DSLR Filmmaking: From Beginner to PRO!

1. Course Introduction: Welcome to the DSLR filmmaking course and I'm very excited that you're here. My name is Jordy, I'm a filmmaker from Belgium and we mostly make commercials, promotional films, and event films. All of our work is shot on DSLRs as we love to work with these cameras so much. They're compact, produce great image and are super versatile. Now some of you might know me from YouTube. We run also a channel by the name of Cinecom, where we share all premier tutorials, camera tips, lighting techniques, and more. If you haven't seen our channel yet, definitely check it out or just visit cinecom.net. Now I've been to film school, I've learnt filmmaking in a very academic way, but created my own style very quickly afterwards. I've made tons of promotional films over the years and I've created more than 30 online courses for filmmakers, and I'm very excited now to release my first DSLR videography course. I've been brainstorming a long time about this course, and a lot of hours, days, and nights went into the preparation of it. Now I'm very positive about the information and structure of the course. I'm going to take you on an amazing journey of professional DSLR videography. While you're following this course, it could be a good idea to also have your camera in your hands. This course is also designed that way. For example, while I explain how framing works, you can practice along by just pointing your camera to something on your desk as well. The best way to learn new things is by practicing it and that's why I also find some tasks during this course. I might ask you to film something and try out some of the techniques explained. In the first chapter, we'll cover the basic settings of a DSLR camera. If you already know how ISO and shutter speed works, then you can skip this, but it's very important to understand these basics well before we dive into the visual storytelling techniques. Besides, you might come across some new things so it can never hurt to repeat. In Chapter 2, we'll go over those techniques and have a look at how framing works and how to connect different shots together to add two more dynamic to your films. As of Chapter 3, some more advanced techniques will be handled like deep psychology behind camera movement. I will help you to decide whether you should film on a tripod, or just hand-held, and how to create good looking hand-held shots as well. Finally, we'll turn on the lights and see how we can add more depths and emotion to your shots. Now you don't meet any expensive lights for this. Light is everywhere, whether that is the sun or some practical lighting in your living room. By knowing how it works, you know where to place the camera in position to the available lights. Now if you bump into any questions during or after this course, please do use the discussion forums and I'll try to help you further as soon as I can. If you're watching this course from 5daydeal or any other promotion, then you can always reach out to us via social media, whether it's in the description or in a text file that came with this course, you'll find all the links in there. But enough with this introduction now. Let's dive into the course. 2. The Aperture: Hey guys. Welcome to the first chapter. We have six lessons here for you that will cover the basic functionality of your DSLR camera. The things might get a little bit technical here, but it's important that you understand everything here before we can talk about Cinematography. The first step you have to do is put your camera into manual mode. You want to have control of your camera so that you can make not only technical decisions, but also artistic decisions. One of the most important settings is the exposure, or in other words, the amount of light that is being captured. If you let in too much light, your shots will look overexposed and if you let in too little light they are underexposed. Your DSLR camera has three settings that controls the exposure and that is the aperture, the ISO and shutter speeds. All three of them can let in more or less lights, but as they do so, they also generate something extra. That's why it's very important to find the right balance between these three. For every shoot, these three controls will be different depending on the film looked at you want to go for. For this lesson, let's start with the aperture. The aperture is a mechanical gate within the lens. Most of the time it's electronically controlled by a dial on your camera body. If you're using manual lenses like I do, you need to turn a ring on your lens too close or open the aperture. Obviously, the bigger the opening of the aperture is, the more light that will enter to the camera and the more you close the aperture, less light will go through. Now the aperture also controls the depth of fields and to visualize this better, we've taken a picture of a ruler. You can notice that the shot on the left has a very small focus area. This is the area that is sharp or considered in focus. The image on the right has a much bigger focus area. You can read more numbers, more things are sharp. This image is shot with a closed aperture. Less light will enter the camera and your focus field, or a depth of field is bigger. The image on the left has a white open aperture. More light enters the camera and the depth of field is smaller. What does this mean on actual shots in the fields? Well, meet Kim. She's going to be the model for most of the practices during this course. She's working at her desk and we're taking several shots from her, to capture the scene. Here in this first example, we have our aperture closed. Now pay attention to the background, you'll notice that almost everything is sharp or in focus. Then when we use the second example, I'm filming with my aperture wide open. The background is now out of focus. Usually this will look a lot better as that small more cinematic feeling to it. That's simply because we're isolating Kim by putting her in focus and the background out of focus. We talk about having more depth of field in the shot and his lasting and something very important, creating more depth. We'll dive into this a lot deeper. But it's the essential of this course. It's what cinematography is all about. That this doesn't mean that you always have to fill them with your aperture wide open. In some cases we'll close the aperture and create depth by a different way. That's the interesting part of cinematography. You are the artist behind the camera. You can combine different ways to create depth in your shots. But it's very important that those are decisions and not defined by the automatic mode of your camera. A quick conclusion. The closer your aperture is, the less light that will be captured and the bigger your focus area is, the wider the opening is the more light that will enter and the smaller the focus area or depth of field is. This is a first and easy way to create more depths in your shots, making them look more cinematic. 3. The ISO: The second exposure control of a DSLR camera is the ISO. It's looks completely digital and is also called the sensitivity of the sensor, or in other words, how sensitive the sensor is to the light. The more sensitive, the more light is captured. Depending on the type of camera you have, you'll see different ISO values. Some DSLRs will have 100 as the lowest value, others start at 200. The lower the value, the less sensitive the camera is. Increasing this value will expose your shots a lot more. The side effect of ISO is unfortunately, noise, digital noise, which is almost always unwanted. Some DSLRs will have better sensors than others, meaning they can be set at a higher ISO value without much digital noise. It's therefore very hard to say which the maximum usable ISO value is. It's different for any DSLR camera. This is something you need to figure out yourself what the maximum ISO is that you can go. The best way to test this is by filming a person in a dark environment. Slowly increase your ISO and check until which point that you can go. If your maximum usable ISO is 1,600, then it's important to never trust that. If the environment is very dark, then just keep it that way. It's how the environment is, and you want to keep it dark. The one great tip I can give you here is to shoot in silhouettes. This means look for any lights that you can find any dark scene and to put it in the background of a subject. But we'll cover this a lot deeper later in this course. Simply put, the ISO digitally increases the exposure, but adds unwanted noise as well. So find your maximum usable ISO and try not to cross it. 4. The Shutter Speed: The third and last setting in your DSLR camera that alters the exposure is the shutter speeds. Back in the old days, this was a mechanical disc that would rotate in front of the film. Back then it was referred to as the shutter angle. Today we have digital cameras and now we talk about the shutter speed as it's something completely digital. It happens inside your DSLR and defines how long the center is exposed to the light. Now when taking a picture, which are DSLR, you'd also hear a clicking sound. What actually happens inside the body is a mirror that makes sure that you can look through the viewfinder goes up for a brief moment to that the sensor can get exposed to the light. If you set your shutter speeds to a slow value, that mirror has to stay up longer and if you choose a faster shutter speeds, the mirror will go up and down very quickly. Not all DSLR's have such a mechanical mirror. Well, actually they do because eager camera only has a digital shutter, it's called a mirrorless SLR. If we're using these kinds of cameras for video then I honestly don't care how he call them. When I see something shaped like a photo camera, I would always call it DSLR. While you're filming, the sensor will digitally open for a certain amount of time, close, go back open, et cetera. It's that speed rate which defines the shutter speeds. When your censored exposed longer to the lights, more light will be captured, but we'll also see more motion blur. If you wave your hands while the shutter speed goes open and it stays open that entire wave of your hands, then it will capture that entire movement as well. You would see a very blurry stripe. Now if you would make your shutter speed very quickly, it only captures a short moment of your wave and of course reducing that and motion blur. But because you've only let in light for a very short time, you will also expose your shots less. The big difference between taking a photo or video is that video works with multiple frames per seconds. In Europe or Asia, that's 25 frames per seconds and in the US, it's 30 frames per seconds. A lot of DSLR cameras also lets you choose 50 or 60 frames. But the reason I am telling this is because the shutter speed goes a little together, which are frame rates. When you look at your hands while waving it, you will also see a certain motion blur. Since you're viewing this through your own eye, is considered as a natural motion blur. To get a natural motion blur in video, there's this general rule to set your shutter speed at the double value of your frame rate. If you're recording at 25 frames per seconds, you want to set your shutter speed at one-fiftieth of seconds and if you're recording at 60 frames, you want to put that at one-twentieth of a