DIY Cinematography: Make Your Video Look Like a Movie

1. Introduction: My name is Ryan Booth and I am a Filmmaker, Cinematographer and a Director. I work on a wide variety of projects, primarily documentary-based projects. Sometimes it's narrative work, sometimes it's commercial work, sometimes it's actually documentaries. I got to work this last fall on one of my favorite projects, which was a full length documentary about the spiritual process that our Hungarian Naritu went through to create the movie, The Revenant. We got to spend time with cast and crew from that film and kind of really explore, why they made this amazing movie. So, for this class, what we're going to talk about is how to walk into a space that we've never been in before and figure out the best way to shoot that space. We'll look at the light as it falls on the room. We'll talk about how to position our subject and how best to take away a handful of things to make it feel like we've created this intentional world. We're going to invite one of our friends David, who's a candle maker. We're going to try and build a short 60 to 90 second little-mini documentary about David and the process of him making these candles. It will provide us a great opportunity to shoot in this kind of intentional enhanced realism documentary approach to cinematography. So, my goal for you would be that, at some point during the point of this project, you're looking at your screen and you go, "Oh, my gosh! This looks like a movie." If you have that feeling then, that it is something to hang on to. We're going to spend most of the time shooting with natural light. Today, we're going to talk about taking light away, as opposed to adding a bunch of light. A handful of decisions that we can make as filmmakers, that make our scenes go from feeling like a video to being this kind of a cinematic moment. 2. My Philosophy on Cinematography: You hear the words cinematic batted around quite a bit. People say, "Oh, that looks really cinematic. I want this to look really cinematic". I think that I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what exactly that term means. I think it's one of those things that you kind of know it when you see it. It's kind of that gut reaction you just like, "That looks cinematic." And what they mean is, that looks like it could be on a big screen. It looks intentional. I think, for me, that that's really the basis of creating cinematic images, is intentionality. A lot of times, from a technical perspective, that may mean that the light is intentional meaning that the light a lot of times in a cinematic image comes from the side. It's a light that wraps around the face. Cinematic, a lot of times has to do with shadow play. I think that what isn't there is often as interesting as what it is and what that means is that cinematic images are ones that are heavily steeped in shadows. That doesn't mean that they're super, super dark all the time but it means that there is definitely a lot of shadow and a lot of differences, and layers and, depth to the image that's cinematic. A lot of times, cinematic could possibly mean that there's color temperature differences within the same image. There's a foreground elements. There's multiple layers of things that draw the eye. It's really something that as a Director of Photography, it's your job obviously to create cinematic clicking images but really, that just means kind of working on finally tuning your eye to seeing things that are happening. So, as a DP, you can walk around when you're on the subway, when you're in the grocery store, and the light just kicks through that window and skips off the floor and puts this reflection right behind somebody that kicks a little bit of light on the hair of the guy checking you out at the grocery store. That could potentially be a cinematic image. And you don't need a camera to see cinematic images. I think, a great example would be a sunset. Sunset occurs, twice a day. You get to see the sun come up. You get to see the sun go down, and on either side of the sun coming up and the sun going down, the light just does all of this amazing, the colors are amazing, the depth is amazing. The light is often coming from the side and there's long shadows and everything just looks compelling and it looks cinematic. That happens every single day, and I think, in the same way that you may go out and see the sunset in the way that the light is changing and shaping during that sunset, it's training your eye to see that occurring all day, every day in the places where you are living your life. One of my favorite photographers is a guy named Robert Frank and in 1952, he crisscrossed the United States of America with a couple like of cameras and some black and white film and he created this project called The Americans. At that time, when everything was very buttoned up and perfect feeling in the 50's, he created these sloppy, loose, unbelievably beautiful black and white images across the United States of America. I think there's something in those images and the reason that we still look at them 70 odd years later is because there is an intangible quality to those images. There's something about them that just feels real. And for me, that is something that I really want to put in the images that I make. This kind of intangible quality that even if everything isn't quite exactly perfect, it just makes you feel something, because why make films if it doesn't help us to feel something, to explore an idea, to feel something, to connect to our very own kind of individual lives. And as the director of photography, as the person behind the camera, you really are the conduit to that experience for the audience. It's your job to kind of feel and put yourself into the image making so that the audience