reversal and a wide shot again that's we're always staying in the same side of the actors moving for another close-up more close-ups reversals and coming up after this shot will be another close-up on one of the leads now even though he's staying frame right because we've established him on frame right and it's still close-up it's different than his previous close-up but we're just always staying on the same side of those actors so again a simple dialogue scene that you know a lot of people will sometimes I'll do the establishing shot then they'll jump on the other side of a person or they'll he's he's frame left the other guy's frame right they'll accidentally put them both on frame left because they're crossing that 180 degree roll line if that's something that you keep in your mind your your audience is going to be able to stay with you and when you do the close-ups it's not going to be a visual discontinuity because you're staying where you've already established yourself all right jumping back in I'm gonna get to that so thank you for asking I don't have a whole thing that and all right so we have here here's our coverage another thing to keep in mind is a lot of times I see an amateur filmmaking they'll do one or two shots well we showed you in that previous scene was the wide and then the reversals on each of the talent now if you have a long dialogue scene that's gonna get really really boring so you notice we had some cutaways when he moved took the folder and put on the table we had that as a cutaway when we did for the the scene if you watch our film which will be shown later tonight during that dialogue scene he was saying something that was very domineering and so having him looking down at the character it was it was a really good moment for that and so that's why we have that cutaway as another closeup of him but giving good coverage you'll notice here we have two mediums and then a close-up this gave Shawn as the editor the ability to edit between those four emotion and also keep it visually dynamic we have if you look in the top one there's two goons in the background that continues to establish this character as you know kind of a boss man and then the reversal here is just a different perspective of that same shot so you're not constantly going back to this one and if closed of course the close-up for more intimate moments of dialogue so camera motion and I know I'm kind of cruising along with this I just want to make sure we did everything in camera motion you're gonna see here we have a dolly and we have a jib who's all familiar with dollies and chips pretty common before I get into it I do have quite an investment in dollies and jibs but I also have a video out there of how I built my own out of a clothes hanger rack so you can build DIY gear there's no problem in building it the thing is when you're doing paid gigs and people are expecting you to do to be in and out fast and you want the gear to work that's where you start investing in quality equipment I have about ten thousand dollars in jib and dolly and slider motion stuff like that because when I show up I want it to work I want to be in and out and I also know what my client going why the heck am I paying you for plywood so just just keep in mind this is a visual element but feel free when you're as an amateur filmmaker DIY is your friend it's where everybody starts off and it gets you into the realm of being able to do these shots without having to go out and spend ten thousand dollars so for camera motion I just want to show a few examples of of each element camera motion is something that again is lacking oftentimes in amateur filmmaking because they either don't know how to use it or they overuse it we do a lot of corporate videos and in corporate videos I do jib shot sand dollar shots all the time because a piece of factory machinery is really boring to look at for a long period times and people want to see dimension and in an object and obviously film is a two-dimensional medium and the only way to show dimension in it unless you know obviously these 3d movies but will say that none of us are shooting 3d movies and I hope none of you ever well but so in order to give depth and dimension you have to be able to move around and then of course there's lighting which we'll get to in a little bit but not only is its showing dimension it's also showing emotion and so I'm gonna go through a few Dali are a few different camera moves this is a Dali reveal it's just simply you know starting off at one part of the frame revealing another you could do a cutaway for this but a Dali reveal gives you a moment's retention you can build up emotion it's also a great way of just again showing perspective in a scene and it can elongate something a bit longer if I just did a locked-off shot of a or a random chair and then reveal this guy that would be really weird but to have that motion it can now allow for allow for a musical intro it can allow for a fade in a claw for a lot of different things it can also allow for comedic elements like we see here he's crammed into a small vehicle and very uncomfortable and this scene actually plays out where somebody else has to now cram all of their stuff in and again we have a dolly reveal for additional comedic element so there's a lot of things Dali reveals are great for giving you the timing that you need in a scene right here we have a dolly in this is great for emotion of somebody feeling a sudden realization like oh my gosh Eureka this