A Reflection of My Blog

What have I done?
Over the period of half a year, I attempted to create a blog that was centered around cinematography. At the same time, I tried to undergo an ambitious short film to experience problems I'd never encountered before.

My Best Post and Why it's Good
My best post was the lesson I did on cinematic continuity and exposure, because of how thorough I covered the basics of that topic. I felt that that was where I did the best in explaining a principle of cinematography.

What I should Improve on
In the future, I am going to undertake less ambitious projects to attempt to try to get a wider range of examples out in a shorter amount of time. I will also try to post lessons that are more thorough and helpful.

What I've Learned About Myself as a Learner
I've learned that I learn better by doing things and I learn best by doing things with other people. I also need a schedule to follow or else I tend to get lazy and unproductive.

Where I'd Like To Go
I'd really like to start on new projects an really start producing work that is decent, instead of trying to try all these new things at once with little to no experience (Night time filming/ studio).

The Types of Movement: Part 1- The Pan Shot

In film, there are many types of shots that a cinematographer uses to capture the personality of each scene. Using these shots is important, and using different shots can make a scene turn from bland to symbolic. Today, I will be talking about the pan shot, perhaps one of the most well known types of shot.

Here's a pan, and it's going to get shot! Haha, right guys? No? Anyway...

Pan is short for "panoramic", and it refers to horizontal movement of the camera either left or right. This effect can be easily achieved with a tripod or dolly that allows for left, right, up, down, and tilting motion. The book "Cinematography: Theory and Practice" goes on to state this rule of thumb, "... With a shutter opening of 180 degrees and a frame rate of 24 or 25 fps, it should take at least 3 to 5 seconds for an object to move from one side of the frame to the other. Any faster and there is a danger of strobing". What is strobing? Strobing is when the camera skips a few frames due to things moving too fast on screen. Unless intentional, this effect is very disturbing and can ruin any film, so therefore, don't ever do it. Pan shots are probably one of the most commonly used shots in film, and I would consider panning to be a part of the trunk of film from which all other technique spreads out into branches. It might seem easy, but don't undersell the power of the pan. As with any other shot, it's possible to create a crappy pan, so don't assume that because all you're doing is going from left to right that it's okay to give a little mental slack. I've seen bad pans. I've done bad pans. Bad pans are embarrassing. Don't do bad pans. Okay? Good.

Well, that pretty much ends this week's post. On the next blog post I will go into more shots or will describe some camera equipment, as I realized just now that not everyone knows what a dolly is from my statement up above. What? Dolly? Is that like, a doll that carries the camera? Hm, kind of, if you really don't think about it.
But I'll get to that later.

An Update to The Filming of Film

Hey! For today's blog post, I'm going to be talking about the project that I've been working on since I started this blog, Abandon. So far, so good, at least as far as my very first horror film/night shooting experience goes. I've learned quite a bit from my time here, and want to share with you some things we could improve on in the future.

 One: Always plan out your script and get it revised and re-revised before the day of film. Due to some issues on our team, our screenwriter gave me the script for the second Act on the day of shooting the second Act. Needless to say, that became one big, giant, cluster of crap. Two: Always tell yourself that you will be working hard on the shoot and never tell your team otherwise. We thought we only had a little to do the last time we filmed, and so told our team that we could relax a bit for that day. We only filmed one scene that day, out of around 10. Three: Check and double check your gear. I had forgot my extra battery packs the last time, and if we had actually done more filming that would've been an issue.

With that, I am going to present you guys with an updated version of the video, with a watchable first part. Enjoy! Except the horrid parts, of course. We'll fix those I swear.

Guerrilla Filming Vs. Studio Filming

In cinematography, there are two types of categories of filming: Studio filming and guerrilla filming. Studio filming is what is most often seen in high production movies such as X-Men. The majority of the footage taken from that movie was done inside a large studio, using sets that were constructed specifically for the scene they were shooting on the day. Below I will show a picture of the set for the bridge in X-Men.

This realistic copy of the Golden Gate was made and placed inside a studio and the surrounding made to look like San Francisco in post production. Studio filming is almost exclusively done by those with a bigger budget and a bigger team.

The next type of filming is guerrilla filming. Guerrilla filming is characterized by skeleton crews that use whatever they have available and often on real time locations for short periods of time. This is the type of filming I am accustomed to, because I do not have a real budget. A good example of a cinematographer who often practices guerrilla filming is Devin Graham, a.k.a Devinsupertramp, who is a famous youtuber who filmed a lot of the first videos for musician Lindsey Stirling. Below I will post a picture of Devin Graham. Notice how minimal the gear is compared to the larger studio films, only using a helmet mounted camera, their props, and the location they are in (which they did not rent out).

For the project that I am filming, I will be using a combination of guerrilla and studio, leaning towards studio in that we have an actual set that we visit every time to accomplish all shots, and leaning towards guerrilla in the gear that I use. It's been interesting, since the lighting aspects and such that come along with studio filming have presented themselves to me, making my job a cinematographer much more difficult. All in all, it's a good experience though, and I am beginning to find my way around studio filming.

With that, I bid thee farewell ladies and gentlemen.

Abandon: A Super Scary Horror Film- Preview

Hey guys! Today, I have a very special post to share with you. As you know if you have read my previous posts, I have been working on a horror short film with a group of other friends. I now have enough of a draft to show you! I recommend you start from 2:25 as that part on is a more revised, better film. We will be retaking the first portion on our next film day.

I was aware I did not need to post today, but I was simply too ecstatic to resist. Tallyho, me hearties!