may also feel something. You can't quite put your finger on why you like something. You just know that you like it. That's a really great indicator that you're on the right path when you just kind of get that feeling. You're like, "Man, there's just something to this." In a lot of ways, that is cinematic and it may be hard to define but you sure as hell know when you've done it. 3. Key Terms: So, before we get into actually shooting a bit, I thought we should probably talk about a handful of key terms and concepts that we'll be discussing as we actually pull the camera out and get going in a bit. I think a lot of times when you first start out, you can get overwhelmed by the terminology and the specificity. Film making is a complex team sport. So, because of that, it requires everyone to be on the same page in a lot of ways. So, that's why there are so many specific terms and specific things that people reference when they are on set. It's not because people are trying to sound smarter than someone else. It's literally because it may be somebody's job to go get the piece of equipment that you're requesting. So, everyone needs to call that piece of equipment the same thing, so that when you say, "Hey, man. I need an Apple Box", they don't go looking like going, "What is an Apple Box and where does one get one?" They go directly to the Apple Boxes, and it comes back because it's this big moving organism trying to create these films. So, the terminology can be intimidating, but it's really not. It's not that big of a deal. So, from a conceptual standpoint, we'll talk about a few things today. The main one being key light. Key light being where is the big light that's keying your subject. It's the main light right now. It's this window. That's the key light for me. The opposite of that is what is the fill. You can either have fill light, or you can bounce right back in, or alternately on the fill side, which is against the key, you can bring in what's called negative fill, which is to take light away from the fill side. You do that in an effort to create a contrast ratio, which is literally the difference between how bright it is on the key side and how bright it is on the fill side. So, the difference between this light here and this light here is your contrast ratio. I am not a super technical DP. I say all of this as if I know what I'm talking about, but I literally cannot tell you what the contrast ratio is between this and this right here. There are some DPs who could literally look at my face right now and go, "Oh, that's four to one". I have no idea what the actual contrast ratio is. I just know I like it when it looks like this and maybe if this side was a little bit darker, I'd like it even more. So, you don't have to feel like you need to know exactly like the contrast ratio is duh duh duh, and this is this stop, and this is this stop. If you want to get technical, fantastic, but don't be afraid if you don't have, but you need to know that this is the key, this is the fill, and the contrast ratio is the difference between the two. 4. Tools of the Trade: So, when I'm working on a low budget or even a no budget project, there's a handful of things that I'll make sure that I have with me as tools to make the most interesting images as possible. The first one is your eye it's you. I think it's knowing that when I walk in no piece of gear is going to be as good at seeing how the light is falling as I am. It's my job to be the most finely tuned instrument on the set, in terms of being able to see where the light is falling, how the light is falling and how best to position myself and position the subject to make that space look complex and layered and cinematic. The second most important thing that I'll have when I'm on set is finding a particular part of that set that has a decent amount of natural light and by natural light, I mean window light. It could be massive windows like this. It could be smaller windows, it doesn't really matter. The reality is that to create really natural looking light and that's what I mean by natural light, the sun in a lot of ways is just a giant HMI which is a very expensive movie light. But that giant light creates this big huge beautiful source that wraps around the face very naturally. So, it's light that looks very natural that's what we mean when we say natural light. So, that is your best ally on a low or no budget project is the Sun. Everything else that we'll try and keep with us on a set for a low to no budget shoot is going to be things that help us modify the sunlight. So, one of those things would be a bounce card of some kind. There's the official version which is like a bead board or a gaiter board all the way down to like a little piece of foam core. It literally could also be like a white wall beside you, you could position your subject to use a wall as fill. It's anything that basically a light surface that pushes your key light back on to your subject from either behind or on the side. Another thing that we'll want to use, we're going to use a lot of is a black solid. So, officially if you use like the proper grip equipment these come in all different shapes and sizes. The most traditional one would be a four foot by four foot floppy is what they call it. It's like a big piece of black solid and it velcro's, a flap velcro's down so that it can be four feet by eight feet. It's awesome and I use them all the time. When you put it in between the subject and some either reflective or bouncing source it kills any excess ambient light to help you increase your contrast ratio. We'll be using negative fill a ton today because our key light is so large and it's spilling all over the room. So, we'll be trying to basically walk it in and help keep some of the bounce down off of our