could be and in this scene here we have a he gets a phone call he suddenly realized who it is on the phone oh my gosh I can't believe it's you duh and so those are those are those are examples that I have there another good thing for Dalian is is when you want to create a level of intimacy it's a very slow Dalian and and something's emotionally happening people are getting closer to each other she some girl is opening up about her past and so you want to you want to creep in for that emotional you can do a cut in but Dalian is just as more gradual and allows for that emotion to draw on the opposing side we have the dolly out which adds as a level of disconnect it sorrow this guy is depressed so by dying out we kind of feel like we're leaving him and he's all alone also one thing I'll mention in that by framing him center frame that also gives him a level of aloneness so that's a different subjects more blocking but by framing him center frame the whole frame feels like it's surrounding him and he's alone and life is horrible alright so now we have a follow move this guy's walking forward and now we're this is also a reveal so this is actually a dolly and a jib shot I want to play this again because kind of complicated we're actually dollying in and jibbing up and tilting down now there you have professional gears because that's a really hard move to do with the IOA gear but we're we're following you as he's walking forward and then we're gybing up to reveal the car and then we're tilting out on the state with the car in the frame so this is a great follow movement these guys are walking into a scene and we're it's a really really subtle dolly move but you can see that we followed them in there very briefly to get that follow motion this could make it feel like the audience is there with the with the talent and a lot of that to play off now they're walking in here there's a really really subtle dolly move there but it feels like you're walking in with them to reveal the main character here and then he sits down another again another cell dolly move so those those feel like you're there with the character following their motion is a great thing and last but not least is the ability to play out a long scene and not have to do cutaways this scene right here we see that we start out on the husband clean the dishes and they're dialoguing together we pan back and forth and literally I'm just dialing back and forth and then following each actor with a pan and a tilt and so that scene could have been a wide shot reversals close-ups or as we did there we can do it in one salty not only does this add some dynamic elements to it but it also helps for production set up you don't have to relight a scene you can just set it up go shoot and that can save you time if you have that ability to do that so continue and then this is just another example of a long dolly shot like that all right let's go in the audio I am I'm a director of photography I'm not an audio tech Jonna actually is our audio tech on set we fill many many many hats but the the one thing I'm going to talk about this on briefly is simply you know the two things on the you see in a film is visual and the audible and you know the old saying goes if they say audio without video is radio and video without audio is dead air so you you want to have a good element of audio and you need to pay attention that and if you're just getting started what the common thing of a lot of independent filmmakers is either put the camp the microphone on the camera or if they they may not even have a microphone they're just using the onboard microphone out of the camera obviously that is not the best choice for you and for people to get started there's really two options for basic microphones any audio engineer will give you a list of a bajillion mics that exist but there's really two basic ones that you can interact with you've got your shotgun you've got your lavalier a shotgun is a directional mic and you when you point out something it records that audio in that that general direction that a hundred percent like a you know a rifle or something like that but it's general that's the direction think of it as a shotgun yeah think of is a shotgun it goes that way it's not super accurate but it goes that direction a lavalier of course is you know you see it on the news they pin it up on themselves and for filmmaking you obviously don't want to see the mic you never do that takes you away from the element but you can put it underneath clothing and you can hide mics sometimes if you're doing a wide shot and you can't necessarily get the MOT gun close enough and frame people will more readily video right and audio will take you out of a story so it's the easiest way to improve your audio the easiest way to improve your do is get the mic as close she came to the subject it's it seems simple its fundamental but that is the number one easiest way to improve your audio you get the mic is physically close as you can because there's two things that happen first of all you are you're just getting a better signal of course but but second of all you're able to reduce the the noise floor every mic has a noise floor and when you can increase the the audible well especially the background noise yet here's your noise floor and you look in some mics at my tap noise some your equipment might have a noise floor like where they actually contributed to a noise and the greater the gap you have your you know if you've got like a air conditioning