Learn Indie Filmmaking By Making a Short Film

1. Class Intro :: Learn Indie Filmmaking: Films are like dreams, waiting to become a reality. Hello, my name is Olaf Anderson. I am a filmmaker with over two decades of experience. I've made feature films and documentaries that I've written, directed, and produced. In this class, I will share my tips, tricks and secrets with you. The more films I do, the more experience I gather. I've nothing to do with all this experience and I want to give it away to you when you get an idea for a film that is a form of a message. Filmmaking is a way to decode that message. In this class, you'll learn how to write, produce, direct, and finish a short film. We will be side by side as I guide you from lesson to lesson through the steps that have enabled me to complete over 12 feature films I'm going to be teaching you, or rather you're going to be teaching yourself how to learn filmmaking by doing your film independently. Regardless if you're a beginner or if you just started making your own films. This class will deepen your skill as a visual storyteller. Starting in this course will be really easy because we're just going to be starting with your idea. All you need for this class is a camera or even a phone, something to write on and a computer to edit your material. We'll start with your idea. We move into outlining and into screenwriting, directing, cinematography, producing, editing and coloring. I'm really excited to share all my experience with you and I cannot wait to see what kind of films you want to make see you in the first lesson. 2. Class Project: Thank you for joining this class. Let's list out the resources, go over some of the restrictions, and discuss what you need specifically to start doing your own independent film. So I will be holding your hand through each step in this class until I eventually let go, Sorry. In this class, you'll be doing your own short film. The maximum length that I recommend is doing a film from maybe 1 minute up to 3 minutes. The most important thing here is to make it doable, that you're able to achieve something. That you're able to finish something from A to B, keep it short, keep it contained, and keep it focused. We want you to be able to finish this production circle idea, script writing, producing and everything independently. Because the intention here is that when you are finished with the scores and you have finished a short film, that in the future you can, can stand on your own two feet. We are thinking about the long run. The future, the marathon, the yeah. Every film, big or small, is made with the same process. We are going to be imitating and learning that process by doing exactly that, creating your own film independently. We'll be undergoing a kind of DNA process of any project you will take on in the future. It doesn't matter if you're a beginner or you've worked on some film projects in the past. This course will deepen your understanding and knowledge of the process to prepare you for future endeavors, let's get specific on what you need for this class. You need a camera. It could be your phone or anything you can get your hands on. You need a microphone. It can be a part of the camera, or again, anything you can get your hands on, that's the key phrase of independent filmmaking. Something to write with or on. Then you need a computer and editing software to edit your film. Let's talk a little bit about the restriction frame for this course. We are talking about one to 3 minutes short film. Keep it as simple as possible because the main point is to finish the course. So you can make the one to 3 minutes as big or small as you prefer. The minimal requirements you can kind of get away with for this course is you holding an iphone and recording a documentary about something that interests you. Then you're going to edit it and finish it. Version two would be you having an iphone or a camera that you borrow from a friend. You do a little bit more elaborate version of your film, maybe a couple of actors and so on and so forth. Then maybe version three, you would have a big camera that you were able to get somewhere and that you want to shoot something. What you might consider as a big production, the most important thing is do not get stuck on the fence of overwhelm. That is, don't produce yourself into something that isn't manageable. So as you move through the class, feel free to share your progress as you move along. The more we share our progress, the more and we inspire others. Just like we, ourselves, we, we'd like to get inspired. So let's begin. Let's begin with a very simple step which is thinking about the idea, the film that you want to do in this class. And we'll be talking about that in the next lesson. See you there. 3. Your Idea: Welcome to your first assignment. Your first assignment is fairly easy. I hesitated a little bit there. It is simply thinking about an idea for this class and write down everything you know about it. It is important here to flesh it out a little bit. I'm not a great fan to start this class with something so abstract and irrational as an idea, but of course that is our foundation. When you've done that, in the next chapters, we are going to use all exciting tools to try to harvest this idea into structure. Brainstorm. Use a tool of your preference: a pen, a pad, computer, drawer, or just close your eyes and use your imagination. Before you do that, let's talk about the concept of what an idea is. An idea is a little bit like a rainbow. The process of making a film is based out of mathematics, gravity, the laws of nature on Earth. We can measure. We can even measure a rainbow. A rainbow arises in certain meteorological conditions. We can analyze and calculate why the light appears like it does. We can scientifically explain a rainbow. Even though a rainbow is made out of numbers, it still has the ability to lift the heart. Film-making and all the umbrella techniques of film-making, writing, editing, and so on, are these meteorological tools for you to analyze. We don't have to be shy towards our ideas. They are the shy ones. We are the parents and we have to learn to say hi and get to know them. What are they trying to say? They always have a message, and that is the treasure. Stop here for a second and write down everything you know about your idea. 4. Idea Tool :: Fairy Tale: A great way to think about your story or test it, develop it, is to think of it as a fairy tale. Starts by using the phrase, "Once upon a time, " and see where it takes you. I've used this tool millions of times. If you can't explain your story like you would to a child, then you really have to take a second look at it. 5. Breakdown and the 3 Acts: In this chapter, we're going to break down the film process a little bit and over simplistic terms and talk about a three act structure. Let's break down a little bit the filmmaking process. Something takes place in a specific location, somebody is there to record it, that recording goes into editing software where you shot by shot, form a scene and the collection of scenes is perceived as a film. This might seem obvious and maybe even a little bit naive but we really need to break down all the sections of the filmmaking process to understand it. We all know that everything is made out of a beginning, middle and end. Time is made out of a beginning, middle and end. Humans basically think in times of one two three beginning, middle, and end. You've thought about your idea, you may be written down a little bit. The next phase is to figure out a clear beginning, a clear middle, and a clear end. Everything we do has three acts, for example if you go to the store, you have to go out of the house, you go into the store, say hi to the clerk, you get out of the store, beginning, middle and end. Everything has three acts and now it's time for you to place your idea within that structure. 6. Theme :: The most Important tool : In this chapter, we will be talking about theme, which is probably the most underrated tool and also the most complicated tool that we use in our film-making. Theme is an unless endeavor of exploring it, researching it, and trying to understand it and by that, theme becomes a fantastic tool. Theme always comes in a form of a question, why does this happen? Why does that happen? It ties into your beliefs in life, your values in life. If you find a very personal theme or a personal question, then you're also securing that the film that you're doing, it has meaning that it's not just another film sequence out there in the world but it means something to you. Theme relates to purpose and meaning, why we are here. So make sure that the theme that you discover is important to you. A theme is the undercurrent of a story, is the question or questions in the background that will follow it throughout. I sometimes think of a theme like it's a song or a wish from your heart. One example of a theme is, what are the consequences of isolation? What are your personal consequences of being isolated? Then that can start to pour into other departments of your film, like cinematography. They start to shoot on either angles. The costumes, what represents isolation, and so on and so forth. Theme is really like the fountain of everything that keeps giving you ideas, resources, and helps you figure out how to execute your film. You're trying to decode yourself. What is your message? What is your story stand for that is valuable to you? If you don't think about your theme or contemplate it quite a bit, then you can easily get stuck in what I call a what happens mode. This happens, then this happens. Theme will help you realize why do things happen in your story? What is the undercurrent of action in your story? One of the biggest payoffs about thinking about your theme is that you do not always fully understand it. By that, I never stop questioning it or thinking about it, what it could really be, that will contribute greatly to your story's development. 7. Make Poster For Your Film: In this lesson, I'll share with you one of my favorite tools. The poster tool can help you find your idea or even better understand your idea on a deeper level. When using the poster tool, it's important to use your hands. This invites your body to participate in creating your film since your mind is already busy trying to figure it out. Creating with the poster tool is easy, you just draw a poster. We'll start with this tool which works on multiple levels. For now, it's important for you to discover it yourself. Here's the question. What could the poster for your idea look like? As soon as I ask, you might already imagine your poster. But you might also say, I don't know how my poster looks. Or I don't know how to draw, but just get over it and draw it out. Your task in this lesson is to make a basic outline of your poster. If you're still stuck, use just these four simple shapes, a line, a square, a circle, or a triangle. Soon your poster will start giving you ideas. You might discover what genre you want to make. You might discover that the main character has their back to us. On the poster, you might see trees, streets. No matter what you draw, it'll be an image of your film communicating itself to you. Take a moment and start drawing. It doesn't have to be fancy. Just some lines will do. If you're still unsure, here's the good news. Your hands know what the poster should be. In simple terms, your task is to create a basic version of your poster. And if you're still stuck, use those four simple shapes. A line, a square, a circle, or a triangle. After you have drawn the poster, look at it with fresh eyes and notice the symbolism in your drawing. Look at it like it was a classical painting. Don't underestimate yourself. Examine what is big in your poster, what is small, and so on. So have fun drawing your poster. 8. Genre :: Identify Your Genre: In this chapter, you will learn about the value of genre. Genre is what helps the audience identify your story, and it helps them leap into it more quickly. An example of a genre are drama, thriller, horror, romance, even documentary is genre. Social media story is a genre. A common response against genre is, why do I have to pick a genre? My answer is, you don't have to. But you will always eventually end up in one or two genres, whether you like it or not. It is better to decided it beforehand. Genre is also a tool that can help you with how you tell your story. Imagine a person walking from their home towards their car. How do they do that if it's a comedy? Do you see the bright colors? Do you see there is mounts? What happens if you change it into a horror film? Suddenly there's rain. 9. Outline : In this chapter, we'll talk about your outline and some of the challenges that come with writing an outline, and also throw in several tools that you can use when working through it. Let's talk about the outline. It is definitely not my favorite thing in the world, however, I know how much it's going to cost me if I skip that phase or if I try to hurry through it. That is, if I try to just start to write the idea immediately, I know I'm going to run out of steam pretty quickly. This comes from experience. Just the very thought or thinking about doing a list in the vicinity of your idea, can come across a little bit like an insult to that idea. How dare you define me? One of the joys of making a film, working with your idea, is that we love to be surprised, especially about our own ideas. Because of this, we often fear making an outline or listing out, flashing out our idea because we're afraid that we demystify it. However, this is contradictive by the works. The more detailed you list out your film, the more profound the level of your surprise will be. I sometimes think of an outline like I'm building a tunnel deep into the unknown. Making a form of a list in an outline is a way of writing down everything that you know about the idea, and when you do that, it moves out of the way in order for new points to arrive. When you write lists and you're thinking about the outline, doing the outline, it is a form of relief for the idea that you're working on. There are several ways to keep in mind before you do your outline. The most important thing to keep in mind when doing it is to decide the level of depth in detail before you begin. It can be useful to start with an outline that only has chapter headings. Then you can move into bullet points and then into paragraphs. This is a great way to leave the detailed approach for later. It is of great importance and I don't use that word lightly. It is of great importance that you only use one method at a time because a common mistake is trying to do or use two methods at the same time. When you do that, you annihilate your approach. Even though there is a certain value in being confused, I recommend testing this out. This is often called the snowflake method, where you build from a headline to a bullet point to a paragraph. You snowflake it out. Be aware of what method you're using before you use it. Even though we're talking about the outline in this chapter, there are certain extra ways you can go on about detailing your outline. Elements like synopsis, treatment, even log line. The outline is more in our case, in the Indie filmmaking case, the outline is more of work tool. If you're doing an application for any film fund or seeking support, then it would be a good idea to do log line synopsis and treatment and do a little document on your whole thing. However, just now, we're just sticking with a rough form of your outline until you are happy and until you feel that you're ready to start the screenplay. I'll stop right here and do your outline. I know it's a lot to ask because the outline is never going to be perfect. But again, that's film-making. We're always dealing with imperfection. It comes with the job description. Stop right here and do your outline before you continue. 