Documentary Filmmaking: Write, Film and Edit A Short Documentary

1. Class Trailer: Hello. Hello. My name is Olaf De Fleur, I'm a filmmaker with over 20 years of experience. In this class, we're going to learn about documentaries. The ability to make documentaries has been the difference that makes the difference in my creative career. Not only are documentaries very challenging, but the great thing about them is they will prepare you for any kind of creative challenge that you might take on in making films. Documentaries are teachers, and in this class, I'm going to share all the tools that I've learned in my career in making documentaries so you can make your own. In this class, you will be doing your own documentary, and when you complete this class, you'll be able to do so independently. Throughout the class, I will provide you with a step-by-step process so you can take in the lessons through tasks and challenges, but most importantly, through a hands on experience, which is always the best way to learn. For this class, obviously, you'll need a camera and something to record sound on, which might be within the camera, and then an editing software. In this class, we will have two types of videos. The first type of videos will be in a form of a lesson, task, or a challenge where you will indeed get the hands-on experience. The second type of videos will be in the form of education and philosophy and showing you examples. That way I provide you with all the extra information you might need to complete each challenge. Hopefully, you are as excited as I am to share my experience. No, wait. Hopefully, you're as excited as. This didn't come out right. Let's try it again. Hopefully you're as happy as, no, wait. Well, let's make some films. 2. Class Project: Thank you for joining this class. Before we start diving into the lessons, let's look at what is ahead. Your class project is to make a short film documentary, even though it's not maybe necessary to say it out loud what that means, let's regardless, say it out loud because as you will learn later in this class, clarity is key, or rather over clarity is key. Making a short film documentary means that you will be holding a camera. It can be a DSLR, or it can be your phone, or whatever camera you get your hands on. Then you will be recording material on that camera and transferring that material into a computer, into an editing software where you will edit your material and make a short documentary film. When making this class, I thought to myself, if there's anything more difficult than making a documentary, it is teaching it. Because documentaries have a very wide canvas, there are so many possibilities, so many genres, and so many ways. Therefore, I'm going to rely on my two favorite teaching methods that I've seen excellent results from. The first one is learning big by doing small. In this class, you'll be doing your own short film documentary. The second one is inviting you into our hands-on framework. That way, you will not only be learning, but you will also start teaching yourself and discovering your own authentic voice. In this class, we have two types of videos. The first type of videos will be in form of lessons and education, where I will talk about a specific element in documentary film making and invite you to do a task accordingly. These second videos in this class have more philosophical. For example, it might be me driving in my car and talking to you and sharing with you more details, and giving you more information about the topic at hand or the section we're located within in the class at each time. [inaudible]. A part of that section is also showing you examples from the documentaries that I've done, showing you editing examples and how you can break down a scene before your film it, and cinematography tips and tricks, and even low budget suggestions. The aim here is to give you all the tools that you need so you can complete your own documentary film independently. 3. Your Documentary | Parameters: By the end of this lesson, you should have recognized what type of documentary idea would be ideal for this class. Ideas and the concept of making a documentary have one thing in common, they both have endless possibilities. That is what is great about them. But obviously, in order to convey our idea, we would have to chunk it down to a clear, and accessible formula for the audience to receive both the idea and the documentary form of it. There are two requirements for this class. The first one is you working with your original idea for a documentary. The second one is you chunking down that idea into a clear, and accessible form. We will achieve that by applying duration limitations for your film. Your film for this class can be a minimum of one minute, but not more than three minutes. The reason for this limitation is to increase our chances of achieving the most important thing when it comes to filmmaking, completing an idea fully. Working in increments is the key to creative success. We all know the risks when we go up or down a staircase. If we take two, or three steps at a time, then we risk severe injury. It is a paradox, but going slow gets us there faster. Creativity embraces paradoxes. Right now I want you to think about the documentary idea you have, and I'm pretty sure it's a big idea, and that is normal when it comes to documentaries. The key here is to select one representation, one part of it, one scene of the big idea, and use that part for this class. I would not suggest working on the big idea because you will be working on it anyway by working on a particular representation of it, or a small part of it. Right now I want you to write down the idea you want to work on in this class. Here are a couple of car logical reference examples that you can think about interviewer relative, and use family photos to cover a part of the interview visually. Do a visual documentary about life on a farm, document a part of a city, and use old photographs to see how it has changed. Do an investigative inquiry about a social issue, only interviewing one person. 4. Your Idea | Bonus Audio: Finding or rather discovering an idea that interests us so much that we actually want to do a film about it is a form of magic. Because we have to pass through fear, it feels there's like what is a good idea? Or I want to do an idea that can be done correctly, properly like trying to stay within traditions. Finding an idea is such a personal endeavor. It's very important that I don't over talk any specifics or pollute your sense of idea in any matter. Deciding what idea to make, the funny thing about that is that most of us usually know what idea we have before we even asked. That is one thing. The other thing is to keep in mind for this class is that it's up to you how you use the class. You can use it for a gut instinct idea, or you can use it as something that you want to practice it, you want to practice the form of it. For this class, you can decide to practice making a documentary where the subject or topic isn't the most important thing. This is a great way to become confident. It's like learning an instrument. It's nice to take lessons before you compose a song, or you can decide to make a documentary that is very important to you, something that you want to do now, something that you can use to learn as you go. That way, you can learn the instrument as you actually practice it. One way is not better than the other. This is dependent upon our needs at this time and where we are in our life. The main thing I'd like you to focus on this class is typically are the following outcomes or parameters. It is vital that you hit the mark of each. That way you'll protect yourself from talking yourself out of doing an idea, or you avoid inviting creative or alarm alone that can stop you. Our focus is always small step for creativity, big step for you. The outcome for this class is a short documentary with a minimum duration of 1-3 minutes. No more, no less. 5. Your Documentary | Information: Regarding the type of film you're going to want to work on this class, it doesn't need to be full on film. It can be one scene in a larger context. For example, if you're already working on a documentary, then you can use this class to do one section. The setup with this class is that you do one short film that can be independent or contained, but it doesn't have to be like this. You have a little bit of a range. Regardless of what I'm going to say, you're going to do whatever you want to do. The only thing I'm saying is just make sure that you're focusing on a section. Otherwise, it's so easy to fall prey to going all over the place and then doing something somehow some way, and then you're not going anywhere. 6. Create A Film Proposal For Financiers: In this lesson, I'll cover how to present your film to investors by creating an informational document about your project. This document can be shown to potential financiers, supporters, and film funds. At the end of this video, you'll find information on how to download a 34 page example of a film information document that you can use to make a film proposal for your project. When crafting this document, the aim is to quickly convey your film concept to the reader. Think of it as an invitation into your film's universe. Let's dive into a quick guide on creating an information document for your film. This document goes by many names. It's sometimes called proposal film, dossier, or mood document. Creating this document not only allows you to present your film efficiently, but it also helps you delve deeper into your story and better understand it. Here are the crucial six steps you'll need to include to create an informational document for your film. One log line, a single sentence, summary of your film's plot. Two, synopsis, a concise overview of your film's story, characters, and themes. Three, treatment. A more detailed account of your film including character growth, plot twists, and key scenes. Four, author statement, your vision for the film and your unique angle as the filmmaker. Five, visual statement, a description of your film's aesthetic including lighting, cinematography and production design. Six, audience and marketing. A rundown of your film's target audience and promotional strategy. Once you have these six elements in your informational document, you're all set. I also encourage you to add your personal flare. Include images that capture the mood and essence of the film. To kickstart your process and give you more detailed information. You'll find a link to a PDF example of an informational document or a film proposal in the class resources. 