Learn Filmmaking from Beginner to Pro

1. Introduction: Camera, lights, sounds, and [NOISE] action. You want to become a filmmaker, master that camera of yours, and make the most cinematic videos. But you have no idea where to start. Well, you've come to the right address because this right here is the most complete fundamental class for beginner filmmakers. The exact information and secrets that they teach in expensive film schools. I forgot to introduce myself. Hi, I'm Jordy. About 10 years ago, I graduated from film school, which after, I began my career as a filmmaker and own a film studio that I've always dreamed about. I share my passion through online classes and through an audience of over two million subscribers on YouTube. Right now, I am super excited to bring you a brand new and updated filmmaking class for beginners. We're going to start with the very basics and take manual control over our camera. In that way, you can make creative decisions. In the second half of this class, we'll explore the filmmaking rules such as framing, visual storytelling, B-roll, and more. Finally, in the last chapter, I'll introduce you to some of the more popular camera tools like the tripod, the gimbal, and more. By the end of the class, you will be able to shoot an entire video that will look just like a professional would have done it. That is because you will become that pro filmmaker. This class is curated in a way that film schools would teach. That means you will learn everything from the basics in a very structured way to keep the learning experience exciting and engaging. Throughout the class, if you're stuck with any questions, just pop them in the discussion below as I'll be happy to help you out. I really hope to see you in my class and start this new filmmaking journey together. I am super excited and I hope that you are too. I'll see you back in a moment. 2. Camera Introduction: [MUSIC] Oh, hi there. Good day. You signed up for the film-making class. Well, can I say that I'm super excited to start this journey together with you? As the maintenance guy of this very old abandoned camera equipment storage unit, I've seen nearly everything. The first cameras that came in here had an actual film strip inside. Then when the digital revolution came, this entire storage room was piling up with digital cameras like this. Do you know what then came? [NOISE] The photo cameras, which had an incredible video functionality. Chances are that you have one of these. There has been so much change ever since film-making became a real profession. But you know what hasn't changed, the way that we make videos. By the end of the day, it doesn't matter what kind of camera that you're using. Maybe you have one of those SLRs, or maybe perhaps a larger digital camera, or maybe you're just using your phone. Frankly, phones these days have pretty good video cameras. All I'm saying is that filmmaking is all about the person behind the camera and not the camera itself. A better camera will not make you a better filmmaker. The theory and artistic rules of visual storytelling, on the other hand, will. Now, we do have to choose one kind of camera as a demo throughout this class. We'll be working with the Panasonic Lumix GH5, a very popular SLR camera. It consists of a body, the brain and the sensor, and a lens, which is going to convert the light that it captures into an image. Every camera has these two things, a body and a lens. Sometimes the lens is fixed onto the body. This means that you can't change the lens. Now, in most photo cameras, we do have the ability to take the lens off, which means that we can attach other lenses to it as long as they fit on the body. This is called the lens mount. Every brand has its own mounts. That's something important to keep in mind if you're planning to buy a new lens. Now, I've put that camera into a rig. It's not necessary, but it does make certain things easier. Rigs are like connects, like Legos. You built them out the way you want. There are no rules to it. My very first rig was even something that I built in a garage to save some money, and it worked very well. I was able to put my camera on my shoulder. I thought about a counterweight and where we'd mount an external monitor. Today that rig looks a lot smaller. I've learned that a big rig isn't always so useful. I like to keep things compact. Around the GH5 is a cage which gives me a top handle and allows for rods to be attached. On the back, I've got a big battery, which is powering both the camera and the external monitor. Sometimes you can buy such rigs as a package. Manufacturers will recommend something, but you could also buy parts from different brands and put something completely custom together like I have. That's the beautiful thing about these rigs. Most of these connections are industry standards. Like these rods, they are 15 millimeters thick. That's the same everywhere. Now, for this class, such a rig is obviously not needed. I just wanted to explain that to you because, after all, you have to look at it the entire class, and so you don't need to ask weird questions. Now, professional videographers know their camera inside out, so I highly recommend to open up the menu of your camera and go through the different settings. Make yourself familiar with your camera and don't be afraid to explore. There should always be a reset option there somewhere if you do mess up. Anyways, don't worry too much. We're going to do that together. We're going to hold each other's hands and make it nice and cozy. I'm making it weird again. If you're trapped in a storage unit like this, you don't get to meet many people. Thanks for watching, and we'll explore the first setting within that complicated menu in the next lesson. 3. The Aperture: There are three settings that control the exposure of your camera. The aperture, the ISO, and the shutter speed. Each of these settings will let more or less light be captured. The exposure in other words. As you're starting out, you probably have your camera set to automatic modes. Your camera will change the settings of the aperture, ISO, and shutter speed automatically to capture a good exposure. That looks like a good thing. Well, it's not. The art of filmmaking is to take control over the settings. So let's put that camera into manual modes. Each of these exposure settings come with a side effect. That's why we've got three exposure settings and not just one. It's up to the filmmaker to decide what side effects that you want to see more prominence or not. Let's start with the aperture, which are actually a series of blades within the lens. Digital cameras control these blades through a dial on the body itself. Back in the old days, this was a physical ring that you had to turn around on the lens itself. As you open the aperture, more light comes through, more exposure in other words. As you close that ring, less light comes through, the center is being exposed less. I think that is pretty obvious. The sensor sits inside of the camera body behind the lens by the way. As you take off the lens from the camera body, you can actually see the sensor. It's right there. This plane is what captures the image coming through the lens and transforms it into a digital video. Now, apart from changing the exposure, the aperture also changes the depth of field. That's the side effects. As you probably know, there's a focus ring on the lens. As you turn it, you can put things in the foreground, in focus, or in the backgrounds. The rest will then be out-of-focus, blurry. Again, you can let your camera do that automatically, which is not ideal, but that's for later in this class. For now, that focus ring is something that you can control. You can push it back or forward. What's in focus is called the focus field. That field can be big or can be small. You have two people in focus, even though that they don't stand at the same distance of the camera. But you could also have only one of them in focus, essentially the focus field gets bigger or smaller. The size of that focus field, which is the depth of fields can be controlled with the aperture. The more you open up the aperture, the smaller that depth of field becomes. In filmmaking terms, we talk about a shallow depth of field. Oftentimes, it's considered that a shallow depth of field is more cinematic as the background will be more out-of-focus. Now as we close the aperture, less light comes through the lens, but the focus field also becomes bigger. More elements will be in focus, but it also affects the general look of, hence the out-of-focus backgrounds. Here's the same shots where we have the talent standing at the same distance towards the camera. One of them is shot at an open aperture and the other one lay closed aperture. See what that does to the background. The aperture is more than just an exposure setting, it's also a creative choice. Do you want more or less depth of fields? Like with everything else, aperture is also expressed in a unit. It's called the f-stop. Sometimes you'll see these values on the lens itself. If not, you'll probably see these on the display of your camera 2.8, 5.6, 8, 11. These are all different F-stop values. The smaller this number, the more open your aperture is. The more light that comes through the shallower the depth the field becomes. Now, the bigger this number, the more close the aperture is, the less light that comes through, and the bigger the depth the field becomes. That is in a nutshell, the aperture. In the next lesson, we'll explore the ISO settings. 4. ISO Settings: Three settings, the aperture, the shutter speed, and the ISO. These control the exposure, but every single one of them also control a side-effects. For ISO, that's going to be noise, which makes it the easiest exposure control of the three. ISO is nothing more than a digital brightness control, see it as making a dark image brighter through a simple slider. Unfortunately, this introduces noise. Definitely when it's very dark and the ISO needs to be pumped up when taking a picture with your phone in low light environments, you also see a lot of noise. Usually these photos don't look so good. It's the automatic exposure setting in your phone that is cranking up the ISO to expose it better. With video, it's the same in a dark scene, the automatic exposure controllable crank up the ISO, resulting in too much noise in your video. As a filmmaker, what can we do? Well, first of all, try to keep the ISO as low as possible and expose the sensor better using other techniques like opening up the aperture or changing the shutter speed, which we'll look at in the next lesson. But you can also try to make your environment more bright using lights or if you're shooting an after movie go stand closer to the party lights, anything that helps to keep the ISO to a minimum. Now when shooting in bright environments like outside during a sunny day, keep an eye out for the ISO setting. I've seen it happened way too much that aspiring filmmakers overlook this setting and actually are shooting at a very high ISO. They have lots of trouble to decrease the exposure entity video will be very noisy. Try to make a habit of it to always check the three exposure settings with every change in your environment when you go from inside to outdoor or vice versa, check these three settings and not just one of them. Now what can we do as filmmakers? Do we just keep the ISO to a minimum at all time? Well, of course, not. You see every camera is a little bit different. Some can produce a pretty clean video at higher ISOs, while other cameras produce noise pretty fast. It's important to know what your camera can handle and what the maximum ISO is that you should go for. If your camera is capable of going up to a 128,000 ISO, it doesn't mean that you should actually use that, maybe 6,400 is already acceptable maximum. I want you to figure that out for your own camera, but in the manual mode and record some video at different ISO settings. See for yourself what is still acceptable and at which point it isn't anymore. We'll have a look at the shutter speed in the next lesson, and then it's time for you to take a quick break and practice these settings. 5. Shutter Speed: I just had a client coming in here with this camera and he told me that it isn't working anymore. I looked into it, I did some investigation, and it appears [NOISE] that there's no battery inside. Now, I'm not sure. Should I tell him about the battery or just tell them that it's dead, that the camera is broken? Because maybe it's time to invest in a new one. This is a pretty old camera. Anyways, the shutter speed, the last one of the three exposure settings. The shutter speed can also be seen as the refresh rate. That's why it's expressed in a time value such as 1/50 of a second or 1/100 of a second. As the light is coming through the lens, it's being captured by the sensor. The sensor waits a little bit as it's being exposed and finally it decides to write that information away and wipe that sensor clean to be exposed again. The speed at which this refreshing is happening is the shutter speed. Back in the old days, that was an actual physical disk rotating in front of the film strip, which is now the sensor. There's a hole in the disk and the bigger that hole, the longer the film was exposed. Now we couldn't change the turning speed of that disk as it goes together with the speed at which to film is being rolled. That's the frame rate which we'll talk about later, soon. Now when the sensor is exposed 30 times per second, it's obviously more exposed than if we were to have a refresh rate of 60 times per second. We talk about a slower shutter speed which lets in more light or a fast shutter speed which captures less light. We understand how the shutter speed works, but what is its side effect? Well, motion blur. As the sensor is capturing light, what's happening in front of the lens is moving so if you wave your arm, the sensor captures the entire wave, then it refreshes to take a new sample. A slow shutter speed will capture a longer movement as with a faster shutter speeds, it only captures a small portion of that movement. That's why you often see these blurry lines when people or something else fast is moving in the scene. It works the exact same when taking photos by the way. This is motion blur. Having a slow shutter speed can sometimes create fun and camera effects like this right here or you can make everything looks super sharp with a fast shutter speeds. Action films like fighting scenes are oftentimes filmed at a fast shutter speeds as it makes the action feel harder with less motion blur. Again, you can see the creative choice that we have there. Another reason why we should film in manual exposure and not automatic. In dark scenes, we could increase the ISO to expose the shots more that introduces light. What if we were to decrease the ISO and set a slower shutter speeds that introduces more motion blur. Perhaps we put the camera on a tripod so that it doesn't move and we ask the talents to stand still. Essentially, we are decreasing movement in the shots, which means that the motion blur is not going to be that noticeable. Now, when outdoor, we decrease the ISO and we close the aperture and fortunately, our depth of field becomes deeper. I would like to retain a more shallow depth of field. What if we were to open the aperture back and make the shutter speed to go fast, that's a way to compensate for the exposure. Depending on the side effects that you would like to have, you can change the aperture, ISO, and shutter speed. Every setting changes the look of your video and that's the creative choice of the filmmaker. Don't let an automatic feature take that creative choice away from you. Now it's time to practice. Go into a darkroom and change the three exposure settings, see how they work together, then go outdoor and change the settings again. Now try to get familiar with these settings and also remember to