second. This is a general rule to get natural motion blur, but don't be afraid here to deviate from this. If you're shooting at 30 frames per seconds and you have a shutter speeds of one-fortieth of a seconds, the unnatural motion blur won't be that noticeable. Sometimes it helps with bringing in more lights. Also look at your subjects, if it a driving car you might want to stick to that shutter speeds, but if it's just a person sitting still, that slower shutter speed is barely noticeable. In films like Saving Private Ryan, they've even increase the shutter speed to get crispier explosions as movements of the actors to make the war scenes even harder and feeling and strangely making them look more realistic. Even though the shutter speed has a rule on which value it needs to be set. It's also something to experiment with to create a unique look. Increasing the speed of the shutter, decreases the motion blur and lights being captured. Making the shutter speeds go slower adds more motion blur and adds more lights to your shots. The general rule to achieve a natural motion blur is by selling it to the double of your frame rate's. Though these were the three settings to change your exposure, the aperture, the ISO, and the shutter speed. Next up is a small quiz to test your knowledge of what you've seen so far. Good luck with that, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 5. Quiz 1 - Camera Exposure: 6. The Histogram: Welcome back guys. Now that we understand how the three controls work for the exposure, we can have a look at the histogram. It's an option that any modern DSLR should have, and it's displayed as a graph on your monitor. This is a very important tool. You should always leave it on. The histogram is a measurement tool for the captured exposure. It's your in camera lights meter, and it'll tell you whether or not your shot is over or underexposed. You can never trust your camera display. Even high-end calibrated professional monitors still are being used together with measurement tools for the exposure. All right, we get it now. It's important, but how does it work? Well, let's say that the complete dark areas and a shot are zero percent, and the complete white areas 100 percent. Well, looking at the histogram on the left side, we can find zero percent and on the right side, 100 percent. The graph represents your shots and you want to make sure that it sits between the zero and 100 percent. When we close the aperture, you'll see that the information goes to the left. The shot just now underexposed and when opening the aperture too much, the shot is overexposed. We can see all the information now on the right. Ideally, you want to utilize the space of the histogram and get as much information as possible in-between. By solely looking at the histogram, I know that my shot now is well exposed. However, in practice it's not always this convenient. This example here we have Kim standing in front of a window. We can clearly see a spike on the right side of the histogram. This is the light from the outside. It's very bright and this overexposed. Let's close the aperture and take that spike loose from the right side. Looking at histogram now, the shot is well exposed, but in reality, we see that Kim is actually now underexposed. We can still see her though she's not all the way blacked out, but she doesn't look appealing because she's underexposed. Generally speaking, you want to have your subjects face at around 60-70 percent. When analyzing the shots, we can divide the exposure levels in three parts. We have the shadows or dark areas such as Kim clothing, Kim face and her hair are a little brighter and we have the background which is very bright. These areas also come back in the histogram. There are somehow tree spikes. The larger the surface of each area is, the more it'll pick to the top of the histogram as well. But we'll get into that a little deeper in just a moment. We know that Kim's face is somehow the middle part, which is the part that will put at around 70 percent. If you notice that you are overexposing certain areas too quickly, you can set her face at 60 percent to preserve a little detail on the highlights. That isn't really a general rule here on using the histogram because every scenario is different. It's important to remember is that you want to have a good balance between having your subject exposed correctly and not going too much over or underexposed. Although we can sometimes go a little overexposed, if you can please do try to avoid that. Overexposure is considered very videoish and not filmic at all. If you can capture a beautiful blue sky, you have yourself a cinematic shot. Well, let's have a look at the other side of the histogram, the shadows. The shot right here is extremely dark. There's only one candle that illuminates scene. Since the scene is dark, you want to keep it that way. Looking at the histogram, you'll notice that this is almost all of the information. This is because a very large area in this shot is dark and only a tiny spot give light. This extreme example you do want to underexpose, although at the time we can't go forward under display. Often it seems like something is not over or underexposed, but the histogram will tell us different. Use the tool to check where most of the information is at and try to expose to subject between 60-70 percent for a natural shot. Try that yourself, shoot something in the dark and go at site as well. Use your histogram and check if your shots were exposed correctly on your computer. 7. Focus: We've got the exposure part out of the way now, which is the biggest chunk. You'll notice that everything will need some practice. There's no course that you can watch at instantly produce better video. You want to go out and shoot stuff, experiments with the settings, watch your shots on a computer and see where you can improve. Learn from your own mistakes. Let's focus on this lesson now. One of the things I don't understand this why people always ask about the auto focus of a camera. Sure there are applications where auto focus is very much needed, but when you're talking about cinematography, you want to get full control over your shots. Auto focus means not being in control. As of now you're going to put your lens into your manual focus. In the beginning it's going to be very hard to get your shots into focus. You're going to get frustrated if you've always shot with auto focus, but it will pay off. After a lot of practice, you will set yourself free and to really create some stunning shots by having this control. So quickly, a couple of practices are focused pulling. You can decide the speed and ramping by turning that lens, revealing objects from auto focus to focus, or just make creative shots and film completely auto focus. Then we'll dive into these practices a lot deeper when we're going to talk about cinematography, but you might think, then how do I get my shots into focus? Well, there are three options that can help you with that. Sometimes it's even a combination of these three options to get your focus spot on, but that depends on the project and your needs. First off is digital zoom, and I'm pretty sure that any DSLR type camera has this option. On a GH 5 I was able to set this as a function key. What it will do is digitally enlarge a portion of a shot. This makes you see the details on a small screen better thus helping you focus. This is probably the most important option. I use it very often and some cameras like the Canon 5D even has a dedicated button for it. If you have a newer DSLR camera, the chances are it also comes with an option called peaking. Just go through the menus and see if yours has that. What we will do is look at the contrast and define if it's sharp or not. You can see it as what auto focus will do. But with peaking, it will not focus for you, but just tell you whether or not it's sharp. It will tell you by highlighting the focus areas. This way you can instantly see if it's sharp or not. Disclaimer though, focus speaking is not always something to rely on, definitely in very wide shots, but that's something you can find out by trying it out. I don't use focus peaking that much, because I use option number 3, and that is an external monitor. You don't need to have this, but it's a nice luxury item that makes filming a tag easier. Almost any DSLR camera comes with an HDMI port on which you can connect a five-inch or seven inch LCD monitor. Now there are many different brands and models from $50 to $3,000. However, it's important to not be sheep on this. If you want to look for a monitor, look for something that has at least a resolution of 1,280 by 720 pixels. I'm using one from small HD, which is a very popular brands and I have specifically chosen a full HD monitor, meaning it has 1920 by 1080 pixels. The reason you need this resolution is so that you can see much detail on a monitor. The more detail you have, the easier it is to focus. But again, I do like to point out that you don't need to have this. The previous camera was a GH 4 and a broke the HDMI port within the first month I got it. Yet I used that camera for almost three years on a lot of projects going from Afro movies to corporate films and even TV commercials. I have link in description of this lesson, that will bring you to one of our videos on YouTube that explain some more advanced tips on getting your focus right. You don't have to see it to continue with this course. In the beginning, it's important that you have digital zoom, focus peaking and an optional external monitor available to get your focus right. Then go out to the living room or to the yard and film your family. Just let them do whatever they're doing and you have to focus on your focus and just practice. 