subject to help increase this contrast ratio. The last thing that I'll say is great to have is some diffusion and this is like proper diffusion that goes on a scrim gym kit or whatever but it's any fabric that's basically translucent in some way. It allows light to pass through it. It's a way to really soften light to help shape sunlight that's coming through. Sometimes you may be shooting a scene and the only time you can shoot that scene the sun is just blasting through the window and it's creating too high of a contrast ratio. It's super bright here which makes it super dark over here and you want to soften and spread that source out. The way that you do that is to put some diffusion in-between your key light and your subject. For us today, it's super cloudy outside so our diffusion is happening way up in the sky so we don't need to add a bunch of diffusion. We've got a nice soft light already coming through this window but diffusion which you can buy officially which would be rolls of rasco diffusion or there's any note that comes in all shapes and sizes and flavors. So, if you've got sunlight pounding through a small window you want to diffuse it, you want to add a little bit of bounce to help make the window feel bigger and maybe a little bit of negative fill so that you don't get that reflection coming back and all of a sudden you put up three pieces of gear and you don't have any lights up yet and you're helping shape and create this light that feels intentional, which again intentionality is the foundation of cinematic image making. The camera I'm going to be shooting on is a red dragon which sounds like some fancy amazing camera but I'm actually going to be shooting just on a 24 to 105 canon lens, you probably have a lens similar to this at home and I've got some neutral density, a variable neutral density filter on here to help us out with ND. What I don't want you to do is think "He's shooting on the dragon, it's going to look awesome and whatever." I think the thing to remember about cameras is a red or an airy camera or some expensive movie camera allows you to see a higher contrast ratio. So, there can be a larger difference between your key and your shadow side. There can be a ton of difference between that and it still is able to register very bright and the very dark. But the reality is our eyes are incredibly sophisticated and complex image making hardware. We can see very bright and very dark areas. Our eyes can actually expose for two different exposures whereas our camera can only see one. So, the reason that an expensive camera is expensive is because it's trying to replicate the human eye as closely as possible to allow us to see very bright and very dark at the same time. But if you're not afraid of the fact that your camera can't see very bright and very dark at the same time, you can bring this contrast ratio together and it will all of a sudden look amazing. You can make a DSLR look incredible, if you are not afraid to play with your contrast ratios. 5. Maximizing Your Location: So, what we're going to do in this demonstration basically is something that I do on a pretty regular basis, which is a documentary style project. A lot of times, even on commercials and films, we walk into a space not necessarily having seen or shot that space before, and pretty quickly, we'll have to assess how the room looks and how best to shoot it in a way to create as cinematic images as possible. So today, we have a friend, David, who's going to be working on making some candles. He makes these amazing candles. So, we're going to set up a scenario here where he's working, and we're going to cover it in a way that looks as interesting as possible. The first thing I do whenever I walk into a space that I haven't been in before is see where the light is falling. In this space, obviously, we have these beautiful, amazing, large windows which will act as our key light. It's really about then looking at how the light is falling on the space itself along the back walls and making decisions that we may need about how to start taking away light. Generally speaking, whenever you walk into a space, there's going to be more light than you need. It's really about taking away a handful of things to enhance and shape the light that exists in here. The main thing is right when we walked into this space, there was a few things that immediately stood out. The first is the corner, this direction over here. Both of our corners actually, you can see that the window light. Because this brick wall extends the window light as it comes in, there's a nice little fall off. The corners tend to be good spots for that. But as I look this way, I noticed that we have an AC unit, that I know that we're not going to be able to address and move, and because David's going to be sitting when he's making his candles, there's no way for me to shoot into this corner without this AC unit playing pretty heavily in our images. I know that even though I really like this corner, and we've got the brick, and it's really beautiful, white, I know that that's going to limit the place that my camera can be. For me, conceptually, when I walk into a space, what I'm wanting from the light is light to look as interesting as possible from as many different directions as possible, so that when we get into allowing David, our subject, to make his candles, he's not having to hit marks or be limited in what he can do. As long as he's able to move freely, and I can move freely, then we'll get as good images as possible. Because of the AC unit, we discarded that side, and decided we're going to shoot into this corner. The first thing we noticed in here, there was a bunch of boxes stacked up, and there was a large television right here. In addition to the concept of essentially