figure out the maximum ISO for your camera. See what the threshold is by capturing a video with different ISO settings. Have fun practicing, and I look forward to seeing you back in the next lesson. In the meantime, I'm going to do my hair because it's going everywhere. [NOISE] 6. Frame Rates: Apparently people still buy one of these cameras. Your phone shoots better video. Anyways, I hope you had a good practice and got more familiar with the three exposure controls. The ISO, aperture, and shutter speeds. In this lesson let's not talk about my hair which is still looking very bad but instead, let's talk about the frame rate as there is so much more to it. In short, frame rates are the amount of frames that you record per seconds, common values are 25 or 30 frames per seconds. In short we talk about FPS, which stands for frames per seconds. Good job. Now there are mainly three FPS values that we're recording, 24 FPS, which is the standard for cinema. If you go to the movie theaters, you're probably looking at 24 FPS. It's considered more cinematic. When making videos for the web such as YouTube, we oftentimes record in 25 or 30 FPS. The reason that we have two different standards comes from the old days when videos were still shown on old CRT televisions. Now I'm not going to go in depth to what that is. It's in the past, it's behind us, but it comes down to the refresh rate of those televisions, which were bound to the frequency of the electricity. That is different in various continents. In Europe, we have an electricity net 50 hertz, and in the US it's 60 hertz. I'm going to spare you all the technical stuff behind that because it's no longer making sense in the digital world. But it's good to know is that many cameras these days still shoot in 29.97 FPS. That is because the electricity frequency in the US isn't actually 60 hertz, but 59 point something. That's the backstory. Now, what frame rate should you record? Well, that is a personal taste or what your client is asking you. Even though I'm from Europe, I do shoot everything in 30 FPS as I personally like my videos a little more smoother and sharper than if it were to shoot at 25 FPS. Wait, smoother and sharper videos as my frame rate increases? Well, smoother; we can understand a video of 10 FPS looks very sharp compared to a video of 30 FPS. This one right here looks a lot smoother but sharper? Why is that? Well, that has to do with the shutter speed, which we talked about in a previous lesson. Your frame rate and shutter speed are a little bit bound together. You see when your camera is capturing 30 frames per seconds, it means that it cannot refresh the sensor more than 30 times a seconds. The lowest shutter speed that you can have is 1/30th of a second. Many cameras have that option locked. Just try that for yourself. Set your camera to 30 frames a seconds and try go below 1/30th of a second. The same thing is with 25 FPS, you can't go below 1/25th of a second. Now some cameras do allow you to go lower, but that's some digital processing get us going on. We're actually going to lower the FPS without telling you. Naturally, cameras cannot do that. Now, the shutter speed actually has an even bigger correlation with the FPS. In the real-world there's also motion blur. Just wave your hand in front of your eyes, you'll see motion blur. This is obviously a natural amount of blur. When we want to recreate that natural motion blur, we take the double of the frame rates. Shooting at 25 FPS, we set the shutter speed at 1/50th of a second. For 30 frames that's going to be 1/60th of a second. That way the motion blur feels natural depending on the frame rate that you choose. That's why I said that my videos thoroughly look smoother but also sharper when increasing that frame rate. I set my shutter speed at 1/60th of a second, less motion blur, thus my videos are sharper and the motion still feels natural because it matches with the frame rates. Maybe that is a lot to take in so don't worry too much about the shutter speed and your frame rate just yet. These are settings that you can take with a grain of salt. The more you get familiar with film making, the more you're going to pay attention to such minor details. But let's talk real quick about slow motion. Obviously, we're going to need more frames per seconds, 60 FPS, maybe even 120 or perhaps 10,000 frames per second. Yes, that exists by the way, although switch cameras are super expensive. Having those extra frames a seconds means that we can stretch our video clips. We only need 30 frames, but we have 60 frames available for each seconds. This means that we can stretch the club out, double as long and we're going to take 60 frames per two seconds. We've created slow motion. Or if we were to do that with a normal 30 FPS clip, we would get 30 frames per two seconds or 15 frames a second. Playing Baghdad video, it starts to look choppy, a problem that we don't have with 60 FPS. The more slow motion you want, the more frames per seconds you're going to need. Most cameras already transform their captured FPS into something like 25 or 30 FPS, like my Panasonic Lumix GH5. I can record in 120 FPS but it's going to process that into a 30 FPS clip. When I play back the video, It's already in slow motion. I don't have to stretch the clip in video editing. That's something to keep in mind. What frames do you capture in and what frame is your camera processing it too. Sometimes that could be the same recording in 60 FPS and processing it into a 60 FPS video clip, but it can also record in 120 FPS and process that into a 30 FPS file. Every camera has different options, so check that out for your camera. That's most of it about frame rates. Later in this class, we're going to learn more about when to shoot slow motion and how it can help us to shoot better video. But first we need to expose our shots correctly and that's for the next lesson. 7. The Histogram: We've learned about the different settings to change the exposure and also what each side effect this, but purely looking at exposure, when is my shot underexposed or overexposed? Underexposed means that it's too dark and even outdoor during a sunny day a shots can look too dark. You've close the aperture too much, or you've set the shutter speed to high. Deciding whether or not your shot is well exposed can be done by simply looking at the display of your camera. It's like going outside and guessing what temperature it is. You can get a sense whether it's warm or cold, but to know the exact temperature, we use a thermometer, and that's the same thing with your camera. We use a tool called the histogram to measure the exposure so that we can make better decisions to what we need to set the aperture, ISO, or shutter speed ads. That histogram looks something like this. Before we continue with the lesson, pause this video for just for a brief moment and try to find that setting in your camera. Makes sure that it's displayed on the monitor. For some camera models, you need to press the Display button a couple of times. For others, it could be a setting that needs to be turned on within the menus. We're looking at a diagram. This information shows the light or the exposure. On the left side sit the dark areas and on the right side is the bright. When I close my aperture, you'll see that the diagram moves towards the left and when I open the aperture, the information moves to the right. Ideally you want to make sure that the histogram has its graph somewhere within the middle, and not touch one of the outside. This way I noted there are no parts in my shot underexposed and no parts are overexposed. In a studio environments like this it's easy because I have full control over the light and the scenery, but when going outside this gets trickier. We have a strong sunlight and white reflections in the shot as well as the person standing in the shadow. This is a big contrast and when looking at the histogram there seems to be two peaks at both the dark and the bright areas. On the left sits the information of the telons and the shadow, and on the right information of the white reflector. It's impossible to get the diagram into the middle because of that contrast, a situation that you'll face a lot by the way. Here it's important to make a choice. Do you want to see detail in the reflector or on the telons? Well, I think in this case the telons is more important, so let's open up the aperture. Hence bring the diagram loose from the left side of the histogram. Now, don't put it in the middle though, the telons stands in the shadows. It is dark, so keep it dark, just don't make it underexposed losing all detail. Now, this has been an extreme example. Another more likely situation is where you fill in your subject in front of a bright sky. One could argue that the subject is too dark when we try to aim all of the information in the middle of the diagram, so we expose more. Right now at a sky will get overexposed. This is a very typical shot that a beginner filmmaker makes. However, the sky is too prominence that I would not recommend doing this. Try to get to the bright areas loose from the histograms right sides, bringing back detail in the sky. You want to see the structure of the clouds and not just white blobs. Yes, your telons is a little bit too dark, but there's still detail. We can see the face and if you can, it's always better to underexposed than to overexpose. That's what separates a professional from a beginner. Now what about the telons and skin tones in general? Now we could see the histogram as a percentage bar. Where on the left, so it's zero percent black and on the right side sits on a 100 percent whites. Brighter skin tones like myself should be around 70 percent so when I make a shot of my telons, I could move a little bit closer in to see the information of the face only, and I'll try to get the diagram somewhere around to this 70 percent when I move back out to make my medium shot or whatever, I know that I have exposed my shots correctly for the skin tones. When working with a telon to as dark skin tones, you could aim at around 50 percent, but do take that with a grain of salt. This 70 or 50 percent is academically correct, but it's good to know this academic standards. That's how the histogram works. Definitely use it all the time to double-check whether or not something is over or underexposed. Your display does not represent the exposure correctly, which is why you have to use that tool. 8. Autofocus: We get it guys. Exposure. Let's stop with that. Enough talk about exposure. Let's talk about the fun stuff now. [NOISE] Focus and I mean the focus of your camera, but also your focus, of course, two kinds of focuses. In short, we say that a subject is in-focus when it's sharp. Anything else in the background or foreground that is unsharp is out of focus. It's like me. I'm in-focus and that over there is out-of-focus. Now turning that focus ring on your lens will bring the focus back and forward. The bigger your focus field is depends on the aperture. We've talked about this before. Now there are two ways of focusing. Either you do it manually by turning the focus ring, or you let the camera do it automatically. Oftentimes you have a switch on your lens for that, AF stands for autofocus, and MF stands for manual focus. If your lens doesn't have that option, you can set it from the menus and choose manual focus or one of the different techniques that out-of-focus needs to use because autofocus can do a face detection and always try to have a face in focus, or it can be set to a chosen point so that you can use the thumb sticks to choose a specific point to which the lens needs to focus. Each option has its own use case. It's not like one is better than the other, it depends. Now, autofocus might seem a bad choice in general. I mean, so far I've been telling you guys not to use auto but there are exceptions. I mean, manual focus does give you more control. However, it isn't always easy to keep your subject in focus when doing it manually. If your goal was to keep your subject in focus while you run around with your camera, why not set it to autofocus with face detection? It allows you to focus more on framing, camera movements, or the histogram, and whatnot. When you don't have a person in your framing, you could even opt for the point focus option. Using the thumbsticks, you can move it to that point to focus around now, even while filming. You could start off filming, for example, one object, run around, or do whatever you want, and then move that focus point to somewhere else, changing the focus. I think this is a great way to practice with focus changes without having to worry too much whether or not your subject is actually sharp. Autofocus definitely has its benefits, but it also comes with some downsides. You have no control over what the focus does. It happens automatically. That means that focus pumping could occur. This is where the camera has traveled to focus on a subject and starts pumping back and forward. Or when changing the focus through that technique with the thumbsticks, you have no control over how fast the focus changes. If you have the guts and want absolute control, then set your camera to manual focus, and we'll talk more about that in the next lesson. 9. Manual Focus: I'm completely out-of-focus. That's because my camera over there is set to manual focus and my little table, right there, my production cart is in-focus. But this is my background and I shouldn't even be here. That is why I have my camera set to manual focus. Let me just go stand back here. Professional filmmakers rarely use autofocus unless it actually has an advantage over doing it manually. At first, you might think that autofocus might always have the upper hand. That's because you need to train yourself to focus manually. It takes several months or even years to master. Once you master it, it is so much better than autofocus. Start with getting more familiar with your lens. Choose a subject and walk back and forward while trying to keep it in focus, you need to get sense of how much you have to turn the focus ring for the distance that you walk. At first, you will walk slowly and as you get more and more comfortable, you walk in a little bit faster. Now, it's good to record that as well, so you can check your practice afterwards. Sometimes it seems like our subject was in focus, but actually it wasn't. Now, just like the histogram, there's also a tool to help you measure the focus. This one is called focus peaking. Now, not all cameras have that option though, but if your does, it's that option that you need to look for and turn it on, focus peaking. This will display a bunch of dots or lines on your viewfinder. The marked areas are in-focus, so that way you can easier see whether or not your subject is in focus, which isn't always so easy on a small viewfinder. A trained camera operator can even focus without looking through the viewfinder. When you turn the lens all the way to one side, they know exactly how much they have to turn it back to get their subject in focus. But that's sort the masters, that's for the senseis of filmmaking, which I happen to be. That's one aspect of focusing, trying to keep your subject in focus, but manual focus also comes for creative choices. For instance, you're taking your final shots, and you want your video to have an ending. What is often done is just pulling the focus back, making everything out of focus, and you can do this smoothly at the exact speed that you want, changing the focus from one subject to another will also go much better. We're filming a subject and mid shot or turning that focus wheel so that another subject comes in focus. This technique is also called focus pulling or rack focus. In the film industry, a focus puller as a full-time job, you stand next to the camera guy while keeping the subject in focus performing focus racks and what nots, you are the focus puller. Often times this can be done through a wireless system as well, where the focus puller can stand a little bit away from the camera operator. The focus puller then controls a motor which is attached to the lens, but that's for the future. For now, I want you to practice with focusing and a helpful tool for that is actually one of these things. This is a focus chart. You can find this online and print it out. It allows you to better see if the plane is in focus or not. Such a focus chart is often used to hold next to the subject real quick, so that the camera operator can see if the subject is in focus or not before they start filming. You thought you only needed the camera. Film making comes with thousands of different tools that you actually don't need, but you buy it anyways. Now go practice your focus, private. Step back and forward while trying to keep that focus chart, or whatever in focus, hit record on your camera too, so that you can review it on your computer later on, and then I'll see you back in the next lesson. 