7. The Map Tool: Every idea for a documentary is a world onto itself. The great thing about that as a metaphor is that every world has a map, and if you have a map, that means you can track and trace. In order to identify possible ways, not only into that world, but also what to omit, what to highlight and then what sequence you want to convey your specific take on the world. Having that overview is a key thing. Every time you get a documentary idea, it is important to start slowly and gradually mapping it out because that will give you increments of understanding, and then little by little, almost naturally and automatically, you'll start to understand what part of the map doesn't need to be in the film, what part to highlight, and in what order you want to convey it. Another great way to map out the world is to use keywords. Using keywords can really help you identify the blueprint of your idea. Sometimes I use keywords. Sometimes I just think about the idea. If I'm thinking about my character at home then I'll just say, "#home", and then I write everything that comes to mind there. Then I might think about if the person is, let's say, going out to sea, they have a boat, hypothetically, I'm not sure which idea this is, but let's say they have a boat. Then I'll say #boat, #sea, then I'll continue and continue and continue. Like #car, #husband or wife or whatever. When I'm finished with the session, I can just look at the hashtags and then reorder afterwards. I suggest that you try out working with the map, metaphor and the use of keywords and see if it can help you create an overview of your idea in order to enable you to find your specific way into that idea. 8. The Story Tools: This class is about making a short film documentary, as I've said numerous times, hopefully. This class is about picking up a camera and filming your idea. Before we go into the filming process, let's go over some of the story tools I use when I make a documentary. Making a documentary is not a linear process. It's not like making a movie where you decide beforehand what to film and then you film it. I'm saying that because the three tools or concept that I'm going to talk about just now before we go into the filming are tools that are good to keep in mind throughout the process. Keep in mind that these tools are good to use beforehand, but that's not something you need to do before you film. What we want do, we want to keep them in mind, let's say it again, through out the process of filming and revisiting them when you edit and just whenever we think about the idea. Let's look at these story tools. 9. Fairy Tale | Story Tools: By the end of this chapter, you will have recognized how to use the fairy tale tool to extract your idea and understand your idea a little bit better. A quick reminder, let's remember our parameters here. We're doing a short documentary film that is from one to three minutes long, no more, no less. Usually, after I've come up with an idea that I want to do, I start with the idea. Then as soon as I got the idea and I've thought about it a little bit, then I apply several tools all the time. The first one is the fairy tale tool. That is, the idea that I'm doing, would I be able to explain it to a child? If I can't do that, it doesn't mean the idea doesn't work, but it means that I need to work on it a little bit. It's just that if you can explain your idea to a child, then it has a certain amount of clarity. It can help you know more about the idea. To use the fairy tale tool, you take your idea and you put it into a fairy tale format. You start with the setup, once upon a time, there was such and such. Life was normal, then life change because of some threat. Then the question would become, how would such and such react? Or in documentary context, how did such and such react to external pressure or external threat? Let's sing it together, once upon a time, [inaudible]. Here's a quick fairy tale example. "Once upon a time there was a little boy who went to a store. His real mission was to maybe save a princess or maybe get the items to under the valley or get the items to the cash register." The question was, would he be able to transfer the items without breaking them? Just play around with his tool. It's meant to be something you just don't take too seriously, but see how this tool works for you. 10. Genre | Story Tools: In this section, we're going to discuss the role of genres in documentaries. We're also going to help you analyze and figure out what particular genre you're working in in your film. Yet another tool that I use when I'm figuring out my idea is to think about the genre. Now we all know typical genres, which is crime, thriller, drama, horror, and so on. In documentaries, these genres definitely apply to some degree. However, in documentaries we have so many sub genres. A documentary can be a Dutch drama, soap series. Documentary can be artistic, and visual, and nonverbal. The reason the genre question is even more important than in movies is that it is similar as with theme. It needs to be a question we're constantly asking ourselves, what is the genre? I want you to keep in mind not to overthink it, not over define, not over predefine the documentary you're about to do. This relates a little bit what we're talking about, documentary genres. It is nice to keep them in mind, but usually I find it's best to jump in their film something and then start to think about what you can do with it. When it comes to genre and documentaries, I'm going to split it up into two functionalities; classic genre and films versus documentary types of genre. Classic genre is what I've already mentioned. That comes from movies like thriller, romantic comedy, horror, coming of age, biographies, adventure, and so on. By thinking in these classic genres from films, we don't have to imitate that in documentaries, but we can borrow styles from it; a narration style, a visual style, and use it to calibrate how we want to tell our story. Let's jump into that ever so elusive genre talk in terms of documentaries. I'm just going to put out the following broad definitions that are not strictly speaking genres, but more concepts or angles to consider for your approach. Number 1, maybe that is poetic style, observational, fly on the wall, investigative, you're figuring something out or you're following someone who is figuring something out. Historical documentary, even biography, autobiography of someone's life, experimental re-enactments, where you can take any approach and re-enact some of the parts in the story. Then event-based. You start in the shoes of the character and you following through an event. The great thing about working with documentary genres we have mentioned, is that you can mix them up. You can do a poetic biography, you can do an experimental investigative film, and so on. Right now I would suggest you stop here and think a little bit about considering this broad genre talk. How you would like to tell your stories, how you'd like to tell you a documentary short-term story by using what I've mentioned. Do you want to mix them up, or you want to use one approach, and so on and so forth. 11. Theme | Story Tools: In this section, we're going to talk about the importance of using a theme when it comes to your documentary. It can sometimes be a little bit of challenge to realize what the theme of your film is. What I like to do is to constantly think about the theme and never close that book, because a theme is something organic, it's always going to evolve. Whenever I approach a film project, I don't really think about the theme. I just go very much in gut instinct first. When I have filmed a little bit and worked with the idea a little bit, after that, I start thinking about the theme. The word theme, the concept theme is very or can be quite confusing because theme is that kind of word that is very broad. When I talk about theme in the film context and in a documentary context, I'm referring to finding a question. What is this film about for me? What is the film about for the audience? It always comes in the form of a question. For example, if I want to do a documentary about the history of lamp posts on streets, then the theme there could be maybe, what are we yes, what I'm doing now I'm tracing it a little bit because the theme question comes in layers and develops over time. For example, in the example of lampposts, the theme could be, what are we without light? Even further you can get about lampposts. They're usually stacked up alongside a street, almost like a path. What are we or rather, how do we find our way if we don't see fragments of lights upon our path? It is tricky to talk about theme because it is indeed broad. But in the end, you want to find some kind of symbolic question. When you start looking for your theme, think about the question. Let's say you're doing a documentary about trees. What kind of theme is there? It depends on the angle of course, if you're doing a documentary about the history of trees, well, it's quite big so you want to always try to layer the thematic thinking, you want to chop it down. What are trees? They're made from seeds. They grow and then you can decide what kind of film am I doing? Am I doing scientific film? Am I doing a film about a tree that had a certain meaning for me when I was young or a certain place? What meaning does the tree have for me? Finding the theme is also finding the value. You find the theme, you find the value. What value does making this film have for you? This value is what will drive you through all doubts, through all kinds of fatigue. Whenever you're feeling discouraged, having found that value, having found that theme, is what will keep you going. The theme works on many layers. Think about your theme, see if you find it. You will want to find the end conclusion. To start thinking about it. Theme, value. 