Cameras

Your Worst Shot [Cinematography]

Yesterday was our first cinematography class. We had to choose the worst shot from the F3 we were Director of Photography on, bring it in, and discuss what went wrong. It was a good idea, and a good way to learn. My shot (not the one pictured above) was this clunky...

I Didn’t Keep the Lens Cap On

The footage I shot as DP has returned. If we play by the rules, we are supposed to wait until this Wednesday for dailies when the entire crew gathers and we watch the footage, synced with the sound in script order. I was going to go along with this until I had to...

Morning of DP-ing Nerves

It's 4 AM and I'm about to shoot a movie in two hours, but I can't seem to go back to sleep. So I'll write! It seems that Director of Photography is the most nerve wracking position. It's a blend of using your technical knowledge to create artistic images, while...

A Busy January

January is going to be a busy month for me. As I said before, three films are down, four to go. These four are all ATL jobs, and are every Friday-Saturday for the next four weeks when school starts up again on the 7th. Week 1 - Director of Photography This is a sci-fi...

Digital – 2 Film – 0

New show. I'm now First Assistant Camera (1AC). Above in the photo is Matt, my second. The first day is done and we have one roll to download, Matt's first full on downloading experience. Of course I've told him all about my previous experience, and tried to give...

Digital Scores Another Point

Charles' F3, the one that I redeemed myself on, went pretty well last Sunday and Monday. The house we shot at was amazing, all ten cast members arrived on time and were great, and even Goodwood went off without a hitch. Of course a show can't be perfect, which is why...

Camera Tests

For the past couple of weeks we've been having camera tests for our F3s in our Cinematography Lab. Camera tests give us a chance to try out different film stocks and techniques so we can get an idea of how we want to shoot our F3. The idea is this is the chance to...

Film Books

These are a few of the books we're required/recommended to get. Hopefully I'll be able to go into more detail about each one in the future. We were recommended to buy this book last year for Filmmaking I, and now both Filmmaking III and Advanced Cinematography are...

5 Ways To Make Video Look Like Film

So you wonder why your home movies and YouTube masterpieces don't quite have the same production value as say, SNL's Lazy Sunday. Well the people that made that get paid to do it, so I would hope it looks good. But there's some tricks you can do to liven up your...