10. White Balance: Hey guys. Welcome back. Something is off. The white balance. Let me just set that correct. There we go. There are different types of lights in this world. You have warm tungsten lights like this one right here or candles, or a very low warm sunlight's. But on the other side of the spectrum there are cold lights like this one over here, but also the lights over at the dentist. Even the sun lights can be very bluish cold as well. During an overcast day, for instance. The clouds change the color of the sunlight, or when the sun is set after the golden hour, we get the blue hour. The difference in these natural lighting colors is referred to as the color temperature and here's a shot that shows this very well with examples of types of lights that you can find on the spectrum. A candle on the left side where the orange colors are at and an overcast day on the right in the blue tone. We can even give a specific value to the color temperature, which is expressed in Kelvin. A candle sits around 2,000 Kelvin. A tungsten light is 3,200. You can often find these values back when buying a light bulb. LED lights have no specific Kelvin, so they can be any value. In the middle around the 5,500 and 6,500 Kelvin, we can find back the natural daylight. This is where the sunlight is not blocked by clouds and it's high up in the sky. Around noon and on the right side at around 7 or 8,000 Kelvin, we can find back the overcast day and furthermore also sits the blue sky itself. Now why is this so important to understand? Well, our eyes automatically adapt to these colors. That's why we don't even notice or aren't even bothered with this. But a camera doesn't do this automatically. You need to set the Kelvin value. I'm filming in a room with tungsten lights, which sit around 3,200 Kelvin. I look for the white balance menu and I enter that value. Doing that will make the tungsten light appear as white or neutral. This technique is called taking a white balance. We are balancing the light color to appear white on camera. Now setting that exact Kelvin value gives you, of course, the most control. But you can also choose from a series of presets. You'll see some icons in your white balance menu that represents the lights that you have. These are preset values and most of the time due to trick, just as good. There is one option in there that you should never pick though, and that is AWB, or auto white balance. Although an automatic white balance seems as a good idea, it causes the colors to shift and change. The colors in your shots should stay the same unless you have a really good reason for that. We understand what white balance this now. The idea to make a white plane appear as white on camera. Some cameras, definitely professional video cameras allows you to even capture a white point. You then simply point a white paper towards the camera and you can do a white balance. The camera will calculate the Kelvin for you and makes sure that the paper appears white and it's going to save that value and not change anymore automatically afterwards. Now not all SLR's or consumer camcorders can do that, so we'll skip that part. Also you don't actually need to be that precise. You see a shot like this doesn't feel natural, even though white is white. We feel that there's something wrong. The warmth from the indoor tungsten colors are gone and the daylight coming through the window is two bluish. Maybe instead of 3,200, we should set the Kelvin to around 6,000. Aim for the daylight colors. Well, that makes the window lights better, but indoor it's way too orange. In a scenario like this, you want to give the impression that the bluish light from outside comes through the window and that we have warm light indoors. Instead, let's pick something in-between 4,500. This makes the window light a little bit more blue and the indoor lights more natural warm. It doesn't matter if you're shooting at 4,200 or 4,800. Just as long as you are somewhere in-between tungsten and daylight. When filming solely indoors without any mixed color lights, I would also not recommend setting the white balance to tungsten. You want to keep that warm tone in there. Perhaps set it around 4,000. Shooting outside during the day, this is considered natural light, so this is a good idea to set your white balance accordingly and make whites appear as whites. Finally, an overcast day is moody and you could make the creative choice to keep your white balance setting at daylight, making that overcast day a little bit more blue. It adds to the look and feel, but that's up to the filmmaker to decide. Now of course, once you're going to jump into the editing phase, there's also the color correction part in which we can change the white balance and other colors as well. Don't be too much worried about the white balance while filming. Just try to think about it a little bit so that your talents does not appear like a pumpkin or something because the bigger that the difference is, the harder it will be to color correct. You always want to make sure to be somehow correct. Now we will not cover video editing in this class, but I do offer an editing and Adobe Premier Pro as well as a color correction class. If you're interested, you can always check those out. Now thanks for watching and I'll see you back in the next lesson. 11. Picture Profiles: Now I've seen a lot of things, even a very wrong white balance, but this, where are my colors, ads and anti contrast. This looks so washed out. Oh, it's back. Right, the picture profile. Welcome back guys. You've almost gone through all of the lessons about the camera's settings. After this one, you are ready to start with film-making. The idea of the first lessons was for you to understand your camera in and out and we've accomplished that. Good job. They're doing an amazing job. You can give yourself a pat on the shoulder, but stop, don't pat yourself too much yet because there's still so much more to learn. Picture profiles. Depending on the camera brands that you have, that picture profile option is tucked away somewhere within those menus. So just flip through it until you find it. You'll come across some different picture profiles, such as standard, neutral, vivid, maybe even black and white, or monochrome. Using one of these options will change the way your video looks. Vivid will give you a very saturated look with lots of contrast while neutral is going to be more flat and desaturated. Most camera brands even allow you to go into this picture profiles and tweak there look a little bit more by changing the contrast or the saturation individually. Now comes the same question as always. Why? Well, there are two reasons that you want to change a picture profile. First of all, you don't know what it's set to you when your camera comes out of the box, you're a filmmaker, so you choose the look of your videos. Either you want a nice picture straight from the camera, then you can choose something like standards or maybe perhaps vivid. But if you'd like to have some more control with color correction later in the edit, it is best to choose something as flat as possible so you choose neutral and dial the contrast down, the saturation down and the sharpness as well. We've got an ugly flat image but we can add contrast, colors, and sharpness back in the edit. It gives us much more control. That's what you saw in the beginning of this video. You see, this right here is the flat image which is being recorded by the camera and this is with some color correction on. We do that because we can't remove contrast or saturated colors only to an extent. That's why filmmakers like to shoot flat to have that possibility to color grade and get that cinematic look. Professional video cameras and even a little of prosumer SLRs have the ability to shoot in a log picture profile. It's usually a setting that is tucked away even more, but it's essentially a super flat image, as you can see right here. But it holds all of the information that we need. A shot like that can be easily color-rated to something like this, in fact that flat look. This right here is actually a lock picture profile and it gives me the possibility to color grade it to anything that I want, like this or this, maybe this. You see, you can just do anything you want with this, which is a lot harder and maybe even impossible with something like a vivid picture profile. Now, every brand has its own flavor of this log picture profile. Sony cameras call it S-Log, Panasonic cameras called V-Log, for Canon it's C-Log, etc. But it all comes down through the same thing. If picture profiles or something that you're already familiar with, definitely play around with a log picture profile and check out my class on color grading. This is all brand new to you, then don't bother shooting log just yet. Just set your camera to standards or neutral, whatever you prefer, and focus under rest of filmmaking first, because there's a lot to learn and the show has just begun, but I am super excited to take you on this journey. What I'd like you to do now is go through all the settings of your camera, if you haven't already. Make sure that you feel comfortable with the different tools and manual controls and when you feel ready, come back because in the next lessons we're going to start with a whole new chapter and learn about the creative side of film-making, which starts with the rule of thirds. 12. Rule of Thirds: Today if you shoot a video, you just take out the SD card from your camera, plug it into your computer, and you can start watching it. Back in the old days, you actually had to take out the film strip from your camera, develop it, [NOISE] put it on this thing right here, which would then project the film to watch it. Talking about this makes me feel very old, even though that this was before my time. Anyways, now comes the fun part. The following lessons will separate you from a beginner because knowing your camera inside out is a good basis. But if you don't know how to use it properly, you're still doing things wrong. Let's start with framing. This is the way that you point your camera at your subjects. You have probably heard about a composition already. This is the way that you position different elements in a shot. We have this rock right here, and some trees in the back by moving around, and the way the way that I point my camera at these things, I can position them differently in my camera frame. A filmmaker knows what a good framing or composition is. In other words, they know where to place those trees and the rocks to make the shot interesting, and enjoyable to look at. Now, there are different kinds of framing techniques, but almost everything comes down to the basic rule of thirds. You divide your shot into three parts, both horizontally and vertically, thus the name rule of thirds. You might be familiar with this grid, as you can call it up, as an overlay on almost every camera device, including your phone, is usually referred to as a grid. This is a guideline that we can use to align different objects, and let's start with the basics. We're filming a landscape which is being divided with the horizon. The idea is to place the horizon on either the upper guideline or the bottom one. That is going to depend on what you want to show the most, are that the clouds or is it perhaps the landscape itself? If it's the landscape, obviously you put the horizon on the upper line. This is a balanced shot. It's pleasant to look at because we've aligned it to the rule of thirds. Now let's bring a subject into the framing such as a tree.A tree is tall so we can't position it on the horizon guidelines. We're going to use one of the vertical ones, either the left or on the rights. At the same time, we're going to keep the horizon on the upper line or perhaps on the bottom one. A composition are always going to be multiple objects or subjects that need to be aligned. Just like with the horizon, think about what area is more important to show is that the left or the right side of the tree, depending you'll choose to which guideline you will align the tree to. Now sometimes your subject or main focus is much smaller than the surrounding, such as the Terence here, who's sitting on a rock in the far distance. In a case like this, we could position them both on one vertical and one horizontal line, basically choosing one of the crosses. Now if some areas really don't make any sense, you could opt for a center composition, basically centering the subject, either perfectly in the center or still having them sit at one of the horizontal guidelines, this works too. Doing such a centered composition, you pool all the attention to the subject. Filming the subject from a closer distance, we can do the same thing. Place a subject on either the left or the right or the center. But what do we put on the horizontal line? The point of interests. Where does the audience look at for a person that's going to be their eyes? We plays their eyes on the top horizontal line. The bottom could also work, but then you need a very good reason for that. Something is happening above the Terence head. Then as for the vertical lines, as long as the person who is looking into the camera, you can choose. Oftentimes, a centered composition is used, but when the Terence is looking away from the camera, something happens. Suddenly, a viewing direction occurs. The Terence either looks to the left or to the right. In our composition, we need to give some room to this viewing direction. When your Terence looks to the left, will place that person on the right vertical guideline with the viewing space on the left, and of course vice versa. Now, this rule does not only apply to people, but to basically anything with a face such as animals and statues or teddy bears. In fact, it works with anything that has a front and a back. Think of a car, it doesn't have a face, but it does have a front, so make sure to give that car some viewing space. Lastly, there's also walking space. If a human walks into a certain direction, give them walking space. It's the same as viewing space. If they walked from the left to the right, you place that person on the left guideline, and follow their movements. Again, this works with anything that is moving, including cars, planes, animals, and whatnot. Of course, this only implies when you're following a subject, when you have a fixed framing and choose to let the subject drunk students shots, you don't have to give them walking space obviously. But that is how the rule of thirds works, and depending on which areas are the most interesting, where the subject is looking at or moving to, you place them on one or more guidelines. In the next lesson, we're going to work some more with the rule of thirds and focus solely on people. 