Perfect your Film with Cinematic Motion

if you haven't heard yet we have a sale going on right now we have 40% off all of our digital downloads and a brand-new lut pack this one emulates look of different film stocks from famous films we have 29 lots in there in a variety of formats including BLT so you can load them right into your GH 5 if you want and as always some must-have utility lets in this pack as well so if you're looking for a new look back or just filmmaker assets in general now's the time to check out our store check the notes below for more info on that and like last week now to me wearing a different shirt because why not welcome to film riot once again we're partnering with our friends at MZ to bring some excellent film educational goodness to you for free and if you don't know MZ is a provider of excellent online education with amazing instructors like Vincent la vraie who's a director and DP that has worked on all kinds of great commercials and short films and today we're gonna be hearing him talk all about directing the motion in your scene ready go the next thing we're gonna look at again is foreground and background how do you appreciate left-to-right motion what type of geometry are you looking for in your frame horizontal close but no cigar the other one vertical look at these blue lines when you start this shot you'll notice the amount of vertical lines in there that's how you notice left to right movement that's how you know it's panning and sliding see that and now this character is going to motivate the start of the move this guy is kind of countering a little bit staying anchored now in comes this guy look at that nice blue vertical line so you can appreciate the move this guy moves from right to left those guys counter it and now comes our main purpose of the action here they're going from right to left these guys are sawing back and forth the idea is if a character walks from right to left they're going to motivate you to pan from right to left whereas if the actor walks in the opposite direction they're even more blurry creates more eye candy so you want a combination of those things in all of your scenes when you're trying to do these nice setups to make them very rich you don't want everyone going in the same direction you do want some actors motivating the camera to move so it's not randomly panning but you also want some counter motion let's look at this scene from Spielberg in ET we have a scene going on up in the house where ET is back to life we've got some kids at the bottom of the hill that are held away by security and Spielberg his script doesn't say much the characters are at the bottom the hill and they say three lines let's watch it but notice how he makes this entire transition very rich to go from the house to the kids [Music] notice that they're motivating the camera from the top of the hill to boom down and pan right these two cops are going to peel off now the camera starts stops panning and here's a dialog all this is for this the entire dialogue is ooh they're gonna die shut up Craig something's definitely to happen that's deep there's nothing there but Spielberg is adding these transitions that makes his film a blockbuster that makes it more rich that involves you let's watch this the slow motion you can see the amount of things that he and the adsr doing first of all they have this call of guys coming down that motivates the camera to boom down and pan right to left well that's all the blue vertical lines they're carrying these weird cones the red is counter motion the white motivating motion this guy is that nice vertical blue line to make us appreciate that move the guy in green his entire purpose in life is to do this little arch just to energize the frame that's what he got hired to do these two guys are now going to peel off from this column as does the camera they're going to step into their car we slowed down we started pushing in our actors see this little piece of business going on here with the actors the extras and on the top left and then they go ahead and deliver their lines you understand how much is going on in what would be a one-sentence lying on the script we cut from house to the characters below that's it but look at the amount of work that the directors and first ladies are putting into this to make this an energized frame coverage principles this is perhaps the single most important thing I can give you in terms of a formula that you should never divert from the three plus three I made up it's just simple we're going to talk about a moving master as well let's go into what three plus three means you've probably read in the book that for any given scene you should shoot a wide shot which will help you establish the geography if I don't show you the room as a director you as the audience have no idea where we all are in relationship to one another right I need to set the scene set the stage for the viewers if I choose not to do this you're gonna feel confused I can use that in a horror film but most of you don't shoot horror films I don't know what I assume so you want to set the scene Golden Rule to you go to your medium idea being find the hero give me somewhere to look now lead me somewhere with your direction and then three you're going to move in tight connect with the actors eyes this is the best direction to give actors is they have to connect with each other's eyes and you need to connect with them as well as an audience if I can't see your eyes I'm not going to care about you this is a simplest formula in the world wide medium tight reverse you can shoot any narrative scene even na narrative scenes as long as you follow this formula why do I bother to point it out well I read this seven years ago in a book I said this is boring I'm gonna do it my way I don't like following formulas it bit me in the butt