8. The White Balance: You know how to properly set your exposure now. The focus right and now we'll cover the less metal setting of your DSLR. This is the white belts. A camera captures light, just like our eyes do. If we turn off the light, we don't see anything. Now lights come in many colors and flavors. Here we have a color wheel, is a shape that represents all the available colors and to display it so that all the colors flow nicely over each other. Now every color has an opposite or negative color. For example, here we have the orange on one side and blue on the other side. Now, this part of the color wheel is called the color temperature. It's a very important setting within our DSLR. If we put this color wheel into practice, we could say that the orange color lighting can be found at candlelight, tungsten light, bulbs, the sunset, et cetera. We call these warm lighting. On the other side of the spectrum, we can find blue colors lighting such as a cloudy day, moonlight, or after a sunset. These are named cold lights. In the middle sits white, which is considered superior daylight, a beautiful high sunlight. On your camera, you'll find presets for these lighting stew. But what do they actually do? Well, light name says whites balance. It will change its camera temperature so that white looks pure white. If your white balance is set wrong, white areas could look too orange or too blue. Of course, this will influence your entire shots. Now these presets are nice to have, but they aren't really accurate. The best way to set a white balance is by a reference or by setting the value manually. Under your presets, you'll also find an option to take or set the white balance. Some cameras like the Panasonic GH five allows you to do this in real time. Select the option and just point your camera to a white object, press on the set key, and the camera will adjust its white balance accordingly. Important is that you always use a white object. If I would set my white balance to an orange paper, the camera will think it will need to add a lot of blue to compensate. In reality, the shot looks way too blue now of course. For some DSLR, it's a little more tricky to set your white balance like this. Often it's required to take a photo with white object first. Then we'll load that image due to white balance setting for measurements. Then a way to set your white balance is by doing it manually. Again, not all DSLR support this, but this option allows you to set to the Kelvin value. The lower this value is, the more blue your shots will look and the higher this number, the more warmer it will look. For a neutral pure daylight. You want to pick something at around 5,600 indoor, tungsten lighting at 3,200 and a cloudy day at about 6,500. Here it's important that you have a good monitor so that you can see what happens and how the colors look while changing the Kelvin. If you were holding your DSLR at this moment then tried to set the Kelvin yourself, look at the white areas of a shot and try to make them pure white. You want to change your white balance every time the situations changes. If you're filming inside with tungsten lighting, you set your Kelvin to 3,200 somewhere. If you then go outside, you change it to 5,600. Now these failures are very relative. If you have a tungsten light at a big window, you can pick something in between, like 4,800. But just like with auto-focus, you don't want to use auto white balance. Your colors will cancel it shifts. If you're filming a scene, you want everything to be the same. If you want to make her shot warmer or give it some other tone, then do that and post-production, it's called color grading. You can only do that with a neutral color or good white balance. Fixing the white balance in the edit is not so easy. Unlike rock pictures, the information of a DSLR video is baked in. Let's conclude. For every learning situation, you want to take a white balance. This means changing the camera color temperature to that white looks pure white. Don't use auto white balance and try to avoid the presets which aren't always accurate. The best way to take a white balance is by measuring a white point or by setting the Kelvin value yourself. This was the last manual control of your DSLR camera. We've got a little quiz now to test your skills. Make sure to try out all the functions from this chatter so that you can get familiar with them. We're not going to talk about the basic functionality anymore. We're going to step up the game now and talk about the real stuff cinematography. That's for the next chapter. Thank you very much for watching. 9. Quiz 2 - Camera Functions: 10. Rule of Thirds: Welcome to the second Chapter of this course. Now it's time to get to the essence of visual storytelling. The stuff that will make your videos look pro, and that starts with framing or composition. This means knowing where to place the different elements, or the subject in a shot. Here we see Kim in three different framings. Which one should we go for? But most importantly, why should we choose one framing over the other? Like with everything, we first need to understand the basics before we can paint outside the canvas, and, these basics come down to the rule of thirds. You've probably seen this before. It's this raster which you can often overlay on a video camera, your smart phone, or some DSLRs. This raster definitely helps in the beginning, but eventually you'll see that you can frame properly without this raster. This raster will help you to frame under rule of thirds, it has its name because the shot is divided in three parts, horizontally and vertically. For example, here we have Kim looking away. Currently, she's not positioned well as she sits in the middle of the frame. But let's frame her now on the right vertical line. This looks more appealing and natural. Here we have a landscape shot. There isn't really a subject now, but we do see the horizon, which we can put on one of the horizontal lines. Again, it looks a lot more balanced as reframing under rule of thirds. Here's another example of that same landscape, but now we see some trees as well. We can align the horizon on the lower horizontal line, and the trees on the left vertical line. Let's look at one more example. We have a close-up of a flower. Again, we're looking at things that we want to pull attention to, and align that to one of these lengths. Often you can also use the intersections when you have a small object. In this shot, we have a candle on a white table. There's a lot of space around the candle, and sometimes not so easy to frame it properly. Of course, there's nothing wrong with having the candle in the middle. But we can also put this candle on both the horizontal and vertical line, making the shot a lot more interesting. Here's where your creativity comes in, use this raster to align as much as possible towards. We've got a bunch of stuff here in this shots. Look at where the lines cross every time over something that is a subject. It feels more balanced and appealing to the eye that even when we would frame the shot like this, where none of the elements are on these lines. Let's paint a little bit outside the canvas now we've got a candle here again, and I'm framing it on the bottom. Half of the candle is even cutoff and you might think it's not framed properly, but still, it does seem to work in an odd way. That's because I did use the rule of thirds. Let's overlay the raster. See how the bottom horizontal stripe lines up with the top of the candle. Doing this, it's still brings in that harmony. Now, when doing an over shoulder or just having something in the foreground, you also want to make sure that this object sits on one of these sides, and that it just touches the vertical line. Because we're using this as a foreground object. You don't want to put too much attention to it. If you would align it on the line, then we'd say that the foreground is too heavy in the shot. This is because we are now focused to look at it because it sits on that line. But the guy's shoulder is out of focus, so it doesn't seem right. This is how the rule of thirds works. Use the lines of your raster to align your objects to it that you want to pull attention to. Try to practice this a little bit. Look around in your room and just point your camera to certain objects. You can even use your phone here if your DSLR is around it might not have this raster, just look around a line the elements and perhaps take a picture. You know how the rule of thirds works now, you align the objects to the lines, but to which line? When I see someone, should I put that person on the left or the right side? Well, that's for the next lesson. 11. Framing: You've probably heard about the terms long shots, medium shot, and close up before. These are types of framing that fit within the rule of thirds. Now, these framings are the basics and seen as academically correct. But they're also used in TV, cinema, commercials, and any other film jar. One of the biggest problems I saw with my students and my colleagues when I was in film school, was that they wanted to be different. You want to take off the edge from these framings and create something by themselves. This is something that you should never do as a beginner. Yes, skilled filmmakers who had not framed by the book, but it would only be a few shots within their work. The other 95 percent are just those standard framings. Let's go to the most important ones. We have four framings and the first one is the establishing shot. This is a shot that will tell where we are. It's usually going to be a very wide shot. If there is a scene going on inside a house, we could open the film with a shot from outside and show that house. This is an establishing shot. In films like Star Wars, and an establishing shot is often an entire planet to define where we are. As you can see, the establishing shot isn't really defined, but relative to the scene, it is the widest chart. Think about the rule of thirds here that we've seen in the previous lesson while framing yourself establishing shots. The second framing is the long shot. Here have the entire subject in the frame. You're not cutting your challenge off. This framing also has some variables, such as the extreme long shot and the medium-long shot. But in the field, those names aren't used that much. When director asks for a longshot, the camera guy knows which long shot he means by just looking at the scene. Now here comes the answer to your question. Where do we place the subject on the rule of thirds in a longshot? This has to do with the looking direction. It's a site to where your talent is looking at. If Kim here is looking to the camera, there isn't really a viewing direction. We can choose to either place here on the left side or on the right side, is even okay to also put her in the middle. But when Kim looks towards the right side of the shot, or I'm filming her sites, we need to give her some viewing space. Therefore, will place her on the left line of the raster. This gives Kim more space at her face sites and it will feel more natural for the viewer as well. If we place her on the opposite site, it seems like we're trapping her. This gives a very uncomfortable feeling. That also seems as the left side of the image is now empty. Like it's not being used, is therefore not a good framing. Giving the talent viewing space is one thing. Another important element is the headspace. This is a space above the person's head. You don't want to stick the talent's head to the frame, nor do you want to cut it off. It acts the same as the viewing space. You want to give some reading around [inaudible] that the audience won't feel uncomfortable that the [inaudible] is trapped in. Always make sure that you have a little space above the talent's head, and then there is one last space to pay attention to, and that is on the bottom. Also here, you want to have a little space to avoid the same issues. What's talked about here as well is the puppet effects, and it's something you want to avoid. The puppet effect occurs when your subject is framed right underneath your feet. It seems like she's walking on the frame. A quick conclusion, give your subjects and space inside your frame. [inaudible] understand that we can continue with the other framings. The next one is the medium shots. We're going to cut into the subject and only frame the top part of the body. Just like before place her on the correct vertical line and make sure that she has some headspace as if something like a medium shot, you can use the horizontal lines from the rule of thirds, to place the eyes on. The reason for it is because we tend to look at the eyes of an actor or actress. In long shots, we didn't do that, and we give too much headspace to the talent. You still want to balance your subject in the framing so that's why you typically want to start framing the eyes on the rule of thirds as of a medium shot. Finally, you want to pay attention to the puppet effect again. We've already cut into the subject so we