13. Talent Framing: We've got an understanding of the rule of thirds and how to use the guidelines to frame different objects in a shot. But the most common object or better sets subject is the human being. Whether you're filming a presentation, a dialogue between two people, an action scene, it doesn't matter. Filming people comes with framing rules. There are three main framings; the close-up, the medium shot, and the long shot. In-between we have sub-framings like extreme close-up, or medium long shots, extreme long shots. These are sub-framings and they are therefore not that important to remember. You can also say, let's make a long shot, which is a little bit closer. It doesn't really matter as long as you understand the three main framings. Let's start with a long shot. This means that we're going to frame so that the talent is completely visible into shot from head to toes. As we learned in a previous lesson, we could go for a center composition if they are looking into the camera. If they're looking away from the camera, give your talent viewing space and align them on the proper side of the vertical guidelines. Using the horizontal guidelines becomes trickier. We are looking at the face, so we might want to align that to the horizontal guideline. But in a long shot, that creates too much headspace above the subject. That space is called breathing space. You need some of that, but not too much. Just enough to get your subject loose from the framing. On the bottom where the feet are at, you also want to give some breathing space, space between the feet and the bottom frame. If you would stick the feet to the frame, it looks very odd. This is called the puppet effect, by the way, just don't ask me why it's just this. The same thing with your talent's head, sticking it to the upper framing is odd. It creates that puppet effect, which you want to avoid, give it some breathing space. Now let's move a little bit closer into the talent. This is considered a medium long shot. We're going to cut to the feet from the talent off. I mean, not for real, just by framing it. Now we learned about the puppet effect. You don't want anyone to stand on your framing. The same thing occurs with any joint. That means ankles, knees, pelvis, etc. Avoid to cut into anything that can bend. A medium long shot like this is odd as we're cutting into the knees. I know filmmaking is cruel, there's a lot of cutting involved. [LAUGHTER] Anyways, you don't want to do that, always cut above or underneath a joint. This feels so much more natural. Now let's take a medium shot. We're going to cut above the pelvis. Interesting now is that our subject has become more prominent in a shot. It takes up more of the framing. We can actually place now the eyes of the subject onto the horizontal guidelines. Keep in mind to give breathing space above the heads, definitely, for a medium shot. We can go a little bit closer again and take a medium close up. Essentially we're cutting underneath the shoulders. We're getting so close that it's impossible now to give breathing space above the head. We'll cut into the head, avoiding the puppet effect, and make sure to cut in the forehead as well. We're getting the hang of this, guys. Let's go for a close-up. You want to be above the shoulders now, but underneath the neck, as that is a joint as well. The eyes are going to lay above the upper guideline, otherwise, we'll cut away too much of the neck and the chin to leave an unwanted space above the eyes. The foreheads becomes not as important anymore, we are focusing on the eyes, nose, and mouth in a close-up. Finally, there's the extreme close-up. Basically, you can choose what you want to focus on now. Either that's going to be their eyes or mouth or whatever. Most often you're going to frame it in the middle unless you have a good reason to show other areas. Like if you're going for the eyes but also for the nose, you can put then the eyes on the upper guideline or a little bit above and leave room below for the nose. That is in a nutshell how to frame a talent. Just like with the viewing space, you can find faces back on other objects too. A teddy bear is also a talent that's can be framed by the same principles. Even a dull objects like a fridge. Before you're wondering, what about the joints, well, that are the intersections between the two doors. That is considered a joint as well. Many objects have something like that. Think for instance here my light in the back. This right here at the light stands where I can tilt it up and down, that is considered a joint. You either cut into framing just above it or right underneath. Now there's one last framing type which we haven't talked about yet, and that is the establishing shot. It isn't even an actual framing, but more of a storytelling shot. An establishing shot is oftentimes used at the very start of a film or a new scene. It displays the location and sometimes also the time. For instance, a wide shot of a house. What follows next is a scene of a family having dinner in that house. But that establishing shot of the house tells the audience that the family is in dad's house and that it shows during the day, the sun is shining. It helps to locate where we are at, and we can use that principle to cheat a little bit, because that establishing shot doesn't have to be a relocation. But you can trick your audience into thinking it's the location that the scene is played at. An example here are these skyscrapers where suddenly an explosion in happens. We then cut to a shot of me where I pretend to have tried to defuse the bomb, but that failed. Obviously, I'm not actually sitting in that particular building, but from a story point of view, I am. That's where stock clips comes in very handy too. We use a library called Storyblocks for that. They'd been a longtime partner of us by the way. It's basically a library filled with over a million stock videos of various genres and themes. You can use these commercially and download unlimited video assets with an active subscription. That's why I can highly recommend it to anyone. For instance, I came across this establishing shot of a planet. That's something that I can't film obviously, but I can download it from here, and it allows me to point out a specific scene that plays back on different planets like Mars. We then cut to these shots right here and it feels like these guys are on Mars, which of course they aren't. This is on some desert right here on planet Earth. These are also stock clips from Storyblocks, but you get the idea. You know what? I'll leave a link down here in the class notes. If you want to check out Storyblocks, that's a special link, by the way, which supports our business and these courses that we're making here. Anyways, an establishing shot doesn't really have rules in terms of how wide your shot is. I mean, it can be an entire planet. Important is that it shows the location and maybe also at a time of day. Do make sure that you treat your object as a subject. The entire house and the entire planet becomes one subject. As we've learned about how to frame a subject to the rule of thirds, give it some breathing space, and some viewing space if you don't choose a center composition. Now we're not done with framing just yet. There are two more lessons about framing with foreground objects and one about backgrounds. After that, you can take a small break. Until then, keep watching, guys. 14. Foregrounds: So far we've only been framing one person but what if there is a conversation between two people? Shooting from the side we can place each talent on the vertical guidelines and furthermore apply the rules of framing depending on whether it's a long shot, medium shot, or a closeup. Having two people in the shot is also referred to as a two-shot. We're essentially focusing on the two talents. Both of them are equally important, a two shot. But at the moment that one of them starts talking, we often cut to an over-shoulder shot. Here we have one talent in focus and the shoulder of the other person out-of-focus on the side of the framing. In other words, the shoulder is acting as a foreground object. When looking at the rule of thirds, we're going to frame the shoulder in this example on the right side of the vertical line not on but next to it. The subject itself can be framed normally on the vertical guidelines. Remember that these guidelines are there to draw attention to a subject. We don't want the shoulder to draw attention, it's just there as a foreground element. The over-shoulder shot gives you more sense of where we are at. We can see that the talent is talking to another person. This is a framing that we could use to swap between the two people as they're talking. We move the camera from one person to another. This is a very typical way but a way of capturing a conversation. Foreground objects don't always have to be a shoulder. It can also be a rock or a tree, anything. Having an out-of-focus foreground actually creates more depth in your shots. You start to see bigger parallax between the subjects and the foregrounds. This is a very easy way to make your shots simply more interesting. Now sometimes that foreground object it does become more important. We're going to go back to working with one talent and that person is looking into the distance. Now, we could choose to make an over-shoulder framing, this way we show that the person is looking at the landscape. But we can also place the talent on one of the vertical guidelines even though the foreground is out of focus. It becomes a more important part of the shots. Alternatively, you could even go for a central composition. A shot like this is oftentimes used to tell a visual story. The landscape is big and the talent is ready to explore it and go on to an adventure. These are obviously more advanced camera techniques but I want you to know that camera framing at an advanced level comes down to visual storytelling. There are two ways of framing a subject either to make a natural shot that is pleasing for the audience or taking it a step further to tell a visual story. The art of creating visual stories in film-making is called cinematography. In films, you're going to see a mix of both normal shots and visual storytelling shots. For now, let's focus on the basic framings and get a good feeling of those first, and then we can go over to the next level. 15. The Background: There is one last thing that we haven't covered yet when it comes down to framing, and that is the backgrounds. What is happening in the backgrounds? Now, we've got a nice medium shot of the talent framed by the rule of thirds. Although this is a good shot, we forgot to think about what's going on in the background. Actually, this is not such a great shot. We have a tree right behind the talent and it sticks out from behind the talent's head. This feels very odd and something you always want to avoid. If there's a tree, a pole, or anything else that could stick out from behind the subject, make sure to avoid that. Always place a tree like this next to the subject or perhaps cut it a little bit out of the frame if you don't want to pull attention to it. Apart from framing, the background also tells us where we are. In a medium shot like this, the subject is very prominent in the shots and we don't see much of the backgrounds, but we do feel that we are in a forest or at some park because we can see trees in the background. That's why we, as the filmmaker, need to think about what's going on in the background and what we want in the backgrounds, what fits best for my story? Does it make sense that we are surrounded by tree, or is it best to go inside and have a living room in the background? That's for us to decide. With this lesson, I only wanted you to be aware of the backgrounds. Look at it and ask yourself the question whether or not there's something annoying and if it makes sense, also the elements in the background needs to be framed properly. Now, let's take that small break. Grab your camera or even your phone, and try out some of these framing techniques. Ask a friend or if there's nobody available, just fill in your teddy bear, practice those long shots, medium shots and close-up while you follow the rule of thirds. If you can, even enable that grit as an overlay on your camera and finally, see what you can deal with foreground objects. Practice that a bit, and when you feel ready, come back and we'll continue with the rest. 16. Focal Length: Hey, welcome back. There are two kinds of lenses that you can attach to your camera. Either it's a prime lens or it's a zoom lens. Prime lenses have a fixed focal length such as 50 millimeters. Zoom lens can cover an entire range, for example, from 24 millimeters to 70 millimeters. Turning the ring on the lens allows you to zoom in, or in other words, change the focal lengths. Now prime lenses tend to be of a better quality as they are easier to build and maintain that better optical quality. That's why they are cheaper than zoom lenses of equal quality. That's the backstory. But now what are those millimeters that I was talking about and how does it affect our shots? Well, there are three distinct focal differences. You've got wide angle. In an extreme way we can even call this fisheye normal, which is just close to how we see the world or the focal length of our eyes. Finally tele, which is zoomed in, we can see things closer than they appear in real life. Now, the human eye sits somewhere at around 50 millimeters. That's why a 50-millimeter lens is so popular. Anything below that is wide angle, so a 20-millimeter lens looks something like this. A very wide angle view. The opposite side, 100-millimeter lens is zoomed in. We talk about a telephoto in shots, and there's a lot more going on when changing the focal length. In fact, we're going to take a look at three different side effects that any focal length comes with. Here we have a medium shot of our talent at 100 millimeters focal lengths. Here's that same shot again, a medium framing at 20 millimeters. The first thing we notice is the background and in wide angle shot, we can see a lot more of the environment than with the tele lens. This is because of the field of view that changes. Starting at wide-angle, we have a large field of view and as we zoom in, it becomes more narrow. Doing this trick right here with your arms really helps visualizing what happens. When a background is less important, you might want to zoom in a little bit more, when it is more important and you want to show more of the environment, maybe zoom out and stand closer to the subject. It is very important to be aware of this. Don't just zoom in because it's easier, because maybe the better choice is to zoom out and actually stand closer to the subjects. This same effect of the field of view can be found back on the talent itself. See what it does to the face. It expands the face more in a wide shot and it compresses it more in a tele shot. That's why beauty shots are always filmed at 50 millimeters and above. Eighty millimeters for instance is something that is oftentimes used in fashion because it makes you look more beautiful, more pleasing. A wide shot makes you look funny and weird, so are you filming comedy or something more serious like fashion? Now you know which kind of focal length to choose. That was the first thing, field of view. The second thing is depth of field, and we talked about this before. Having an open aperture creates a more shallow depth of field. The area that is in focus is smaller. Now enclosing the aperture of that focus field or depth of field becomes larger, we can put more things in focus. The same thing occurs when zooming in or zooming out. Zoomed out, or at wide-angle, we have a large depth of field, very wide angle lenses like your fisheye so you put everything into focus. That's one of the reasons why those action cameras like the GoPro has such a wide-angle lens. There is no focus options so these action cameras need to have a wide-angle lens so that everything is in focus. But then the more that we start to zoom in, the shallower the depth of field becomes. Oftentimes