10. Outline Tool :: Change: Changes is obviously what makes story. Something is in a certain situation in beginning and then it changes. Changes has a form of transformation in it. Whenever you check off your script, think about it in terms of plus and minus. It is a little bit like electricity you have minus, you have a plus. For example, if we have a character who is afraid to lose the affection of a loved one, that will be a minus. But in order to understand that minus, we would have to have seen the plus. We would have to see the main character where he or she is receiving kindness from a loved one in order to be at risk to losing it. Changes, and the more clarity you have in your changes introduces a form of stakes. The more clear the minus and the plus, the setup and the payoff, the higher the stakes. 11. Outline Tool :: Storyboard: If you ever feel stranded with your idea, there are some methods of loosening up a little bit. One of the methods is to do a form of storyboard for your idea. That is, you can do some doodling that only you understand, which is fine. You can also take things and just place them on the floor and literally walk into your story. You can even go to some other locations you want to format or locations that are similar to that. Take photos and draw into the photos or characters. 12. Bonus :: Using Keywords: In this section, I'm going to share a tool that I use that can help you protect the flow of creativity. For example, when you're writing so often we don't think in linear order. We're always thinking about the beginning, the middle, and the end. Everything at the same time. With this tool, it can really help you protect the flow of imagination and creativity. The key here is using hashtags or keywords. Sometimes when I write, I use a lot of keywords. Let's say I'm working on an idea and I don't want to go linear, that is, I don't want to go, this happens, then this happens, then this happens. It depends on the mood of my day. Sometimes I use keywords. Sometimes I just think about the idea. If I'm thinking about my character at home, then I'll just say hashtag home and then I write everything that comes to mind there. Then I might think about if the person is, let's say, going out to sea, they have a boat. Hypothetically, I'm not sure which idea this is, but let's say they have a boat and then I'll say #boat, #sea, then I'll continue and continue and continue. Like #car, #husband or #wife or whatever but every paragraph I write, I hashtag it. When I'm finished with the session, I can just look at the hashtags and then reorder afterward what I was writing. That way. I can work with the very often digital thinking of the mind. Because the mind very often doesn't think in linear. Even though when we tell a story, we want it to be linear. When we tell a story, you want to go into it. If that then this kind of equation but the mind is very digital. It just jumps quite a bit. Hashtags can kind of rapport yourself. Sorry, hashtags can kind of rapport with this non-linearity of your mind. So try it out. 13. Screenplay : In this chapter, we're going to start to prepare for your screenplay. Let's break it down into several processes and analyze it a little bit before we start. Writing a screenplay is just like anything else. It is three or four, depending on how it work, processes that you eventually combine. So let's break everything down. These processes are, you start with writing the headline like you've already done. After that, you can go to headline and add some bullet points, after you do the bullet points you can do even more bullet points on through the bullet points. From there you can start analyzing the structure of the scene, deciding in which order it occurs, how it begins, the middle of it, the end of it. Then you have to formulate it into a screenplay format. The scene in a film has a reflective structure of the completed version. That is, a scene has three acts, a beginning, middle, and end. You can choose if you arrive in the middle, in the beginning, or at the end. You can even decide to show the beginning and the middle and leave before the scene ends. Allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions on what happened. I want to emphasize again how important it is to decide the beginning of your scene, the middle of your scene and the end of your scene, regardless of where you actually start. Even though this might seem very obvious and easy, that is precisely why it's tempting to ignore it. Usually, we just want to jump in and write. But ignoring this exercise as I'm sure you'll find out, is a little bit like coming up with a game plan, when the game is already started. 14. Screenplay Format: Regarding the screenplay format, whenever I write a scene for the first time, I write it cleanly, I don't attend to spelling errors or even think about format. I just write through it. When I've done that, then I move over to screenplay mode. When you're in screenplay mode, you are a little bit of an engineer because you've got a structure, interior, exterior characters with uppercase and so on and so forth. You're using the mindset you're using when you write the script is more like an architect. When you write the raw material of your idea, it needs to be away from the architect. When you write a scene, you start by telling the audience or the reader if it is inside or outside, interior/exterior. After that, you name the location, house and then the time of day. After that, it is really up to you how you continue. An example would be, we say, where we are, we give a description of something inside the house, for example and then we start focusing on a person. It is just an example. One method that I often use when I write a screenplay, is I think in terms of zoom in or zoom out. When I start a scene, we could see light coming from a kitchen and then zooming in. We see who was in the kitchen and what are they doing and we can do reverse. I can start in the kitchen, somebody's making coffee, and then I go back and see how they are affecting the environment. Now I'm going to show you a couple of clips from a web series at it, with some friends. You're going to see the scene as it plays out and then you're going to see how it was written at the same time. Subject is confirmed and flagged, accurate intentionally. He should be ready for the reception, unit code 1322. Thanks Kentuc E1571, erase and confirm. Here, need batteries? No man, I'm good. Can I see that? Marcus and Moses. Yeah, over in Brooklyn on Pacific Street. It's a LBB situation, so hurry. Thank you for giving me this important assignment. Stop with the sarcasm let's get going. Where to? I'd like you to stop here a little bit and make an attempt to write a version of a scene of a choice from your screenplay, and start by writing it in a flow mode and then practice bringing that one, only one scene into the screenplay format. Use interior/exterior, characters uppercase and so on and so forth. Have fun. 15. Bonus :: Screenplay Format II: In this section, I'm going to offer more information, more details about the screenplay format and how it works, just so you have it in your toolbox. This is a crash course in screenplay format and we're going to do it pretty quickly. We're going to start with a scene header, when and where does the scene take place, then we're going to go into characters, how we present them; what is uppercase, how do we say their age, how is dialogue formatted and structured. We're also going to talk about the fancy little brackets that we can use all around the screenplay and parentheses and descriptions, off-screen, dialogue, and voice-over. We're going to wrap it up with the use of transitions. First things first, let's start with the scene header. In then scene header, we tell the audience if the scene is inside or outside, INT or EXT. Then we say the name of the location; where does the scene take place? Then we tell the audience what time of day it is. When we introduce a character, we say their name. Usually, it's up to you. It's a little bit of style issue. It's nice to put their name in all caps in the beginning and then their age in brackets afterwards. As you probably know, and we'll see in any screenwriting software, is that the characters are automatically centered in the middle with the dialogue. It is also good to keep in mind every line that you write. It can be very helpful to think of it as a one shot. Right here we can see how one shot is one line or paragraph. This is the action section of the screenplay, where we describe what is happening in the scene. Some of the little things around doing a screenplay are in these nifty brackets spread around the screenplay. Let's talk about some of them. Just after the character's name, before they speak, we can put in what is called the parenthesis, which is a little bit like an afterthought or explanation. We can put in tone of voice and stuff like that. We just have to use it sparingly. Next up in these fancy bracket section is the 0.S. after a character's name, which is off-screen. When something is off-screen, it is happening in the scene. For example, somebody's walking and somebody else, "Hey, come here". That is off-screen because it is in the scene, but they're not in the frame. Off-screen can also be used as, for example, there's a scene that took place a long time ago. We can also be listening to that scene. This is not to be confused with voice-over or V.O. That is something we put in where the character is talking to the audience, like, "I will always remember, blah, blah, blah, blah". Keep in mind not to confuse these two. Off-screen is one thing and voice over is another. Let's go into transitions. It is very practical to put in Cut To. You're in one scene, you write the scene and then you write Cut To and then you're in the next scene. This is also a little bit of a style thing. You can choose if you'll use this or not. 16. Screenplay :: Physical Expression: As you already might know, or you probably suspect, physical expression is the biggest currency you have. In terms of screenwriting, when you want to convey information about your characters. A novel can reveal the inner most thoughts of a character. While in a screenplay, you would go about hiding it in order for the audience to draw their own conclusions. For example, in a novel a character would say that they feel sad. In a screenplay we will put it in, you guessed it, physical expression. The audience want to be a part of the metamorphoses of watching your film, of de-layering it with you, because we all know how it feels when we give it everything through exposition. Remember physical expression, portraying things visually in terms of how people stand, how they walk, the tone and the voice and so on. That is one of the biggest assets you have. 17. Screenplay :: Writing Demo: To show you a little bit higher working for you to practice that script format. I've thought about a film and one scene in the film and the scene that we're about to go through is about a little girl who has a monster under her bed and her parents do not believe her. So let's walk through it slowly. So before I write the scene, I'm going to write some bullet points. First I would think of the theme. What is a monster under a bed? It is fear and what is fear, is it something we're afraid to face? So coming from the theme, maybe there's a mirror in the room and the little girl is looking at herself in the mirror, and there is in the background, we see the bed, and we see some darkness and maybe coming from the scene, because we are talking about fear and not facing it. She can have her eyes closed, open, close, something like that, and maybe when she closes her eyes, her fear can magnify. So when I start the scene, I start with the location, the time of day or night, in this case, the main character and her age, and from this point, I'm just going to go I ignore spelling errors and kind of fly with it. So when I write the scene, I kind of on purpose, and this taken years of practice, you really have to focus to ignore spelling errors. It is a big one, is kind of thinking about spelling really can take you out of it. So it just go with it and after you've done it, I recommend waiting at the here too, revisiting it and then polishing it. 18. Bonus :: Exposition Story: In this lesson, we're going to talk about the level of exposition. How much do you want your audience to know about your film? And how much do you need to hide in order to keep them curious throughout watching your film? It's always a little bit tricky. So let's dive into the lesson. In this lesson, I'm going to reflect on the balance of exposition when you're writing your screenplay. Writing a screenplay, we're always wondering about how much information the audience needs to know in order for them to be intrigued. How much exposition explaining the plot does the audience need in order to be curious about that film and get the story? We don't want to have too much information or too little. Yes, this is as confusing as it sounds. Sidenote to find the balance of how much exposition or information the audience needs. The best way, in my experience, is to listen to your gut instinct. And B, ask someone to read the screenplay to see what they get and don't get even after I complete my film. To make sure I hit the perfect balance of information and exposition, I test screen my film several times to a small audience and listen to their feedback. The question to your personal taste is, how much would you like to hide? And how much would you like the audience to know? If you want, you can also decide to make your film so that no one gets it. That's fine. As long as you are exploring something you're interested in, how much we explain depends also on the financial structure of your film. If you have financiers, then you might have to swallow some artistic pride. Let's continue and get back to the core question. How much information does the audience need in order to understand or be interested in the story? This question should haunt you throughout the writing process because it challenges you and in the end trains you to learn how to explain yourself. I'm fond of things being very clear in my first writing round. In the second round, I use the metaphor of the dark side of the moon because in the second round I start to hide selective clarity. This is not as robotic as it sounds because I often write something I don't understand at first and then go the other way around and add clarity as usual, there is no right or wrong here. But the point of these words is to help you become more aware of playing with the balance of exposition. The metaphor of dark side of the moon. Playing with this balance is a wonderful tool. We want enough clarity, portioned with darkness. The aim is to invite the audience to lean forward to try and peek behind the moon, curious to see if they can see what lies within the darkness. 19. Bonus :: Exposition Dialogue: In this lesson, we're going to talk about the same thing we talked about in the last lesson, which is the level of exposition. How much does the audience need to know in order for them to get the core of the story? How much can you hide? Or how much do you need to hide off the dialogue and off the characters? In the same mission, the audience to want to peek around the characters and see what is inside them. We don't want to give everything away and we want to conceal something. In this lesson, we're going to discuss the balance of exposition when you're writing dialogue in your screenplay. The primary goal in writing dialogue is to make it feel natural and authentic. If you find that the dialogue seems forced or awkward on the page, one helpful tip is to act it out. A skilled actor can often bring even stiff dialogue to life, making it sound much more natural than it appears in writing. The key question to ask yourself while writing dialogue is, is it clear? Clarity doesn't necessarily mean full disclosure or exposition. In real life, people often don't explicitly state their thoughts or feelings. Instead they conceal them. Therefore, you might want to ask, is it evident that the characters are hiding what they're really thinking? And are your intentions clear? As a writer, one method that I use is to write the dialogue with almost silly and obvious exposition, explaining the scene fully in dialogue. I then afterwards, start hiding the exposition. By doing this, I make it clear to me what the characters intentions are so I can hide them. This is almost like painting a wall. Instead of making it perfect the first time I do this layering for the first round, and then add the second layer to hide the first one. Through this, the audience starts playing cat and mouse with the characters. What is in the layer behind the conversation? Example, dialogue. Let's say a character is suspected of committing a crime, a police officer is interrogating them. Example, a layer one with bad exposition. Officer, where were you on the tenth suspect? I was at my sister's place. She can confirm it, but she is lying and covering for me. This was my first round of obvious exposition. Now, in the second round, I start hiding it. Example B, layer two. Without exposition, the character hides what they're thinking of. Where were you on the tenth sp? It's cold in here. Can I get something to drink? In this second example, I avoid answering the question, but the suspect hints that they feel cold, telling us that they are sensitive to heat. They ask if they can get something to drink. Trying to ask a question against a question, hinting that either they are actually thirsty or they're being tactical and trying to distract the officer. 