running in the background that's at a certain level the greater you get the mic closer your audio is gonna have a greater distance from that floor and here a build isolate that let you if you have the mic further away you bring that closer and you're gonna hear that hum you know yeah so in order to get their audio level up to where it needs to be to match the other audio level now the noise for us to be boosted as well and so it's much more difficult to work with so again easiest way to improve your audio is to get it as close to the subject as possible that involves boom poles that first shotgun mics and stuff like that but honestly you know you can get cheap shotgun mics they they make them on you know eBay for 50 hundred bucks just to get yourself started and then when you move up you know this is uh is actually one of the better ones we have and the mic inside there that's that's just a blimp around the mic the mic inside there's only 250 bucks and that's what we use for all of our work it's a rode ntg-2 like you want to cover that later you want me well I was gonna cover that in my thinking for you like I just gotta make mention of that but I can answer it now I'm just guessing around time but basically uh like it one of the in there on our film we are in a location we didn't have control over the kini so the air conditioning went on and off so I didn't have a continuity of sound so sometimes it be on while recording and sometimes would be off so you'd have you know and other times that's not so I would record room tone so I can overlay that on the tracks that need to to create a continuity so there are no harsh cuts like when I'm cutting at it so you know you have that room tone in there and it also can be it's just a great idea you know you have cars passing by and stuff like that I mean if you have to cut dialogue and you hear a car passing by it to cut while the cars passing through all of a sudden you're not gonna hear the car anymore you know so it's kind of helps you with mixing style so it's always a great idea to get you know however long your scene is gonna be get a little extra yeah the thing is there's never never in real life do you hear absolutely nothing unless you're no vacuum and so if you're cutting dialogue and you want to space something outs for emotional impact or you put like a wide shot in there that didn't have any dialogue over there if you have nothing underneath that it's gonna be really bizarre so I'm mixing that with with good room tone yeah depending on your scene like in this room you can hear a certain home of the fan the projector and stuff like that my new there's one scene where there's a aquarium in the background so I have that the other one have a clock because I also wanted that kind of the ticking that we grabbed emotionally that you know pressure you know so you want to help set those elements a lot of times too sometimes they'll shoot a scene and the dialogue is too close together and you kind of wish there was a pause there you can put a closet and so the good rule of thumb is just get about 30 to 60 seconds of room tone clean room zone when you're recording and that's literally just hit record on your camera and have everybody stop talking and breathe all right what is lighting lighting a lot of people only look at lighting as number one on this list which is create a proper exposure for the medium being used film or digital sensors obviously you know you have we talked about dynamic range the film is to actually see your digital sensor has to see something so lighting is gives you proper exposure but more than that in film lighting is also these other two options which are create allows you to create depth and illusion of three dimensions in a two-dimensional medium we talked about how a dolly move in or jib or any sort of movement can allow you to accentuate the depth and dimension in a scene lighting does this as well this is a huge part of lighting and in of course the last and most important thing is it creates the tone and mood for a scene that's why a director of photography is called a director they direct the light they direct the mood they direct everything that you see from what the director tells them it's supposed to feel like I want this to feel like a you know a dark moody scene you know everybody seen the Godfather I hope at some point in their life the visual look of the Godfather that now everybody has replicated that sepia tone warm tonality was the director photographer he just said this feels right and he and he set up that and he started shooting that way with the warm tonality and the white balance adjustments on the camera using certain film stock and and next thing you know you know we've got to look that now everybody's replicated for generations and so that is you know the job of a director photography is to make it feel the way that you're supposed to just as much as sound lighting is a big factor in that and who's all heard of the stand 3-point lighting technique yeah it's very common you've got your key light you fill light in your back light this is used in various demand and various powers to get the look that you want here's an example of an interview scene we've got the key light lighting her face we have a fill light that gives the appropriate amount of fill how moody we want it to be if if we want to be super dark and contrasty we would have very little fill if we want it to be bright and sunshiny more of a comedic or light-hearted element then we would