12. Story Control & Environment: When we're doing a documentary, it is a little bit like working with nature. Nature is something that we can't control. We can't control our characters, and we can't control the narrative outcome of our story. Let's focus on what we can control. We can control how we tell the story, we can control the cinematography style, we can control the edit. What do we omit? What do we put into the story and so on. It's good to focus on what you can control. Key key part of that is communicating with the environment, with the characters you're working with. It's easy to make a big mistake if you're not a good communicator. When doing a documentary it is of high percentage of your rapport or your connection to that environment or to the subject. They really have to be in on it. You have to make sure they don't have any false hopes or something of money or grandeur that needs to be managed with a degree of expectation control. When you do a documentary, one thing that you can rely on is that it's not going to make you rich or it's not going to make any money. I don't know of any documentary that has made money. Making a documentary is more like a beautiful type of social work. You take a decision to make a film about something in it's your surroundings or a topic that fascinates you, and it's going to cost you a lot of underappreciated work. But the good thing about it, it is a quest. Sometimes we want to make a film so bad, a documentary so bad that we don't count the hours. That is actually a good sign that you're onto something that you really want to do and you're not counting the hours. You can use it like reverse campus if you really want to do the film. 13. Directing A Documentary: One of the things that I've been thinking about is what does it mean to direct a documentary? Of course it isn't the same as directing a movie, but directing a documentary is a little bit more multi-tasked. Just like in a movie actually, I realized documentary directing I would say it's more about filming a world, and then kind of dialing a little bit gently your vision into it, while at the same time respecting the environment you're making a film about, and also at the same time, a lot of it in the same time, honoring your vision. When you are directing a documentary, there is these two things; it is the world you're visiting that you're portraying, and then it's also your inner world that has a vision and a voice and an interpretation. 14. Simple Film Test: Just before we start diving into your documentary, we're going to do a quick simplicity test. That is, you taking three shots and putting them together. This course is all about taking action, that we do something that actually manifests in reality. The end result is simply video footage, preferably with audio, edit together, and the duration can be a couple of minutes. The worst-case scenario you do a little bit of a documentary and you find something that you're interested in and you might do more of it. But the main thing here is to prove that you have the capability to take action, film it and deliver it. Let me clarify. This particular section, this test section is only set up to give us a little bit of a confidence booster before we actually go into your idea, testing how challenging it can be to do simple. We're going to do simple and here are the parameters for this particular test. If you already know how to do simple and you already think it's very easy to do this test, then this test is exactly for you. I know this sounds extremely unnecessary, that is precisely the reason why it is necessary. We need to burst a certain bubble here, so just trust me on this one. 15. Film Test Example: This simple filming test is what documentaries are all about, picking up a camera and just filming. In this section, I'm going to show you an example of how you can execute this test. That is, I'm not going to do it, but my nephew is going to do it. Here he is. I've just asked my nephew who is 12 years old to pick up his phone and make a film with only three shots. As you can see, he distracts his shoulders. He's not sure what to do. Let's see what happens. I also decided to do a little mini documentary about my nephew trying to do a mini documentary with only three shorts, so here he is. My nephew who has finished making his film or at least the filming period. Now it's your turn. I want to invite you to go somewhere only in mind to film three shots, and just notice what happens, how you already know how to do it. 16. What is B-Roll: B-roll is something I think people use as a fancy name for extra material. We film something and then when we want to film something extra for a documentary, that is called B-roll. For example, let's say we do an interview, and then we want to cover that interview with material, that is B-roll. 17. Screenplay For This Class: In this section, we're going to discuss how you write your screenplay for your documentary. Your screenplay for this class will be a one-page description about your film. Iteration should be somewhere from 400 words to 700 or roughly one page. It might be tempting for you just to skip this step and jump in and film, that is actually fine as long as you eventually return to this step. The reason it is very important not to skip this step and the reason for writing about your film, is that it will not only help you know more about your feelings about the product, but it will also help you extract more ideas and overall, your documentary film idea will benefit greatly that you've gone through the process of writing about it. Writing about your project is a little bit like shaking a pay bank. By doing it, you're not only freeing up more space in your mind by getting it out there into words, but you'll also shake out more information and data about your idea, that again, will benefit you greatly. So trust the process. 18. Shooting Plan | Production: In this section, we're going to be discussing your production days when you film your documentary. For this course, we want to put down some parameters. When we do a documentary, it is so easy to just go and film something, which is fine. But for this course, we want to manifest a film. In order to do that, we're going to put down some strict parameters, which is, no matter what you decide to do or film about, please do not film for more than three days. That is three trips are three attempts, three rounds of filming. You didn't decide in your own way what do you do in each round, here is a little bit be my suggestion that the first round is something you feel on impulse. You just go to the place, whatever you want to film and you just film. Then you assess the material, assess your thoughts. When you go the second time, you want to look a little bit more for something specific. Before you go the second time, you can still be shooting on impulse. But do a little bit of a plan like think of three shots that you would really want to get, in the second round. In the third round before you do that, assess shooting day one and shooting day two, and figure out the absolute necessity of shots that you need for the final round. Let's recap that pretty quickly. Overall, we want to limit ourselves to three shooting days. On the first day, it is fine to jump in on impulse, actually I encourage you to do that. The pattern we're working with here is shooting on impulse, then stopping, assessing. Then on day two become a little bit more precise, stopping, assessing. Then on day three becoming even more precise. You don't have to shoot these three days in a row. You can split them up, create some time. Even if you just want to shoot one day or just two days, that is fine also. The main thing here is we want to finish and complete a film which is essential to give you confidence for your future work. 19. Cinematography | Consistency: In this section, we're going to talk about cinematography and the importance of consistency when it comes to your short documentary film. Today is a very, very hot day in the city of Reykjavik, Iceland. But we're going to power through because we are here for the passion of documentaries. To get the best audio here, I have my AC off, which means that I'll be sweating, not only metaphorically, but for this class. An example of consistency in cinematography is when you maintain a certain visual style throughout your film. That could be, for example, if all your film is shot hand-held or if all your film is shot on a tripod and so on and so forth, the main thing is we want to have consistency throughout the film. I'm not saying your whole film needs to be on track, that your whole film needs to be handled. But the individual sequences need to be consistent. Why do we want consistency? We want consistency in order for the audience or the viewer to trust us as a storyteller, as a narrator. Right now I want you to keep that consistency thought in mind because next up is visual style where consistency in that style plays a key part. 20. Cinematography | Being Clumsy: When we're filming, I'm always struggling with this part because there is a part of me that thinks, if we're too conscious when we film, if we're too full of knowledge, then we miss quite a bit. What I always suggest is go in very clumsy with your camera, stay in the clumsy phase a little bit, and then the nature in you will take over and help you become more disciplined. Because you will be catering to the style that you've already created when you were clumsy. It's a little bit like almost raising a child. You allow the child to draw outside the lines, give it all the freedom it needs and then the child, almost by itself, starts to regulate. That is a little bit like, in my case, creativity works. I rely on not knowing what I'm doing. I really emphasize ignoring all the technical talk. I take an odd pride in having somewhat disregard to technical requirements. The only thing I do in terms of technicality and its requirements when it comes to cinematography, is the quality high enough? Does it meet any standards? If it does, then I just use it. Because how many films have we seen where the cinematography was beautiful, but it doesn't count for anything. It's the story, the characters, and your unique angle. 