Secret Path To Becoming a Cinematographer

1. Welcome: In this class, I'm going to guide you through practical steps you can take right now to start your journey to becoming a cinematographer. Hi, my name is Pierz trovic, a film director, screenwriter and an academic teacher at Polish National Film School. My filmmaking journey began 20 years ago when I created my first short film, serving as my own cinematographer. Drawing from my experience of being self taught, attending to film school, and working in the film industry. I've distilled essential knowledge into this easy to follow class. We'll explore each stage of film production giving you a comprehensive understanding of the role and creative contributions of director of photography. To make things clear, we'll break down the cinematographer's role according to the stages of film creation process. We'll start from the conceptual phase with Moodboard preparation, move on to the creating of a shotlist or a photo storyboard and then dive into the actual production and post production. At each stage, I'll introduce you to various tools and applications that can assist you. Lastly, I'll show you where to find relevant information and how to connect with your local film community. My goal is to equip you with the knowledge and skills needed to be accepted and start working on the film set, paving the way for your creative journey. I'm looking forward to seeing you in the class. 2. The Cinematographer: Roles, Responsibilities, and Collaborations: Thank you for enrolling in my class. So let's start with a simple definition of cinematographer. The cinematographer on a movie set is a person with a camera. The cinematographer's job can include planning shots, lighting, and operating a camera. A cinematographer is also called the director of photography or DP or DOP for short. On a large budget film, there may be several cameras being used at once. The cinematographer is the person who directs the camera operators as well as oversees the lighting on a set. Director myself, I view my cinematographer as my closest associate during the production of a film. The cinematographer is the first person with whom you balance the ideas off and discuss the tone of the film. It's a very important collaboration and a lot depends on it. During my independent amateur times, when I was writing, producing, directing, and editing my films myself. I was the only creator, and I was always behind the camera. This is how we kind of all begin, right? While studying at Polish National Film School, I made student films with many different cinematography students. I got to know their creative visions and ambitions, I watched them work with me and watched other movies that they made with different directors. I was lucky to find a cinematographer whose creative style I liked and whose skills were fluent enough that we could both work on different kind of stories. You know, Every film has a different kind of a story and every film needs a different kind of approach. Me and my cinematographer Nicolas, we have been working together ever since. But this kind of collaboration doesn't always happen. It's also normal for cinematographer to already be attached to a project. As a professional, you are expected to work with anyone. Therefore, there is a very strict set of expectations and duties that cinematographer is expected to fulfill. Now I'm going to name some of them. As sigma atographer, you will be expected to collaborate with the director, take part in the creation of the visual style of the film, help to choose the locations for filming. Take part in the creation of materials like storyboard, short lists. You are also going to be expected to attend technical documentation on locations of filming. If you're going to be asked, you also have to attend rehearsals with actors and prepare the list of camera and lighting equipment. You're also expected to be the head of the camera and the lighting team and collaborate with the production manager to realize the vision within the budget and on time. As you can see, it's quite a lot to do and a lot of responsibility. On a normal scale film production, a lot of money is allocated to the camera and lighting department proportionately to, you know, other departments in the film like art design and snography. Now, You creative input in the film depends on the director. Most will make you a partner in finding the distinct visual style. But some directors will want to do everything by themselves, and some will leave you with a total creative freedom. There is no one way to do it. As I said, it depends on the director, and it's one of those things you guys need to discuss before beginning to work together. Now, if you are a beginner making your first short film, you are probably going to fulfill most of the filmmakers duties like I used to do when I was making my first short films. However, it's very useful to understand the framework and what to do and when to do it to better organize the work on your film set. Even if you're beginning, I advise you to reach out to local filmmaker community and look for people who are as enthusiastic about making films and are going to help you with your movie. You can meet another filmmaker who will agree to be your cinematographer, for your movie in exchange for you to be his cinematographer with his project. Or maybe you'll get lucky and find people who are, you know, enthusiastic about your project and won't expect anything in return. Maybe you don't have a project, and these people are going to accept you to their project and their teams. Either way, your work as a cinematographer will have three stages, preproduction, which is preparation, production when you are shooting the film and post production. It's when after the film is going to be edited, you're going to post process the shots and make them beautiful. In my opinion, the preparation is the most important part of the cinematographers work or any filmmakers work. If it's when the most important decisions are being made. We are going to start with this part of the process in the next lecture. See you there. 