Cinematic Continuity and Exposure

Today I will be talking about cinematic continuity and exposure, as the title of this post would suggest. As I have said before, there are many things that go into making a film, and you can't expect to make a good film while simply holding a camera in hand. When you have everything placed just so in one shot, it needs to be exactly the same in the next shot. This is called cinematic continuity.

As the cinematographer, you strive to create a visual story so believable that the viewer is sucked into it as if it was real life. Things don't magically move on their own, and if you have a can sitting on a counter in one shot, then magically disappear in the next shot, it will take away from how believable the film is. One instance of this can completely ruin an entire film! So, when you film, you need to always keep track of which props are where, where the actors are standing, what the actors are doing, and the natural light that is on set. If you don't, it will completely ruin the cinematic continuity, turning your amazing story into a substandard film.

You also need to make sure you have the right exposure. Exposure, on a very, very basic level, is the amount of light that is on the scene. As a cinematographer, you use exposure to create ambient effect as well as to make subjects stand out. If you underexpose an object, it will look very saturated and dull, while overexposing an object will make the object look overly bright- highlights will blend in with the rest of the picture. I will post an overexposed picture, an underexposed picture, and a perfect picture below. You should be able to tell the difference between the three.

If you didn't get it simply by looking at the pictures, the top one is overexposed, the middle one is underexposed, and the bottom one is perfectly exposed. Note that underexposure doesn't always look all that bad, personally I think the photographer of the middle picture made it underexposed for dramatic effect. Before I go I'd like to say that I do not own these pictures, but rather took them from google images after searching "Overexposed picture", "Underexposed Picture", and "Perfectly Exposed Picture". With that, I end this post. Farewell mine Lords and Ladies, I bid thee adieu!

First Film Is Underway!

Today, I would like to discuss the first film I will be posting on this blog. My very first project (which was a horrific failure) was a horror film based off of the popular game "slender" wherein  the main character was chased down in an abandoned house by slender. The project was a massive failure due to overestimation of how much editing we could do in "post" (post production). At the time, we could not film at night so my editor, who was as well still fresh at the time, decided that we could probably make the sky dark and fix the shadows and make everything look like night time in post. He got about four seconds done in the span of ten hours. Needless to say, we abandoned the project.

Since I now have a little more experience, I had decided to attack the horror genre again with a more original idea in terms of the character of the antagonist. This project promises to be interesting, as I have no experience filming at night, and I have never worked on a project that has lasted more than two weeks. Yesterday, we officially started filming for the first third third of the film (the film will come in episodes), and have gotten around a third done of the first episode.

 So far, the biggest problems we are having seem to be cinematic continuity and exposure, which I will go over in next weeks blog post. The first episode should be finished within a reasonable period of time, and when it is out I will proceed to analyze it and give my opinion of what I did well and what I did poorly. Before I end this post, I would like to apologize for the quality of it, I have only gotten around four hours of sleep after a full night of filming, and so I am extremely tired. 

The Rule of Thirds

When we look at a film or photograph, there are a number of subconscious things our minds look for and either enjoy or don't enjoy. There are certain areas where we can place objects of interest to make them pop out to the average eye. This is called The Rule of Thirds.

 Basically, you split the LCD  or viewfinder of your camera into nine equal parts, like in this image taken from http://digital-photography-school.com/rule-of-thirds:

Why do we do this? It has been tested that the mind will look at any one of the intersections of these points more so than the center of the shot. What is the first thing you looked at when you looked at this picture? Personally, I was drawn to the eye of the bee, which is right on one of the intersections. So, by placing subjects of interests along the lines or on/close to the intersections, you draw more attention to them.

 This translates to cinematography by allowing the cinematographer to make objects of interest pop out compared to the rest of the shot. For example, if you were doing a horror scene wherein the antagonist is stalking the protagonist, a facial shadow of the antagonist in the window placed on the upper right intersection as the protagonist walks away towards the camera in the center would draw attention to the shadow and would increase the feeling of suspense.

What is Cinematography?

Before I start actually posting lessons about cinematography, it would help if we knew what Cinematography is. Cinematography comes from the Greek roots kinema, which means "motion", and graphein "to record". Put it together, and the result is "To record motion". So what does a cinematographer actually do? Well, Blain Brown, author of the book Cinematography: Theory And Practice says the following: "At the heart of it, filmmaking is shooting- but cinematography is more than the mere act of photography. It is the process of taking ideas, words, actions, emotional subtext, tone, and all other forms of nonverbal communication and rendering them in visual terms". What a Cinematographer does is take a story and makes it look so realistic that you can't help but be absorbed into the movie. However, you can't simply hold a camera and hope that a movie will come out of it.  There are a lot of factors that go into making a good film, and again in the words of Blain Brown: "... everything in visual storytelling is interrelated: the sets might be fantastic, but if the lighting is terrible, then the end result will be substandard".

What I'm All About

Hello! For this blog, I intend to study the art of cinematography for a whole entire year by studying film techniques and creating films of my own. I have a deep love for the camera, and so I thought I should learn more about it, and in the process possibly provide some sort of teaching for others to look at. This blog is going to be directed at people who want to possibly learn more about cinematography as well as hopefully those who would like to critique my work, because I can only get better if I know what I'm doing wrong! I'll try to post a video a week, whether it be on current projects, a finished project itself, or how-to's for certain things. I will also try to post some of what I learn about the intricacies of cinematography as I learn them. I will also be combining my blog with two other blogs studying video editing and choreography, so expect to see links to their blogs as I post things. Throughout the entirety of this project, I will be using a Canon Rebel T3i DSLR and a glidecam HD-1000, with some other fittings added on when necessary. The picture on the upper right is a picture I took of my lens cover.
So, without further or due, my name is Nath, and welcome to my blog.