21. Cinematography | Example: In this sample, I'm going to show you a scene from a documentary I'm working on. How many brothers and sisters you got? Are you the oldest? No, I am the next oldest. You are the second oldest? Yes. It was 10 of us. Ten. My mom had five of each. A lot of biscuits came and I didn't open. In this sample we're looking at, I'm using two different cameras. One of them is Canon M6, and the second one is a pocket DJI. These cameras are a little different in nature, so combining them and uniting them in terms of color and style was a little bit of challenge. The reason I'm filming this scene onto different cameras, it is of course not ideal, but the main reason is budgetary. Another thing, certain moment presented itself. These are the cameras that I had on me and I throw them up aiming for content over quality. The theme here is, I've not discard it fully, but I know a part of the theme is executing the film in a raw and clumsy manner, and that is my consistency in this case, I'm going to be consistent with my clumsiness. The interesting thing about consistency, no matter what consistency it is, it always elevates the whole. You even have these elves living in storms. A lot of people see them. For real? Yeah. 22. Bonus :: Metaphors in Cinematography: In this lesson, I'm going to discuss how you can use metaphors and cinematography. And how shapes and sizes within your film frame communicate to your audience, just like a traffic sign to a driver. I'm a big fan not overthinking things when it comes to filming my projects. My go to method is to rely on my gut instinct during a shoot. However, as I've worked on more film projects, I've found enjoyment in making this instinct more conscious, this way. I can still trust my gut, but with greater precision and awareness. We all recognize that a film frame can be likened to a painting. If you examine classic paintings, you'll notice that every element has been carefully considered in terms of size, shape, and position to create a dynamic that transcends the canvas and connects with viewers across time. These old paintings are metaphors. Just like films, the symbols they employ are relatable, much like traffic signs are, to a driver. When it comes to composing film frames, perhaps the law of composition isn't as rigid as it is in classic paintings. However, it can be beneficial to think about the relationship between the sizes, shapes, and positions of elements in your frame. It doesn't have to limit your artistic expression, but can provide you with timeless tools. I'm not suggesting that you burden yourself with the painstaking task of creating immaculate storyboards for every frame. I'm simply saying, keep this in mind because the way you compose a frame can help you convey your artistic message. In this example, you'll see how you can start shaping your visual narrative that aligns with your story. And how you want to convey just by blocking the scene even before you roll the camera or check the frame. Imagine you have two characters having a conversation in a kitchen. Picture them sitting across from each other sipping coffee politely. This conveys one meaning. Now let's alter the scene's meaning by changing the blocking. What if one character is seated at the table sipping coffee while the other stands by the window with their back to the one sitting? With this simple change in blocking transformed the scenes meaning almost. Before we even begin filming, consider how the scenes meaning shifts. With this adjustment, the one standing is taller than the one sitting. The one standing has turned their back to the one sitting. What does that signify? This is also an illustration of how much you can communicate through visual composition metaphors, even before any dialogue unfolds. This can help convey your message more quickly and clearly than words alone. 23. Cinematography | Visual Style: In this section, I want to offer you some variants of visual styles that you can use for your film. I'm trying. What are you trying? All the [inaudible]. There's no excuse. I know. No excuse. Two goals now from you. Should just kick them in order to get the ball straight away. Not to try to do something like Maradona or Ronaldo. They are too far from them. I'm freezing today. Right now I'm showing you examples from the documentaries that I have done. At the end of this video, I'm going to list out the styles that I use visually that you can pick from or you can maybe create your own, as you consider what style you want to use in your film. I also want you to take into account the work that we've done this far. By thinking about all the development work we've done so far, that can help you land on the correct style for you. By saying that, I want to invite you to think about the genre that you've thought about. Think about your theme. All of that work can help you when you think about your style. 24. Cinematography | Camera vs Sound: One of the things to keep in mind when we're thinking about what camera to use. Just on that note as an indie filmmaker tool-tip is, sound is much more important than the quality of the camera. For example, I think we've all seen a film where the cinematography was fantastic, but the film wasn't good. But if you're filming something with a mediocre camera, but the sound quality is immaculate. You can hear everything that is said then nothing snaps you out of the film. Thinking about sound, it is amazing how good sound can save a scene. 25. Interviews & Light Sources: When it comes to doing interviews, there are several ways to do it. One way is of course, doing a traditional TV interview setup or even simply doing a talking head documentary. If you have several interviewing subjects, you can choose to unite them by using the same neutral background throughout, for example. When it comes to professional interview setups, honestly, that is not my specialty. What I will share with you here, my specialty, is to do documentary interviews on the fly. Usually when I do documentary interviews, I film them from two sides. One direct onwards and one from the side in 90 degrees. If I have one camera then I make sure to adjust the frame size on regular basis if I'm shooting directly at the subject, so I can intercut the interview by cutting in and out in different frame sizes. Here, I have my iPhone up and I just wanted to show you quickly an example of an interview frame. This is my friend [inaudible] , we have just finished playing football. Here I have the camera straight in front of him and he is looking into my eyes. This is one example. Then if I have a second camera, then I would place it like so on the profile. This is just a very rough outline just as a quick example. Yeah, that's it. That's all. Give a little golf clap to [inaudible] , my friend. When it comes to light, again, my specialty is interviewing subjects on the go for creative documentaries. We always relying on natural light. Anytime I enter a location, I'm always on the lookout how the light comes in from a window, and then I place the subjects accordingly. If I'm interviewing where there are no windows or if there is night, then my second go to is looking for light sources, which can be simply practical lights within the compound. Many masters of cinematography have mentioned the power of using shadows with light, that we don't always have to see everything fully. I often place my interviews subjects by a window, but I also rely a little bit on this shadow technique, that I don't have to fully see the person being interviewed. Again, to make it more simple or complicated, this goes back to consistency. We want to have a little bit of consistency. If we're working with a lot of shadows, then we want to maintain that a little bit. Where if we increase the light, that needs to be a point to it, like the person's life has become brighter, for example, or something like that. 26. Edit | Your Footage: In terms of editing, when you have your material on a phone or on a camera, getting it into an editing software can be, for some people, very challenging. If you're not comfortable with computers, then you just have to develop the documentary filmmaker's mindset, which is figure it out. If you don't know how to do it, you ask someone. You can go on YouTube, but it's not a great resource for little things like that. I would ask someone, ask the young people or somebody who is just familiar with it. Because in the end, to demystify it, you just have your material in the device. You need to connect it to a computer and transfer the material. The material is on your desktop or in a folder of your choice and then it goes from there into the editing software. It really doesn't matter if this sounds extremely obvious, because when you're doing a film, especially for the first two times, it matters so much to us that every time we go into technical thinking, if we're a little bit wary of technical stuff, we can easily go into all of them. I want to do a film, but I can't put the stuff on the computers so I'm not going to do the film. We're going to try and break that. That is why we're always going step by step. For example, even though I have 20 plus years of experience in film making, my go-to method is anytime I feel overwhelmed or confused, I have to go back into counting my steps. What do I want to see in this scene? Have I said it in that scene? How did I say it? Am I happy with how I said it? Is the scene finished? Good, then the next one. This step by step counting up simplicity system is almost like an oxygen tank for me when I go into the deep waters of my own idea because when you work on your idea, it is so easy to lose a sense of grounding gravity. Anchoring ourselves by thinking simple, which is remember, complicated. 