3. Script to Screen: Creative Cinematography Prep (Project#1): Let's begin by understanding that all the visual creative choices are meant to serve the story. This is the most important concept in this class and should guide your decision making process when you're a cinematographer. You should set aside your personal preferences and make decisions that enhance the storytelling. Making the right decisions will come with experience and intuition. It's the essence of your talent that will develop over time. Come up with the ideas. You need to watch and analyze a lot of movies. So let's start with analyzing right now. Let's look at two example scenes. One scene will have a very elaborate camera movement, and the other scene will have a more random handheld camera. Please watch both of these scenes and try to distinguish which is which. Let's watch. Hello, Yan. Hello. B. Why don't you have any church bells? We do not need bells in our church to wash. I like church bells. Let's put them back again. Okay. Have fun. Now, I hope you like the scenes. And let's begin with a Alfred Hitchcock's psycho, the camera work is very elaborate and stylized. The shots are either on a tripod or when the camera is moving its smooth motion on a dollly. This is how the director builds suspense and anticipation that something horrible is going to happen. From the context of the scenes that we already seen in the film, We know that the detective is in danger and the director prolongs the tension by showing him looking around and coming up the stairs. Now, using this type of sophisticated camera movement or a camera on a tripod, we get the feel that what's going to happen is inevitable. The man is doomed and we can't do anything about it. In contrast, breaking the waves by Lars Vanreer uses a camera that is very shaky and the style of filming is close to a documentary film, right? As you've probably noticed, the editing was also rather erratic. They would cut out parts of the scene and didn't mind disrupting the unity of action and time. They would just make jump cuts, right? Now, Why would they do it? It's a multi million period film with stars, I mean, European acting stars. Why would they film it like that with a shaky handheld camera? Well, the answer is in the script of the film. This film is like a fairy tale. We have an innocent and good but very simple protagonist best who is facing horrible injustice. In modern cinema, we have this trend of complicated protagonists who all have their dark side. Lars andre who wrote and directed the film, decided that characters in this film are going to be either good or bad. And since it's a fairy tale happening on a beautiful rocky island, they had to do anything they could to give this film a documentary texture if they would use a stationary camera. This story would be too sweet and unbearable. With the use of a documentary camera and realistic acting. Las Montrere was able to create a very emotional film. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend watching breaking the waves. Now, since we spoke about breaking the waves, now let's talk about breaking the rules. Let's break the cinematographic rules. Let's watch a scene from bringing out the dead. This scene will be heavily stylized. Uh, the main hero is a paramedic who uses drugs, and in this scene, the cinematographer used many different techniques to visualize his state of mind. One of them is considerate breaking the rules and a big no no no in cinematography. See if you can spot it. Let's see the scene. Frank. Frank, what are you doing back there? I'm sick, Tom. I need a cure. Vitamin B cocktail. Followed by an app of blue Case. Drop of adrenaline. It's not as good as beer. That's all I got. Come on, Frank, there's blood spilling in the street, SqushFun Watch out? These are hard times. Yeah. Spraying, isn't it? Spray to be trumped. S killing me. Look up in the sky, Frank, foo. Blood's gonna run tonight. I could feel it. Our mission to save lives. Mission Shop. Ten. In this scene, the cinematographer Robert Richardson over exposed the white light. In the places where you see the over exposition, there is a characteristic glow. This glow is achieved by putting a transparent cloth with a net between lens and a sector in the camera. In the old days, cinematographers use stockings, like something that women wear on their legs and tape them to the back of the lens. And this is how you can achieve this characteristic glow effect. So as you can see, there is no one right way of doing things. Different approaches can serve a purpose, and as a cinematographer, you have to grow on your own by watching and analyzing movies and constantly