can't really place her on the bottom of the frame. Where could this puppet effect takes place in a medium? Well, this time we're looking at the joints. Those are the angles, the knees, the pelvis, the neck, and even the elbows for certain shots. You want to cut after framing just above or underneath those joints. For an alternative of the long shot, you want to cut the subject and its size or in the shin legs. In a medium shot that's going to be just above the pelvis in the stomach. Never cut in those joints as that will create their puppet effect again, and this is something really important. Paying attention to the space around the subject and avoiding that puppet effects makes a big difference in the look of your shots and this right here is a professional shot. It's something that you could see in a high-end Hollywood production. As you can see, it's all bad. The knowledge, knowing how it techniques work, and use them. Folks, let's continue with the close-up, the last one in line and also comes with some alternatives like the medium close-up, also named the chest charts because we're cutting into the chest and to the extreme close-up. But again, in the field uses say take a close-up of eyes. The idea of a closeup is to a box, a subject intuitive frame. You want to cut into foreheads and place the eyes on the rule of thirds again since the idea of a closeup is to narrow down on the subject and isolate that person. We can therefore forget about the headspace. All of these things like the viewing space, rule of thirds, and the puppet effect still needs to have attention got in the forehead and not on the joints. All the stuff that we've been talking about now does not only apply on humans. I'd been seeing subjects a lot of the time, so we all respect for Kim, but that's how we need to see our elements in a shot. Everything is a subjects whether that's a person, a building, a tree, a cup of coffee, it doesn't matter. Once you point your camera on something, it becomes a subject. Try to see the techniques of framing in any subject. You really have a cup of coffee and a long shot. See how I'm paying attention to the headspace of the cup. Avoiding the puppet effect using the rule of thirds and even giving it viewing space. The cup doesn't have eyes, but we do feel like the back of the cup is where the iris because we hold it that way to look at the front of the cup and this is becoming subjective of course, and therefore the viewing direction isn't always that important with subjects like this. But when there is a better visual like a building that has an entrance, we could definitely see that as the face and give it viewing direction from there. Guys, this was a big chunk of information. Maybe write down these words on a paper. Viewing direction, headspace, the puppet effect, and rule of thirds. [inaudible] paper which you right now, and go shoot some stuff in the backyard. Try to make an establishing shot, a longshot, a medium shot, and a close up of something. Once you've done that, you can come back inside and follow the rest of this course. In the next lesson, we're going to tackle the camera position which will go a lot easier that you know how the framing works. Thank you so much for watching. 12. The Camera Position: Welcome back guys. I hope you've had some good fresh air outside and also practiced the techniques during this course. It's very important if all of this information is new to you. It's best to learn a few new things, then practice that, come back in, and learn something more. In this lesson, we'll talk about the camera position. We have a three-dimensional world, which means we can place the camera anywhere on the surface, but also in height. You can place your camera on something or use a tripod, which you can change in heights. But let's start with the flat surface first. Here we see couple of trees. We can place the camera where it stands now, but we can also move it a couple of feet further, filming it from a different angle. Two different camera positions and both shots look different too. If you pay good attention to everything that we've learned previously about framing, both shots are good. But let's analyze these shots for a moment. What's the visual story that we're telling? What does the audience feel when looking at the two different shots. In one shot the trees take up a lot of the frame. They are very prominent, which means all the attention goes to them. There are many details as well making the shot little bit hectic. You can hide things in here because there's just so much intermission. As Kim is walking in a distance, it could take a second or more before the audience notices that. The trees are more prominent than Kim. She turns out very small relative to the prominent trees. Though analyzing a shot like this is not so hard, it's something that you have to practice on a lot. Just go and google Image Search and look at any kind of photo you see, or you can also go to a museum and just look at paintings. Take some time to think about what visual story is being told. This is also the reason why you're getting artists who go to film school. Many people hate it, but it's something super important, it's where cinematography started. The principles used in the middle ages still apply today. Let's have a look at the other shot now. The same trees from a different camera position. Take a moment for yourself to analyze this shot. Look at what's prominent or maybe what isn't. Where your eye is guided to and why is that? The trees are on the right. We have a wide open space on the left. This is the entire opposite of what we had before. There's less detail, we don't have anything too prominent anymore. As Kim walks into the shot now, you're instantly drawn to her. She's also not being intimidated by something else. She has the space around her free, making her and the audience breathe out better. The moral of the story, think about what your shot is telling. If the trees are too much back together, but you would like to create a dramatic tone, then take your camera and reposition it to spread those trees. This is just one example, but there are thousands more. I don't have the time for that, so let's have a look at one more. Here we have a medium shot of Kim, and here we have another medium shot of Kim. While she is just standing on the exact same place, I just move my camera to the opposite sides for the other shots. Look at the backgrounds. One of which is very bright and the other one is very dark due to the trees again, and I don't think I need to explain anymore. What do the trees tell? It's very dark. There are shadows, lots of detail, so a little bit hectic or more dramatic. Though these trees could also be a building or something else, the idea is that we're having something darker with more detail in the back. The other shot, it's all bright, whites and open, which is more positive and relaxing. Therefore, it's super important to think about where you place the camera. The next thing is heights. Relative to the subject, there are basically three levels of heights. You have low angle, eye heights, and high angle. Some of these have alternative naming, like bird's-eye view for the high angle, or here in Belgium we say frog perspective to low angle shots. These angles are always relative to the subjects eyes or to the point that the audience is drawn to. A low angle shot is already occurring when you're just beneath the eyes. It's therefore very important to understand what the difference in height does. One of my recent work was to make a promotional video for a street artist. Often I would film him from a low angle. Reason for that is so that the audience seems to look up to this man. It makes the artist look bigger in heights and his status, which is exactly the story I want to bring. He's a great artist, which we look up to. During that same shoot, I would also film him from a high angle. This does the opposite with him, we're making him small and to look down on him. Where we have the artwork in the foreground while he's working on it, it's making him seem small, opposite to the artwork. In fiction this is often used to make someone smaller in status. The big boss of a company is usually filmed from below and the employees from above, when they're in the boss's office. Filming from below or above does something to the subject. The bigger this angle is, the more you emphasize that, so be careful using this. For natural shots, you want to be at eye level just like we are now. I don't want to intimidate you nor want to look insecure. That's why I put myself on the same level as you because we're doing this course together. To conclude this lesson, analyze your shots and look at what the visual story is. You might want to take your camera and reposition it to get a different perspective or background. Use the height of the camera to set the status of your talents. The bigger this angle is, the bigger that status becomes. In some occasions, you just want to be slightly higher than the eyes of the subjects. But if you want to be on the same level of your audience then make sure that the camera is still. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 13. Lenses: In this lesson, I want to talk about the lenses and not so much which one you should get or which one is better. But about the focal length, you know, those millimeters on a lens, you can see it as zooming in or out. For example, this right here is a 35 millimeter lens. It's called a prevalence because it can't zoom. It has only one focal length, 35 millimeters in this right here and 18 to 200 millimeter lens. It's called a zoom lens and it has a focal length range. Generally speaking, prime lenses are considered better and quality than zoom lenses, but it's all very relative. There are many zoom lens out there at outperform, some prime lenses. When it comes down to buying lenses and definitely as a beginner, don't get to brainwash tube quickly about needing to spend a lot of money on this. As long as you're not in the high-end production markets, then don't mind those $5,000 plus cinema lenses. A kit lens is often the best way to start. Typically, you want to get a new lens if you want a different focal length or a wider aperture to get a more shallow depth of field and low-light performance. Let's talk about the focal lengths again. You have two options when making a medium shot of someone. You can stand close to that person and zoom out, or you can stand farther away and zoom in. In one shot we talk about a white angle and the other one, is it telephoto or just tele? But when is a lens white or tele? Well, it's compared to the human eye. The human eye sits somewhere at around 50 millimeter focal length. There are discussions about this, that's why I say around 50 millimeters. Anything below that suggests 24 is considered a wide angle and anything above 50 millimeters is considered tele. A 50 millimeters is not the same on any camera and that has to do with the actual physical size of the sensor. The biggest size is called full-frame. Bubbler cameras like the Canon 5D or stony A7S have such a full-frame sensor. Such sensors we talk about a crop factor 1. That means a multiply 50 by 1, that makes 50 millimeters. But when you're using something like a Canon AD or Nikon 7,200, you have a cropped size sensor. Chemicals that APSC, it's Nikon names, it's DX. You also have variations