20. Bonus :: Character Development: In this lesson, I'm going to jump into some character development talk. When we are writing a story and we're not sure what to do next or how to deepen the story, it's nice to single out some of the elements in the story. One of the most obvious things that we sometimes forget to look at is actually the, or the characters themselves. Yeah, for example, if I've written a story and I'm stuck with it, I look at many things like the theme, the poster. What is a metaphor? La, la, la. But I also jump into character. I place myself in their shoes. In this example or this lesson, a little bit later, I'm going to pretend to be my grandfather developing a film character. When we write a story and feel it's not quite complete, a good approach to enrich the story is to examine its elements. This could involve pondering the theme, the message, and so on. But another method is to focus on character development. Understanding your characters can elevate your film as it lets you see the film from their point of view. We often overlook that we watch films primarily for the characters, not just the plot. What was the last outstanding film you saw? Perhaps a more revealing question would be, who was the last memorable character you encountered in a film? If you're working on a film character, here are some techniques to delve into their persona. Step into the shoes of your character by simply imagining you are them. Before doing this, I recommend conducting as much research as you can. What major and minor life events do you know about them? In the following example, I've placed myself in my grandfather's shoes and imagined how moments in his life might have looked like during a random winter day back in the 1950s. After you've placed yourself into your character's shoes, write down what you have observed. Please note that there's a big difference between thinking about this exercise and just writing down what comes to mind. Don't confuse thinking and visualizing. So for this exercise, I decided to imagine a day in the life of my grandfather. He came from a farming community on the west coast of Iceland where I grew up. And I wanted to study his character and also just kind of remind myself of where I come from. So I asked my mother for insight into his life, her father. And she told me about a day, a winter day in the 1950s. And her description helped me re, imagine it. For the sake of gaining a perspective into my grandfather's character, I imagined myself slowly descending towards the farmhouse where my grandfather and grandmother lived. In a cold climate back in the day in Iceland. I settled into one day, I imagined that I would travel towards their house or a farmhouse. And when I was inside the house, I felt to smell smell that reminded me of my childhood. When I was in all these farmhouses, there was hints of smell of old leather dirt and also a hint of sulphur from their burning heaters. So placing myself in the footsteps of the character of my grandfather, I inhaled descent and looked out the window and outside the window, because my grandfather was a priest, I saw a church. I would say about 100 meters from the house. I placed myself in the shoes of my grandfather, and I imagine being him. I dressed up in warm wool clothes and walked out of the house and into the afternoon twilight. I felt my cold fingers beneath the gloves, where I removed the snow blocking the path I would lead up to the church entry. After I cleared the path, I was hungry. I went inside back to the house to find something to eat. I listened to an old clock in the house and the sounds of other people talking inside rooms. I ate the remnants of a sheep's head. It was pretty common back in the day, and I drank pitch black coffee with an overload amount of sugar As I looked out the window again, this time not toward the church, but to the farmhouse for the livestock boom. Went back outside and I hear the sound of hard snow breaking under my feet. Then I see day given tonight, I saw my old Jeep car buried in snow. I thought that I would have to pluck it out later and warm it up. But I doubt actually I could go anywhere at all because there was heavy snow all over on my way to the farmhouse. I squinted my eyes During the harsh twilight transition, it made me think of people who had ventured to claim the North Pole. Now, I'm just in the mindset of my grandfather. When I was in the farmhouse working with the livestock and preparing food, I listened to the sheep and cows and I heard them chewing and breathing at the same time. Then I noticed a loyal dog had been following me the whole time, his eyes offering a hug whenever I would feel alone. I thought that my back would hurt with the constant strain of carrying the manure and foods from the bar to the main house. I would also have to prepare a horse maybe, and settle in at the church if someone in the community would die or want to get married. So after imagining this day, I know more about my grandfather because I placed myself in his shoes. And on a personal note, I appreciate my grandfather's resilience and I also learned how much I admire what he did for the community, the community where I grew up. So this was a little character study, placing yourself in the shoes of the character. And I just wanted to visit my grandfather. And I encourage you to do your own study in your own terms for your film. 21. Create A Film Proposal For Financiers: In this lesson, I want to give you a quick run through on how to make a film proposal or information document for your film. If you're doing a short film, documentary or whatever, if you want to get some financing for it, then it's good to create this document. Please note that this is just a quick run through of the basics that you need to create a information document so you can hopefully get financing. But at the end of this lesson, I'm going to put in information how you can receive a 34 page example that I've made specifically for you. I just love sharing resources. In this lesson, I'll cover how to present your film to investors by creating an informational document about your project. This document can be shown to potential financiers, supporters and film funds. At the end of this video, you'll find information on how to download a 34 page example of a film information document that you can use to make a film proposal for your project. Crafting this document, the aim is to quickly convey your film concept to the reader. Think of it as an invitation into your film's universe. Let's dive into a quick guide on creating an information document for your film. This document goes by many names. It's sometimes called a film proposal, film, dossier, or mood document. Creating this document not only allows you to present your film efficiently, but it also helps you delve deeper into your story and better understand it. Here are the crucial six steps you'll need to include to create an informational document for your film. One log line, a single sentence, summary of your film's plot. Two, synopsis, a concise overview of your film's story, characters, and themes. Three, treatment. A more detailed account of your film including character growth, plot twists, and key scenes. Four, author statement, your vision for the film and your unique angle as the filmmaker. Five, visual statement, a description of your film's aesthetic including lighting, cinematography and production design. Six, audience and marketing rundown of your film's target audience and promotional strategy. Once you have these six elements in your informational document, you're all set. I also encourage you to add your personal flare. Include images that capture the mood and essence of the film. To kickstart your process and give you more detailed information. You'll find a link to a PDF example of an informational document or a film proposal in the class resources. 22. Production: You have completed your script, now it's time to break it down and prepare for production. One great analogy that I heard about production, it is a little bit like camping. You want to be able to foresee everything that can come up and make sure that you have everyone on board and all the items needed for happy family or solo camping. In baby language, production is essentially about one thing, making lists and making calls related to those lists. Because we're doing a small project in this class, I'm not going to list detailed worksheets or something like that, because we're keeping it simple. We're only focusing on doing this small project, a manageable project from a to b and finishing it. At this stage, I recommend that you do your lists in reverse. Look at your script and work backwards from that. If it's on the page, then you need to organize it and arrange for it. If there's a specific location, a specific actor, there's no magic formula or magic call or magic list you can make, your screenplay nominates your list making, and the calls thereof. How many actors do you need? How many locations? How many items, wardrobe, and so on? What is your technical equipment? When you prepare for your film, a part of the training in this course is to call random people firsthand and negotiate. When you do a film, this will become a vital skill to be able to communicate clearly to your team and negotiate with your environment. Take a break here, I always have a break, stop right here, and look at the screenplay, each and every scene, and make a detailed list, an action list of what you need to do. I'm going to spare you the suspense, do it. 23. Cinematography :: Visual Style: In this session, we'll go over some of the visual styles you can use for your film and discuss several ways on how you go about finding the right one for you and your film. It is important to make your cameras setups coherent throughout. This will help the audience get into the story and they'll start to trust you. That is, they'll start to trust the narrative style. There needs to be a consistency in how you tell your story. If you break that consistency, there needs to be a strong emotional and narrow the reason for that. The aim here is to keep the camera behind the story. Helpful analogy there could be, we all know when the music gets too loud in a scene, It's feels a little bit like that. You want to keep the music low enough and you want to keep this cinematography consistent so it stays behind and support the story. I want you to think about a style for your film a visual style. Pick one style and stick with it. Just as an example, here is a clip from my film city state. Notice the consistency in the handheld style designed by the cinematographers. My advisors tell me there's a cultural convention in town. It seems its effect in business in a big way. I'm taking care of that. These gentlemen are showing a particular interest in your business. All of it. Despite their funny acts there was no doubt they were joking. I'm not in the habit of buying goods that are personal sell-by date. [inaudible]. At this moment, I'd like you to write down what kind of a visual style you would like to have for your film. You can think about if it fits to your theme? You can think about a similar film that you'd like in the same genre and just research it a little bit. 24. Cinematography :: Angle Tool: In this chapter, we'll talk about how you set up your shots and give you some options thereof. You might be filming this film yourself, or you have a trusted ally that is on the camera for you. It doesn't matter if you're using your phone or if you use a camcorder. When it comes to cameras setups, we're going to focus on frames that are efficient when it comes to editing them. That means that you're always going to be shooting on an angle. This is the basics of film making. For example, if you shoot directly towards an actor, your next set will be 90 degrees on the same action. You just have to keep your corners checked. This technique will help you immensely when it comes to editing the material and enables you to control the time of the scene. If you want to shorten this unit length in the scene, because when you shoot on an angle, it means that you can shorten pauses or you get lengthen passes in a scene, be it dialogue or action. I always want to start with a disclaimer. Whatever I'm saying is the way I think. For example, in terms of cinematography, if you want to do your filming one shots or even just one shot. Fantastic. What I emphasize when I approach a film project is practicality. Practicality means control in time. Controlling time in edit is really important because you can control the time of the product, of the film, of the art that you're doing. The best way to control time is to shoot on an angle. My people spoken to your uncle, Yovan. Apparently, you ought to be trusted. I've set up safe transportation for the shipment. I'm aware of risks. Well, awareness isn't exactly the same as realizing a situation. My employer is fronting you a substantial amount of product. We may have an amicable relationship with your uncle, but that doesn't mean you won't find your head in a ditch if you, [inaudible] the usual bullshit, we say these things. 25. Cinematography :: Making A Shot List: In this section, I'm going to talk about the importance of making a shot list. This is something that we, now I'm projecting. It's something that people often postpone quite a bit. But as soon as you have the first draft of your film in a screenplay format, then I always recommend starting to do the core of the shot list. We start simple, we just list out quickly the shots that we want, the scenes that we have. The earlier we do it, the more time is going to be processing in our minds. Almost like planting a seas in a garden metaphor, then the time is going to grow. Yeah, yeah. In this lesson, I'll discuss the importance of creating a shot list for your film. And why it's crucial to start thinking about your film setups as early as possible. When making a film, a shot list serves as a useful roadmap for the shots you'll need in each scene. It's beneficial to do several iterations of your shot list, starting simple and adding detail with each round. The key is to create a shot list as early as possible in the process or as soon as you've completed the first draft of the script. After finishing the initial version of the shot list, allow some time to pass. New ideas will come to you in the following days. Think of making an early shot list, like planting a seed. Let time and creativity work for you and soon you'll know which shots you prefer for the first round. Briefly outline each scene and list the camera set up you'd like is your shot on a tripod, handheld a wide shot, or a close up and so on. Example shot list for a scene description, a man parks his car, a woman outside a store. Shot list, wide shot from inside the car as the man drives into the parking lot. Tripod shot from outside the car, panning as the car enters the parking lot. Handheld and close up shot of a foot stepping into a puddle next to the car to shot outside the store with the woman in the foreground over her shoulder. We see the man getting out of the car, close up of the woman's face as she looks at the man. Place the tripod low and angle the camera up towards her face. Remember, the key is to be clear and concise in this first round. For subsequent rounds, you'll expand this list further. 