27. Edit | Log First Impressions: In this section, I'm going to share with you my approach when it comes to editing documentary material. Whenever I edit documentary material, I do with this a mind-map that you're looking at right now. What I do is I start categorizing the material by browsing through it, and then I use several techniques to assemble it. First of all, I use quite a bit of first impressions. That is, what about the material impresses me? The important thing about first impressions is they are first impressions. As soon as you film something and you look at it and it moves you in a certain way, then mark it, because that first impression can fade away. Aftermath, the first impressions I go on about logging my material. Now, it is easy to get lost in locking your material. We make endless, countless support scenes. What I do, I try to do this as quickly as possible, creating a list of my scenes, creating bins for them, and when I've done that, I start editing. Whenever I start editing, I try to go on feel. How does a certain feel that I want to see in the film look like? Then I try to find a scene that can represent that feel. When I find the scene then I start breaking it down. What is a mastership? What is a closeup? I do have a closeup. How do I want to convey this feeling? How do I want to convey this feeling through the material I already have? Let's do a little checklist here. Just remember this is my system. It doesn't have to be yours, but you can borrow it. We start by first impressions. After we've logged the first impressions, we can start logging the material itself and we have to do it quite quickly so we don't procrastinate. Then we can think about what a feel we want to edit, what excites us. We can find the scene that can represent the feel we want to convey, and then after that, the material starts talking to you and starts automatically suggesting the next thing. It takes a little momentum, and when the momentum drops, we have to do the same thing again. 28. Edit Session | Final Cut Pro X: In this session, I'm going to make a draft of the documentary short film that I'm doing for this class. I'm going to use a method that I use quite a bit when I edit, going in with no plan and just figuring it out. So instead of rushing through with them, I'm going to allow you to peek over my shoulder as I try to figure out this edit having no plan in mind. Here we are in Final Cut 10. I just want to tell you that even though I'm in Final Cut 10, I also use Adobe Premiere and DaVinci Resolve, and DaVinci resolve is free, so I absolutely recommend it. Here we have the material I'm going to use. Take it all here and drag and drop it in here. There we go, boom. The first thing I do here is lift it up from the timeline. I'm just going to make it look like any other editing software. Final Cut 10 is known for this timeline here. For this example, I'm not going to use it because this is the purest way to show it. Here we have several shots. Let's see how long it is. See it right right. Total duration is three minutes. Let's place it here. These shots here, these are just random shots I filmed on a trip with my brother to the countryside I'm just going to make something out of it. They haven't thought about this at all. I'm just going to plow through it and see what happens. The first thing I'm going to show you just for fun is how to proxy your material. Here you have three minutes of sample footage. Here it is in the bin right here. I'm just going to select all of the clips here and then I go under File and I go into Transcode medium. When you proxy your material, Final Cut, and all the other editing apps, they make smaller versions of your cuts. That means if you're running on a computer which isn't maybe the newest, then you can edit in this low resolution and it's going to go much quicker. Let's click on the "Proxy Media" here, right here. I never do this one. This one is a little bit faulty. This codec, this one here. Here you can select the size of your proxy. I always go into this size because it's the lightest and quickest. I'm going to select that one and say transcode it. Then you can see up here in the corner that it is starting to transcode it for me into proxy media. Right now it has finished making the proxy. It took about two minutes. This is a fast computer. I'm going to show you how you turn on the proxy. Let's take, for example, this shot here. This is the shot we're looking at. Then you turn on the proxy by going to View. Here you can say proxy only or you can have proxy preferred. I'm going to put proxy only, boom. You can see the resolution drops down. But instead, there is no color wheel or slowing down in the computer. It's all very low low-resolution. Then I can turn it back on by going to View. Just notice how the quality is going to change. Here we go. This editing lesson, is simply meant to show you a little bit how I work and the material we have here is just a random trip I took to the countryside with my brother and I'm just going to make something out of nothing. So let me see. Let's start by looking at the shots. What I'm going to do is to use first impression. I have not looked at the material in an organized manner until now. Roll it. This window right here. Car is parked. Car is in a town. I'm just doing this very disorganized on purpose and to see where the gut feeling takes me. This is car parked probably. Car in a town. I'm not sure what that is. Car in a town. Car in the countryside. Very quickly I'm going to lose track on what I'm doing, but that's fine. This is probably a good match, this one here. Well, I know what I will do to order too, missing a title here. It's called basic title right here. This is the basic title. Let's delete the text itself and just use this one here. I'll go here into Info and do here in town just like that. Now we've got a labeling system is in town. That's right here. Again, going very clumsy on purpose. I'm just showing you how helpful it can be to just go with it. Now I'm here. This is town. I'm editing this without the audio, and then I'm going to add the audio later. This is driving in the countryside. Let's go here. This one. Here we go. Very clumsy, clumsy, clumsy, clumsy. Car is still, I think it was here. This the speed editing session. This is night. We do this one here. Copy and paste it. Night. I've no idea where it's going. It's going to make a little cut here and drag it here to make some space. This is still. The one was still. No, not this one wasn't still. This one is still. This one. Static things. Copy-paste. This go. I sincerely hope you're not learning this because this is very disorganized. I'm just trying to be as genuine as possible here. No faking, no pretending, no arty fartsy like this here. Night, night. Town driving. This is night. These can go out. This one is this one. This can go. This one is still things. This is night. We're almost done. Unbelievable. This is amazing. We have people here. I'll just put this under people, make a whole new category for it. Here we go. Where is this going? Right now I have this thing here, the scales and what? That's a great question. Thanks for the great question. Let me see what am I making on this? This is night. Let's start with something manageable. Isolate it, and let's go deep into it. We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 shots here. First one is dashboard here. Just notice when you do this exercise, you're going to know thinking editing exercise, how your perfection mode rebels. That's what we're doing, we're stretching out and teasing. We're not trying to be perfect. Nice. Here we have two shots. This is man drives, this is man turns. Let me start with man drives here. I'm going to pretend this is the beginning of the film. Boom 1, 2, 3 is nice. Man drives and then I'm going to maybe see what he's looking at. I don't have any science here. It is very natural rhythm thinking, I just sense it. Go. Nice. Focused of 1, 2, boom. Somewhere around here. I'm just going one by one. This is this one, this one, and this one. Wait, this is bright, this is dark. I'm going to swap them. Start here like so. Then after I see that, I'm just going to see if this works like so. Why not? That means I'm having similar shots here to this one here. There's clear change in light, so time passes. After this shot, maybe I can go seven turn. Car turns like so. Now I'm just going to look at what I call night. Roll it. I'm just going to leave it like so, this is night. The next thing I'm going to do, I'm going to move away from night and go into countryside drive and see what happens there. This is countryside drive, remove that aside. Let's look at these charts here. The interesting thing here, you don't really need much thinking when you do this. There's this something in us that knows already how to tell a story. Snow, this is not snow, medium snow, but this is also a little dark. Maybe we can transition from this to the night. This is our console. That's sun and that's snow. What is that? This is interesting, so this is a little bit different from the other songbirds. Put it to the side. Let me start with snow. Look at the snow shots here. One, it's a nice section here. Let's say 1, 2, 3 boom. This is side, this is front view from the car, front, front. We always