like APSH, super tele 5, etc. But whatever it's called, it has a crop factor that sits around 1.5. You can look that up for your cameras specifically. Just type your camera myelin on Google Plus or crop factor. Multiply 1.5 with 50 millimeters and you get a 70 millimeter lens. In order to have a real 50 millimeter lens, you need to put on a 35 millimeter lens, which will actually result in a 55 millimeter lens, but a 33.33 lunches doesn't exist. Then you have micro fourth third sensors, which I believe are the smallest sensors for DSLR cameras. These are cameras like the JH five, black magic buckets cinema camera, Olympus EM1 amd they have a crop factor of 2.0. You need to double the actual focal length. There exists adapters like the meta bone speed boost or that you can connect between the body and the lens, which will optically increase a sensor size so that you only have a crop factor of, let's say 1.5 on a micro four-third sensor. But that's a whole different story. Important to know is what camera you have and how much it's cropped factories. Now that you know how that works, I'd like to answer the question that we raised in the beginning of this lesson. Should we resume out and stand close to as subjects or zoom in and stand for away from subjects. When we zoom in or use a Tilly focal length, then we are compressing everything and the background gets more out of focus. When we stand close to Kim with the same framing, the image field is whites and it'll capture a lot of the surroundings plus the background is more in focus, comparing them next to each other we also notice what it does with the shape of Kim's face. The white angle was not so flattering as it will distort the image. The more white you go, the bigger the distortion is. Till lenses look more flattering and also something that is used more and beauty shots therefore. But apart from U distortion, we're also telling a visual storing here. If you stand close to your subject on a wide-angle lens, the viewer is more pulled in to the scene. This often used in war films who already wants the audience to feel like they're sitting next to the soldiers in the battlefields. When taking a distance with your camera and zooming in, you also take the audience to a distance, and this has many effects. Just imagine if you would look at something from a distance, a girl might look prettier than if she would stand in front of you. You can look at someone while that person doesn't know you're looking at them. It's also more relaxing as you can just lean back and watched from a distance. These are the two main differences. Let's have a look at this scene for a moment. We started out with a tele shot to create a relaxing feeling. We're getting to know the character but as it seen changes and Kim stops, we brought the viewer closer to or send or they and feel the same tension in the shot after that, we leave the character again. This makes her vulnerable as she seems to be back alone. See how the use of that focal length matters a lot. Instead of zooming in and out, think about also stepping backwards and forwards. It's something very fun to play with during a scene where you can cut two different focal lengths. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next lesson. 14. The 180 Rule: The 180 degree rule. When you're going to edit some multiple shots together, this rule is super important. The fun about this thing is that you can even break this rule for a very good reason. But let's first start with understanding this rule. When we are at a certain location, we know how it is there. We have a sense of the space so after we've shot a few clips there, we also have a much better sense of the orientation. Now the audience was not there, so they don't have any of that orientation. When a person walks from the left side to the right side, and the next shot from your right to the left, it seems like that person has turned around in between. But in reality, Kim Miller was just walking in the same direction. We only place the camera on the opposite side of that path. Looking at this quick drawing here, the subject walks from the left to the right side in the first shot. In the next shot, we place the camera on the other side of the road. Now that person walks from right to left. Seeing this drawing, it doesn't feel like the person is walking back because we have the sense of orientation. But without this drawing, you wouldn't and this is the 180 degree rule. Choose one side at the direction the person is walking, it never crossed that line. You have 180 degree of space to place your camera in, so there's where degree rule comes from. This is something super important if you don't want to disorientate the viewer. Now this walking direction is the basic, but your 180 degree rule comes in more often than you would think. Here we have Kim and my coworker genic, standing in front of each other. They are just talking. Typically you want to film several shots like this over shoulders or having them both in a medium shot, etc. The same rule applies to your two. Look at the viewing direction of the actors and draw a visible line between them. Choose one site and don't cross it. Here's an example where we cross that line. Look how the viewing direction of Kim is a same as genic. This should be opposite if you stand in front of each other. Let us take this to a more advanced level. We have a close-up of Kim and we cut to a medium shot of Kim. Camera wise, we're doing nothing wrong here. But you've probably seen the lighting changed as well. In the first shot, we had lighting on the back of Kim and in the second shot that same light has changed place and it's now on the front side of Kim. This time not to camera, but the light has crossed that line. This creates confusion too as we expect the light from the back. The audience might think that Kim has turned around. Now in the beginning I said that you could break this rule. It's done pretty often actually. The idea of 180 degree rule is to make sure that the audience stays orientated. If we would break it, the audience gets confused over the space and direction the actors are moving. This is often used in fight scenes to make them look more chaotic and realistic. If the audience has too much orientation, they can see the minor mistakes and perhaps the sloppy fight moves. When the audience is unorientated, they have less time to focus on that and the fight scene would be a lot stronger. This is one use of where you could cross that line. But there are more reasons. Just think of what's the rule implies and which effect it has on the audience and see if you need to break it or not. Thanks for watching. 15. Slow Motion: Many DSLR cameras these days can shoot slow motion or at a higher frame rate. For example, you can film at 60 frames per seconds, but eventually export to 30 frames per seconds. This means you can stretch the video so that you have two frames available for each actual frame. My GH5 can even shoot at 180 frames per seconds. That's a little more than seven times slower if it would export that to 25 frames per seconds. Anyways, if your camera can do that, definitely play with it. Slow motion looks great, but should also be handled with care. We live in a world where everything is real time, not in slow motion. It feels natural and we're used to that. Nothing special about it. Now when we look at something in slow motion, we have more time to look at the same clip. Our eyes will wonder and start to look at details. This is one of the biggest advantages of slow motion. The bigger your slow motion is, the more time we have to look around. Here we see Janic running and jumping over this rock. We saw what happens. But let's play this now in slow motion, your eyes get more time to look at what's actually happening and you start to look at other things like how he pushed himself over here. What his facial expression is while he's hovering the rock, and how he's landing. You get a lot more details from such a shot. Slow motion works great for action shots like this, but it doesn't always have to be. It's also one of the mistakes people make. You wish to show the detail, then you slow mo. If not, then don't you slow mo. Is there a large movement or action in your scene or just a character standing still? In both scenarios, slow motion has great power. Here we see Kim looking into the camera. Nothing special happens. The audience perceives Kim as just a person looking into the lens. Now if we were to put this clip into slow motion, look what happens. That emotion suddenly became bigger. Not that the clip is longer, but because it's slow motion, we tend to look at the details more, which in this case is the emotion. We use this very often in our productions to emphasize certain emotions or to draw the audience into the film. As you've seen, a lot of the clips came from action movies or event videos. Usually these shots are bureau, which adds a great dynamic to your projects, but that's for the next lesson. 16. Importance of B Roll: The naming B-roll comes from the early days in film-making where you had an actual film on a roll. The A-roll was the main camera and the B-roll was the second camera taking different shots from the same scene. Over time, that definition evolved because film-making in general also changed to what we call today modern film-making. But the principle is still the same. Let's say you're doing an interview, you have one camera and a person looking into that camera or just next to it. This is the main camera and it's how your setup starts. In other words, it's your A-roll. However, we don't call it that way anymore. It's usually just a main camera. Now imagine if that was the only shot you had. One camera capturing the interview. This is going to be a pretty boring video. It's one same frame, for example, a medium shot, and that's it. For the rest, you can only just listen to that person and there's nothing more to watch to. Let's add a second camera angle to the interview. This camera is called the B-roll and is usually considered to be more creative. In this example I'm also holding the camera handhelds and I'm making different framing throughout the interview. The video has different angles now to which we can cut. It keeps giving triggers of new information to the audience, keeping them more interested. So we can conclude that during an interview, you should always shoot with a second camera. But let's say that you don't have a second camera. Well, here's a smaller project I've worked on. I only had one camera available, so I shot the entire interview from a long shot and then I did the interview again with a medium shot. It's not that important that a person tells the exact same thing. You can take one quote from the first interview and another quote from the second. But it makes your scene a lot more organic and you probably notice it as well here. We are also working with two camera angles, that over there is the main camera, and over here we've got the B-roll. So making your videos look more dynamic is one reason. The second reason you need B-roll is to make your cuts unnoticeable. Assume your subject says something wrong or tell something you want to cut out afterwards. Since we are cutting out those parts, we see the video jumping. These are called jump cuts and it's something I hate to see. YouTube is full of that and I even see them some professional