a camera man will close its aperture a little bit more when filming a tele lens, that's where you can make your focus field a little bit bigger again, making it easier to keep things in focus. If you want to achieve that cinematic shall depth of field, you simply film from a bigger focal length or zoom in. That brings us to the last effect that the focal length has, which is the audience perspective. The audience or the people that watch your videos see everything through the camera. That's obvious. They experience the story that you're telling from the camera perspective. Now if we film our subjects from a distance and zoom in, the audience also feels that they are far away. They are looking at something from a distance and this again is a visual storytelling technique which we talked about before. Looking at something from a distance creates that same feeling. Now we are not involved as we are looking at the situation yet we are not part of the situation. Now opposite, we could zoom out and go wide angle and stand really close to the subject. Suddenly the audience stands right next to the subject. They are part of the situation now. During an action scene, the audience feels in danger as well. The focal length allows you to place the audience where you want. A very powerful tool within visual storytelling. All right, so that is how different focal lengths work. But now when you go out to the store and buy that very nifty 50-millimeter lens, you might notice that it doesn't actually compare to the human eye. In fact, it might be more tele. It feels maybe something like 80 millimeters. How is that possible? Have I been lying the entire time? Don't worry, I haven't. The thing is that in order to see the full 50-millimeter lens, you'll need actually a full-frame sensor. That's the little chip which sits inside your camera body. Hang on, let me just grab one of those. It has a certain physical size. The bigger the size, the more it will cover from the actual lens. If you have a smaller sensor, you're only capturing a smaller portion of that lens. Basically, you're cropping in on the video. Now, full frame sensors like this one right here are definitely a thing, but something like an APS-H or an APS-C sensor like this camera are super popular too. In these sensors sizes can be found in anything like a Sony, a Nikon, and Canon camera, doesn't matter. In terms of size, they all have their own flavor, but it comes roughly down to the same thing. Now, Micro Four Thirds is also a very popular sensor size, which is even smaller than this one. Now, these sit in the Panasonic Lumix cameras. That means in order to have a 50-millimeter view, you actually need to buy a 35-millimeter lens if your camera has an APS size sensor. The reason that I know that is because I can look up the crop factor. This is a multiplier numbers such as one and a half, which is for APS-C sensors. A 35-millimeter lens times 1.5 comes down to roughly around 50 millimeters on an APS-C sensor. For a Micro Four Third sensor, you need to multiply by two. You want to look at a 25-millimeter lens or 24-millimeters, which is easier to find. That way you can have that 50-millimeter field of view. Now to make it even more complicated than it already is, I'm sorry guys, I didn't invent this, but lenses could also be made specifically for a specific sensor size. That means that you have full-frame lenses, you have APS-C lenses, you have Micro Four Third lenses. Now, their crop factor remains the same, so that's nothing to worry about, but their coverage, on the other hand, is different. An APS-C lens is only so big that it covers the size of an APS-C sensor and everything below. But that also means Micro Four Third sensors, but not a full-frame sensor. If you put an APS-C lens on a full-frame camera sensor, you will start to see a vignette of the actual lens. That's because it's not big enough to cover the entire sensor. This is very important to know when you're going to look out for a new lens. If you choose to buy a lens for a certain sensor size, it means that you cannot use it anymore when you're going to buy a camera in the future, which might have a bigger sensor size. Ideally, you buy full-frame lenses, but they are way more expensive. They're bigger and they're heavier. That's a choice that you have to make for yourself. I have a set of APS-C lenses since most cameras do utilize that size of sensors. Full-frame is more often used in photography and not that much within videography. That is what you need to know about lenses. If you have any questions, or perhaps you're thinking about buying a new lens or anything of that, let me know in the discussion down below, guys, and I'm happy to give you some advice on that. 17. Camera Position: Now although a camera can take any position, there are basically three distinct ones. Do you film for me, low angle, or you go high height, or you go above the eyes and take a high shot? That means that anything lower than the eye height is considered a low-angle shot. Anything above the eye is considered a high angle. But let's start off with the low angle and why you should use that or why you shouldn't. Now, first of all, the position of the camera creates a visual story. It tells something about the character. Remember that the audience will always perceive the video that they are watching from the camera perspective. We talked about that before when placing the camera close to the talent or far away. Now when shooting below the height of the talent's eyes, we're looking up to the character. They appear bigger onscreen, but also in status. All of a sudden my talent is somebody who means something. They have the upper hand, they are in control, they are the boss. Even when filming slightly below eye level, you're already telling that story. That is why it's so important to be aware of this. Now of course, just going slightly underneath eye level, will not make that effect so prominence, but the status difference is there just slightly. Now in the extreme case, we talk about a frock perspective. This is used when you want to showcase that your character is the actual boss, the badass, the one who has everything and control. Then we have eye height. This is when you level with your audience, you make your character equal. Nothing special, a neutral camera position, oftentimes used in interviews. Then finally, we have the high perspective. The character appears to be small on screen and their status also diminishes. We are looking down on the talents. They appear more vulnerable and in the extreme case, we can call this even a bird's eye perspective. Now, pretty understandable stuff, but how do we implement this in a video project? Well, let's say that we have two people talking to each other. One of the characters is the employee and the other one is the employer. The employee reaches out to the boss to ask for a race. At first, the employee feels vulnerable, a little bit scared to ask. We shoot the talents from a higher perspective. When shooting an over-shoulder, we even link that perspective to the person that the talent is talking to. When the boss starts to talk, we switch camera angle and shoot from a little bit below. The employer has the high grounds. They can make the decision, but suddenly the employee steps up their game. We switch camera positions and film slightly from below, making the talent appear stronger. Maybe the employee is threatening to quit, so the boss might get a little bit scared. We shoot from a slightly higher angle, making the boss now feel vulnerable. But that is a great example of how you can set and change the status of a character. This also extends to creative work or event videos. I once met a short video about someone who makes spray paint arts. I created a mix of both shooting from a low angle to make him appear as a great artist, but also from a high angle to visualize how small he is in front of the big wall that he's about to paint. That tells us something about the canvas that he's working on. Always think about the camera position and what the status is that you want to give to the character or talents. 18. The 180 Rule: The 180 degree rule is probably one of the most important rules for anyone who's starting out with filmmaking. The moment that you have two people talking with each other, we can then fill in this from multiple angles to make the video more interesting, like we've already learned, we can make a two shot or perhaps an over shoulder, maybe a long shot from an angle, perhaps change the camera position and go a little bit lower. Although we have the freedom of placing the camera where we want, you want to make sure not to disorientate the viewer. That is where the 180 rule comes in. You see as the filmmaker, we know what the location looks like. We've seen it with our own eyes and our brain can immediately tell where everything is at. But the audience only sees the location true to view of the camera. This is something very important to be aware of. We can draw an invisible line through the two characters, we're cutting in the direction that they are looking we split it into two parts both, 180 degree, that is where the name comes from. Now, it's important to choose one of those sites and stay there. That means that we can place the camera here and then cut to this angle or to here. But you cannot mix shots from one site with the other. That is going to disorientate the audience. Let me show you why that is. here the talent is looking to the right side of the frame. As long as we stay on the side of the 180 degree rule, the talent will keep looking at the rights. But once we go over the line, the talent now suddenly looks to the left. For the audience, it feels like the talent has turned around but they haven't. This gets even more confusing with two people. One is facing to the right while the other is facing to the left. This is normal as they stand in front of each other. But when we cross the line, their viewing direction is now different, and we lose the feeling that they are standing in front of each other. This rule also extends to different locations where we have the same subjects like a driving car. If the car drives away from a place, we choose a certain direction. Usually that's from the left to the right when following that car or taking multiple shots from it at different locations, we make sure to stay on that side of the 180 rule. That way the car always drives from the left to the right, regardless of the location. If you were to shoot from the other side, the car would drive the other way. Now it seems as it turned around somewhere in-between two shots. That is why it's so important to shoot from one side of the 180 degree rule to keep your audience orientated. However, sometimes you do want to disorientate the audience. Think about a fighting scene. Obviously it's a fake fight and you want to avoid that, the viewer sees that. We'll constantly jump over the 180 degree line to disorientate the audience and cover up mistakes. But also this creates chaos and confusion which fits the scene. It's a form of visual storytelling. Breaking the rules of film making is sometimes for the better, but you can only break the rules if you understand them first. That is why I want you to follow the 180 degree rule first, make some shots and edit them together, see how it influences your scene. Once you've got the hang of it, then you're ready to break that rule. Of course, for a specific reason, everything you do within filmmaking needs to have a reason. Thanks for watching. 19. Handheld Movement: Handheld camera movements. We're starting to get a feel of how film-making works. We've covered most of the rules, so we're ready to start shooting. For most people start is by simply holding their camera in their hands. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Even big Hollywood productions are oftentimes shots handheld. However, shooting handheld is a choice and not something you do just because it's convenient. As we've talked before, the audience perceives your video through the camera, and the feeling that you give to the audience is depending on what the camera is doing. Thus, having some shake in the camera, will give a different feeling to the audience than if you would film from a sturdy tripod. Handheld is more dynamic, more aggressive, more alive, more energetic, playful. An action scene like a car chase or a fight scene is therefore more often filmed handheld. If there's a time pressure, for instance, a simple action like dialing a number and calling someone, could be filmed handheld to emphasize the mood. But also things like an interview, which needs to feel more casual and personal, that can be filmed handheld too. Many different use cases. Of course, there is a difference in types of handheld motion. You can make big and fast movements, or gentle and slow movements. Where a fighting scene will get much more camera motion, to make it more aggressive, a casual interview will get a more gentle and smooth handheld motion to make it more dynamic. But in any case of handheld motion, it's always under control. Let's go over two extremes, a fighting scene and a casual interview. Starting with that interview. The idea is not to draw attention to the camera motion, but rather to the talent and their story. You want to start off by finding a comfortable position so you can film for a very long time. Chances are that you shoot with one of these SLR cameras. Hold it with the grip, and support the body with your other hands, like this. Your elbows go into your chest or belly. Important is your spine. Don't lean back like this, like the scene is happening all the time. If you need to lean back like that for some reason, then simply stand straight and take a step back. It's the same thing. Stand with your both feet, sturdy on the floor, and now you're ready to shoot. Casual handheld movements does not need to be made on purpose. It's already there. Simply breathe in and breathe out and let your camera move with your breathes. As you inhale, the camera goes up, and as you exhale, the camera goes down. I'm of course, exaggerating a bit. But you get the idea. Here's a better example. Keep focusing on the framing. You want to avoid that your framing goes up and down. Do it gentle. In a more extreme example, like a fighting scene, you want to make small but fast movements around your subject. You keep the same pose like that, but you go with the flow of the subjects. When they make a specific movement, you can follow that movement, usually to make their impacts more powerful. But it's important that you snap onto a subject, make a correct framing, and make small and fast movements. When you're switching subjects during a shot, you make a fast movement to it and snap onto the new subjects. It's that snapping from one subject to another, which makes your handheld motion controls. Give your audience the time to understand what they are seeing. So don't move away from the subject too quick. We'll talk more about cameras supports like the tripods later in this class. As a starter, going handheld is definitely a good idea, just as long as you're doing it correct and controlled. Thanks for watching. 