learning. No one, literally, no one is expecting your framing and pictures that you do to be pretty. They're supposed to be purposeful. So let's get back to the process of making movies. The first thing that you need to do is read the screenplay of the story and figure out what is going to be your visual style. If you're working with a director, some of these decisions might be predetermined. During pre production, you may brainstorm it with the rest of the art department sonography department or any other creative department. It's the best moment to raise questions like, what is the tone of the film? What is the color palette that you're going to use? What other films inspire the look of this particular story? What special effects are we going to need? Directors and cinematographers often communicate with each other during this phase using mood boards or loop books. A moodboard is a collection of pictures from other movies that are going to be referenced for your work. You can show moodboards to the producers to highlight how you're going to shoot this particular film. One page of a moodboard should show a couple of photographs next to each other that show a particular aspect of the film. Let's say that many scenes are going to be shot in a church. You may have a page with the title church or just interiors, and then a collection of steel frames from other movies that capture this particular mood. If you're thinking about a particular lighting, you can have a page with the title light and have the references about lighting only. Your moodboard has to encapsulate your idea. Usually, DOPs mood boards contain pages with titles like interiors, exteriors, lighting, mood of the City, and so on. Whatever is important in this particular visual style. In my opinion, nine pictures on one page is enough. Now, I have a great tool that can help you prepare your mood board. It's a website that uses AI to catalog scenes from films. The tool that I sometimes use is FM AI, S L AI. Now I'm going to read their definition of who they are and what they do. Film is the best tool for econographic search. It's constantly evolving database of HD screenshots. Over 50,000 HD screenshots provided daily stills coming from movies, documentaries and soon from ads and music videos. It's an outstanding search engine. Each picture is registered by film director, DOP, actor, and also kind style topics and release date. It's an artificial intelligence helping you. Each screenshots gets a color analysis, AI that detects objects, clothes, characters, et cetera. So, if you have an idea for an interesting underwater scene. Let's say I want a woman and I have an idea that the color red will symbolize something in the scene. I write in the search box, Underwater woman with a red tint. This is what it shows me. Every example comes with a palette of colors. You can search by the color, and I can see the title of the original film if you wish to find it and see the whole thing. There are also other web pages that do the same thing. If you don't like film AI, you can find other tools as well. Now, let's end this lecture with a first class project. First, watch any of the films mentioned in this glitz, Psycho, breaking the waves or bringing out the dead, and try to prepare a moodboard of this film. Two, recognize most important elements of the visual style of the film and use it as the title for your panels. Hree When you will be choosing the pictures for your panels, let's exclude the frames from the actual film that you have chosen. There are many other films that you can choose stills from. I'm super curious about your projects. I'll be giving feedback to everyone who decides to submit. See you in the next lecture. 4. Mastering Preparation: Scouting and Planning (Project#2): During the pre production period, a crucial job of a cinematographer is to scout locations. The director of photography, DOP will accompany the director, location manager and the production team like Scouts, as they search for suitable filming locations. During this communication process, you may discuss with the director how you're going to set up the movement of the actors in the scenes. It's always best to use this opportunity being there on location to shoot a photo storyboard if you have time for it, right? A photo storyboard is a series of pictures that you take on location that show exactly how the frame is going to look. Of course, during the documentation, your actors won't be there for you. You can use whoever is there as a muzzle. For instance, you can see the photo storyboard. I did with my cinematographer. Where I play the subject in the frame, like here. See that? Because this is a working material where you just want to show your crew what the shots are going to look like. In this particular example, we were alone on the location, and my DOP Nicolas wanted to imitate the face of another actor, so he just used his hand in the frame. Now, after you're going to make this picture, it's crucial to number them and add the needed information like which character is in the frame. I repeat it's a working material, and I don't intend it to be pretty, but rather understandable. Meaning, If I don't have access to a location, I try to recreate it in my house. When I don't have my cinematographer and I was doing it alone and had no one to take a picture, I just drew it. Why not? Anything goes. Your mission