productions. In my eyes, it shows laziness and very sloppy work. The least thing you can do is crop the video in between, so that you can digitally cut from a long shot to a medium shot. When the frame size changes, the audience doesn't notice that cut too much. This is also the reason we're using that B-roll. Every time the subject says something wrong, we cut to the other angle. But to make sure it's not jumping, you want to make sure that it's a different frame size and you want to take some distance from the main camera as well. The more difference in position between the two or the angle, the less that cuts will be noticeable. Now, we've been talking about the same scene, two cameras capturing the same thing. Whether that's two cameras or repeating the scene with one camera. In addition to that, you also want to fill up the stuff that the person is talking about. It adds the same benefits. You can make the cuts unnoticeable, plus you're visualizing what the person is talking about, and this really makes it interesting for the audience. You've seen those examples of the interviews, which is a little more dynamic with two angles, but it's still just one person talking. So let's add shots of the factory and the potatoes that they produce, which is what they're talking about, it makes the entire video completes. You have a dynamic interview, shots at the factory, the machines that they work with, the staff, the stock, et cetera. A good tip I can give you is to shoot as much as possible B-roll. You'll notice in the editing that you're always missing some B-roll, you can never have enough of that. So this was a pretty straightforward example of an interview. But if you're doing something else like a travel video, for example, then your main camera point of view is the walking. Try to get something else in there as well, like the surrounding, a site activity, a close up of a river. It doesn't matter. If you're vlogging same thing. Don't just talk the entire time through the camera. Make sure you have got some extra footage that covers the stuff that you're talking about. Now B-roll is something that you can get very creative with. That could also be like the hands of the person talking. Or you can also cut to subjective shots of that person preparing or thinking during that interview. In this studio, we could do some shots of the light bulbs here and perhaps, and playing with those, it makes the view fun, playful and very dynamic. So B-roll helps with the cuts to make them invisible to the audience. It helps you to cut to different angles or visualize more, making its more dynamic and it helps telling your story better because you're visualizing it. Sometimes it's not so easy to know which B-roll you're going to need because it's something that happens in the editing. That's way you need to shoot for the edits, and I'll show you how to do that in the next lesson. 17. Shoot for the Edit: If you're working on a short or feature film, you're probably half a shortlist. You've thought about the shots before you went to film, and it's made a list of that. It's very good you do. So it means that you can focus now on that list and don't think about the shots you'll need and focus on other production tasks such as directing, lighting, sound, or logistics. But for any other project, you probably don't have a shortlist. For example, I'm doing a lot of event videos. One of my biggest clients as a BMW franchise that organize events very often. I bring that day into a fun video that everyone can watch on social media afterwards. There are definitely some things I can prepare. I can ask the organization what will happen there, and what they definitely want to be filmed. But that's more like a to-do list. At an event, things happen live, you will encounter things you didn't knew, situations might change and even the client might ask you to suddenly film something new. That's why you need to think about how you're going to edit the video while you're filming. Only by doing that, you can know which kinds of shots you'll meet. First thing you have to do is think about the global picture. That means make sure that you have an intro, a middle, and an ending. A certain shot that opens the video, then you have your stuff in between and finally, a nice shot of the video ending where you can transition nicely to the logo or something like that. You could prepare it as at fronts, but you can also look at what happens on the event, or whatever happens in your day if you're vlogging or it doesn't matter what you're making. You want to have a beginning, middle, ending. That's the first thing to keep in mind and it'll already helped you to get that global picture to place. The next thing to pay attention to are the small happenings. For example, you want to film a cocktail bar. Now, before you do so, first think about the edits. How will you edit that scene? How do you want to make it look? Perhaps you want to open with a long shot, then go to a close-up of the glass being filled up, and finally, a medium shot of the glass that is being given to a guest. You visualize that first and then start shooting. This really is the basics of shooting for the edits. If you enter a room where something is going on, the first thing you do as a camera operator is look around and shot that scene into different shots, memorize it, visualize it, and then shoot what is needed. Let's take this to a next level. I don't want to overload you with information because it takes a lot of practice and experience first. Usually if you get the basics of shooting for the edits, you will find that more advanced techniques yourself. One of those advanced techniques are scene transitions. This has nothing to do with editing, but purely with the camera. If you're shooting a particular scene, how will you transition from that scene to the next? There are many ways to do that. At a party, you could film right in to the lights, creating this light burst into your lens. On that flash, you can cut to the next scene. You can also do things like wipes. If you wipe on the ending of your first shot and then start your next shot with that same wipe, you can connect them together by just placing those two clips next to each other and you have yourself a nice transition. Now, we've done an entire video about that as well on YouTube. You can find the link to it from the lessons description to it. But a transition can also be very simple, like going from a close-up, or a medium-shot to a sudden very white long-shot. Having this big change in frame size works as a nice transition between the two scenes. You also have things like walk-through transitions where someone walks in front of your lens, as it gets dark, you can then cut to the next scene, and it goes on like that. But there are things that you'll need to think about during the shoot. So guys, start with the global picture first and think about an opening, middle, and ending, then break individual scenes into different shots before your start shooting that scene. If you want to take it to the next level, try to think about how you're going to transition from scene to scene. This was the last lesson of the chapter and you've actually gone through all the basics now. You know how your camera works and how to make the perfect shot on a subject. What I want you to do now is make a list of the different lessons of this chapter. That's the rule of thirds. Framing, camera position, lenses, 180 degree rule, slow motion, bureau, and shoot for the edits. Now find a nice project that you can film, perhaps it's how your kids playing, hanging out with your friends at the park, or just ask someone to do something simple like making a coffee. Important is that you have a real subject or a certain event that you can take multiple shots off. While you're filming, take it slow and to go through that list to check if you're doing everything all right. Do that first and then come back for a little quiz, which is coming right after this lesson. If you notice that you made too much mistakes, which is perfectly normal, then do try to re-watch some of the lessons again. Something you always have to keep in mind is that the art of film making takes practice. It takes years of practice, and you're getting a bunch of information from this course. So the key is to practice and never give up. Thank you for watching and good luck with your little film project right now. 18. Quiz 3 - The Video Language: 19. Introduction to Camera Movement: Welcome back folks. I hope you've had a good practice and scored well on the quiz. Maybe you're watching this course in one strike. Well, that's also good. I can imagine if you're sitting comfortable in a sofa right now, that you don't want to get up to film stuff. But it's important that you practice during this course. If you choose to watch the entire course first, then do try to re-watch some of the lessons after some practice. We're going to step up the game and talk about movement of the camera. There exists so many tools to make your camera move. There are cranes, dolly, steady cam, sliders, gimbals, wire camps, etc. This list just keeps continuing. Then we also have the convenient things like a tripod or just holding the camera hands held. Every single tool will make the camera move differently. That's what you need to understand. Why should you choose between a slider, hand-held, or a tripod. In the upcoming lessons, we're going to talk about these three categories. Tripods for control of movements. I believe you should learn how to do that first. Then hand-held, which has a lot more in it than most people think. Finally, camera movements in general. And to have to look at two popular devices, the slider and the gimbal, which both covers already a lot of possible movements. If you do not have a slider or gimbal, then don't worry. It's always something that you can get in the future if you want to. You also have to look at your projects, the work that you're doing. It's definitely interesting to know the story behind the camera movements regardless, if you have the proper equipment or not. What I do advise though, is to first get a tripod. It's the most basic and most used camera support. So let's get to the next lesson and see why you should use a tripod or not. 20. The Tripod: I think we all know what a tripod is. Three legs and a head. On top of that head you place your camera. It's the most basic tool to get a stable shot and that's exactly what a tripod is meant for, to get a stable shot. A neutral stable shot on a tripod looks professional. The reason for that is because hand held shots require some technique and you need to focus on your hand-held movements. When you are not focused on that, it's better to use a tripod. A tripod means control. It's very natural and acts a little as confidence. With the heads we can do a pan movement, which is swinging your camera from left to right. Or we can do a tilt movement, we are swinging the camera up and down. We can also combine these two movements and go from a top to bottom corner. These movements require a fluid head on your tripod. Basically, there are three kinds of tripods. You have the cheap plastic tripods that don't have a fluid heads and you want to avoid those. Then there are RD photo tripods or semi video tripods, which are definitely a good start. Just pay attention that it says fluid head. Then you have the professional tripods