20. Slow Motion: When you shoot at 60 frames per seconds, you can add slow motion to it because you can stretch it out to 30 frames per seconds. We've talked about this before in the lesson about frame rates. But apart from that technical explanation, there is also a creative rule. When should we film slow motion and what's the impact that it has on our video? Our talent jumps over a rock, we've seen what happens, but we didn't see the details because it went so fast. Let's shoot that again, but this time in slow motion. This gives the audience the time to look more at the details, like what expression is a talent making? Whether there are clouting doing in the air? What is their body position, etc? Automatically a viewer will start looking at such details because it feels like we're getting more time to look even if the clip itself isn't actually longer. That's the interesting parts. A normal close-up shot where not even something exciting is happening in. At real-time speed we see a person, a five seconds clip. Now let's show that same shot, also five seconds long, but in slow motion. The audience will automatically start paying attention to the details and the face. Because we look more in-depth at someone's face, we perceive their emotions a lot more. In this shot, the talent tilts their head up. Nothing special, right when we play this in slow motion, all of a sudden their emotion becomes stronger. Depending on the story that you're telling, you will emphasize that. That is an essence what slow motion does. It doesn't always have to be fast action shots, even small movements or character emotions can be enhanced with slow motion. So don't use it all the time, but use this powerful technique wisely. 21. B-Roll: The name B-roll comes from the old days where you had an actual film roll inside of the camera. The main camera had the A-roll. Here it is. The second camera had the B-roll. Now that name kept sticking around. But of course, the function of the B-roll camera has not changed that much. Now, don't worry, you don't need an actual second camera. In fact, you could make an entire video with only B-roll shots. Let's start simple, an interview. The talent who is talking on camera is shot with the A-roll. Usually we refer to it as the main camera. The B-roll camera usually sits more on the sides taking a different framing. Now this is not necessary, but it does make the interview more dynamic. This B-roll camera could even take shots of the talent's hands. That means if you only have one camera, you could take such shots after the interview. You can edit them in such a way that it seems like the hand gestures for the B-roll were taken during the interview. But B-roll could also be shots taken outside of the interview or the main message that you're presenting. For instance, we again have that interview but then we show clips of what the person is talking about, which could be shot at a different location, perhaps even some stock clips. Another example is where you cut to a B-roll sequence after an interview. The music suddenly starts and you see a montage of creative shots. B-roll in essence just makes your videos look more dynamic. They don't tell a direct story or at least not an important story, but they do visualize a lot making your videos more pleasant to look at. It's like in this class, I could also just talk the entire time without showing you guys anything. You get all the information, but it would be pretty boring. All the examples that I show are B-roll, which makes this class more interesting. But as I said before, a video can also exist out of only B-roll shots. Think about a creative video, perhaps a travel video. You play a song in the background and show a nice edit of B-roll shots. There is no A-roll shots like an interview or a monologue or something. Now, sometimes B-roll is so short that we can also call it an insert shot. It's basically B-roll, but it has a specific purpose. We have someone looking here at an object laying on the table, and what a filmmaker would often say is, let's take an insert chart of that object. You'll make a close-up of that and edit it in such a way that you go from a long shot to the close up of that object. Then go back to the long shot. It feels like you've inserted a shot in-between. This type of B-roll shot is oftentimes used to show more detail about something that is important. It adds additional information to the scene. Whereas normal B-roll might not be so important, an insert shot is. Finally, we have the cutaway, also a form of B-roll, but again, very specific use case. Cutaways are basically inserts that aren't as important, like the hands of the person talking during an interview. It's B-roll, but more specifically referred to as a cutaway. This could also be a whole different shot about something that the person is talking about. But it's always one shot. We cut away for a brief moment from the A-roll. When you have more shots, basically, a small edits, we don't call it a cutaway anymore, just a B-roll sequence. Now this was a little bit complicated, don't blame me. These are filmmaking terms invented in the old days. It's just good to know that these things exist. B-roll sequences, insert shots, and cutaways, but you can also name all of them B-roll. There's nothing wrong with that. Just make sure that you think about B-roll when shooting a project. Don't just leave the shoot after the interview or the dialogue or whatever is done. Always think about the extra shots that you need to make your edits more dynamic and interesting, the B-roll shots. Before ending this lesson, I would like to mention a very useful resource, again, Storyblocks which I also talked about before. But a stock library like them is super-useful, freaky, don't have the right B-roll. Storyblocks has over a million royalty-free stock clips and HD and 4K resolution. This means that you can use your downloads even for commercial purposes, which is great. Sometimes I feel like I didn't shoot B-roll. It's a mistake everyone makes at some points. You can fix that by downloading a stock video. Or perhaps you need an insert shot. You could film yourself as you turn around to look at a clock, for instance, but you don't have that fancy clock. Simply search for clock on Storyblocks and use that as the insert shots. There you go. You can always check out Storyblocks. Again, I'll leave a link here in the class notes if you want to check it out for more information. 22. Shoot for the Edit: The one problem about my cameras storage unit right here is that one of these lights here work on batteries. That means I need to think about it to change that light, which I totally forgot. Does that make me a bad filmmaker? No, because a good filmmaker starts with editing and then shoots their videos. I know it sounds impossible, but hear me out. You are asked to fill a simple action like someone is pouring in a glass of water and then they drink from it and before you even press that record button on your camera, you should think first about the edits. Say you shot everything from one angle, you basically just have one shot. In the edit you'll notice that you can't really do much with that. As the camera operator, you need to make shots that the editor can use. Or if you're the editor yourself, make sure that you don't get mad at yourself for not making enough shots. How do you go at it? Well, you slice every scene or action into multiple shots. Important is that you always make different framings. For instance, you start with a long shot as the [inaudible] picks up the bottle, then you make a close up of pouring the water into the glass. Then you take a step back to make medium shots of the [inaudible] drinking from that glass. We have sliced the action into three shots. That means we can also play a bit with the length of the scene by cutting faster, the whole action becomes faster or we can make the whole scene longer. We're giving ourselves or the editor options to edit. That's what you always want to try and do by making three individualist shots of the scene. Now of course, there could be more shots that is up to you. Now, could we not just make three long shots, for instance, wouldn't that be easier? You take a shot from this angle, one from here and another one from there. All long shots. Unfortunately, shots like these don't cut. You're going from the same framing to another. What happens are jump cuts. We see a jump in the movement or in other words, the viewer notices the cuts and at all time you want to avoid that. Although it's definitely more acceptable these days in professional filmmaking, jump cuts still need to be avoided unless there's a creative choice. You could basically break any filmmaking rule, but you need a **** good reason for that. For every shot that follows, you change your framing. Medium shot, close up, medium shots, long shot, extreme close up, medium long shot, close up, long shots, etc. I think you get the idea. Now let's say that you're asked to shoot a business event. There are all sorts of things going on and we could film some new product releases over there in the other corner, guests are coming in. There's a bar where they make cocktails. For every scene you make enough shots and I mean, different framings. It's also easier to cut from one scene to another and you will less likely end up with jump cuts. Understanding that brings me to the second part of this lesson. Shooting for the edit also means looking for interesting hooks. I actually shot many business events back when I started out with. It's something that I would oftentimes do is take a shot of an empty dining room. I would then later on in the evening, take that same shots from somehow the same angle and framing when that room was filled with people. I know this is a jump cut, something I just told you not to do. But I had a reason. I could add like a little glitch transition in between or just even keep it as a jump cut and add a beach to the music underneath. I thought it was a cool idea to cut from an empty room to a full room. Now, that was only possible by having that edit idea in mind while I was filming. I encourage you to do the exact same thing. As you're shooting a video, think about some cool transitions that you could make or perhaps a sequence of shots. In a nutshell, always make multiple shots of the same scene that are filmed at different framings but also try to shoot something that you can use creatively in your edits. What helps is to look at other people's work as an inspiration. If you come across some nice transition or editing sequence, write that down and take that with you on your next shoot that helps you to remind you what shots that you need to take. 23. Practice: We have been through most of the fundamental rules of filmmaking. It's been a lot and more to process. Let's go out now and practice what we've learned so far. If I'm going to be honest, I could use a break too, guys. Filmmaking is an endless journey, even after more than 10 years, I'm still learning new things about filmmaking every single day. Don't get overwhelmed by all of this information. Take it step-by-step and most importantly, enjoy that journey. The first thing that I want you to do is make a short action film. With action, I literally mean anything. That could be chopping vegetables to make soup, cleaning the car, or doing some gardening outside. Scripted actions like these allows you to prepare. I want you to sketch out a storyboard of the different shots that you want to take. As you are preparing these shots, go back over the lessons from this class, especially the lessons about filmmaking rules and visual storytelling. Try to think about it as much things as possible as you are making your preparation. Then ask a friend to be your talent and simply follow your own storyboard. Your creative choices were already made, so you don't need to think about that anymore. Just follow that storyboards. That allows you to pay attention to the technical aspects of filmmaking. The lessons that we started with, things like setting the right exposure on your camera, focusing, white balance, and other stuff. This is a great exercise to practice both technical and creative skills. Definitely if you're doing this with a friend, then there's no need to stress about doing anything wrong. Speaking of doing things wrong, I actually want you to to make a mistake because if you always try to never make a mistake, you will limit herself. Dare to experiment and dare to make mistakes. You can only learn new things by making mistakes. This class has been a huge mistake. You've been learning so many new things. That came out very wrong. I hope you are enjoying, guys. Anyways, go out now and start on that video project before you continue with the class. You can publish that video here to Skillshare, if you like, and either me or someone from my team will look at it for feedback. The class is not done yet, we're also going to talk about very important camera tools the next lesson. But I do advise you to first practice what you've learned so far. Take it step-by-step. Thanks for watching and we'll see each other back very soon. I'm going to pour some new coffee in my mug. [LAUGHTER] 24. ND Filters: Hey, welcome back. I hope you enjoyed making your very first video while keeping the film-making rules in mind. We have about six lessons left I believe which will be about [inaudible] and camera supports. Once you feel more comfortable with filmmaking, you'll quickly start looking to invest in some more equipment. Unfortunately, I have seen many mispurchases from beginner filmmakers. That's why I'd like to give you some advice about that, but also teach you about how to properly use something like a tripod for instance. But we're going to start off with the ND filter first. It's probably the very first thing that I recommend to get, as you're ready to spend some more money. ND filter is a very simple piece of glass, a round filter that screws onto your lens. ND stands for neutral density, but essentially these are sunglasses for your lens. The purpose of this filter is to block out light. But why do we need that? Can we just close the aperture if the video is too bright? Of course, you can. But we've learned about the side effects that the aperture brings as well, which is a larger depth of fields. A simple shot like this has almost everything in focus. The foreground is just not separated from the background because of that. If we would have the ability to block out light through an ND filter, we can open up the aperture again, making the depth of fields more shallow, and thus we get a more cinematic shot. That will already set your videos apart from the rest. Now, since the ND filter is designed to block out a certain amount of light, there are also different kinds of ND filters. Now, the amount of light that they block out is noted in their ND number. The higher this number, the more light is being blocked out, or the stronger your sunglasses are. Starting with ND2, which blocks out half the light. Or in other words, it let's half the lights through. ND4 let's one-fourth or 25 percent of the lights through. If we skip a few numbers forward, an ND100 only lets one percent of lights through. Actually, it's pretty easy. The ND number refers to the fraction, so an ND16, let's through one-sixteenth of lights. So there is one thing they made easy to understand. But now that we know the math behind these ND filters, what ND filter do we actually need now? Because half or one-fourth of light is just something not easy to visualize. Well, ND filters are most often used outdoor, where there's a lot of lights. In such a case, you'll mostly be looking at an ND8 for overcast days and then ND32 for when the sun is high up in a clear sky. Popular sets of NDs therefore usually consists out of an ND8, an ND16, and an ND32. Sometimes there's also an ND64 in there. Before you ask, can you screw multiple ND filters on your lens? Although it's not recommended. Yes, you can. The reason it's not recommended, and I'm going to take the ND filters back out of their case I didn't thought is through, [LAUGHTER] is because the light has to travel through two pieces of glass. Hence the more pieces of glass that the light has to travel through, the more the optical quality decreases and you'll start to see things like ghosting or a softer image. That's why these fixed ND filters are so popular. They usually give you the best optical quality. It's like a prime lens, as we've covered before. Like this one right here, a fixed 50-millimeter lens is usually in better quality than a zoom lens of the approximately same price. This is due to the more glass elements needed in a zoom lens thus the