have more fill for example Adam Sandler comedy stuff like that they're usually over lit - a lot of the actors to have freedom to move around and and be able to say something funny and make sure that they record it so that is and if you watch any sitcoms on TV usually they're they're brighter light versus you know shadow like 24 or something like that much more dark and and the lighting reflects that of course and then you have the backlight which allows for multiple things but most of all primarily to add separation from the subject in the background if the shadow side of their face is very dark and the background were to be very dark then you're gonna they're gonna be lost so if you need to add separation the two ways to do that is either to light the background or to light the subject and that creates separation not always necessary if you want them to feel like they're part of the background that could be an element for a dark mysterious character that's fine but if you want something someone to stand out it's very common to backlight a woman if you want her to feel you know more feminine or something like that now we have of course soft versus hard lighting this is literally the two fundamentals of all film lighting all the time a hard light is just a bare bulb and a soft light is traditionally a light that has been slightly modified at some level there's two ways I should say there's three ways to soften a light the first way is to physically move the light closer or make it larger this this mole 2k light if I were to stick it right next to somebody it would be very hot it's a 2000 watt light but it would also be relatively soft because the source is physically larger even though it's a four now it's a technically a hard light the closer it is and the larger it is it's actually mimicking a soft light the two other ways that most people do it would be to shoot through diffusion so cell Corp Ohio muslin whatever it may be or bounce off of the source a wall white wall or a white ceiling this softens the light and if you have just and and the thing about it is you know I have a lot of professional lighting gear but you can get along the same looks with just stuff from Home Depot and knowing how to modify it is is really the fundamental of it and if you want a nice backlight to somebody get up there halogen bulb and point it in their general direction you're gonna get a backlight if you want to soften that guest shower curtain and shoot you that a lot of people do that now don't get too close so you can cause fire and that's another thing Whateley so get insurance but you're you you can use basic stuff it's literal light is all about understanding light and what it does this this light this picture back here I was lighting her with a 4 foot by 3 foot soft light so if if you were using just a little 24-inch softbox and thing I always see a lot of people is they think that a soft light is you know I just took a sheet of diffusion over my halogen light and now it's soft light well technically you did shoot through diffusion but you didn't change the size of the source by much so now it's still gonna mimic a hard light because it's tough if this is the size of your light and you put a sheet of diffusion over it now how much have you changed the size of it barely anything so it's still gonna mimic a hard light versus if you now put in a large source and you shoot through that it's gonna create a softer source on the subject and so understanding how light works is gonna allow you to get really great imagery one of the other things too is directing your key the key light is the primary light that lights the subject and there's if you light camera side or as we talked about hi fill content you're gonna get a flatter lighting like we see in the top left I know it's small but you can see that the subject is fairly flatly left there's no dimensionality to them that's fine this was a product video so it doesn't need to be that you know the Apple commercial style versus this this is a more intimate candlelit scene so we're we're lighting opposite camera this is called reverse key and we're because we're keying opposite camera we see dimension in her face we have a soft light that's covering in any blemishes and any wrinkles and then we have a harder life that's mimicking the candlelight from the table and so that creates dimension and just creates a great mood and lighting is all about creating the proper tone for each scene these are all different scenes that I've shot and all required different levels of lighting you know this was kind of a harder source because it's you know an industrial-style feel again saying these two here more hard this was lit to mimic fluorescent lighting from an office room we wanted to feel green you wanted to feel kind of you know droning on and boring and mundane versus the bottom ones we wanted to feel happier so we've got a salon with knots a lot light soft light being poured in we have overhead diffusion being used for the girl in the park and then of course a nice soft light for the baby and so that's I mean every scene is gonna require different style lighting but if you at least go with the perspective what do I want it to feel like and then kind of categorize soft light for happiness and hard light for for a more darker tonality and then you start feeling where does the scene fit in there you're gonna actually be able to create stuff that fits the mood of what you're wanting and just as much with audio you know a proper