with bowl heads, but those will give you the best performance and have tons of great options to balance your camera or at different levels of friction. If you're starting out and you are on a tight budget, then I recommend to start with a semi-professional video tripod. Later down the road, you'll notice that a second or even a third tripod is helpful. That's why I don't recommend the best tripod to start with. That's a quick introduction to tripods. I don't want to focus too much on that. Just make sure that it says fluid head if you want to buy one and you'll be fine. Just do some research on Google to find out which is the best tripods for your budget. Like I've said before, a tripod shows stability in your shots. It adds a tone of confidence, neutrality, being, in control over the situation. That goes for your movement as well. If you were following someone with a pen, it's pretty easy to keep that person on the rule of thirds with some practice. Same goes for product shots. Do a little band over its to add more depth to the shot. We'll get into that in a little moment, but it's very controlled, very neutral and it shows that professionalism again. Better tilt movements need to be practiced as well. You want to try to start, gently, make a constant movement and stop slowly. A great way to practice this is by hanging three by three papers on a wall and number them from 1-9. Then bend, tilt or do both from number to number. To challenge yourself a bit, you can ask someone else to call numbers and you need to try and act quick. Now, if you would shoot an action film where those span or tilt movements might be much faster, we remain that controllance and that reflects on the subjects. Someone with a high status who's winning the fight, that character has control over a situation and we can reflect that by filming on a tripod. This is basically what a tripod stands for. Earlier I was talking about depth, and I've also mentioned that in the beginning of this course. The essence of cinematography is to create depth. Here's the reason why. We live in a three dimensional world. This means there's depth all around us, but in video that's flat. You're watching video on a flat screen. This is also the reason why they invented 3D films. To create the illusion of depth. In the lesson about the aperture of lens, we've talked a bit about how a blurry background adds more depth to the scene as it will create a difference in foregrounds and backgrounds. Now, when doing a pan movement, you'll have your foreground objects move faster than the background objects. This creates that sense of depth when it comes down to camera movements. That's one of the great reasons you should always add movement to your shots. To create depth, which again is the essence of cinematography. As from now on, I will give clear examples on how to create such depth in every of the following lessons, because depth can be created in thousands of ways. It's done which camera movement, lighting, sound design, compositions, art direction, color grading, visual effects, those 3D glasses, etc. A good filmmaker is going to try and create as much depth as he can. Of course, we can't take all of the elements. It's that creative process of combining different elements together to create depth which is so interesting. Though like I said before, it goes really deep and you're already going to need years of experience to really master this. We're going to give a few of the essences in this course to get you started. All right. The next lesson is all about hands out movements. So I'll see you all guys over there. 21. The Motion of Handheld: Handheld is the opposite of what a tripod stands for, you get unstable, shaky footage. However, there are multiple variations of handheld movements which all have their own meaning. Let's start with the gentle handheld movement. The idea is to actually try to get it's stable shot without a tripod. You want to look for a good way to hold your camera tight. Things like putting your elbows against your chest works great or by leaning against a wall or tree. Now as you're going to hit that record button, you want to pay attention to your breathing. You can either hold your breath to reduce the motion, or gently breathe in and out, and push the camera around on your breathing. Your breathing controls the speed of the camera movements. This is a very relaxing handheld movement, but it takes that edge off from that tripod shot. When properly done, it definitely adds some more dynamic, but it's not always that convenient. If you're on a long lens or tele lens, which we've talked about previous, it's harder to keep your video steady. This works best on wide angle lenses, where you notice that movement less. Things like lens stabilizations or in camera sensor civilizations like the GH5 has, also works great for these shots. Again, the reason why you want to go for a handheld shots is to create more depth into your shots. An important aspect here is to look for foreground objects, and that can literally be anything. Here we have Kim without a foreground object, and here's Kim with a foreground objects. Very simple, but it creates more depth. You can look for objects that have something to do with the subjects like this spray paint cans here that we have with the artist in the backgrounds, or something vague that sits in front of the lens. Be careful though using these in fiction. It also creates a point of view shot of someone looking very sneaky to someone else because of that handheld movements and vague foregrounds. But for things like product shooting, event videos, et cetera, it's definitely a great way to add ins and depth to your shots. Handheld movement is not as controlled as it striped bars. It adds a little more tension. It reflects on the character that they aren't super stable themselves. That's why you often see bigger movements during a drama scene where someone has been busted or during a war film, and the camera guy walks with the soldiers in the battle. Those characters aren't in control anymore. Their situation isn't stable, and you can emphasize that with the movement of handhelds. But very important is that you know what you're doing. Don't just start to spin your camera. Even with bigger movements, you still want to move around gently. If you go to shake with the camera, then it looks like it's filmed by an amateur, disaster tourists or something. Those sudden shakes: try to avoid that. If you want to get a chaos handhelds movements, then do try to pump up and down only once. Look at the movements in this example. It's pretty hectic, which is awesome for action films and such, but it's controlled. Here is an example of handheld movement that isn't controlled. Very typical, you'll see that shaky footage where the camera goes up and down too quickly and too much. One last example of linking your movements to the tension of the scene is this here. We see Genic boxing. That's heavy movements. But when he suddenly stops to rest, the camera movement also goes to a rest. It's very important that you do that. Try to add foregrounds during handheld shots to get a little movement between the different objects, and pay big attention to your movement. Make sure it's controlled that you're not shaking the camera, and that you adapt to the scene. One thing I don't recommend for beginners is walking with a camera, it's definitely not easy, but something that can help with that are gimbals, and we'll get to that in to the next lesson. Thanks for watching. 22. The Slider and Gimbal: In this last lesson of this chapter, we're going to talk about the rest of camera movements. Now, we can't talk about everything because that would require an entire new course. Plus I've said it in the beginning, that it's important to focus solely on you and your camera as a beginner. But it's important to note what's all out there and what the meaning behind certain movements are. In this last category, we can find all kinds of equipment that lets us move the camera around in space, but very controlled. So you can see it as a tripod and handheld into one. These are things like cranes or mini jibs which are more suitable for us DSLR film makers. Steady cams or glidecam type stabilizers, motorized gimbals, which are even very popular among mobile users for amateur videos. Slider sets come in all kinds of shapes and accessories, which allows your camera to slide over a rail and that list continues. I'm sure that you've heard about these things before. Let's have a closer look at this slider. It's one rail on which you can slide from left to right or from the back to the front. With some creativity, you can really make some awesome movements with it. But again, it's controlled and it sets that same tone to the scene. A normal sideway slide creates a lot of depth. Again, you want to look for those foreground objects. It also reveals a lot of space. This is also a great example when using a wide angle lens where everything's in focus. We can't really create that depth with a blurry background. Using a slider, we're creating depth in a different way. Let's have a look at gimbals now, as they're so popular. These are made out of different motors that will make sure the camera is stable. You can run around with a gimbal and have a nice fluent shot. There's a bit more movement in it as a slider, as we're going sideways and up and down. It has more of a hand-held touch to it. It's less controlled than a slider. If you do wish to have the same freedom as a gimbal, but more control, you're going to have to look at cranes or jibs. So gimbals are often used to follow someone. You can kind of glide through the space. It has more of that being in control status to it. Because it's placed like this, it's a pretty cool motion. You also have all the freedom with a gimbal. Almost any movement is possible. Here are some common movements. You can do a track in on a subject. This way you are isolating the subject, focusing more on the talents. You can also do a track out to leave the subject. For example, when a character is heartbroken due to the loss of something, or she's lost in the middle of nowhere and feels alone. By tracking out, the audience leaves the character emphasizing that emotion. Other cool movements are running around someone. This works great on tele lenses as well as it makes the backgrounds move fast. You can't use this during an accomplishment of the character as it's isolating the character enormously in a very dramatic way. But regardless of the movement that you're doing, always try to look for objects in the foregrounds, the backgrounds, or on the side. While you're doing your movements, you want to bring motion in the elements of the 3D space you're capturing. Start out with practicing on a tripod. Hang those nine pieces of paper to the wall and spin and tilt from number to number. Then try out several different handheld shots. Start with gentle movements and then bigger handheld motions. If you have a slider or gimbal, I'm pretty sure that you've already played around with it. But what you can do next is think about what your movement is telling first. Are you leaving the character or coming closer? Is your movement fast or slow? But always remember, the key to camera movement is creating depth. This lesson follows up with a small quiz to check if you've been paying attention. In the next and final chapter, we'll