26. Sound Recording: In this lesson, we're going to talk about how important it is to have good audio quality and discuss techniques to record good sound when you're making your film. Have you ever seen a film that had great audio but poor visuals, and yet it didn't bother you? Now, reverse it. Have you ever seen a film that had great visuals but poor audio quality? If we have bad audio, then we are snapped out of the dream. I want you to imagine a world where you place audio recording higher than cinematography. The importance of recording good audio is much more important than you might imagine. There are a couple of ways you can have a radio mic here, but that sound is not reliable. You're going to have all kinds of scratches and stuff like that, so you're going to have to do some post production sound on it or dubbing. That's fine, and it can work actually pretty well. However, in most of my films, when I don't have too much budget, then I try to record the sound as able as possible on the film set. What I do is I have a microphone. This is a microphone right here, just like this little guy here. Anyway, usually I take it and I put the micro right here just on top of the actors and then I frame the camera like so. Yeah, all I want to do is to get fantastic, usable sound in that recording. That's one thing. The second thing is the room tone. If you have fantastic dialogue recorded very close, we also need good room tone. If you listen to the room tone in this room, I'm just going to be quiet amazingly. So for a little bit, audio is just layered. Yeah. You have good room tones. And then you can borrow from all kinds of sound libraries, additional room tones, or additional sound effects, maybe. Do parking outside, do we hear dog barking? Well, that's special effects. I just added it in there. Yeah. Great audio recording. 27. Bonus :: Low-Budget Camera Tips: Another little tip you can use, I'm always aware of when I'm sharing my tips or tools, that everyone has their own system. When I'm sharing this, this is something for you to try, maybe it works and maybe it doesn't. It goes without saying but it's always nice to say it. In all my films, I've always used, dare I say, a medium-range camera that is not the top quality, not the bottom quality, but the medium. A couple of tips on that would be if you zoom in a lot, if you have a zoom lens, if you zoom in a lot, then you'll get a background that is a little bit out of focus, which can imitate a very expensive lens. For example, in a lot of my films, I place the characters in one spot, and then I move back quite a bit. I'm not going to talk about meters or miles. I'm going to say, I move back about five or six car lengths. I zoom in completely, using a zoom lens, then I get a very rich background. Then I have the characters in focus, and the background is a little bit out of focus, which imitates a very expensive lens. On location and backgrounds, whenever I'm shooting something that is low-budget, I try to find locations that are texturized but have a certain pattern. That way I can elevate the production design, so to speak. It feels like lived and with some color or texture. Another thing that is good to keep in mind is using the weather. For example, if I'm shooting, again, low-budget, or let's put a better phrase on it. If I'm shooting something as an indie filmmaker, then I try to keep in mind anytime I can use natural elements. It could be a scene that I haven't found a certain location for, then I might move that scene to take place in nature, to get a little bit of elevation in the surroundings, which can translate a low-budget film translating as something higher budget. Another thing that I use quite a bit is rain. If it's raining, then I usually jump out and shoot. If I have characters, then I'm going to place the characters on their shelter so I can have the rain in the foreground and rain in the background. This will, again, give you the equivalent of having a Hollywood rain machine. This is, of course, dependent upon where you live. I live in Iceland, so I use quite a bit of snow. 28. Three Acts Of A Film Moment: In this lesson, I'm going to share with you the three acts of a film moment. Everything is three acts. Remember whatever we do? I'm here, I stand up, I get out the door. Three acts. I walk down the stairs. If I had stairs, maybe they are stairs. Anyway, I open the door, I go downstairs, I open the door downstairs. Where do I live? Everything is three. The reason it's important to think in three and think about the beats of a film moment is that our digestive system as an audience, it's consisted of these three acts. And it ties into when somebody told us the story when we were kids, once upon a time, 123 Beethoven. If we show anything in a film, it always has to be in three acts for the audience to receive it. We can't just show like a personal looking pop and then go to another scene. It has to be a person looking person standing, reacting, or still standing a 333. Did I say 43? Yeah, so enjoy. In this lesson, we're going to zoom into and understand what a film moment is made out of. What is a moment in a film? A film beat. It is a moment that we need to transport to the audience and make sure that the audience understands that moment. In order for the audience to receive a film moment, we need to take a moment and dissect it into three parts. A film moment is just like any moment that you notice around human life. One of the key tools that I've used is to think of a, every moment in a film in three parts. Just like any film is three acts, any story for the matter actually is three acts. The same goes for a film moment. A quick example from daily life of a film moment could be, if you want a sip of water from a friend, you see that your friend has water, Then you ask or plead if you can have a sip. And then hopefully your friend hands you the water. And even if the friend doesn't hand you the water, then still, that's the third act three steps three acts three to rule them all. Let's look at another example. Let's say that we're writing a script where someone is raking leaves. So how do we convey this moment? How do we make a film moment out of someone raking leaves? So we need to dissect it into three parts. The order of these three shots is up to you, for example. The first shot could be a close up of someone raking leaves, like the close up of the actual raking. The second shot could be that we reveal who is raking the leaves. In the third moment, we could see where the leaves are being Ken, which is probably not the right English, but I'm saying it anyway. This was an example of film moment. When you write your script, think about what you want to say, make it as clear as possible to you. And then split what you want to say into three parts. 123, this is for a film moment. If you look at my face, my face, I'm going to have three subtle changes like an actor would do it. I'm going to start here Three. Yeah. It's crucial to understand that a film moment isn't necessarily composed of three different shots or camera set ups. It consists of three distinct story beats. This could be captured in a single shot focused on a character's face held steady on a tripod. The key is to linger on the face long enough to capture three subtle shifts in emotion or thought. For instance, the character's eyes might first reveal contemplation, then shift to indicate a troubling thought, and finally, resolve with a decision on what action to take. 29. Bonus :: Metaphors General Introduction: In this lesson, I'm going to tell you about metaphors in general, because metaphors have changed everything for both my writing, when I'm writing screenplays, and also when I'm making films. Let me first just talk about the basics of metaphors and how a metaphor is a symbol. To put it actually. Much more simply, a metaphor is just an image right there. Metaphor is an image that represents not only your film, but can also represent some of the themes. Can help you find some themes that lie within your story. Metaphors is going to be your new favorite word, Sing it with me. In this section, I'm going to share with you one of the most powerful techniques I use to extract ideas, and that is using metaphors. First, I want to say that the process of getting an idea out of your mind and into the real world is unique to you. So anything I say here after is a suggestion. So what is the process I follow when I'm getting an idea out of my mind and into the real world? The process is of course not linear because an idea doesn't really come to us and conveys itself from left to right, from A to B. There is a seemingly high degree of randomness to it. I'm sure you've all experienced that. It is in net phase where I do my best to try to not control the idea and try to step to the side. One of my favorite things when trying to get an idea out of my mind is to work with metaphors. I use a metaphors to try and help myself understand the idea that wants to come out. For example, let's make a metaphor about using metaphors. I imagine that my mind is a river and the idea are fish in it. Using metaphors is like using a phishing tool to get the idea out. Another example that I sometimes use for myself is to use the metaphor of the cave. In this metaphor, I imagine that my idea resides in a cave. I even imagine that the idea is shy and vulnerable, and afraid to come out. Then I develop that metaphor even further. What if my idea needs to stay in the cave for a certain amount of time because it's not ready to be exposed by the sun outside. Playing with that metaphor, my job is to stay outside the cave and just wait and be available when it comes out. Another example I use is the idea of an idea coming to me, like collecting drops of morning dew. That metaphor helps me be patient, but drop by drop, the idea will slowly grow into a lake. What is required in all metaphor is my presence. I have to wait by the river, by the cave, or by the morning dubs. A way to do that is to stay there and almost kind of waste time in the vicinity of the idea. It doesn't mean I have to think about the idea all the time because that might scare it away. But I do try to be close by in case it calls me. So this is an example of my metaphors. It is very important that you create your own metaphors. We want to start training ourselves a little bit. So what kind of a metaphor would you like to create when it comes to extracting ideas? 30. Using Metaphors To Express Your Story :: Bonus: In this lesson, I'm going to discuss how we can use metaphors to express our films more clearly both in the screenplay and filming stage. Working with metaphorical thinking is a bit like working with the theme of your film. It's mysterious, but it can help you clarify the concept of your film to yourself. So what is a metaphor? Metaphorical language is something that you can visualize. Yeah, so you can start by listening to your friends when they speak in metaphors. So an example could be something always knocks me down. I didn't have any wind today. It's a heavy project weight and stuff like that. Yeah, let's look at some examples of metaphors. Let's take a film for example. Let's think about Force Gump. It's a small boy in a grown man's body. Yeah, that's the metaphor of the film. The metaphor in force comp is that small can still be small in size internally and work miracles in a bigger context. Yeah, it's innocence. Now the metaphor is helping us into the theme of the film, like innocence. See is better than the supposed grown up world. Yeah, that is why I'm using the words small and big. There has to be a size to a metaphor, a position, a posture, or a symbol, almost like a traffic sign. Yeah, it might sound very fascinating and confusing to talk about metaphors, but the more you get to know it, you just start to realize it's another tool in your toolbox. Thinking in metaphors, For example, if you see a movie poster that is half human and half horse was a horse, this by itself is a metaphor. Yeah, a metaphor is clean, half human, half horse can mean a lot of things, but when you're looking at the metaphor, you are the one putting the meaning into it. A poster with half human, half horse could be a horror film. You put the meaning into it. It could be a documentary about the relationship between horses and humans, which goes back centuries. For example, if you want your audience to understand that your film is a mystery, it doesn't really work. A character says it. We want the audience to produce the word mystery inside themselves. Again, metaphorical and metamorphosis sun. In a metaphor, the sun puts light on the flowers and there's metamorphosis metaphor. There's a production from the audience to your seat in this metaphor, what would be an example of a metaphor where we get the audience to imagine or create the word mystery? What could that be? Think about it. A voodoo doll. We see a voodoo doll in the background somewhere. Not just a man stretching. Yeah. That invokes a symbolism that we are positioned in a misery, misery mystery. Even though I'm saying that the words are not enough, we can also place metaphors in a word, therefore increase the understanding of the one listening. Let's think about just two verbal versions. One is without a metaphor, and that could be, don't dwell on the past and focus on the present. But with a metaphor, you could say, looking into the rear view mirror can get you killed. Just notice the difference it has on you when you listen to it with a metaphor and without the metaphor. 31. Metaphor Dialogue Example: Later on in this lesson, I'm going to show you a great example from one of my favorite films, Marching Call, where the main character is talking about bridges, but they're actually talking about their life. In this example that we are about to see, it is a great example of how to use metaphors in dialogue metaphor when we're talking about one thing and we're actually talking about something else. In this example, the main character is talking about bridges. Building bridges. That person has spent all his life building bridges, but he's actually talking about his life's worth. Let's look at the example roll clip. There's no one here, actually, I'm alone here. In this lesson, we're going to look at an example from a film called Margin Call. When you watch this scene, notice in particular how much we can learn about the value of one character just through dialogue and the use of a metaphor, in this case a bridge. What are you doing here? Hey, so Peter finished the model you we're working on really called stone and petted. You think he's right? I know he's right. Did you know I built a bridge once. Sorry. A bridge, no, I didn't know that I was an engineered by trade. Mm hm. It went from Dillsbortom, Ohio, to Moundsville, West Virginia. It spanned 912 feet above the Ohio River. 