removing things as a way to get to more interesting images that applies to things that you find in the spaces themselves, we were able to move the television out of this space, which then will allow me to move very freely, and have this entire backdrop to have behind David as he's working. That's a pretty simple thing, but arranging furniture a little bit is really helpful. It's actually a helpful part of lighting. The other thing was that this desk right here was actually against this window, which while looks cool would make it so that if I move away from the window then I'm going to be shooting his back. So, we moved the desk out here, so that we would have a nice angle for light and allowing the camera to travel around the space really well. It'll allow us then, while we're filming, to film as fluidly as possible, to move as much as needed and to gather a bunch of really great images as quickly as possible. Now that we've basically spent five minutes or so rearranging some furniture and situating our desk in the most successful way possible, we'll get David in, and let him start working, and we'll start making some adjustments, and we may bring in some negative feel or some bounce depending on how the light is actually falling on him as he's starting to work. So, that's what will happen next. We'll get the camera up and start seeing what the camera is seeing. 6. Shooting & Sculpting Natural Light: All right. So, this is David. David was gracious enough to come in and make some candles for us. So, I've got him seated now. Like we were talking about before, basically, I tend to my key lights come in around a 45-degree angle. That tends to look really nice, because then you can come shoot against the key on this axis. So, I've got David seated and now, it's time to get the camera up and see what the camera's seeing is very different than what our eyes are seeing, and start working around and figuring out exactly how that coverage is going to play out. I know that the lighting is more or less going to be, we'll say 85 percent lit at the moment, which is really about just finding the right position in the room and then we'll bring in a few elements. So, in addition to lighting, I'm starting to think about composition which is how do I tell the story, how do I get the shots that we need to cut together to tell this profile documentary on David? So, it's both lighting and composition as we get the camera up, starting to see what works. So, I'm going to get the camera and we will start working here, and that looks good. One thing that I'm always thinking about especially as you start swinging profile and seeing from a profile angle, you'll start shooting into your key a little bit, and definitely, one thing that makes something feel cinematic versus video-y is blowing your highlights out. Digital cameras are very unforgiving when it comes to highlights. For me, somebody who's in control of their highlights, indicates that they're in control of the image making which tends to translate to something feeling cinematic. So, a lot of times, it's just an intentional choice, I don't have to make sure that I can see all the way outside of the window and that nothing is over exposed, but I absolutely have to decide that I want it to be overexposed for that to work. In this scenario, I like this contrast ratio that we're getting right here. I'm going to pump it up a little bit, and our window is blowing just a little bit almost. We're just getting on the edge. So, that's all looking really nice. Another thing I'm thinking about at this point is eye light. If you watch some of your favorite movies, you will never see an eyeball that doesn't have a little shimmer in it. If you've got just a little bit of touch of light in the eyes you can shoot a lot darker, it's a lot more forgiving, because it's the center of a lot of people's emotional reaction on their face. You can shoot as dark as you want as long as you can still see their, them working it out on their face, and that usually is through the eye light. We know that we've got the angle, the key light is looking pretty good. There's basically three things that I'm thinking about at this point. One is how is the contrast ratio looking, which basically is, how bright is the key light and how much is that light wrapping around David's face? My general rule of thumb is to shoot from dark to light. Meaning, if your key light is coming from this side of frame, then that means that my camera is going to start on this side of the frame. That is going to be the most interesting way basically to approach that light. That's my personal opinion. When you shoot on the key side, it's like shooting on the flat side basically, which again, any of these rules are rules to be broken if you're intending on breaking those rules. The difference in the ratio between the key and then all the way to the shadow side of the face is the contrast ratio. I tend to like a pretty high contrast ratio. So, you can either add a light to adjust the contrast ratio, or you can bring in a bounce card to adjust the contrast ratio, or you can bring in negative fill to take light down from the fill-side to adjust your contrast ratio. So, any of those are perfectly acceptable ways to do it. In my world, I tend to the last resort is adding a light on the fill-side. I absolutely avoid adding light on the fill-side at all costs. We talked a little bit about key light coming across the face. One way to adjust contrast ratio basically is by walking in black fabric and this is called the road rags kit, it's like a little professional grip kit that breaks down into like a little bag that you can bring with you. But literally, you could use a black bed sheet, you can use any thick solid black fabric here. It does not need to be like a flag