have a look at light. I'm going to show you the basic principle of lighting and how that applies to any environments. Whether you're setting up extra lights or not. Thank you so much for watching and good luck with the quiz. 23. Quiz 4 - Camera Movement: 24. Introduction to Light: Welcome back folks. So far, you have learned how your camera works, how to make professional-looking shots and how to add great dynamic to it with camera movements. You're almost ready to start on your film project because there's one more thing that we can't overlook and that is lights. If you turn off the lights, it's dark. A black screen. You can imagine how important light is, right? There are two things that we see when analyzing light, that is the light itself and the shadow it creates as you can see here on my face as well. Often, it's overlooked, but shadows are just as important as the light. Remember that we are trying to create depth in our shots. Well, lighting might be the most important elements to create depth. If you would draw a 3D cube, put a pencil, what would you do to make it as real as possible? Exactly. You would draw at different intensities of shadow on it. If you would draw a ball, you will get this gradient of shadow over it to make it look like a real round objects. Shadows are the essentials to define the texture or depth of an object and that is why you must pay attention to where you place those shadows in your shots. The following lessons are not going to be specific on how to setup lighting, but I'm going to explain to you how lighting for a video works. Once you understand that, you would also know how to deal with satellites or where to position your subject in a room that has casual lighting. As if you have the option to move around or take off to lights, place candles, or close the curtains, then you'll know what to do to create more cinematic depth in your shots. 25. The 3 point Lighting: The three-point lighting is a principal that defines the essential of creating depths. We'll be using some real film lights to explain this, but you'll notice that it's a technique that can be applied to any object that gives light. These are windows, a television, decorative lights, candles, and so on. Like the name says, the three-point lighting exist at a three light sources. The first one is called the fill lights. The purpose of the fill light is to fill the room and the subject for a global lighting. Now like I've mentioned before, shadows are very important, it's what creates depth. Depth will place this light on the site of the subject, so that it can't create a shadow over Kim's face. Now very important for a fill light is that it's not too intense. Ideally, you want to have a soft light, something very gentle that creates a soft shadow, illuminating the entire room, so that's why I'm putting a soft filter in front of the lights, that don't pay too much attention to the equipment that is being used. Just remember too great a soft global lights. Next light is called the key light. It sits on the other side of Kim's face and it'll work as a more artistic lights. You can use a hard spot if you want, but usually faces are literally a software lights. One thing is for sure the key light is going to be more intense. If a key light and fill light are both the same, you won't have those shadows that trade depth. We'll put on a bigger, more intense spot for the key lights. Now, you'll see that we have a beautiful degradation over Kim's face. Her left side is more illuminated than the rights site creating depths. Then the final and third light is the back-light, which is the most powerful lights to create depth. If you only have one light available, then use it as a back-light. But we'll get into that a lot deeper in the next lesson. The back-light sits on the back of the subject, and always on the opposite side of the key lights, and it'll shine in the back of the subject, creating this nice halo, as you can also see here in the studio. Since the key light is the brightest front lighting, we want to make sure that the back-light shines on the site of the fill lights, it creates more contrast this more visual depths. The back-light can be a very hard and intense light, so we don't need to soften this. Having a hot lights from the back creates a nice halo around the subject, making them pop out. This is the three-point lighting, and it contains the essentials of what light is about. Remember that the purpose is to create shadows and contrast between different light sources. We're going to work further on this principle in the next lesson and use all day light sources like the sun when those decorative lights, etc, to create more depth in our shots. 26. Natural Light: The three-point lighting setup contains many practices, but we don't always need all three lights. You can perfectly choose only a backlight or only a key light, and often the fill light is already there. For example, give me standing in our living room, through the windows, come slides. So there is our fill lights. I'm going to add one key light on the side of her face to create some contrast over it. This is now a two-point lighting setup, which is also perfectly possible, that the position of the key light is very important. This has to do with the viewing direction of the talents. We've talked about this before. When the talent looks to the left side, we're going to position that key lights on the left side as well. This will make sure that the key light functions a little bit as a backlight, which I've mentioned before, is a very powerful lighting position to create depth. If that light sits on the other side, it will just flat out like the subject. With any kind of light source, you always wanted to be on the back of the subject, even if that is just by a very slight degree. Kim here is looking outside of a window. When I am taking a frontal shot of that, I'm going to ask her to set a little bit to the side so that the light from the window bounces to her side and that I can film from her shadow sites. This is a super important principle and we'll dive a little deeper into that in the last lesson. But first I'm going to talk about the sunlight, probably the most used light source by everyone. The sunlight is one light source and it shines on the environment such as the ground. This environmental reflects that light which now acts as a second light source. This is going to be the fill lights. Notice sunlight's can function as the backlight or the key light, but because the sunlight is so intense, will usually place it as the backlight. It also creates a very nice halo again around the subject. Sometimes this backlight is so intense that we need to create a key light. The easiest way to do that is by reflecting the sunlight. You can use professional reflectors or just a white foam board from the home depot. Anything that has a white surface entry facts, lights works. Like we've seen in the previous lesson, we want the backlight on the opposite side of the key light. In this example, will reflect the sunlight on the left side of Kim. As the backlight is coming from her right shoulder from our perspective. As you can see, you can take the principles from the three-point lighting and apply them to any situation. You can even go with a two-point light setup, where you only have a backlight or key light. Important to always remember, is that you're creating shadows with your key light and a nice halos with the backlight. 27. Practical Lighting: In a special lighting we can finds many light sources. When doing more advanced setups, this is going to make a lot more sense. But I already do like to give you some of the basics about it. We're talking here about practical lighting. At first this has nothing to do with the three-point lighting setup, but it can't have an influence on it. Practical lights are light sources that are visible in your shot, such as these light bulbs here around me. Those are practical lights. Having a light source in your shots creates enormous depth again, because you have a spot that creates more exposure than its surrounding. This light bulb here is brighter than its backgrounds. It's a backlight that doesn't directly shines on your subjects. Here's another example from a video that we've done for premium bit, one of our sponsors at YouTube. Notice how we have that light source in the backgrounds. It just brings the entire scene to life as it breaks that flat shadow in the backgrounds. But give me your sits at a table, and there's only some fill lights from the lamp above her. To make the scene more interesting, we'll turn on the practical lights behind her. Now it's important that you have practicals that's makes sense. If you are filming in a living room, make sure you have a light source in that background that fits within a scene, such as a [inaudible] deflate stance. If you're doing an interview at an industrial factory, then you could add a red alarm light in the backgrounds. You're making the light fixture visible in your shot so it should fit within our scene. A quick conclusion from this chapter. The principles of a three-point lighting setup is to create shadows. You want to have your lights coming from a site and create a high low, by putting a harder backlight on the back. Use this principle in everyday situations, windows, the sunlight's, candles, etc, all function as a light source. Try to position them to your subject so they can fit within this three-point lighting principle. Debt is created by having her lights coming from the back, even if that is a short angle, which means putting your subject first and then the key light. Front lighting is considered flats. Lastly try to experiment with practicals. These are lights that are just visible in your shot. If you had a little pop quiz coming right now to test your knowledge and after that a final conclusion and life advice. Thank you so much for watching and good luck. 28. Quiz 5 - Light for Video: 29. Conclusion: So here we are guys. The final and last video of this course. First of all, congratulations for completing its. It also awesome that you're still here to watch this conclusion video. This means that you are truly dedicated to get yourself to that next level of film making. To everyone is going to need practice. Don't expect to suddenly be better after just one course. You're going to need to months of practice now. Luckily, you have this course, so that you know what to practice on. You've definitely made a big leap forward. This is how I'd like to finish the course, with three words that turned to me and to a filmmaker, and to an entrepreneur, and to a full-time YouTuber and into someone who's able to employ and to work on film projects for huge claims. Never give up. That's a secret to this course and to life. You've got lifetime access to this course. So please do re-watch some of the lessons and perhaps everything again, practice all the principals. Feel at its learn from your mistakes and make your work better. But never give up and want to thank you guys so much for participating in this course. You can stay in touch with me over at YouTube, just subscribe to Cinecom or visits cinecom.net and you sign up for our newsletter to receive a notification every time that we upload a new tips and tricks video. There's always this thing that we say at the end of our videos. Thank you for watching. Hence, stay creative.