12,100 people use this thing a day. And it cut out 35 miles of extra driving each way between Wheeling and New Martinsville. That's a combined 847,000 miles of driving a day for 25,410,000 miles a month and 304,920,000 miles a year saved. Now, I completed that project in 1986. That's 22 years ago, over the life of that one bridge, that 6,000 708,240,000, miles that haven't had to be driven at what let's say 50 miles an hour. So that's what, that's 134,164,800 hours, or 559,020 days. So that one little bridge has saved the people of those two communities of combined 1,531 years of their lives, not wasted in a parking car. 1,531 years is. 32. Metaphors in Cinematography: In this lesson, we're going to talk about metaphors in cinematography. Again, metaphors, quick reminder metaphor. A simple metaphor is like it was as easy as drinking water. Metaphor is the image. I'm not sure why I'm doing that. Thinking in metaphors in terms of cinematography helps us think about the relationship between items. What is big? What is small? What is in the foreground? Who is standing? Who is sitting? All these dynamics speak to the audience on many, many levels. I'm not saying that we need to kind of overthink it immensely and kind of painstakingly try to do storyboards and all that. But it's good to keep this in mind as I keep hitting the mic. Let's jump into this lesson. In this lesson, I'm going to discuss how you can use metaphors and cinematography. And how shapes and sizes within your film frame communicate to your audience, just like a traffic sign to a driver. I'm a big fan of not overthinking things when it comes to filming my projects. My go to method is to rely on my gut instinct during a shoot. However, as I've worked on more film projects, I've found enjoyment in making this instinct more conscious way. I can still trust my gut, but with greater precision and awareness. We all recognize that a film frame can be likened to a painting. If you examine classic paintings, you'll notice that every element has been carefully considered in terms of size, shape, and position to create a dynamic that transcends the canvas and connects with viewers across time. These old paintings are metaphors. Just like films, The symbols they employ are relatable, much like traffic signs are, to a driver. When it comes to composing film frames, perhaps the law of composition isn't as rigid as it is in classic paintings. However, it can be beneficial to think about the relationship between the sizes, shapes, and positions of elements in your frame. It doesn't have to limit your artistic expression, but can provide you with time, less tools. I'm not suggesting that you burden yourself with the painstaking task of creating immaculate storyboards for every frame. I'm simply saying it's good to keep this in mind because the way you compose a frame can help you convey your artistic message. In this example, you'll see how you can start shaping your visual narrative that aligns with your story and how you want to convey just by blocking the scene even before you roll the camera or check the frame. Imagine you have two characters having a conversation in a kitchen. Picture them sitting across from each other sipping coffee politely. This conveys one meaning. Now let's alter the scenes meaning by changing the blocking. What if one character is seated at the table sipping coffee while the other stands by the window with their back to the one sitting? With this simple change in blocking, we've transformed the scene's meaning almost Before we even begin filming, consider how the scene's meaning shifts With this adjustment. The one standing is taller than the one sitting. The one standing has turned their back to the one sitting. What does that signify? This is also an illustration of how much you can communicate through visual composition metaphors even before any dialogue unfolds. This can help convey your message more quickly and clearly than words alone. 33. Directing: You've finished your script, you made a shortlist and now you're ready. Maybe not. It doesn't matter. You don't have to be, to direct your film. Let's go over some directing tips and do and don'ts and does and finding your own method. There is a logic in say about directing because the way it is executed very much depends on the characteristics and personality of the individual holding that responsibility. Because of that, it is hard to define with precision a clear to do approach for directing. On one end if a film doesn't work, the director is usually responsible or made responsible. If we work from that end that means that the director is responsible for everything. Doesn't sound fair, does it? Now sorry. Stephen I need this on record. What the director? [inaudible] There isn't much pep talk to be done here. Your job as a director is to make the world you're conveying as real as possible. From there, you can easily guess where your focus needs to be from actors, sets, costumes, makeup, light, and so on. Just like in production, we'll work in reverse. If we want something to appear on screen in a specific way, our job is to find the effective methods to manifest that. Here is a short clip from a film I directed called Malevolent. If you can control your mind. You can control your attitude, and how you handle a situation. Then you can begin to control the situation. Repeat your goal in your mind, visualize it, make it happen. Be proactive. Take charge, and remember that you are amazing. Regarding directing, one of the tips I can give you is prepare, prepare some more and prepare some further more. No director in the history of film making has ever said, "I got too much time to film this scene." I want you to aim at becoming the first. You're not going to make it, but you're going to make your life and others easier. Directing is one of these things that are unique to each individual that takes it on. There are several rules of thumb that you keep in mind when you direct, and I'm going to list them out here so you can hand pick the ones that apply to you. Working with actors, listen to your actor, get to know them. The more you do, the more you'll be able to create rapport, and before you know it, they'll be ready to stand on their heads for you. It's helpful reminder or tool, whatever you want to call it. When it comes to directing, is do not line and read for the actor. If you're not getting the performance you want, you can not do that because acting is just like you doing your new film. It is a discovery process. Yeah. If an actor however, asks you specifically for a line written, you can do it otherwise not. I was probably scolded in my first film pretty severely, and I thank God, it was my first film. Whenever I direct the scene, each and every time it's like you're doing something for the first time. Just before I filmed the scene, I have thought about it in my head quite a bit how I want to shoot it, but my fail-safe method is always, what is the one-shot that will make this scene work. In my head, I worry about what if all the cameras break down, and what if something happens and we can't shoot more than one shot, then I always think about, if I had to make this scene work in one shot, what shot would that be. That's what I think about, and I start by filming that shot. I'll shoot that shot again, until I'm happy with the performance. If I held my fail-safe shot, that when I edit the film again. If I only have this shot than a single work, then I'm free to experiment after that. When it comes to directing and organizing a shoot, blocking is a big part of making it successful in terms of time and efficiency. Blocking in baby language is the travel that the cast does around the scene. You can decide beforehand different actors are supposed to start there and there. If you do that, that is what we call blocking. You can decide beforehand what they want to do, but you can also just go into the location and decide it on the spot. Like when you walk into a location, you can see how it's structured, and the third option is to have the cast go into the location and having actor see now, then they might find their way naturally, throughout the location. You've set up a camera with a cinematographer. There is an actor in front of the camera. The actor has clear directions where he or she can move, they know their lines and it's your job to say action and observe. After you do that, you adjust the camera, the light, and discuss the performance with the actor. A good way to approach directing is always thinking that if something isn't working, it is only because you have not communicated properly what you want. I'm not saying this so that you as a director will feel at fault. This is a practical advice. I'm saying this because when the film is a clumsy in external process, which is the essence of creativity. Your job is to parent that process to the best of your ability. Sometimes you just do mistakes or others do mistake. As a team leader, it's your job to keep the process on track and get it back on there, if it falls off. 34. Film Directing :: Preparation: In this lesson, I want to share with you important elements to keep in mind for your role as a film director. I'll cover a range of responsibilities that fall under the important role of directing a film. Regardless of the size or scope of the film project that you're heading, the role of the film director stays the same. The film director is the glue that keeps all the departments together. And a common joke about film directing is that a film director spends 90% of their time listening to other departments, 9% worrying and 1% directing the film. This joke has some reality to it and keeping that in mind, it will also suggest how important it is for your role as a film director to really prepare as much ahead as you can. Because when you are filming onset a healthy degree of chaos will occur. That's the nature of the sport. Therefore, it goes without saying that the more you prepare, the better you can respond. Even though if you don't use much of your preparation, because anything again can happen on a film set. But preparing will give you a plan to abandon and even more importantly, the preparation phase. As you go through it, it will level you up and increase your focus. Once you will get on set like, the more you prepare, the more focused you will become. 35. Directing Tools : Failsafe and Blocking: Whenever I direct a scene, each and every time, it's like you're doing something for the first time. Just before I film the scene, I have thought about it in my head quite a bit how I want to shoot it, but my failsafe method is always, what is the one shot that will make this scene work? In my head, I worry about what if all the cameras breakdown and what if something happens and we can't shoot more than one shot? Then I always think about, if I had to make this thing work in one shot, what shot would that be? That's what I think about and I start by filming that shot and I shoot that shot again and again and again until I'm happy with the performance, and if I have my failsafe shot, when I edit the film I feel like, if I only have this shot then the single work, then I'm free to experiment after that. When it comes to directing and organizing a shoot, blocking is a big part of making it successful in terms of time and efficiency. Blocking in baby language is the travel that the cast does around the scene. You can decide beforehand different actors are supposed to start there and end there. If you do that, that is what we call blocking. You can decide it beforehand what they want to do, but you can also just go into the location and decide it on the spot. Like when you walk into a location, you can see how it's structured and the third option is to have the cast go into the location and have them act the scene out and they might find their way naturally throughout the location. You've set up a camera with a cinematographer. There is an actor in front of the camera. The actor has clear directions where he or she can move, they know their lines and it's your job to say action and observe. After you do that, you adjust the camera, the light, and discuss the performance with the actor. A good way to approach directing is always thinking that if something isn't working, it is only because you have not communicated properly what you want. I'm not saying this so that you as a director will feel at fault, this is a practical advice. I'm saying this because films are clumsy and external process, which is the essence of creativity, your job is to parent that process to the best of your ability and sometimes you just do mistakes or others do mistakes. As a team leader, it's your job to keep the process on track and get it back on there if it falls off. 36. Bonus :: Directing Focus: In this section, we're going to talk a little bit about an interesting side of directing, which is developing your focus and ways to maintain your focus even though you have a lot of distractions around you on the film set. In this somewhat strange exercise, I'm working with film students in the Icelandic Film School. What they are doing here right now is they are all reading at the same time. The reason they have their thumb between their teeth is to help them try to maintain focus mode, even though everybody is talking at the same time and having the thumb in your mouth in this exercise also makes it unfamiliar in this exercise. I'm training future directors in this strange way and many others to maintain focus even though things are unfamiliar, strange, a little bit silly, and a little bit crowded, that you still have access to your artistic voice. Because the last thing that we want to have happen is that we are trying to direct a scene and everything is going backwards and everybody is talking to you and things feel strange, we do not want to cave in and lose touch with our voice and just film to get it over with. We always want to make sure that some part of us is connected to the artist within. Again, even though things get a little bit crazy onset. 37. Bonus :: Tips on Directing Actors: In this video, I'm going to share with you several tips that can help you when you start directing your film and working with actors. There are many great methods and books on ways to direct actors. And the methods are as many as the directors. Everyone has their own style to develop. When you start making films, you'll notice that the difference between what you've imagined versus the reality of what comes out on screen has a vast difference to it. Finding your directing method is about working with that gap. It can be negative or positive. Sometimes the outcome surprises you in a good way, and sometimes you're just not close to getting the performance you've imagined. Yes, it's about working with this gap. Making a film, and working with actors is teamwork. We also have to be flexible. You can get what you want out of a scene as a director without micromanaging the situation when you're not getting the performance you wished for. The good news is that it's always your fault. You'll have to learn to work with that actor and learn to express yourself more clearly. It's something that only comes with experience. We gather it, learn, take classes, read, but most importantly, gather mistakes and learn from them. One of the most important tips I can give you on directing is to help the actors relax. Being at ease, improves performance. You want to avoid stiffness, exaggerated facial expressions, or overly theatrical moves. Aim for a natural feel. And the first step to achieve that is to relax yourself. This can be challenging when making a film, but just as you develop your directing style, work on finding your own relaxed state. Move slowly and speak clearly even if you're stressed. When you're directing, you're also performing in a way. Being relaxed and open helps your team feel more willing to support and listen to you. Another tip is to never act a scene or dialogue for an actor to show them how you'd like the scene to be performed. That's a big no, no, You can't tell them how they should feel. They've read the script and have their own thoughts. If you're not getting the performance, then it's a slow conversation. There might be subtle tonal suggestions for the actor, but only if they're really asking to use a metaphor. If we micromanage an actor or act the scene for them to show them how it's done. It's like stroking a cat backwards. Find a way to get everyone to chill before the camera rolls. Don't take it so seriously, even though it's dead serious. 38. Editing: Even though all the processes in making a film are really important, I would place editing as more equal than others. Because editing can save your film, it can save a disaster shooting, it can save your creative soul. Because editing can easily become overwhelming, I want you to think about it as Lego chips. Your material is made out of Lego chips and you're just going to build something out of it. Now, I want you keep that image in mind because again, it can get easily overwhelming working in the editing phase. I'm also going to drop in the usual disclaimer here because editing, unlike all the other departments, is extremely subjected to taste. The method that I'm going to be sharing with you here is just my method of how I organize the material after a shoot in the editing phase. As always, I encourage you to find your own recipe towards how you organize yourself. Here's a little peek into my editing process. I organize my material, I look at my material and I look for strong first impressions and you shot that moves me when I looked at it, so I lock my material and I create a bin for each scene, then I decide on what scene I'd like to edit first. That can vary quite a bit depending on the project. I try to do something that I cannot look forward to and that I'm excited about. When I found a scene that I want to start with, I go. What feel, does that scene have? How do I build it? Is it a slow scene? Is it a fast scene? What shots would best express that feeling? 