musical score will tell you how to feel the second you hear a proper lighting will tell you how to feel the second you see it you don't have to tell somebody that this is a bad guy you can just see the lighting and feel it and know that that's a bad guy right right and that as Craig was saying earlier you know we talked about the the elements of that bar and how all the detail that you can put into it but in the end you on your script you wrote a bar and in in order to get all that feeling that you want that person to see and hear and and and and look at you have to create that mood just by them looking at you can't you don't have a narrator it's not like a book where they explain everything to you in detail they are looking in it for the very first time and they have to know how to feel the second you look at and that's completely your job as a cinematographer as a as a videographer and as a filmmaker and last thing I will say is filmmaking is very much a collaborative process and and too many people trying to do this completely on their own and they fail miserably and they say well I'm a horrible filmmaker and and the truth is you'll be a better filmmaker if you do this right and you focus on it I've written scripts it's not my strong point I enjoy lighting I enjoy shooting I enjoy working with camera gear and figuring out all those shot Styles that I just talked about so for me it's beneficial to work with somebody like Craig who likes to tell story I'm sure Craig would would say that his strong point isn't in camera or lighting or any of that type so his benefit is to work with somebody like myself and then moving on I edit just fine I'm not a I'm not a skillet ER that's not my my main point of focus versus Shawn as Porter's himself tremendously into that he's a great editor and he's great official effects and it's a great asset for him having our company so for me to be able to you know focus on heat that's his focus that's his great skill set he's going to elaborate on the the necessity of editing and the importance of it but having a diverse group of people to work with is just gonna improve the your film I mean Hollywood films how long are the credits very long and every person in there is necessary and you know if you the more you feed them the more you'll get people to show up so I hope that was helpful and - [Applause] yeah so definitely to reiterate I know that obviously in the infinite film community you're usually the writer the director the editor you're you're doing a lot of roles and try to get other people involved if you have accessibility to them get a fresh perspective on telling the story because it might pull something that you didn't see that works great so I just wanted to encourage that all right I try to keep this short and I designed it to be short so hopefully that works out that way so basically there are there are three roles that have the most influence on how story is told you have the writer you have the director and you have the editor I think that those are the three main roles that have the most direct influence on how the story is being portrayed of course you know there's all aspects have a part of that but those are what I view as the main and a big mistake that I see sometimes when starting out with creating video and crane film is don't think of editing as an assembly line like where you just assemble all your pieces and get it out there but it's where the emotional flow of your tour your story is told editing is much more about feeling than what tool you use to cut and mix your footage so it's more about the feel the emotion that's obviously the main theme that we've all run through you're all trying we're trying to convey motion video and film is all about conveying emotion you can convey information through many other different things so emotion emotion emotion and story that's really your your main things uh I wanted to go ahead and there's talk about rule of six that Walter Merc I don't know if anyone's familiar with that he's a great editor he wrote a book called in the blink of an eye great if you're interested in editing or you're an editor you want to prove your craft - definitely recommend reading that this is regarding does a cut work you know when you're decided to cut how do you decide when the cut there's six the rule of six and this is pretty much in diminishing order most important to less least important emotion Story number three rhythm for I trace number five two-dimensional plane of screen and number six two-dimensional space of action I can pull it up there a quick if you'd like I didn't I just did notes so I don't have a presentation ready this so now you can see that I'm pretty much reading exactly what I'm saying instead of being a good speaker so emotion not necessarily extreme emotion like our wild emotion because not every scene has that it's it's it is consistent with the emotion of what we want people to feel here you know is it consistent with what we want to feel in this scene you got this one checkpoint doesn't subtract or district so that's another question you ask yourself to sign the cut and it should definitely push this forward and what we are trying to convey in that scene or in that section of where we're cutting so that is priority number one story does it help tell the story does it advance their understanding of what's happening that's the other consideration of making the cut and rhythm as if you look at it as music in a musical sense does the cut happen at