want to differentiate. For example, not always and rules are meant to be broken. But in this case I'm going to do, this is front, and we go to the fairy tale tool once upon a time, we were looking at the front of the car and it so happened. We could also see on the side of the car. Then we go. Let's try this one. Roll it. This is looking good. We have front, side, front here. This is side, this is side. What if we start with this one and this one? Then we have a nice differentiation which would be, look at these shots, side, front, side, front, side. See how it works. There's something about this one that doesn't work. I think it is because the frame size is similar. What I'm going to do, I'm going to swap these two. We go and see what happens. There wasn't enough differentiation. This seems to work fine. This works. This is fine. That's fine. Good. Now we have a little drive here. What is that here? It seems to be something else. Let's say, what about if we just start here, 1, 2, 3 boom, and this one here? The story here is perhaps we're in a place that has no snow, and then boom we have snow. Let's take it out. Looks good. Let's shorten a little bit, 1, 2, 3. When I do 1, 2, 3, I'm making sure that I've understood the information that is in the image. As soon as I have boom, I add it away from it. That way, we're always doing some differentiation before the shot drops in interest. Let's go and look at it like that. We have this section here, this is countryside drive. I'm just going to double speed over it to check the rhythm. It's just something that I do on regular basis. Going double speed helps me go, pop, boom, and so on and so forth. Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm. Here we have a little bit of darkness. Maybe we can use that to transition into the night. What was the last thing we saw? side view and this is frontal view. Let's go into frontal. Let's skip this zoom here. 1, 2, 3, 4, boom. Now, we have the best thing in filmmaking, we will change our differentiation. I'm just going to get the night that I got here. Before I'll look at it, I'm going to check the rhythm. I go here and then I double speed it. Right now, I'm going to check what else do we have here? Here we have people. Let's check out the people section here. Close the car far away. What I'm doing right now is very much checking, always thinking about differentiation. Here people are close visually. Here they are far away visually. We're inside the car, men inside the car. I wonder, it's nice to work with this random material, it helps you think on your feet. I'm going to have them drive first. Let's check this out. Start here. Dashboard [inaudible] maybe here, 1, 2, 3, 4, like so. Then go into here. Take this edit, that's fine. Maybe a little bit later. Then I'm going to do it like this. Thinking about using the theoretical tool, that is, once upon a time we were in a car, we saw house, we saw men in a car and then it turned out that the man was in nature. We can have that a little bit long in nature. Then they went back to the car. In the beginning, we have people in car and they're going to end as people in car. In the middle, if this thing here was an independent film and then we would see first act is in car, second act is out of car, third act is going back to car. Everything has this three-act structure like so. Now you have people, very nice. The countries, that drive, night and people. I would guess that this is because before I would say close here, like so. I just look at it double speed and as I told you, I use it to measure the rhythm, but I also use it to make sure I don't get bored with the material or overview the material. Like so, check it out in double speed. Out of this random material, I have made a little story. There are people here; they're looking at things in nature, they drive in nature. They see snow, they see decreased snow. Then they drive so long that they drive into the night. We have a little fairy tale here. Let's see what else do I have? This one's nice. Maybe we can use this one somewhere here. In the car and then in nature. Let's place this one here, shorten it a little bit, and see how long it lasts in my rhythm. Go. There is a little shake there. Boom. Check out this section. Natural speed. I can already see that this here is way too fast. I'm going to come up with three and go here. This is basically out of rhythm. Checking now, go. I'm buying it. This is in town. I'm not sure we need any of that. Well, this is nice. This is very different from what I've seen. This is mountains on the side. As you can notice because I've added these nugget here, that when I see something like that, it's going to find a home within it. some just going to look here, where could it go? Double speed. Where can they see mountains and sea on this side? Right there. Just going to place it here like so and we'll see what happens. This works. [inaudible] this section. We've almost used all the shots, which is quite amazing. Maybe we can use this one. This is probably the only one I want to use here. I'm wondering if it can be at the top here, people. As you can see right here, what was chaos about 15 minutes ago has turned into order. We have people who have countryside and we have night. Roll it. We're in a town, we see a house. We see a man in a car and then we see the car has traveled outside of the town. That people are outside the car. People go back into the car. We see the sea, the countryside, and so on and so forth. Another reason why I often add it without any sound, not even music, is I want the edit to be clear visually before I add the sound because adding the sound is one of my favorite things. I use it to encourage myself to have something to look forward to like a kid on Christmas. We've made a little short film out of nothing. Here we have the final result of this edit session and we're rolling this film here for that one minute that it is. Later on, we're going to use this edit sample when we go into coloring and some sound work. 29. Edit Sprint | Real Time Demostration: In this session, I'm going to give you a live demonstration of a 15-minute editing sprint, which means, you just put on a timer for 15-minutes and then you go. The main trick is to never go back and review your materials, just always keep going. I'm just going to start the clock. Right now, I'm feeling very uncomfortable, which is probably good. I'm just going to check out the material. Right now, we're somewhere, that's for sure. With me here today is my friend. Here we go. I'm there with my friend. What I'm trying to do here is not to become anxious even though I have the timer. I'm going to be calm and I'm going to breath sigh a little bit. Calming down. Then being calm, I'm going to decrease my inner dialogue. Like what I think about the material, and just edit, and let my hands do the work, and see what happens? It can be fairly scary. Let's go. Right now, we're somewhere, that's for sure. With me here today is my friend. Right now, we're somewhere, that's for sure. With me here today is my friend. He's going to not even take a mini. With me here today is my friend. We are going to make a mini film. There it is. No thinking. We're going to make a mini film and I'm just going to shoot a couple of shots with him, and we're going to edit the film. I'm going to shoot a couple of shots with him and we're going to edit together. We make what we call a little entity in a story, so follow closely. A little energy there. Let's check it out. With me here today, no, sorry. Because of the timer, I'm not going to go back, I'm going to go forward. Action. Just going to start here. Man walking. Stop here, see what's the rest of it? It is just man walking. Next shot is, because I'm going on speed, I'm not going to overthink it or over-analyze it, it's just a man walking. It's a little bit on unskillish shot. Let's see on screen straight here. This is straight here, Check it out. Let's do that. Remove this one, remove this one. We've filming two shots with him. No, I'm just giving a report here apparently. What am I saying? We've filming two shots with him, one following him. I'm just going to put this shot on a holiday. This is me narrating as well. What is that? This is nothing? Okay, sir. I'm just going to say because I'm not going over-analyze it as a side. Holiday over? I'm not being precious with it. [inaudible] Right now, I am telling him [inaudible] . Look ahead, see your daughter in front of you because my intention here is to get this little smile of his face as much as I can, make him think about his daughter. A little better here, but we're friends, so it's hard to remove that smile. Here we go. A little bit of or less smile here. Then when add, I'll go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 best fit. I like this one, I'm going to place it here. Now, I can go backwards. What was that? [inaudible] What am I saying here? [inaudible] I will 20 percent slower, I'm just saying here, but he's smiling. I'm just going to delete that. Here is some stuff from the back. See See how this works? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, that's enough. Only moving forward. Again, very uncomfortable nine minutes. Action. This is nice. Action. I was going to take the sound down on this thing here into walk. 1, 2,3, 4, 5. That's nice. I like the rain here. Moving forward. Here we go. 1, 2, 3, 4. Then I was telling him to catch up with me. Walk as fast as I am walking. Now, this is still all of talking. I'm going to walk with that a little bit. Let's move the ones we're not using, let's place it at the back here. If we can and we say, here we go. Yes, as we go. You can also go here at the back. It means, keeping calm. Here he's standing. That's a nice shot. Up here, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 that's good. This one is skipping the beginning all the time. He never like blinking in the beginning of a shot. 5, 6, that's it. Putting this to the side. This one here. I'm going to change the angle apparently. There we go. 1, 2, 3, 4, that's enough. Keep going. That's over the shoulder. Just looking where I'm still. Usually I have to play these clips if I'm doing something very precious. But again, the point here now is to go fast and slow. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 that's good. There we go. Like so. That's another angle if I want to. This is his point of view. Good, and then the same here. That's it. I'm running into a little bit of trouble. I'm not sure what I'm doing here so I'm going to check what I was saying here. Following him. We film two shots with him, one following him and one in front. Right now I'm going to do a side shot and I'm going to ask him to walk. I'm going to ask him to walk. I might be wasting time time here, let's see what he's saying. Out here at the end, we have stopped because we started the film with him. I'm going to ask him to walk 20 percent slower so I can follow him on his and now. Got cut out there. Who was the cinematographer there? I'm going to fire him. Let me see. Right now, I'm blessingly not aware of what I'm doing so I'm going to check it out here, cool. With me here today is my friend, Sonny. What's up? We're going to make a mini film. I'm just going to shoot a couple of shots with him and we're going to edit together. We will make what we call a little entity in a story. I'm trying to make a story out of this, and I only got four minutes. Let me see. What can I do here? Let me see. Here he is. He walks into the frame there. I'm going to use this as a walking frame. I think I have a little extra time here. Right now, because I don't have any proper sound on it, I'm just going make it out. Let me see. Story. Even longer. In a story. Can you see it? Action. Once upon a time. Stop. Wait, this one. Let's see here. Back, side, back, back. Let's go front. Three minutes, oh my God. Here we go. That's a little jump there. That's it. I think so. I'm going to take the sound away, use my own beautiful soundtrack. Jump there. We are just going to shorten this down to what? Oh, my God, two seconds. Do I have anymore lingering here? That's good. Then I'm going to go to the side because I'm not overthinking. Then I can go back to the back if I want to. Here we go. Actually I will just make him stop right there and then. Done with the sound. Man is standing looking somewhere. Oh, it's a nice one. Put this one here. Here we go. It's a little bit too plain for me. What was the last thing we saw? There and we can go over shoulder. Oh my God, one minute and 40 seconds. Here we go. Do I have a close-up of his face? Yes, I do here we go. Something in the background. Man is clearly looking at something and let's see what he's looking at. It'll be this one here. Well, we made a film, only have a one minute to spare. I'm just going to run it through. With me here today is my friend, Sonny. What's up? We're going to make a mini film. I'm just going to shoot a couple of shots with him and we're going to edit together. We make what we call a little entity in a story. Now I'm yet to sound this and I'm going to finish this. The story. Polish this. There we go. That's a little too much. In a story. This was a quick editing round and then I want fix the sound and fix the color. But it is pretty amazing what you can do in a short amount of time if you shoot things clearly. Here, I decided I'm on a clear path for the character. Then I shot different angles and made a cut together. There we go. Times up. With me here today is my friend, Sonny. What's up? We're going to make a mini film. I'm just going to shoot a couple of shots with him and we're going to edit together. We will make what we call a little entity in a story. [inaudible] 30. Color Grading Your Footage: In this section, we're going to look at some of the basics when it comes to correcting the color of your footage. There are two things to keep in mind when it comes to color correction. The first one is hitting the basics. Asking yourself, is the material bright enough, is it clear enough, or simply put, is it visible what is on the screen? The second part of color correction is just like making a film, it depends on your taste. My oppose to color correction is always in this order. First, is it visible, is it clear, and then I would apply my taste. Before we jump into going over the basics of color correction, I want to mention a little class bonus. In this example, you can see an example of my footage, and then you can see if I apply a very exaggerated movie style look on it. If you want to learn how to create this cinema style take on your footage, then I encourage you to download the PDF document that comes with this class in the resources. Because this is mainly a documentary class, not a color correcting class, and as a bonus to the class, I have included a special section called cinema style color correction in the PDF document, so check it out. In this round, we're going to start with the basics, so we crawl before we walk. This section is all about learning a little bit of balancing your material. Right now, we are in Final Cut. This is somewhat of, I would say, a rudimentary color correction. This is something that I use quite a bit to get my material in shape. I'm here working on this shot, this is the shot that I decided to color correct first. Every time I color correct, I try to find the shot that I want to use as a reference shot. This is the shot that is outside that I just like it, so I decided to work on that shot and then this one here. Right now I have worked on the first shot, found a certain color palette, and then I pasted the same effect on the shot here. Here, let's take a little bit before and after. This, a difficult shot. The first thing I do here, obviously is taking down the brightness and I play with the mid-level quite a bit until my eye is happy with the light balance. Moving on, so I have copy-pasted the color of the light from this shot that I just did in the beginning that was also outside, copy-paste and then copy-paste again, then playing with mid brightness mostly. Here in the snow, taking the highlights quite a bit down. You see here that I've already calibrated the color that I want for this session, so I copy-paste the color. After that, I'm mostly playing with, as you can see here near the right corner, with exposure and then copy-paste. I'm just copy pasting it in now. Because it is night, I need to calibrate the color a little bit and then it's mostly exposure work. Here, copy-paste the colors and now pulling back there, and then labeling here all the shots that I have already color corrected, so skimming through it a little bit. You say copy-paste and then working with the exposure, so it's all about consistency. The questions that I ask myself throughout the color correction is, is each shot of the same world? Just checking up with your saturation here, bringing more color into it, because sometimes they're overexposed. Outside material can get little bit desaturated. Let me resize that a little bit, there we go. The most important thing that I always do, and same goes for riding and all the creative work I do. Let me see, I like this one, a little bit too bright. That is to color correct it like I'm doing now, then I wait a couple of days and then I can see immediately if any of the shots are out of consistency. Right now I'm putting a little vignette on this shot here, and I want to make it very subtle just tinkering with the color. This one here, you see, so I have copy/pasted the vignette to the shot here before. Let's look at the film. 31. Bonus | Cinema Look: In this section, I'm just going to give you a little bit of a hint on how to work with LUTs or these cinematic color correction tools. Now we are in DaVinci Resolve, and as a quick note, DaVinci Resolve has a free version which you can download. In this section, I am working with four shots, these four shots that you see here in the left almost corner. The shots are not edited together. I just decided to use two day shots and two night shots and just throw a little aftereffect, or throw a little color effect on them. So what I'm using here is something that is called LUT, L-U-T. LUTs are just another name of some color palette that you can put on your shots. These LUTs are usually very cinematic. But it always, of course, depends on how much qualities in your original shots. So the more light or the more quality you have in your original shots, be it from your professional camera or phone or whatever, the more you can get out of these LUTs. So right now, I'm just going to throw one LUT into all the four shots. Here on the right side you can see something, what they call a node in DaVinci Resolve, which is another name just for the shot. This is where you drag the LUT. You take the LUT and you apply it and it will appear into the knot, giving the shot this beautiful effect. What I'm going to do now is simply copy paste this LUT on all of the shots. It doesn't really matter if, like right now this shot is fairly overexposed. When I put the same LUT on this shot, it is way too dark. But at the moment it doesn't matter. I'm just using a level of consistency to put an all four shots. Then I'm going to calibrate the light and make them similar in light throughout. So let's check it out. 32. Exporting Your Film: Let's go over how you export your film. We export it should be like exporting, should be going from the computer anyway, when we are exporting our film, it depends on what software you're using. Of course, you have a premier. You have Devin Resolve, you have File. These are the main editing softwares. And it is a fairly straightforward way. We didn't sound right, everything is simple when you know it. Right. But I would say regardless of what editing software you're using, learning how to export it on Youtube video way, I'm not trying to sidestep that, you need to learn this, but I would just