39. Editing Process & First Impressions: Whenever I start editing a film, I always use two methods. The first method is looking at all the clips, analyzing all the clips, listing them down, doing it in an organized manner. But I always combine it with another method, which is what I call the somehow method. I just go in there, I find my favorite scene that I looked forward to edit. Then I edit it and then I have a lot of fun editing the scenes that I have to edit in order to make my favorite scene work. So it's nice to combine these two; the engineering method and then somehow method. Regardless of what method works best for you, I always recommend going through the ordeal of working through on the material, locking it, marking it. The main method that I do here when I do the lock is finding first impressions. That is probably the biggest and the most important tool that you will ever have. If a shock moves you when you look at it, even though you've done the script and you've seen it when you film it, if it still moves you, when you look at it on the screen, then place a little star next to it. As you work through the material, these first impressions will fade. So it is really important further down the line in the editing process that you've marked them because they are going to be your guiding light throughout the edit. Whenever you use [inaudible] grade performance or something just simply moves you in a strong matter, mark it down as a first impression. 40. Edit :: Final Cut Pro : I'm just going to skim through some of the techniques I use by going through a simple scene. There are a lot of great editing classes and tutorials out there and I'm just going to show you a little bit of how I work. In this scene, a man, my friend, their dog has a massage ball and his dog stolen it from him and he's trying to get it back. When we begin the scene, the dog already has the massage ball, so I decide to arrive late into the scene. Then we're just going to see a battle scene between a man and a dog fighting over a ball. Hello and welcome to a brief editing example. Right now, I'm in final cut 10. Final cut is known for its magnetic timeline but because, I'm showing you a general example, I'm not going to use magnetic timeline. I want to simulate how you would do this in any editing software, be it Premier, Da Vinci or even iMovie. Let's see over here. Right here I have my editing window. This is how much I will see of each shot. I've only selected two shots. These are two long shots and I'm going to make a little scene out of it. Right now, I have selected three clips here that I want to start with. Let's look at these three clips in a row and see what they're about. Ah-ah. Give me the ball, bringing it here. Bring me the ball. Bailey. She took our ball? Bailey. Bring me the ball. Bailey. All the three clips have the same message. Deril is asking for his ball. I'm going to take this cut here and just play around with it. I'm just going to overlap it like so. Notice that the sound is going to overlap. See what happens? Bring it here. Bring me the ball. Bailey. She took our ball? Bailey. Let's play with this a little bit. Ah-ah. Give me the ball. Bring it here. Bring me the ball. Bring me the ball. I'm going to take this sound here and I'm going to use the eraser here, which we can select from here. The shortcut is B so I'm just going to go here and push B. I'm going to chop the sound here. I'm going to take the sound away here and this sound is. Bring me the ball. Bring me the ball. Go again. Ah-ah. Give me the ball, bring it here. Bring it here. Notice the little dot that appears here, I'm going to fade it out like so. Bring it here. This one I'm going to fade a little bit like so, I'm going to place it, let me see. Bailey. Bailey. We see him say, this sound has to mark it, and push N and push N. Here's where he says it. This we need to see. Let's take this one here and see what happens if you place it over here. Ah-ah. Give me the ball. Bringing it here. I just want to shorten this cut all the way over here and see how it happens. See it kind of looks at us. Maybe I don't want that. I'm going to skip*** ahead here. Select that and look at the gap and see what happens. Play it. Ah-ah. Give me the ball. Bring it here. Bailey. She took our ball? Bailey. It's pretty good. I'm happy with this cut. Bring it here. Bailey. The immediacy of the sound coming directly at the cut helps the cut. Bring it here. Bailey. She took our ball? Right here, I have my voice coming in, so I'm going to delete that. I always do this just to smoothen the sound. Here, we had put the cite. Bring me the ball. Bring me the ball. Maybe you can use that again. Let me see. Play it. Ah- ah. Give me the ball. Bring it here. Bailey. Maybe it gets good over here. Let's see what happens. Ah-ah. Give me the ball. Bring it here. Bailey. Bring me the ball. That's pretty good. There's a little bit of a sound jump, and I'm always uncomfortable with that. I'm going to smoothen the sound even more. Bring me the ball. That's nice. Bring me the ball. Bring me the ball. Now, I'm going to check if I'm happy with these two cuts. Ah-ah. Give me the ball. Bring it here. Bailey. Bring me the ball. Now, clip number 3 was what? Bring me the ball. Bailey. There's a lot of repetition here but we'll live with it, hope so. Selecting these two. When I select these two, just by the way, I clicked this one and I clicked the option button or command. I hold that in and then I select both of them. I release it and then boom. Let me see how this works. Bring me the ball. Bring me the ball. Sound jump. Always goes on my little editing nerves when I hear sound jumps. Bring me the ball. Okay. Bring me the ball. Bring me the. Even more. Do we have something here? The ball. Oh, he's still in this mush mush. I don't know what that word was, but let's see it. What if we do that? Oh, bring me the ball. That was nice. It's a little accident that happened right there. Oh, bring me the ball. Bailey. I'm happy with these three cuts here. Right now, we're into act two of this major battle. We already setup in the first section act one, where we established dog. The dog has taken a ball and the so-called owner is trying to get it back, and there is stalemate right there. In act two, we're going to bring in an engagement. There's going to be a conflict. Here I'm going to do a mid point of the scene which is false victory. We jump in time and a man, Deril my friend, is now close to the dog and makes an attempt to get the ball. Give me the ball. Failed attempt and right here we have. Come here Bailey. Come here. Come here. Well daddy need a massage. Can daddy get a massage? We place that right here. Just notice I'm just going on gut feeling. Well, daddy. Here's how I have a little jump cut. I have a little cut of the dog right here. I'm just going to place it right here. Come here. Well, daddy need a massage. Now, I have a little bit of a pleading. Here, we had the first section of our scene. I'm just going to move this one because I'm happy with it, right over here and check the next session. There will be this one here, which I've already edited. Let's look at that. Bring me the ball. Bring me the ball. Give me the ball. I'm going to get that ball. Give me the ball. Notice in this section here, he tries again, to get the ball, but this time around there's an escalation. There's a change. Bailey the dog snaps at its owner, snapping. We have escalation. This is section 3. Let's look at the final section which I've already edited with the same process that I've shown you. Come here. Good girl. Come on mama. You're not going to give me? Come here. Come here. You're not going to give me the ball? Did you tried to snap at me for a ball? Why are you snapping at me girl? I'm going to get the ball. I know you right? They're friend now. He's teasing her to get the ball. Now, let's place all these sessions together. I already showed you in detail how I edited this part. Then I went a little quicker here, then I had already edited these ones here. I'm just going to place them all together and see what happens. Right now, we have the scene here. What I'm going to do, I'm just going to place an atmospheric sound in the background. I go up to my bin, and I've made it ready right here. It's going to throw all that clip right over here, boom. First one is complete. Here we go. I'll just place it right here. Now, we have atmospheric sound. Ah-ah. Give me the ball. Bring it here. Let's go crazy and put some music into it. I've already made that right here. Let me see. That's the music. I'm just going to find some high notes on the music. Now, we have a scene, boom. Ah-ah. Give me the ball. Bring it here. Bailey. Bring me the ball. Bailey. Don't chew up the ball. Come on, bring it here. Give me the ball. Bring me the ball. Come here Bailey. Come here. Come here. Well, daddy need a massage. Can get daddy get a massage? Bring me the ball. Bring me the ball. Give me the ball. I'm going to get that ball. Give me the ball. Come here. Good girl. Come on mama. You're not going to give me? Come here. Come here. You're not going to give me the ball? Did you try to snap at me for a ball? Why are you snapping at me girl? I'm going to get the ball. I know you right? 41. Edit :: Real Time Edit Sprint: In this session, I'm going to give you a live demonstration of a 15-minute editing sprint, which means you just put on a timer, 15 minutes and then you go, and the main trick is to never look back, never go back and review your material, just always keep going. I'm just going to start the clock. Right now I'm feeling very uncomfortable, which is probably good. I'm just going to check out the material. Right now we are in summer, that's for sure. With me here today is my friend, Sonny. Hello. Here we go. I'm there with my friend, I see him. Let me just, so what I'm trying to do here is not to become anxious, even though I have the timer, so I'm going to be calm and I'm going to breathe, sigh a little bit, calming down and then being calm. I'm going to decrease my inner dialogue; like what I think about the material and just edit and let my hands do the work and see what happens. It can be fairly scary. Let's go. Right now we are in summer, that's for sure. With me here today is my friend. I'm just going to narrate, not there, just do it. Summer, that's for sure. With me here today is my friend, Sonny. Hello. [LAUGHTER] He's going to take like a mini. With me here today is my friend, Sonny. Hello. [LAUGHTER] We're going to make a mini film. There it is, so now thinking. We're going to make a mini film. I'm just going to shoot a couple of shots with him and we're going to edit and film. I'm just going to shoot a couple of shots with him and we're going to edit together, so we make what we call a little entity in a story. Follow closely. Yeah. All right. [LAUGHTER] A little attitude there. Let's check it out. With me here today. No, sorry, because of the time, I'm not going to go back. I'm going to go forward. [inaudible] or action. Just going to start here. Man, walking. Stop here to see what the rest of it is, is this man walking? Okay. Next shot is because, I'm going on speed, I'm not going to overthink it or analyze it, just a man walking. It's a little bit unskillish out, okay. Let me see, unskill straight here and this is straight here. Check it out. Let's do that. Remove this one. Remove this one. We film two shots with him. No, I'm getting a report here, apparently. What am I saying? We filmed two shots with him, one following him. I'm just going to put this shot on a holiday. This is me narrating as well. What is that? This is nothing. I was going to say because I'm not going to over-analyze it as a side shot. [NOISE] Not being precious with it. [FOREIGN] What am I telling him? [FOREIGN] Yeah, look ahead. [FOREIGN] See your daughter in front of you because my intention here is to get his little smile of his face as much as I can, make him think about his daughter. Little better here, but we're friends, so it's hard to remove that smile. Here we go, a bit of a little smile here. Then when I edit I go, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, that's good. I like this one. I'm going to place it here. I can't go backwards. [NOISE] That was that. What am I saying here? [FOREIGN]. Now, I will go 20 percent slower. I'm saying here, everybody's smiling. [LAUGHTER] I'm just going to delete that. Here is some stuff from the back. [NOISE] See, this works, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, that's enough. Only moving forward again very uncomfortable, nine minutes. Action. [NOISE] That's nice. Action. Of course, I'm going to take the sound down on this thing here, maybe walk, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That's nice. I like the rain here. Okay, moving forward. Here we go. [NOISE] 1, 2, 3, 4. There I was telling him to catch up with me, like walk as fast as I am walking. This is still all of talking. I'm going to wait with that a little bit. Let's move the ones we're not using, this place at the back here. If we can use it, but here we go, don't get as fast we go. You can also go here at the back like so. It means keeping calm, [NOISE] Here he's standing. Okay. [BACKGROUND] There's a nice shot. [BACKGROUND] Up here, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That's good. This one is skipping the beginning all the time. He blinked, we never like blinking in the beginning of a shot. Here we go, 5, 6 that's it. Putting these to the side. This one here is the angle, apparently, there it go, 1, 2, 3, 4. That's enough. Keep going. That's over the shoulder. Just looking where I'm still. You should have played these clips if I'm doing something very precious, but again, the point here now is to go fast and slow. [BACKGROUND] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. That's good. Here we go, like so. [BACKGROUND] That's another angle if I want to. [BACKGROUND] This is his point of view. [BACKGROUND] I have good, and then [BACKGROUND] the same here. That's it. I'm running in a little bit of trouble, I'm not sure what I'm doing here so I'm going to check what I was saying here. [NOISE]. Following him. Resume. We've filmed two shots with him. One following him, one in front. Right now, I'm going to do a side shot and I'm going to ask him to walk. I'm going to ask him to walk. I might be wasting time here. Let me see what [OVERLAPPING] Out here at the end, we've stopped because we started the film with him. I'm going to ask him to walk 20 percent slower [BACKGROUND] so I can follow him on this and now. They're cut out there. Who was the cinematographer there? I'm going to fire him. Let me see. Right now, I'm blessingly not aware of what I'm doing so I'm going to check it out here. Cool. With me here today is my friend. What's up? [LAUGHTER] We're going to make a mini film. I'm just going to shoot a couple of shots with him and we're going to edit together. I'm just going to shoot a couple of film. I'm just going to shoot a couple of shots with him and we're going to edit together, so we will make what we call a little entity in a story. [NOISE] I'm trying to make a story out of this, and I only got four minutes missing. [NOISE] What can I do here? Listen. [NOISE] Here he is as he walks into the frame there. I'm going to use this as a walking frame. I think I have a little extra time here. Right now because I don't have any proper sound on it, I'm just going to make it up. Let me see. Story. Him. Even longer. T in a story him or action. [NOISE]. [MUSIC] Once upon a time, stop. Wait this one. [NOISE] Is here back, side back. Back, let's go front. Three minutes. Oh, my