kit. Though I will say, a flag kit is an amazing tool to shaping light. So, it's definitely worth having. They're not super expensive. So, this is some negative fill and basically what's happening is we've got white walls, we've got a huge light source, and the light is just bouncing all over the place. It's coming off the ceiling, it's coming off the back walls, it's coming off the walls over here. So, part of the way to start shaping the light, which all shaping the light means is making it look more expensive. You will look like you're more intentionally lighting the space, is by starting to knock down some of that reflective light that's coming back that you don't want. So, for instance, there's a bit of light right here coming almost like a back light on David, and I don't necessarily want that in there. You can see it when I bring that in, that's killing that back reflection and it just starts making our light shape even better off of the face. So, that's something that I would probably do is add some negative right here. A lot of this obviously when we're shooting in a wide shot and then start moving in closer and closer, we can add more of these things that are in our frame more or less. But that's one thing and then from this side, you can see that there's definitely light bouncing in this way. Our window is obviously providing our key. That's where the direction of light is coming. So, when David's looking, will you look forward for me? See here, the light is hitting harder here and then obviously falling off on this side. That's great, that's what we want. But what we also have happening is we have a completely large white brick wall directly on this side, where the lights bouncing off of this and coming back to hit David in the face here and it's filling which is fine, again, if you want it to do that. So, I don't necessarily know if I like what's happening off of this wall coming back to bounce into David's face from a fill perspective. So, what I'm going to do is add this literally like a curtain, this is like a black curtain. So, you don't have to have like a big eight by like screen. I might use an eight by if I had it but we have a curtain here, which is going to basically knock some of this fill down and we'll see if we like what it's doing and the answer to that is I don't really know. There's a balance to be struck between knocking down light and knocking down places that will potentially provide eye light. So, when I kill this source right here, the wall in front of them is a place where the light is bouncing back and you can see a little bit of reflection in his eye. Will you look straight forward for me? Yeah, so there's eye light there, a good eye light from the corner. Now, when I bring this in, we need to make sure that we haven't taken away our eye light by doing this. No. So, we're getting our eye light from the window which is awesome and then this is adding a nice little shape to it. So, a lot of times, you'll start with a wider shot because you're not going to be able to walk in a bunch of these pieces of equipment to help you shape the light, and basically you'll start wide and the reason that you start wide and work your way in is because you can add a few things as you go and allow David to continue his processes unobstructed as possible. So, it's just something to keep in mind that there's always a balance to be struck between adding a bunch of negative versus being able to shoot freely. As long as we basically arrange David and the table in the right spot, there's not really a ton to do. So, in this particular scenario, what we ended up landing on is basically one black curtain here that's killing the reflection off of this back wall that was filling in David's face a decent amount. So, that just helps the key light fill more directional. Then, we also came landed on putting a black curtain at a 45 opposite of the key, and that helps keep the reflection coming back from that side of the white wall. We ended up not doing anything to try and kill the reflection on the whitewall directly behind David because it adds a nice little wrap around his neck and ear and it helps separate him from the background. It looks like we have something back over here that's coming in to shoot over his back shoulder. So, that looks really nice. The light looks great, this is something that takes just a couple minutes to get set up. A few minutes to arrange the furniture, put up some black curtains, and now, I feel comfortable going ahead and and letting David do his thing, and I'll be able to arc all the way around in here and shoot a bunch of different stuff as he's going. So, we'll actually go ahead and let David start making some candles. There's basically a 10 second rule for holding shots which is a pretty good guideline. Find a good shot, hold it for 10 seconds or so. You've got a good in-and-out point to whatever action it is that you're shooting. For instance, he's taping right now. I know right now, I need to get an inside of him actually picking up the roll of tape. Then now, I'll get a different angle of him taping or messing with the tape or whatever, and that will be plenty to be able to build a little couple shot sequence out of this. So, the thing I'm also doing, you need to make sure that you're getting a wide shots. I always forget to get my wide shots because they're not nearly as interesting as the close-ups. Close-ups are by far the most interesting thing because it's people's faces and they're doing something and it's quite compelling looking, but you got to get your wide shots too to just make sure that you've got contexts for what's happening. So, as the DP, you have to be thinking like a director and an editor as well, and that just means making sure that the stuff that you're shooting