the right point does it feel with right with the rhythm of what we've established already so those three things are the most important things when considering cuts Adobe wants update right now okay you don't want to all right so yeah go ahead oh yeah yeah what I do when I'm watching a clip I am feeling it out I mean when you edit it's all about feeling you know we're dealing with emotion I will go ahead and get ready you know I'll have my in mark about where you know I'll set that I'll be watching it I try to pretend like I'm watching as a person as you know from different viewpoint and I'll stop it where I feel it's natural and that's where I'll go ahead and insert it and then you go back and forth perfecting that over time but that's where I start I go with what feels right that's where the rhythm comes into play story in emotion you got to go with what you feel in your gut you can always go ahead and adjust frames later the other three are Ness crucial but play and still play an important role if you're looking at it and splitting the first three you're dealing with you know motion story rhythm the last three are more with continuity which is less important but it can be important to be organic you've seen continuity problems in films before that's because they made an emotional decision and so the cigarette is half way in the beginning and full towards the end or whatever you know it's it's more important to convey the emotion in the story and to put it forward to explain the other three I tracing you might have seen the studies with advertising when you do graphic design where do your highs go so where's the audience looking are they looking you know upper right upper left you want to take that in consideration when you're cutting too so are we considering that when we're making the cut does the flow the eye movement from this cut compliment complement the next cut if we're looking at something you know in the upper right upper right eye you know this next thing we won't do we want to keep the eyes focused in that area so taking that into consideration the feeling you want because as an example in that fight scene you want to disrupt that I movement quite a bit to keep it confusing chaotic you want to make people feel that way the cuz that's what a fight is there's a lot going on and it's really confusing unless you're like Jackie Chan or something but you know I mean you're I go to have a hard time following so using those techniques help convey that emotion and especially with the when you're when you mentioned about the slow dolly and when you're starting to get more emotional instead of cutting you're keeping that I tres focused on that character it's less interrupting and you're able to the motion stays there the two to deplane of screen it's basically just explaining the problem that you have of 3d objects or people in a 2d world so you're filming 3d but it's showing up in two dimensions so staging is a big part of that like Tony attacked Bella before the rule of 180 has a little bit to do with that so it's how you represent 3d in a 2d space mmm whether it looks like two characters looking at each other or if one character's looking at something else they might not actually be looking at it but it's how it's conveyed in the 2d world that you're showing 2d space of action are the people or objects moving around in 3d space coherently or not an example is if you got someone starting off in the distance running towards the camera and they keep getting closer but then you've got your cut and they're further back obviously it doesn't make more sense I mean if you're doing that on purpose for specific reason then whatever but you know you want to be able to mimic 3d the way things happen in 3d in life to the 2d medium so those those three you can do all six it doesn't always happen where all six are together but usually the first three are pretty much pre type and you can separate those but pretty much you're those top three are gonna be what you're basing your cut on just that tip 2 is don't cut just for the sake of cutting like I want to cut every two seconds you know so you're just going methodically through it that's part of the assembly line problem yeah it has to feel right so I'll find a positive reason to make the cut how does it feel now situs that's just a brief overlook on editing it's all about the emotional about the feel it's not about the tool you're using as much and I can help you the tool can help though so talking about a couple of the tools obviously we're trying to do it for cheap so free there are a few free tools out there I think you're all familiar with Windows Movie Maker it's sad but it works you have iMovie on Mac of course that's the better of the two so you do have access to those for free especially getting starting that's your best place to start you want to get more advanced there is an actual free professional NLE nonlinear editor called white works it's been used the professional Edition has been used before on films they have a free version it's by edit share they're a company that does storage solutions but it's lwk Escom so feel free to check that out if you want to look into something that a little bit more of a professional side they can get for free of course cheap you have sony vegas pinnacle it is l WK Escom if you have any trouble just google edit share or Lightworks of course you know cheap sony vegas pentacle pinnacle you can get those for like under $100 Dolby Premiere Elements and Final Cut Pro 