say, yeah, it's one Youtube video way. Because every software is different, but they have all these export functions. Did I really teach this or did ask Youtube to teach it for me? 33. Sound Post Production: In this section, we're going to do some sound work. I also want to tell you that the material that I'm working with in this section, both the sound effects and the eclipse are downloadable under the class resources. Right now we are going to do a little sound work on this sequence that we edited together or I edited, let's be frank here. Here we have the files right here. This is the color corrected version. Because this is a creative documentary that I've made here just about one minute. I'm just going to be creative with the sound as well. I have gathered here a lot of car sounds that are going to be with the class as a downloadable resource. I'm just going to listen to some of the sounds here. Rain interior. But we're not going to use that because I don't think we have any rain here, do we? No. We have no rain here. Well, it is an artistic documentary, so I just might. What is that one? Sound is all about listening. [inaudible] looks like an exterior drive by and I wonder if I can use it. When I'm doing sound work like this, I'm always relying on the same method that I always use and I emphasize in this class for the first round, minimize thinking. I'm just going to move it up here like so so I can see what I'm doing here. I'm going to test this sound here. See what happens. A little trick that I always do with my computer is I go to the top here with the sound, and then I go 1, 2, 3, 4 and this is the level I want to be working on. Top minus the 4. Have a listen. It's nice. I'm just going to use it. Again, it is pivotal not to judge what you're doing until after you have done it. I'm just going to use this one here. This going to be fantastic I know it. I'm just going to crumble in some of these sounds here. I'm just going to try to use all of them. What is this one? Hard rain? We're not using that. Here we have a car that is driving on some terrain. When are we driving on a terrain if ever? Here, boom. Let's create this one. Instead of dragging all of them, I'm just going do in and if you're using final cut, you just use the letter I and then the letter O as an in and out. Let's drag this one down here. This is terrain that was here. This one belongs somewhere here. It's not [inaudible] enough, so I'm just going to delete it, go again, and find the most noisiest part. I'm just going to keep this one here like that. Later I will do more of this fading to make it more smooth but not right now. Here he is. Even though I'm avoiding at this in my documentary film to be in some truism. I want to focus on differentiation, to have different car sounds. Then when I've finished putting the sound down, then I can measure and tune it. We're speeding a little bit. Speeding. I'm just going to take that down here. I'm just going to check, is there anywhere where he's speeding a little bit? It might be this one because we don't know. Let's see what terrain we're here here. See what happens. It's going to put it here. Now, if I drag this sound, out like that, and this is all happening at the same time, this is the magic of sound. It can really glue time together for us. Let's check it out. Although this is an option. At the moment I'm going to keep it to one edit, this one here. Keep checking. This is vipers we're probably not using that. No. This car it's benign, neutral in color. What I'm going to do we're going to check it here. What I'm going to do, I honestly don't know exactly what I'm going to do. My hands are taking over. See what happens here. Now we can change time again. This becomes a time jump when we switch sounds like that. Let's hear it. Here is where directing comes in. Now I can decide what I want to interpret here. Do I want to have these two shots happening at the same time or do I want to make a journey of different sounds? Let me see what happens with this one. If I, for example, take this one here that I already used, drop it here so it belongs only to this one and then I use another part of it maybe here. Let's see what happens. What sound is this? Like that. Placing it here, like so. Let's see what happens now. This is good. This is another thing that's using laser. This is another car sound. Let's put this one on the mountain, like so. It'll dissolve, check it again. I'm going to see what happens here. I like this one, and this one together, with this one, and right here I want to change. I'm just going to go later in the edit and see what happens. Smoothing out little audio transition here, zooming in like so, and then see what happens. It didn't differentiate enough, I need to try it later. Oh, my God, we have wipers here. Let me see, let's get the gravel. The gravel sound, let's see if that works here. Use that again, gravel, and just take it down quite a bit. She used these wipers here. Before we do anything, let's just remove the sound and just mark the wipers. Here's one wiper. So technically another one right here and here. We have like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 6, 7. Probably three of those, or front and back. I'm going to isolate only the wiping sound here. I'm going to drag it down just for effect. Let's see what happens here. Okay. It doesn't have to match fully, but a little bit. Let's just take two of them. Place this one down here. Okay, let's take it up. Let me see if this one can go. This one here. I'm going to slow down a little bit. I'm going to check the speed. Slow it down to 80, and see what happens. Eighty percent. Okay, what happens if we do that? Okay. Let's take these wipers here, paste them, and just see if they can work for us again. They're way too loud. Here is a [inaudible] that we're going to work with. I'm going to cut it here. Make it a little bit louder. We still have wipers, we should use them again but very subtle. Wipers again, very subtle. I don't really mind if I don't hear the wipers. Wiper here. Okay, if we see it, then we can work with it. Now we've covered quite a bit of this journey, we have a little bit of light left and a little bit of day left. So let me see. Let's go into sound effects and check what other sounds we have here. Oh, I'll check this one here. Nice and domestic. What I've decided just now is that this moment is the same as this moment. I'm going to see how long it holds. I'm going to keep it like that. Make it a little lower here. Right now we have the nature here, see what we have there. This is some kind of nature. Let's just put it here, and in my mind it is a nature close to a city. I'm going to put it like so. Nice. Now I have some footsteps here, I think. Nice. Now, I will just say at the end. Here it is, skip the first sound and put it at the end, for no apparent reason. Maybe there is a reason. Wipers, of course, copy paste the others like so. Nice. We have made a sound for this film, so we're going to roll it. 34. Making Of This Class: We're going to try this. I'll just figure this out. Wanted to share a little bit behind the scenes. What does it mean to make a class like this one? I think here it should be okay. This is like the camera setup in the car. I'm using this one here. I'm just going to stick it right here, like so in order for the cable not to distort my view of the road. Similar to the philosophy about this documentary class, when I made this class, I was avoiding overthinking it. I cannot jump into it. I use several setups in the car, a camera in front of me, and sometimes we would have a profile camera from the side of my car, and then sometimes I would just use my phone and I would use the phone headsets to record audio and sometimes I would use professional microphones to record it. I mixed it up quite a bit and my emphasis was content over technical quality, which is very often my approach in my project. In all honesty when I start making a class like this one, it isn't really that I sit down and I think, I'm going to do this class. It is more like, maybe I'll do this class and then I start working on it. All the time I'm thinking, I'm going to finish this class in a week, and then usually it takes about six weeks at least and it's a lot of fun and a lot of challenges. I for one, find it very uncomfortable to be in front of the camera. You might not see it, but that is definitely the case. Yeah, but then it's something you just get over. It is almost like I get curious about myself on the camera. How did I come up with this? Why did I do that in this film? I wonder if I can make a tool out of it that can help others. 35. Thank You!: Here we are. Congratulations on completing this class. Even though as I suspect this with especially documentaries, we don't really complete learning them. I guess you might be revisiting some of the lessons and creating your own tools, visiting other classes. The word completion is something that I want to be careful with. What I'm going to say is, thank you for checking out the class. As always, I sincerely hope that this class has helped you. It is not up to me, my job here is do my best in putting my tools out there. The more I do this class is the more I learn about myself. Because it is one thing doing films, it is a totally different thing trying to explain first to myself how I do them and then conveying them to you. After this class, all kind of feedback is invaluable to me. Just like doing a film, if you're doing a film you're locked in it, just like you're doing a class. Then any exterior feedback is always appreciated. Please get in touch with me if there's anything that you want to learn more about. Of course, review the class and be sincere there as always. What inspired you to become a director? When I was 20, I broke up with a girl. You discover all sorts of things about yourself and you start to ask yourself serious questions and I found this answer, how to express myself through films.