quality decreases. Although, take that with a grain of salt. Technology has come very far these days. Zoom lenses are definitely a great choice. Now with ND filters like this, we have the same thing going on in here. This right here is a variable ND filter. These are the zoom lenses of filters. They consist out of two filters and more specific to polarizer filters so that you can rotate them and that way they'll let through more or less light, isn't that cool? Let me just hold that right here in front of this light so you can see what it actually does. Isn't that awesome? Basically, you get a range of around ND2 to ND400. In fact, you don't even need to think about the whole ND numbers anymore and the amount of light it blocks or lets through. You just twist the filter, look at your monitor, keep an eye out for the histogram, and that's it. Because of that simplicity, I also suggest you get yourself one of these. In fact, the only time that I work with fixed ND filters like this one, it's when I shoot scripted content where I have the time to swap filters and really want to get the best possible quality. That's usually during a short film for instance. But for all the rest, I use a variable ND filter. So you've chosen your ND filter, good job. But now comes the diameter size; 73 millimeters or 77 or perhaps 82. That's the filter size that threats here on the back. When you look at your lens, you should see a symbol like here with a number next to it. This refers to the filter size that your lens has. But then you realize that your other lenses have different filter sizes. Do you buy two ND filters now? Of course not. It is best to buy one ND filter with a large diameter, for example, 82 millimeters. That's the size that is often chosen. You can screw them onto your lens, but you can't find adapters for it to make them fit. These are called step-up rings, you step up from one filter size to another. These rings, right here, they just cost a couple of bucks so I equipped all my lenses with them. Like right here you can see that we go from 52 millimeters to 82 millimeters. That way, I can fit this very big ND filter onto a very small lens. I only had to spend money for one ND lens and it fits to all my lenses. That's the story of the ND filter. In a nutshell, I recommend buying an 82-millimeter variable ND filter and get step-up rings for every lens that you have. It's the cheapest and most versatile solution. 25. The Tripod: The tripods. The most basic form of camera support yet that is so much more complex than most aspiring filmmakers think. Essentially you have three tripods: the cheap plastic ones, the photo tripods, and then the video tripods. Now, we can already eliminate that cheap plastic tripods. Twenty bucks seems like a good deal for a tripod but in reality, you're just throwing that 20 bucks away. We're then left with that photo tripod and the video tripod. A photo tripod is usually very lightweight. It has a simple design and it keeps small cameras sturdy. They are meant to hold photo cameras, which could be your video camera as well. But if you're planning to build out your SLR like we did with our Panasonic Lumix GH5, then that photo tripod might not be that strong anymore. The quick release is weird. The camera locks into the tripods and it's pretty small on photo tripods. Bigger cameras will therefore wiggle more. Now, a tripod always consists out of two parts. You have the legs and you have the head. You can actually buy these two things separately if you want. Sometimes you like a certain head and a very specific set of legs. You can then combine them together, super easy. Now, a tripod head has three axis's. You can bend which is a horizontal movement, you can tilt which goes vertically, and finally, slant or roll the camera. This is needed to make vertical photos. Professional video is almost never showed vertical so that's why a video tripod can only bend or tilt. Now, looking closer to the video head, you can see that it has a much larger base, a much larger quick release base. In fact, in the high end segments of video and cinema cameras, we can even find tripods like this. Look how big [NOISE] that quick release plate is. That will definitely make our camera sit sturdy. There's a reason a video tripod exists because video moves so a video tripod is designed to make moving shots, whereas a photo tripod is designed to make still photos. We'll actually disregard the photo tripod as well. Now, let's have a closer look at the video tripod. Let me just take this one. This one's a little bit lighter. You'll find three controls on here. There's the drag or friction controls, the counterbalance, and the locks. Now, not all video tripods have all three functionalities and that's where the price difference is at. Now the locks are usually always there. You can find them back here at your pan control locking that. It will make sure that you can't pan anymore. The same thing with the tilt as well. If you lock that, you can't tilt anymore. [LAUGHTER] Note that drag or friction should be fluid and you can find this back in the description of the tripods. If you can't find the words fluid heads, then it doesn't have that feature. A feature that is essential. A fluid heads makes it possible that you can make fluids bend and tilt movements. Within cheaper tripods, this is sometimes built into the lock of your tripods. It's one way of making that drag. The more that you lock it, you have drag, but it's not really good drag. If you want to make very small and gentle movements, having a bigger drag makes it easier for you to do that. Have your cameras also need more drag or friction as well. Although it seems like a nice idea, the fluids lock control is not as trustworthy. After a moderate use, you'll also quickly run into issues where, for instance, the pan control can shoot forward. Or even when you almost entirely locked a pan, you can still move it and it's not enough drag. Ideally, you want to have a separate drag control and a lock. Rotating that wheel also adds more drag to the pan so that way I can make more precise movements. Where I do need to make faster movements, I can just decrease the drag. A tripod like this will last so much longer, although they are a little bit more expensive. That is up to you to decide which one to get. Finally, we have the counterbalance. This is the feature that not all video tripods have and it's usually only needed to what have your cameras. Although if your budget allows, then do get that feature as well as it will make your tripod ready to use on perhaps a future camera that is going to be heavier. A tripod is not an electronic device so it could last a lifetime. That is why I wouldn't cut down on something like that. The counterbalance is a spring in the heads pushing back when it's being tilted. You have different strengths settings in here. The idea is to put it at the right amount so that your camera always stays at the position it's being tilted in without having to use the lock. That's actually needed to avoid camera shake when you need to fill them from an angle and have to make efforts to keep the cameras still. That's why this is an optional feature which is more important for heavier cameras. Now, let's have a look at the legs, which either come with or without a spreader, which is right here in the middle. The spreader makes sure that the legs stay in place and just makes the whole thing more sturdier in general. Now there are a mid spreaders like this one right here, but there are also ground spreaders or bottom spreaders like the heavy tripod rights here. Both do the job good, but I do suggest to get a mid spreader because if you have an uneven surface, that spreader won't get into the way when you're going to put your tripod somewhere, like on a staircase or when there are many rocks out sites. Bottom spreaders are really used in studio environments where you always have a flat surface. Finally, let's have a look at the connection between the tripod legs and the video heads. You can either have a bowl head, also called half bowl, or flats mounts. In most cases, they have bowls from the heads can also be detached so that way you have two in one. In the industry standards, we always work with bowl heads. There are some exceptions where a flat mount goes directly onto the legs, but I wouldn't recommend that. The great thing about the bowl heads is that they are laid with any bowl of the legs and the bottom you can then lock it into place. Having that bowl allows you to level the video heads as you can see. There's almost always some kind of a level tool and a top to help you with that. This means that you can extend the legs of the tripods very quickly the way you want. You don't need to worry about if your tripod is straight or not. You can just use a lock here on the bottom. Use the bowl heads to level your camera. Bowl heads come in two sizes, 75 and 100 millimeters. You can always adapt a 100 to 75 just like with the step up brings that we talked about before. But you cannot go from 75 to 100. Again, that's something to keep in mind. That is a story about the tripods. In the next lesson, we're going to talk about when to use a tripod and also I've got a very good exercise for you to practice your panning and tilting. 26. Panning and Tilting: A tripod allows us to make horizontal movements or doing a bend or a vertical movement, in other words, doing a tilt. Now you could see the tripod as the opposite of handheld. Handheld is considered more dynamic, playful, sometimes chaos. It has a form of reality to it. You showed a depth of a scene more because of that camera movement. A still tripod shot has the opposite effect. It is static but also strong and confident, clean, we can create movements by tanning or tilting, but that is a controlled movement. Scenes shot on a tripod are more relaxed. You can actually mix these shots for a storytelling purpose. Say, we have someone sitting in a room casualty reading something. We shoot this from a tripod because it is a relaxed atmosphere. But then all of a sudden the ground starts shaking, perhaps an earthquake. The tone of the scene changes to more dramatic, and to emphasize that we go handheld and add a little camera motion. There's a reason why we're choosing to film handheld or on a tripod. That is something very important to keep in mind. Corporate is usually filmed on a tripod because it shows confidence. It's like standing with your both feet steady on the grounds. However, it takes some time to set up. You need to bring that tripod. Would you set it up to the correct height, attach your camera to it, etc. You might go handheld, but the reason you're going handheld is not because of storytelling, but because it's more convenient to you and that is a wrong choice. The reason I say that is because this is a mistake that is oftentimes made. I've seen it way too many times on small productions, where they start shooting on a tripod, but as the day progresses, they start to shoot handheld to save time and be faster. Think about what filming technique benefits your story or project the best. Now let's get to panning and tilting. It's important that you practice to start and and such a movement smoothly. Once you started with a pan, for instance, you have to keep going. It doesn't look good if you see yourself adjust. If you notice that you are going too fast, simply slow down until the subject catches up. Although it seems so simple, panning and tilting is something that needs to be practiced. Here's the best way to do that. Take nine sheets of paper and hang them to the wall. Every paper is numbered from 1-9. Now, zoom into it. You only have one paper in the frame. The idea now is to start with is panning from one number to another. Try to start smooth, continue a solid movement, and stop without having to readjust your framing. After that, you do the same thing for tilting as well. Once you feel ready, go sideways, panning and tilting at the same time. Now it's actually good to have someone else standing behind you shouting a number. That way it's more of a surprise and you'll learn to act faster while retaining a smooth movement. Also, experiment with different friction levels. Slow movements had a much bigger friction allowing you to make very smooth movements. If you want to go faster, you need to turn down the friction, try to you find a good friction spot that feels very smooth but allows you to make fast pan and tilt movements. Friction levels don't have to be the same for both the pan and the tilt. In fact, it's sometimes a personal preference where someone likes to have a higher friction, someone else might not. The friction level could also be turned off completely. We talked about shooting on a loose head. Obviously, you'll see a lot more camera shake, but that's exactly what you want. Actually, it's a way to shoot handheld, but it's a more controlled handheld movement because the tripod is anchored to a fixed point. Do the pan and tilt exercises well with a loose head, try to make smooth movements. Definitely when you start and stop, it's going to be so much more trickier though. Shooting on a loose head also gives you the possibility to switch better between the semi-synthetic shots and the more heavy movements. It's also easier to follow someone on a tripod while having that handheld feeling or you can see it as the lazy handheld shot, but don't see it that negative. There's nothing wrong with shooting on a loose head. In fact, it has its own benefits. So go out now and practice your tripod movements with that nine-paper technique. I look forward to seeing you back in the next lesson. 