10 you know that's I think at $300 right now so that's a little bit more pricier but great editor for you know on the cheap and you have your professional and I'm not naming all of them here by like Adobe Premiere Pro avid media composer and Symphony which a lot of broadcasts use and films and found Cut Pro 7 which I'm not sure on the availability of that but I'm sure you can get it out there somewhere another thing that important thing in the post-production world is not only appear but storage you want to make sure you backup backup backup can you imagine creating your film getting everything on your computer you don't have it backed up you erase the cards your hard drive crashes all that you did everything that you did prior is just all for naught you know it's done so you very least have an external hard drive or some other drive that you backup a copy to an exact copy you can do things as far as gets more complicated with raid you know raid 5 get a tower that's getting a little more technical but it's got redundancy and it's fast so backups are very important make sure you're backing up your footage or you will want to kill yourself if you lose it all especially if you take a year to to make that happen yeah yeah a lot of times when you see in amateur filmmaking you'll see where if someone's talking that cut right to them there's a scene in a previous film that I did where it was two actors and they're kind of you know they're both holding each other at gunpoint and it's spinning you're gonna have you know I'll be cutting to an actor but you know the audio the other actor will be underneath that so you'll see the reaction shot of like if I'm having dialogue with Tony I'll be talking but we cut to a reaction shot of Tony and I'm still talking over that and we see his reaction then he starts talking so you don't always need to cut right to when the actor starts talking you can let that overlap that's kind of the basic concept of that and if your audio track from the previous person is extending over and the video stops and the previous video goes over it looks like an L or a J if you you can start audio into the person so I could be talking and then Shaun starts talking but we're still looking at me as I'm watching him so it just it makes things flow better right so yeah wrapping up sound we talked a little bit about that with room tone continuity of sound and how it draws you in and having jarring pieces of sound in there where you hear in a bunch of background noise also then cut to another piece of dialogue it's silent and you're going back forth between that it really pulls you out of the experience you're not immersed and you lose the motion sound effects there big thing can make something mundane feel epic and a lot of times if you ever watch crime scene it was fully they're not really even using the actual thing for the sound you know like bones breaking celery you know using stuff like that there's stuff that sounds better than the real thing so make it in on a more grander scale of course other parts post got color grading I won't really go into that but that's overall like when you talked with the that was kind of done with the film stock and everything like that not as much possible with the Godfather the colors that you're using helps convey motion you know like a bluish tone cold and you know warming up the footage to make it feel much more loving or whatever so that has a big play and on the emotion also you have visual effects which a lot of times does really have to do with motion what's getting more into that especially with like things like Life of Pi where you're creating a whole character out of you know CG elements and you have emotion within their face so that's getting more complicated but it can be more cost-effective if you have to do a giant explosion like I would be doing for a client that will be doing where we'll blow up a tanker truck and mill the intersection we can't do that in real life obviously what we could but we don't have a budget for it so we're gonna be doing that visually digitally the visual effects and it's safer if you want if you're interested in visual effects of great sight that's very popular you want to get a good head start Ned is Video Copilot net the Andrew Kramer wide gamut of visual effects and motion graphics that he covers they're great tutorials great to learn from that's Video Copilot net and the two books I would recommend would be in the blink of an eye by Walter Merck I don't know if it's merch or Merck have no idea and the other one is the eye is quicker and that is by Richard peppermint so if you would like to get more advanced with editing figure out find out more about the principles of editing those be great books check out yes next wave TV is our the tre site at Tony started I joined in I don't do as much on there as lately but film training a lot of things we talked about today we cover that and it's all free

Channel: NextWaveDV

Views: 1,250,330

Rating: 4.9240069 out of 5

Keywords: film, video, production, education, training, DSLR, HDSLR, NextWaveDV, Tony Reale, Sony, Canon, how to, diy, lighting, review, Video Production (Industry), Camera, Demo, filmmaking, scriptwriting, 3 point lighting, nle, postproduction, post production, audio, microphones, acting, directing, director of photography, cinematography, jib, dolly, dynamic range, blocking, composition, script

Id: Nz5zQt5QO3Y

Length: 97min 39sec (5859 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 21 2013