time and time again you would get back you start the Edit and it looks at you says where's your reverse of this we'll have it you have a medium here and you have a tight on the reverse I have a hard time cutting oh I just thought we didn't need that just get this learn this formula do it and then break it do yourselves a favor any scene you cover wide medium tight reverses worst case you run out of time do a widening medium or medium and tight so 2+2 but you always be able to cover any narrative scene you think I'm lying try and look at this scene from Blade Runner and now imagine you're shooting this as a release cop did and you see how even here it's out of order for the most part but it works same exact coverage principles gave the material to the editor let them construct it in a different way but you must give them the pieces otherwise you'll have to be in trouble so we're outside the building now we're back in the building over a general view we've boomed down within the move notice they does not look at the character when he knocks comes down to sit down let's go back to our other view so you can see how just how formulaic the rest of the scene is notice that the coverage principles apply they are just edited in a different order lots of pickup shots a lot of detail shots you know as get those in the second unit generally don't do those first leave those for the end don't waste your time get your actors done notice how we went to a type right away we go back to a wide and pickups so it doesn't matter how you're gonna edit it you just do oh but you should cover it people often ask me well if I know I'm never gonna use this piece of dialogue in the middle can I not shoot it and my answer is if it's like 15 minutes or 10 minutes sure if it's like a minute or two extra you're wasting all your time on setting up on pre lighting on get anyone blocked on the focus marks that asks for 30 seconds to a minute doesn't cost you anything allows the actor to get their momentum to follow their movements otherwise you get lots of continuity errors where they're moving in different ways but look at the formula you see how visually boom-boom-boom and here as well we're building a tension here as well the more tension we have the tighter we go and vice-versa what I want you to notice is don't fight the formula it is there and if worse comes to worst no matter how rushed you are as long as you know you get two pieces and two reverses you can cut anything don't ever leave a set or an interview or whatever it is you're shooting without those two pieces let's talk about a moving master a moving master is the idea of hanging this master that is in continuous motion that satisfies two things let's say actually more than two things but the main ones are that it's moving but while it moves it also picks up coverage all right what that means is you can always cut back to it at any point from your other coverage now there's no rules you have to follow is that it should get closer to people as they deliver dialogue and then back off and become more lively when there's no dialogue it should be more movement whereas when there is dialogue you should slow down and come closer to your characters make sense kind of follow the same principles we have watch this scene from Empire of the Sun you see how we pushed in for him into him for a cowboy on his dialogue delivery now we're back to a wide with the same move over the shoulder down below same angle or same side that is sorry just little tilt up our other character now our doctors can go from warrants on one side of the bed to the other after this shot how do we establish that as a director we cut back to our wide master here you go still rolling from the first take and now we're gonna have him move in over Christian Bale's shoulder into frame right there let's look at this from above again I'm gonna go ahead and do a big pan at the beginning of the shot over here as we follow Christian Bale establish the environment and now we're gonna push into him to a cowboy as he delivers his dialog he pulls away from the camera so we get to a four shot she's kind of dead so I'm off with a three shot or a four shot go to that side of the bed two shot over his shoulder second angle from that side little pan tilt up pan right back to the original angle and then back its previous angle here back to our moving wide master it's momentarily paused and back and back and back to the same cameras just finding a way to keep the cut alive keep it energetic keep it going we're gonna have two little pickup shots coming right over here and over there just to vary it a little bit back to our wide master and again we push in towards the end right over here so this is how Spielberg covers the scenes okay this is classic Spielberg and a great way for you guys to consider in four setups you're one to three and then I'm plunk up putting together the two pickup shots cover your entire scene in a very dynamic way if you everybody a filmmaker out of another innovator domain.com is the place to go when you get that next idea when you buy domain 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classes for only $300 a year as their site says it's a hundred and forty hours of Education and over thirty six hundred dollars in value so check the notes below for that to get started that's it for today and I'll see you next time when I don't know if the thermostats broken or if the ghosts are angry [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Film Riot

Views: 328,546

Keywords: film riot, triune films, ryan connolly, filmmaking, tutorial, how to, adobe, film school, steven spielberg, ridley scott, blade runner, filmmaker, film, cinematic, images, motion, camera, movement, class, vincent laforet, tricks, tips, dynamic

Id: VPfKsdPsS5w

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 28 2017