27. The Camera Rig: There are basically two kinds of cameras. You have, the cinema cameras, these are usually very big and have a bunch of a sass severity and like gables sticking out everywhere. Then you have the video camera, like right here. Video cameras usually have good ergonomics and everything is built-in. It works straight out of the box. Video cameras or camcorders come in small, but also in big sizes. We've seen that previously with that one over there. Essentially, they are the same. A brick debt films entry code is audio. But then one day this little fellow right here came along the SLR or photo camera, which apparently can choose pretty high-quality videos. Chances are that you have one of these. But where do these cameras fit in with the cinema cameras, the video cameras or something between? Well, they're not really video cameras, they are photo cameras and not really cinema cameras because we look at the difference. So, we do have their own category. However, that middle category actually do means more towards the cinema cameras. These two things are pretty similar. I know it's crazy, but remember that video cameras work out of the box while SLRs, not really, or it depends on your needs. For instance, ergonomically, this is not great. You don't have a usable microphone either, oftentimes you need to dive into the settings first, we change a whole bunch of stuff to make it work better for video. It's display is very tiny. There's no high cap right here, like the video camera has. I not even all SLRs have the ability to properly tilt or pan to display, although that was mostly a problem with the first-generation of these cameras. So considering that SLRs lean more towards cinema cameras because these cameras are essentially cubes that don't deliver much functionality like this one right here. It's the red digital cinema camera used to film Hollywood and high-end production. But if you take this thing out of the box, it can't do anything. It doesn't even have a display. Heck, it doesn't even have the ability to connect a battery to it. Sounds very strange, but the idea is that you build out this camera to your own needs. I can buy a display and attach that to this brick, but that means that I can get a type of display that I like. And let's talk through what the manufacturer gives me. That is very different from a video camera where everything is built-in. A cinema camera can take up many different configurations. If you're shooting by yourself, that configuration might be compact. So here we have a lens, a display, and the site handle, and a big battery. That's it. But I can also build it out to something bigger, which gives me more control with working with a team. And they'll go over every component right here, but it looks something like this. And, since most SLRs are missing these kind of features as well, you're able to find this same assess where is there a need for cinema cameras, but then for SLRs. To give you an idea, I can attach a top handle to my cinema camera, which I can't do to my SLR. But if I put it into a cage, I get more mounting options, including that option to add a top handle. You will hold most nut fine such assess severities for camcorders, which is why he's SLRs are so special. A whole new market has exploded and you'll find many brands making such assess severities. There are even crazy configurations possible which makes your small little SLR looked like a big Hollywood production cameras. But whether you added fewest assess severity to your SLR or build it out big, we always talk about creating a camera rig. It's not necessary, but a good rig definitely makes things easier and there are no rules when it comes down to making a rig. So I'll share my personal idea about it. And that starts with the cage, which gives you the ability to mount a top handle as well as a better way to attach a microphone. This is the heart of the rig. On the bottom, you could go for a set of 15-millimeter rods. These are industry standard and allows you to attach things like a bowl of focus. This thing slides onto the rocks and allows you to control the focus ring more easily, or more you could add a side handled through these rods or even perhaps a med-box. This is both useful for blocking out light as well as slight and filters in here such as that ND filter. Do keep in mind that such rectangular filters are not more user-friendly. I'd stick to the screw ones. Med-box is in rectangular filters are more often used in studio production where you work with an entire crew. Anyways, and external display, it's not a bad idea. It bigger monitor is always nicer to have and there are many options to choose from. Having that initial cage allows me to connect the battery as well. And then back here sits a plate. It also slides onto the 15-millimeter rods. I can attach a big battery to it, which powers both the camera and the external monitor. Big battery like this gives me power for almost the entire day. So this is my personal rig. It's compact and it adds a whole bunch of extra features that I want. But where does that leave you? You might be stuck with the question now, [inaudible], what do you recommend to me now? That is unfortunately very hard to answer because apart from the many different options that you have, there's also a big price difference between these different brands, and that's why I cannot give advice through a class like this. However, one big advice that I can give you is to start off simple. Never buy a complete rig or make a big investment. Start with a camera cage and a top handle. Along the way see for yourself what feature that you still might miss and then buy those things later on, or that could be an external monitor perhaps. But give it some good thoughts whether or not yet you need a big monitor or a more smaller one. Perhaps what a nightclub. You see the options are endless so take your time to do the research, but also to get to know your own needs. Likely would, everything, products and brands change. If you would ask me today to look for a new rig, I'd have to scour the Internet again to see what has changed. And if there might be some new innovative product or brand on the markets. But at least you have an idea now over the SLR cameras stands, what a camera rig is and what it's meant for. So I do hope that you learned something from this lesson. If you'd like, always feel free to ask for advice in the discussion below, perhaps explain what kind of filming that you do and what your budget is. And I'll see what I can recommend to you. Thanks for watching. 28. The Gimbal: They say film-making is an expensive hobby or a job. That's not true. The problem is that when we walk into a camera shop, it feels like we're in a candy store. You don't need all the extra stuff, but you really want it, and the gimbal is probably one of the most popular extra tools that nobody needs, but everybody buys. [LAUGHTER] Maybe you already have one or you have your eyeballs on one and if you haven't thought about a gimbal yet, trust me, that moment will come. What is a gimbal? It's a device in which you stick your camera in and by powering it on, the motors are going to try and keep your camera steady. That means that you could walk around, but your camera will retain a smooth motion through the scene. They've become very affordable, which is why many filmmakers love to work with them. Just like with cameras, gimbals come in different shapes and sizes as well. You have gimbals designed for phones or the big ones for heavier cinema cameras. But the principles are always the same. Although there are two distinct designs, you have the stick gimbals and the hanging gimbals. Stick gimbals can be operated with one hand and are smaller, so that makes them more travel friendly. Hanging gimbals need to be operated with two hands and are wider. Such gimbals whoever are easier to operate since the weight is hanging on the bottom, those lollipop gimbals have their weight above your grip, so more shake will occur. Of course, that shake is reduced by the gimbal itself, so it won't be that noticeable. Now there are also hybrids which allows you to easily switch between the stick and hanging design. That gives you a sense of the gimbal that are out there on the markets. But now how do we properly operate one of these, like with everything, it takes practice, but there are already a few things that you can keep in mind as a beginner. First of all, don't expect the gimbal to keep your camera perfectly steady. There's no up and down stabilization unless you get one of these with some sort of a spring. Always walk with slightly bend knees and try to place your toes first on the ground. When walking or running at a faster pace, it is much harder to put your toes down first. In such a case, your arm becomes more important, see your arm as a natural spring. Bend it in a 45-degree angle and keep it loose. Move your body and your arms separately. You should try to keep your camera at a fixed height. However, it's also important to slightly move your arm up and down to catch the bumps from your footsteps. Now bending and tilting either goes automatic by twisting the gimbal or it can be controlled through a joystick. That joystick however is not a good idea. You'll have much more precise control over the movement if you just twist the gimbal, steering it in the right direction. This steering needs to be done smoothly, just like you would span or tilt on a tripod, give it a gentle push, let the motors do their work and slowly stop. Never just jack the gimbal to make a quick movement. Finally, let's talk about where to use a gimbal and where not to. The idea of the gimbal is to walk around, if you're planning to stand on the same spot and either go handheld or shoot from a tripods. Gimbals are designed to explore the space, walking paths, objects or walls, show great depth in the scene. Don't be afraid to also experiment with vertical movements. Use the space around you, walk through it and find interesting angles. The gimbal is probably one of the most dynamic tools, so use it in a dynamic way as well. That's in a nutshell, what the gimbal is about and how to use one. Now the gimbal alone could use its own separate class. I've only scratched the surface, but at least you got an introduction. 29. The Slider: Although I could go on for hours about different camera tools and accessories, I'm going to end to list with the camera slider in this last lesson. This is by the way, my very first slider that I got when I just started out with film making. Camera sliders are very simple gadgets, a rail and a platform which you can slide on that rail from left to right, that's it. Now, they are not as popular anymore since back in my day. I think the gimbal has taken over many different tools like also the jib, which I won't cover in this class. The slider however is still something that like to give some attention as it's very underappreciated. Where a gimbal needs to make faster movements and it's usually a bit more rough, a slider is very precise. You can make slow movements while retaining that smooth motion. Sliders could even be equipped with a motor allowing you to go even slower at a much more controlled and precise motion. That is the big difference between a gimbal and a slider. If you're shooting product videos, a slider is a great option since your subject is small and usually sits on a table, the smallest camera motion is visible. I used to shoot all the time on a slider. This one here in particular because it's very cinematic. Which is both great for corporates, commercials, short films, or anything of that. Sliders can be placed on a table or on the ground allowing you to make very low angle shots. But we could also mount it directly onto a tripod and this opens up a whole new world. We are going to need a second head to mount on top of the slider. I would actually suggest you get a photo head because it can pan, tilt, but also roll or slant. You see we can go sideways on a slider or we can push the camera forward and backwards. This is by the way called a track in or a track out shot. But here it starts to become interesting. We can slant this slider since we have it mounted onto a tripod anyways. Here's where that photo heads comes in handy as we can level the camera with the third axis. We can now make jib or lifts movements going up and down. Something that I did so often as I really liked these shots. Now, we can add an extra movement to it. Since the slider is mounted onto a tripod, we can pan with that as well as we're doing these slight movements. You can turnaround objects. This works especially well with product videos where you want to go in an arc around the product. Keep that in mind that you have the video tripod and a slider together. Combining those two can trace dozens of different movements. Movements that are relaxed, dynamic, controlled, precise, and look very cinematic. That's it for cameras sliders and I showed you guys so much different camera gear now that you might still be wondering why do we need to move the camera. That is something that I like to show you in the last lesson of this class, Creating Depth. Which is the whole pure essence of cinematography and are also the next steps into the advanced techniques of film making. 30. Creating Depth: You've probably heard about the word, cinematography already. It's a visual art, and a film projector is also a cinematographer, and their role is to make creative decisions to both camera and lights. In smaller projects, they could be the camera guy as well, but most often they don't touch the camera. The camera operator does that, and listens to what the cinematographer asks them to do. So far in this class, we've been learning about the basics of film making. Right now you have a technical bag of knowledge which makes you a great camera operator. You know how to set up the camera properly, make a nice academic framing of the object. You understand when a cinematographer asked you to shoot handheld instead of on a tripod. You know how a tripod works and why you should or shouldn't use a gimbal. The role of the cinematographer goes beyond that. Visual storytelling through lighting, camera framing and movements, telling a thousand words through one camera shots, and most importantly, create depth. Creating depth, this what's all starts with. It's the next chapter in your film making career. I might make a new class about that, until then, here's an introduction. What many people forget, is that video is two-dimensional, it's flat. You could project a video onto a piece of paper, that's how flat the video is. Now, don't get me wrong, we do capture a 3D world, but we look at it on a 2D screen. That's why it's so important to create depth so that we can show the two-dimensional world onto the 2D plane. Now, one way of doing that is by simply adding camera movements. Whether you go handheld, shooting on a gimbal, or on a slider. You're moving the camera through the scene, and thus we see a parallax. In other words, the audience gets a better understanding of the space that the cameras sits in. Another way to create some more depth is by having the foreground and background objects out of focus. We open the aperture, the focus area gets smaller and thus the background becomes more blurry. We could even place an object in the foreground to get the same results. We can look at this shots here in three layers now. The foreground objects, the subjects, and the backgrounds, they are separated from each other. This creates depth. Framing is another tool to create more depth. Say that we have everything in focus and shooting from a tripods. The way that you frame your scene or subjects can make it appear flat or show depths. I do happen to have a whole, entire class about cinematic camera frame in which I can highly recommend to check out. I'll live link here in the class notes as well as in a class description. Now without going into details, we can use lighting and shadows to show the two-dimensional rolls much better. Colors and contrast so many different ways of creating depths. Now it's not necessary that you create depth through every possible way. You pick one or two techniques, just as long as you're actively looking for at least one way to create depth with every shot. That brings me to the end of the class. Now I have one last conclusion lesson left, so don't leave just yet. 31. Conclusion: Now, let's start with a big applause for yourself. Congratulations for completing this class. You now have a solid understanding of how professional filmmaking works. The foundation is there and you are ready to build further upon that. Now, I've got a few advanced classes that I can highly recommend you check out. Links to those can be found in the description of this class as well as here in the class notes. But give it some time though. As mentioned many times before, filmmaking needs practice, so go out and shoot, implement the techniques that you've learned from this class, but I also dare you to experiment. By making mistakes, you will learn what works and what doesn't. Now, somewhere in the half of this class, I asked you to make a short scripted video. If you haven't done that yet, then now is the time. Create a storyboard for yourself so that you have plenty of time to think about the different techniques that you want to implement. Plan your shots and perhaps re-watch them with the lessons as you're doing that. Having a good preparation means that you can focus on other things while shooting, such as the camera settings. Make a short video, a product video, a simple action of someone making coffee, or perhaps a mini short film. You don't have to edit it that much, just put the shots in a sequence and publish your work here so that I can give feedback. I wish you good luck with that, lots of fun and enjoyment, and then I guess it's goodbye for now. These are always very tough moments. Go now, be free, seek your own paths in life. Just promise me one thing, never forget me, especially when you're the cinematographer on some very big Hollywood set then I hope that you're still thinking about me. Anyways, thank you so much for watching guys. It was a true pleasure giving this class to you, and like we always say, stay creative.