God. Here I go. [MUSIC] Has a little jump there, is it? I think so. I'll take the sound away and use my own beautiful soundtrack. [MUSIC] Up, so jump there. We're just going to shorten this down to what? Oh, my God, two seconds. Do I have any more lingering here? [MUSIC] That's good. Then I'm going to go to the side because I'm not overthinking. [MUSIC] Then I can go back to the back if I want to, hear I go. Actually, I will just make him stop right there and then down with the sound. [MUSIC] Man standing looking somewhere. Oh, it's a nice one. Put this one here. [NOISE] [MUSIC] Here we go. This is a little bit too plain for me. What was the last thing we saw there? We can go over the shoulder. Oh, my God, one minute and 40 seconds. [MUSIC] Here we go. Do I have a close-up of his face? Yes, I do. Here we go. [MUSIC] Something in the background. [MUSIC] Man is clearly looking at something, and let's see what he's looking at. That will be this one here. [MUSIC] Boom, oh, we made a film and we've got one minute to spare so I'm just going to run it through. With me here today is my friend. What's up? [LAUGHTER] We're going to make a mini film. I'm just going to shoot a couple of shots with him and we're going to edit together. We will make what we call a little entity in a story. Yeah. Now, I'm yet to sound this, and I'm going to finish this and polish this. Here we go. It's a little too much though. [MUSIC] This was a quick editing round, and then I would fix the sound and fix the color. But it is pretty amazing what you can do in a short amount of time if you shoot things clearly. Here, I decided on a clear path for the character, and then I shot different angles. I made it cut together, so there we go. Time's up. With me here today is my friend. [BACKGROUND] What's up? [LAUGHTER] We're going to make a mini film. I'm just going to shoot a couple of shots with him and we're going to edit together so we will make what we call a little entity in a story. Yeah. [BACKGROUND] [NOISE] 42. Edit :: Davinci Resolve : Here's a little bonus editing demonstration that I made in that resolve with material that are shot in the rain here in Iceland. You can download all the material for this lesson on the class website. Have fun. Here I have opened telling to resolve 16, which we can get for free. We're just going to do three quick demonstrations of the sample material that comes with the class, where you can practice a little bit of editing and a little bit of thinking. Let's import our material. Here we have the material that you're going to have for this course, opening up all the material and throwing it in here. Here we have the material and now I'm just going to grab it, all of it and put it in here. Nothing fancy. Let me see, this the first shot. Play it, slow motion. This is a mirror, a car mirror. I've got that here. Notice that I'm not going to do anything fancy here. I'm not going to label anything. I'm just going to go very clean at it. Here I have this shot and I'm thinking this is a mirror and you say play and let's just count 1, 2, 3, stop. Here we go. That's here. I'm going to just select this area here. Push the delete button, like so. Next shall we have what is that? What on Earth is that? A plausible rain. My input could be here. Who's the razor here? Like so and nothing else in this shot. Delete. This also rain and the crown, this calmness. It's reversed. So we're going to have to flip it. Once. Could take, drag this here, like so starting in here, go 1, 2, 3, that was the second part of the shot. I'm not going to use that is quite a long shot here. [inaudible] 1, 2, 3, goes away. What is the shot? It's going to rise. 1, 2, 3. So nice. Another shot;1 ,2 ,3. It's nice that we see the wipers there. Anything else in the shot that I want? Maybe the turn here made music. Not here. 1 , 2 , 3. That is nice. Now I have edited down the shots here. We have the reverse one shot. This one here. Let's reverse it and then we go into Inspector and then we flip it, I think it's here. Like so. Let's make a story out of these clips here. Remember, we're always doing the three acts. What could be act number 1? Once upon a time, there was rain. This is my first act. Once upon a time, there was rain. Let's go to act 2. That will be, and there was a car in the rain. It turns out that there's not only rain, but that there's a car in the rain. The car makes a decision to drive in the rain. We're missing one shot for that. Let me see. Where was that? We'll go right here. I am going to skim through it. The car starts to move. Shade the two acts now. Once upon a time, there was rain. Let's go to act 3. This shot. Because we aren't fully established the car, we have rain, rain, car, car. Let's see the city from the eyes of the car right here. This code here, it turned out there was a car in the rain and the car decided to take a ride in it. When the car decided to take a ride in the rain, this is probably nothing that we need for a moment. When the car decided to take a ride in the rain, it's saw the cities, it saw streets and buildings and more buildings. We've made a little short film. We've made a 24 second film. Now I'm going to add some sound effects. I've got three rain effects and then I have windscreen wipers right here. Check this one. Whenever I click this one, I double-click it, and then I push the space button. Click this one. Here we go. Here we select the place and just push either the razor here or the letter B. Let's check this out. Let's say that we're happy with this and I'm just going to lower this falling down here, like so. Say we happy with this. Let's check this rain effect to see what happens when we put on this car here. That's nice. Script like that. Let's just say that. When you switch sounds like that, you are creating time. For example, if we're here and this faith, this one out, like so. Where we have the windscreen wipers right here, double-click, play, space button. I'm just going to drag this clip right down here and let's check it out. It's a little bit too fast. We can keep it that fast if it want to keep the sound in real time. We can also right-click it and go into change clip speed. Just come up to 50 for fun and see what happens. I'm just going to keep it like that, but very low. Here, I'm just going to stop it right here on this one here. Here I would like to have a new sound. There is a rain effect we're not used, which is car interior. Check it. A little bit too aggressive, but we don't care because we're making a creative short film. Notice how the sound is going to help the cuts quite a bit. Fade in the sound a little bit here. Here, I would like to change time. We'll jump in time. What I'm going to do is press the letter B to edit it. Then I'm just going to go randomly somewhere in this sound here and make it jump and make it a little bit lower as well. See what happens. Here I would like to change time again. Then let's squeeze this one, for example, up again, like so. See what happens. We made a little microfilm using the material. Now have fun doing your own version or preferably shooting some simple material yourself and putting it together. 43. Color: In this section, we're going to color our scene here. I just want to mark. This is the usual disclaimer. I'm no color specialist. But for the sake of this video and the whole Do It Yourself Filmmaking, I'm just going to show you how I would, for example, do this one. Let's look at the first shot here. We've two shots on the same camera in the scene, "Give me the ball." I can probably use a similar setting. Let me find first a reference shot. What is the shot I would like to use as a center point of the whole color correction. Let's use this one. You go up to here to this little nifty color thing here. I'm not going to do anything fancy, I'm just going to go over some of the basics. We have Exposure, Saturation and Color. I am going to start with the exposure. In this I'm going to light that very high. Strong highlights, I'm going to take them down quite a bit. Check taking down the midpoint downs and give it a little bit of faded look, like so. Please check this fatal like this. There we go situation. I'll take that down and nudge like so and bring up perhaps the blue a little bit. Blue on the highlights like so. That is this one shot here. It's going to take this one and I copy it. "Copy". Then I would go into this one here. Then I use the same setting and I paste the attributes and then I can select it what I want to paste here. I don't want to mess with the position, I just want to color like so. Turn these two here. I'm going to select all the shots except for these two here. I'm going to "Paste" the attributes, again, only the color ones like so. I'm just going to check it now. Give me the ball, bringing it here. Bailey. Bring me the ball. Bring me the ball. Bailey. Don't chew up the ball. Come on, bring it here. Bring me the ball. Come here Bailey. Come here. Come here. But daddy needs massage. Can daddy get a massage? Bring me the ball. Bring me the ball. Give me the ball. I'm going to get that ball. Give me the ball. Come here. Good girl. Come on mama. You not going to give me the ball. Come here. Come here. You're trying to snap at me for a ball? Why are you snapping at me girl? I'm going to get the ball. 44. Bonus :: Editing Example: "Racing": In this lesson, I'm going to give you or show you rather how I added in Davinci resolve. This is a little family moment. In this specific editing lesson, I'm going to think quite a bit about angles 90 degrees, how important it is to shot in front of my mouth, it's not good, Where was it? Yeah, shooting angles. If you shoot angle speed 90 degrees, then it's usually very easy to edit from this camera to this camera here. You can even have the angles close. This is going to edit fine. So let's, let's do this again. Let's look at an example. First, I'm going to talk a little bit about angles and I'm going to jump into the lesson. In this lesson, I'm going to jump into Da Vinci Resolve, which is a free editing software. I'm going to keep this editing lesson as much as I can in real time for your benefit, so it might be a bit long. But hopefully it will be helpful for you to see my work process. I'm going to be focusing on using camera angles, focusing on 90 degrees. And to show you how much easier it is to edit when you filmed something with this camera angle in mind. Okay, so it's just a little family moment where people are playing together in a computer games and talking and stuff like that. Okay, So let me see here. I have taking first shot here. Let's see, It's going to use this a little bit, okay? Okay. So we're not thinking about audio here specifically, we're only thinking about angles. So this is the screen screen here that, okay, this is the little girl, this is the screen. And then I'm going to find a position. Let me just mute the sound a little bit. This one is also watching the screen out of focus here in the beginning, which I like, let me just see how that edit together. He's also looking at the video, moving the camera a little bit, cutting it here. The idea here is to edit is not thinking about sound completely, we can do that afterwards. I do like the style of things being out of focus. And so like that she's watching take this one out, place it here like check out roles, open mouth. It always interest me how visuals are much more stronger than whatever is being said. We'll think about that later in this exercise. She says something, camera goes down. Maybe if she's saying something, I don't remember what she's saying. We can just go here, let's just take on the video then. The audio has gone to spill over into the next edit. It's always fascinating how we can glue the reality of each scene together just by thinking about the audio, making the audio flawless with no edit. What we learned here is that we have a computer game, somebody saying something, he's watching. She has free hands, so she's not playing. Let me see if we have the joystick here somewhere. Play. This one is being handed over something said position, stop here. Just for the fun of it, I'm just going to do it like that. I don't know if it's going to work, but actually you can see the audio is here and then the audio is here. And I think about the audio later, we're just focusing on making a little reality out. We're making something out of nothing, okay? Carom thinking about editing rhythm, boom. Saying something that's being handed over, he takes a position. Boom. So roles thinking here. Editing rhythm, Teton, Sympathy number nine. Symphony number nine. Not sympathy, that might have been a better title. I'm not going to go into a time machine and tell Peyton that, let me see right here. There's a technique that I use sometimes. Let me see here. My final edit here is this one here. And here I just use a screen grabbing tool that is called screen hint here. I just have this frame here. So I remember what the last frame was. Okay, here, great. I'm thinking if it does edit, he's here. Maybe this is going to edit. Yeah, check it out. Let's move this one closer and I'm just going to put a fancy color on what I have completed here. Yeah, Okay, so this is the last position here. I think this might dit quite nicely check it. It's always good for me to edit without the audio sometimes because it wakes you up from the dream. This is nice. This shot here that we have here, this one here, and this one here. They're going to add it, okay? Because here the camera is almost 90 degrees on the profile and here the camera is almost behind the character. I'm always thinking about the 90% rule. 90 degrees. If you have a shot 90 degrees, it's going to add it nicely. So, here, thinking about Beethoven, or thinking about any rhythm, for that matter, again, what they might be saying might be quite nice, but that is not the exercise at the moment. The exercise here is only thinking about the angles. Okay, here we have a slide pan, maybe we check that out. Staying here behind the camera. What I'm going to do now is to switch these shots. Just going to make them invisible. And check this one, maybe if it's better go 321 fits nice. And the hand position is the same, which is a bonus. Then we're going to pan down to her like that. I see the rest of the shot. As you can imagine, this is very much down to personal taste. How we edit material, we're going to move these guys on a holiday. Guys here can probably just put close here. So what I'd like to do, as you can see, to work all the edits in the timeline, I really like the analog way of editing. What I see is what I get. What I see is what I use last year we did was this one. We can put this one away. Now I just remember it, It's her profile. And we can go to the car, we can jump in time, looks into the camera, and we can just jump in time. If so, please see what happens. I'm not going to use this one. Boom, like that and now we just jumped in time. He's listening. Boom. He looks at the camera and we're conveying non verbally that they're having fun. Let's see if we have a happy accident. I'm not going to overthink the next edit, I'm just going to place it here and see what happens. A little bit more run. Okay so we're here now. I'm going to jump back rather, I'm going to jump forward in time. See like that smiling was camera and then suddenly time has changed. So I'm just going to go into the area when he has his mouth closed right here. Boom. So take this one here away. Or this one. Yeah. So times past saying something, saying something out of focus. We can use this auto focus here as a transition. That's nice though he has a hand up. What is sometimes nice is to use hand gestures like we have, say our hand is here. That we can use that to say, to tell people time. It's a different time from the shot before you see the jump, quick hand movement. When we have the hand movement here, our eyes are going to go here and distract us. And we're going to see the edit, which is nice. I'm pulling a focus is coughing and they're having fun. Okay. I'm just going to stop here when they're both engaged into the scene right now. As you can see, I'm not much going back and looking at the edit. I'm trying to go linear first. Are going to see the last shot here where I have some movement. I use a slider to simply do like that, investigate it. This is a side shot. Side shot and side shot, very nice, so I can use them. The last shot we used was this one used coughing. We're in front of them now, we're going to go back with them. Going to go here, boom. See what happens. Now, I'm just looking at the camera movement. 