is connecting together. It can't be just a series of pictures. It's got to be a series of pictures that connect together to tell a story. So, once David got going on actually mixing and pouring, and I know we got some good close-ups or whatever, he actually needed to move between this microwave where he's heating up the wax in the table, and I knew that that would make it so that the flag that we had walked in to knock down some of that reflection on his face was going to play in the shot. So, we struck that so that David can move freely and I could add an additional little look into this piece, which is him walking over to the microwave. It's really tough to know when you're done shooting. Most people, if you're like me, I could probably shoot all day long and not feel like I got everything I possibly could get. But I think in these kinds of scenarios, when you're shooting someone who's doing something, it's really helpful because there's a natural beginning and a natural into what's happening. I think the goal should be, for David, for me, to get as much as I possibly can while David is doing it in real time. If there's anything super critical, like if it's a brand piece and we know we need the sticker going onto the box or the stamp underneath the candle, then that may be something that we asked him to do again, bt more or less to let your the real-time nature of what you're shooting decide when you're done. The worst thing you can do is overthink, overshoot, and just spray and pray. That is not your job. Your job as the filmmaker is to have a point of view, make a decision, shoot, and then make a decision that you're done. I think I got everything that I need. David's got somewhere to be. David ran through the entire process. I got as much variety as I possibly could. So, time to be done, must be done. So, we just wrapped up shooting David packing up all the candle making stuff inside. Now, I know that we wanted to get like a little short sequence in the piece of him actually walking out of the building, out onto the street, and then off into the wild west. Whenever you're shooting these sequences of transition, it's really about getting variety quickly. So, letting David walk down the stairs from behind, grabbing him as he walks down the stairs from in front and knowing that I will be able to cut a couple shots together from that, and then having him step outside the building, following him leaving the building, and then pausing, having him do it again from outside the building, and then picking him up, and having him walk across the street. When someone's walking outside, it'll be the same thing. I spin around, I shoot close, I shoot wide, I get as much variety as possible and as few takes as possible because the more you ask somebody to do something, especially in documentaries scenario, there's definitely a law of diminishing returns in terms of not just their interests but believability. So, the name of the game is trying to get a couple quick truth fulfilling moments of him leaving the space. 7. Conclusion: So, we just wrapped up with David and it went great. We've got a wide variety of options, some good scenes, and now I've got a memory card full of footage. So, I'm going to go take out my computer and then try and cut something together out of, and we could do an entire other class on editing, and storytelling, and putting together these pieces, but really we want to focus on creating these images and seeing how a space and how the natural light in the space can help us create these kind of beautiful looking and complex images. So, I look forward to seeing what you guys have made. Even if you just cut a scene together or you want to upload some of your favorite still images, frame grabs, from the stuff that you've shot please, put them in the project gallery below. I look forward to digging through and taking a look at what you guys have created and how you've applied the idea of being able to take natural light and making these beautiful looking images. So, thank you guys so much for watching. I'm excited to see. I want to hear about how you guys take this forward as you build into bigger projects and bigger sets, as you work with the bigger gear. The exciting thing is that this is foundational stuff that you'll be able to continue to take with you. Even when you're walking home tonight, notice the light around you and think about how would I, if I had a camera right now, how can I build a scene out of the light that I'm seeing right now. The fun part is that you can always be practicing seeing and the Sun is up over 12 hours a day. So, there's plenty of time to be working, and practicing, and getting better at seeing how we can use the Sun and use natural light to create beautiful looking images. So, thanks for watching and look forward to staying in touch. 8. My Project: Concrete Candles: The idea of the studio is to create a vanguard design that shows any way to develop and to combine pure materials. I'm an architect, so I love concrete that's the main material that I love to work with. I started to play with the concrete a lot, create small sculptures, and then one day I was just thinking, ''Oh what if I just mix wax and concrete and see how it looks like?'' So, as I come up with an object called the polymer esa concrete candle. Growing up all my furniture at my parents house it was cedar wood, that sound reminds me of home. You have the rock concrete on it and raw wax and essential oil. So, basically everything it's pure. It's not just an ordinary candle it's at the same piece. I just love going to museums, so I hate not touching the sculptures, when you go to a museum, so I want to have like a small sculpture in your house that you can touch and you can interact with. That's great. That's really good. Yeah.