123 camera is going in, they're still talking, saying something while he is still looking at her. I'm going to go, here, there we go. Boom. Again, this is going to be a different edit if I would be listening to the sound. But what I'm showing here is how you can compartmentalize your work process, thinking about one thing at a time. When we do that, we focus on only editing now. Little by little, we'll learn how to do it, both things at the same time. Editing and listening to the sound. He's watching, he's looking at her. She's there. She's focused. She says something. Okay, stop now, let's see. What was that nist. Now he's here and he's watching. Let's wait until the shot is steady like so. Okay, let's see what happens. Pm. Okay, so now I think I have my edit. I'm just going to roll it through. There's the video game, there's the universal metaphor or simple of open mouth, which is fascination, saying, caving the joystick, saying something over should 123, I make out a pen saying something. We jump ahead in time. They're clearly having fun because of smile to camera. And then we use the hand gesture to jump again into time. They clearly having fun. Now they are settled in, he's talking slowly, she's listening, saying something joyful. And at the end he is calm and they're together. Boom, that's a story. 45. Bonus :: Coloring Example: "Racing": In this lesson, I'm going to correct the video that I just edited in the last lesson just to give you a crash course in some color correction, even though I myself am no expert in color correcting. But it's just nice to wrap it up with a little bit of color when I start to correct what I'd like to start with to find the right reference shot, what is the shot that represents the scene and what's the shot with the most neutral lightning lighting? I'm sure he say that. I would probably go here right now. I'm just going to try out a couple of things. Let me see. Mm. We always want to start by saying that we are not professional colorists, but it's very nice to be able to know your way around this one here. Let me see how that feels. Now I'm going quite a bit on just using this one here to measure it, like the natural look from this camera. This camera is called sigma P. Okay, nice. Then I just go down here, see, and just play with basic contrast. I'm not sure what this pivoting is. Detail makes it more rough, soft. Keep that neutral Y saturation. Do I want it up? Something like that. Highlights. I like to put the highlights down quite a bit and then I can play with the light levels right here. Something like that. Shadows. A lot of the stuff I've learned here in color correction is just by color correcting. A lot of films. Well, that's a little bit too dark now for my taste. Probably like that, yeah. Okay. Temperature. Is it cold? Warm in the room? What about this? That's kind of nice. Okay. We like this one and we're not going to make it super complicated. Just take this one here that I have edited, Right click, crap the still. Then I go up here into gallery, and here's my still right here. I'm just going to apply this great boom. Yeah, I wonder if I can do it. All these apply. Great. I basically copy pasted the whole thing. This is the great. I'm going to set up all these and I'm going to go here, apply the great. We're going to say this is not perfect. This one is a little bit too bright. Let me just take that down, somewhat like that. See how does that sound? This one here, a little bit too bright. Oh, let me just grab this still here. Grab still and apply it to this one here. I apply. Great, I didn't change much now, did it? Not seeing a lot of difference. No, it doesn't have a lot of difference. Let me just play with this one here. No, this one here, nice. And this one is the same as this one. Okay? For this one here, I'm going to use, oh, I use the wrong one, I'm going to use this one here. Apply. Great. Then it's going to go down. Okay. What happens if I use it here? Oh, it's a little bit too dark, I would say, okay, nice, nice, nice. This is a little bit too bright, maybe. Mmmmmm. Check the phase. A little bit neutral. Yeah, perfect. And this one here is a little bit like that. A little bit too bright, similar to this one. We're gonna grab this steel here and apply it. No, I've seen the difference. Oh yeah, there is a difference like so. All right, so now I have color corrected it. All this stuff here, gonna check it out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Checking the color. Yeah. Yeah, that looks good. This one is a little right? Gonna stop here, go here. This one is bright, bright in the beginning here. Bright, dark. This is good. Apply this one. Boom. Going back here. Gonna check it. Y, M, yep. Yeah. So this was just a quick example of how sometimes I just edit family videos pretty quickly. How I call correct them, how my experience of thinking about editing rhythm and everything, how it becomes very natural to me and hopefully you the, the more you practice. There you go. Thank you. 46. Bonus :: Edit Example: Mini-Story: So yeah, here I am again. We're going to jump again into Davinci resolve and I'm going to edit. How do you say it? Like an everyday moment. So just brought the camera with me. I met my brothers and I filmed them with by using some angles over, shooting nine degrees over shoulder, over shoulder. And a master. And then I'll try to do this here, for example, in the master shot that I had of two of them, pump, pump. Then I also show you how we can jump the line studs, again, for a fact, jump the line because usually when you're film like this and you shouldn't like that, that's sure, then you can't really jump the line and show cameras here anyway. I hope the example will be more, I hope the example will be more clear than I am right now. In this lesson, I'm going to edit a quick video that I filmed with my brothers and give you an example of how I approach and edit with supposedly normal everyday material, like having lunch with my brothers. How can I put some jazz into it and create a little story? So what we're going to do now is to simply do some clean editing that we're just going to edit a scene as usual. We're going to think about angles and put some style to it. Yeah, the reason I'm being a little bit vague now on my intentions within scene is that I rarely know my intention before I edit a scene. Let's just see what happens because usually my hands figure out how to edit a scene. Going to mute the audio just for some clean it, do it like that. Somebody is talking from this angle. And here is a little shift here and let me move the camera over here. In this video, maybe I want to use this. Here is movement right here. I'm just going to put a color here on the. Movement can be orange. This is simple. Over shoulder, this is movement. Let's label that as movement. Go to the beautiful orange color. Over should still, this is over. Should still, this is still, this is close up. Let's experiment with close up. Let's give close up another color. We go Navy, not enough differentiation, Purple. Close up. This here is master. Or two shot. This is close up, that's purple. This is over shoulder. Now this shot here compared to this shot here. See I'm crossing the eye line. Jumping over the eye line. Usually we would it from this angle here to this angle. This edits pretty well. Yeah, but we cannot jump from here to this one here because cross the eye line, it's fine to cross it sometimes if there's a point to it. But usually that disturbs the audience and wakes the audience from the dream. This one is here. Here we are on this eye line, shooting and cross. And this is a false movement shot. Movement is of course orange. And this one here is also movement. Okay, let's keep going. Somebody saying here, something from the side. This is from the side. Maybe my first step here is to think about where I want to start. Yeah, the idea here is to put some dynamic energy into the scene. Of course, we can edit it very directly to start here with a master and then go, Chris, cross here. We start with this shot, then we go here, crossing the line here. We can also not cross the eye line by starting here with this one here. Then it too, and then boom. I'm thinking always when I edit a scene, how can I just put some energy into it again, I rarely know the answer unless my hands get their time with the scene. I'm just going to check with, I don't know, this is a useful close up. Okay? I'm going to put some jazz into it. Take this one here. Start here, okay. 12345, boom. Goodbye another close up here. I always like to put up my time line like this. I dislike the feeling of like I'm playing with Lego 12345, boom. So I'm just counting it in to count, Check the rhythm, checking this shot. And I'm not counting because I'm just checking the material rubbing, talking Still an hour up on the close. This is how my scene starts. For some reason, 32132. 01:00 P.M. Okay, like classical music. Where do I want to go from here? So I'm looking for something that's not too traditional. Okay, I want to reveal the characters here. We have some hands, just like the movement of this hand here. Just try it out here. I'll go start it. Roll it, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, nice. There's a conversation going on now he's talking. Let's see, Let's have him listening. This one is listening, okay? This one is talking. We're just thinking, pure, metaphorical, symbolic language. Now, person A talks, person B, listen. This one is starting to talk. I'm just going to stop that. See if it's long enough. Probably not see. This is yeah, listening, listening, listening. When he starts to talk. I want to use this one here. This way we have created a dynamic intro to the scene, okay? We're going to use a little movement here when we switch the talker, okay? Maybe he can look quicker like that. Boom, that's nice. Boom, Boom, Dodd dump bomp. Now he's talking, pulling, focus, talking, talking, talking, talking. So now it might be time to go to a wider shot, kind of reveal where we are. So as we can see, we start very close over shoulder, close, close on a person, close. This way the audience starts to imagine how the place could look like, so we can put the audience to work a little bit, make them curious. Okay, here we're crossing the line. So there's also a question of how do we cross the line? So he's talking, so this is how I can cross the line. I can just go symmetrical. That is, I'm here and I'm going to jump over to the other side. Okay. This one is talking. Then we can move to this one. He's listening and this one is still talking, beautiful. So we've crossed the line like that. So let's check it out. What we have, phone fingers, person a, person B is listening, person moves his hands and start person, person at. We jump over the line where a person B is listening and person A is talking. We have crossed the line and we're able to do that by jumping over at 180 degrees. So I wonder what could be next? Could go here. See, could do that. Go back. See, this one is on his side over his shoulder like that, and now we can go over his shoulder. No, no. Just going to look at who's talking. Remember, we're not listening to the dialog, only universal symbolism. He's talking. What is talking? Talking. He moves. Here, he's talking. Okay, let me see. Listening, stop. Before he starts to talk, we're going to go jump back into this one here. Yeah. And then he stands up, boom, boom. Some lively stuff. Yeah, that's nice. Boom. And now there's a life to it. We have organic movement of the camera. He's talking, talking, talking. So we're almost kind of loose the shot here, boom, boom, boom. There we go. Cut here to this one here, rolling, ear, boom, nice. See he goes, okay. Okay, back here. It feels like a good and stopping mid action. Some movement, and then they just going out. So this was the exercise of just editing without sound, Just thinking about angles and practicing making a little documentary moment. 47. Exporting Your Film: Let's go over how you export your film. We export it should be like exporting, should be going from the computer anyway, when we are exporting our film, it depends on what software you're using. Of course, you have a premier. You have Devin Resolve, you have File. These are the main editing softwares. And it is a fairly straightforward way. We didn't sound right, everything is simple when you know it. Right. But I would say regardless of what editing software you're using, learning how to export it on Youtube video way, I'm not trying to sidestep that, you need to learn this, but I would just say, yeah, it's one Youtube video way. Because every software is different, but they have all these export functions. Did I really teach this or did ask Youtube to teach it for me? 48. Export :: exporting your film and making backups: In this chapter, we are going to discuss exporting your film and some backup strategies. So now, hopefully, you've edited your film, you've put some color into it, and now you're going to export it. There are some great technical videos again, on how you export it specifically, and every editing software has an export function. What I would say is, when you export it do some backups. That is, export your film like you want it to be with sound and color you want. But also export several other versions which is, one version with no color, just the sound, just the dialogue if you have dialogue, just the music until it all separately. This way, in case you lose any of your raw material, you can always use these little chips to re-establish the film or edit it if you want to fix it. 49. Lesson Recap: Congratulations on completing this course. I bet you've learned a lot about the creative process, your strengths, your weaknesses. What I'm doing is simply giving you a form of my strategy or my methods if you want to make films. What you're going to be doing is cross fertilizing your own version of the creative process of making a film. That is the whole point. Making is not something stale, it's an art form that is meant to develop with each individual. What we have been doing is basically going through as neutral as possible some of the fundamentals for you to learn to create your own system for your next project. What we have done, just a quick recap. We have started with an idea, something abstract, we have used a theme, genre, outlining the possibility of storyboarding. From there we went into screenwriting mode. We learned about writing and flow, bringing it over to the format of an actual screenplay. From there, we moved into cinematography and production to directing. After that, we moved into editing, coloring, and then we exported your film, and now you're here. 50. Thank You & Goodbye: I just want to say how important it is for me and how grateful I am that you've taken this course. It has big value to me because the more films I do, the more I understand the value of sharing my experience and how important it is for me to share it and I wouldn't be able to do it unless there was some hopefully interest to it. I say it's from the bottom of my heart. Thank you. When you've completed your film, share it here in the product category so I can check it out and others can check it out. Remember, we're doing films for others to see. Also if you have any questions about the core sharable film-making post them here and I'll do my very best to respond to them as quickly as possible. I'd really appreciate if you leave a review for this class, hopefully positive. I encourage you to go out there and create your own system of film-making. Create your own stories. Be vulnerable, take chances, be silly, be ridiculous but after that structure it, hopefully I didn't ruin it. Thank you so much. What inspired you to become a director? When I was 20, I broke up with a girl, you discovered all things about yourself. You ask yourself serious questions and I found this answer to express myself through films.