is to prepare the material that will help you during your work on a set. That's it. Your goal here is to prepare a shot list. You may need to go to the film in location with the director to prepare this photo storyboard. It's very important that you don't spend precious time on set thinking about where to put the camera. You should plan everything beforehand, and on the day of the shooting, have it printed out like I have here. And I always bind it like a book, right? In order in which I'm going to be shooting this. Other crew members also have this document with them during the shooting and they know exactly what we are filming now and what's going to be shot next so they can prepare. Now, as you can probably see, we use a special view finder app that you download on your phone, and it will imitate the frame of the particular camera and display a particular lens number like 35 millimeters or 50 millimeters. There are a number of tools like that. Unfortunately, most of them are payware but there is one that you don't have to pay for. I'll link it in the comment. The application is called magic Ari viewfinder. Now, another useful app is shot designer. Apart from making a storyboard or photos storyboard, this app allows you to create a top down view of the s. You can even animate how your actor is going to move. You can combine the power of a photo story board and incorporate the shots made with viewfinder app with the top down view. Now, this particular photos story board was made with my cinematographer's viewfinder App. By the way, shot designer app has a built in viewfinder mode, but in my opinion, it's not as good as other dedicated apps. So to give you an example, this is a plan that my scene and autographer made for a scene in my debut feature film fate breaker. If you have seen a top down schematic in my other classes, be sure that it was made with this program, shot design. Additionally, this program lets you add to this schematic, the camera position, and lighting equipment. The green stuff on the scheme is lighting equipment. Unfortunately, this program is also paywre, but you can test it out for free. In the demo version, you can create only one project. So this is the main limitation. But within the project, you have all the functionality of the full version. Now, when you are preparing a short list or a photo storyboard, it's crucial to be aware of 180 degree rule. This rule governs where you should put the camera in relation to the actor. The purpose of this rule is to minimize potential confusion for the audience when they are watching a scene. I've created a separate course on the basics of 180 degree rule, as well as another course on the subtleties of camera placement. I highly recommend watching both of these classes. They will be of great help when you're preparing for your shoot and starting to set up the movement in the scene. Another useful app during the location scouting is sun seeker. This type of app shows you exactly where the sun is going to be. It's cinematographer's job to survey the location for the natural light or, you know, lack of thereof. A sunk application is going to help you with that. You can make screenshots and prepare and be aware of where the sun is going to be when you will be shooting the scene. Now, you have to remember that when you are preparing for your film, you will have a limited period of time. It's great if you can prepare a very thorough shortlist with a top down schematics and lots of information that will make your work on a set more organized. But you have to remember that things not always go according to the plan. More prepared you're going to be the better for you. However, not always do we have the time to prepare everything. Sometimes we lose a location and we have to adapt quickly to another location, and we just don't have the time to update our materials. However, the work that you have done on the other location that you have lost is not going to be forgotten. Some decisions are going to transpire to your new location. So preparing is always good, even if you're not sure you're going to use this particular location. Okay, so I've given you the basic information how to prepare for a shoe. Now it's time for our class project number two. Take one of the three scenes that you've seen in the previous lesson and try to recreate a photo storyboard of each shot that went into the scene. I want you to use your camera or your view finder up to map out all the camera angles in the scene. As an example, you can use a link to my other project from another class of mine about 100 degree rule. Good luck. 5. From Vision to Film: Technical Preparation and Production: During the stage of technical preparation and production. You already have a clear understanding of the effect you're aiming for and the visual style you want to achieve. Now it's time to determine the equipment and the crew you'll need to bring your vision to life. To illustrate this, I've prepared two examples from two very different movies. Let's consider the style and consistency throughout each scene. First, let's look at the beginning of the Brazilian film, City of God. Yeah, I got for you. B. But. We put a poll. Now, if you analyze every single shot of this lively opening of the film, you'll notice that there is no consistency in the lenses that were used to shoot this. In fact, the inconsistency is the consistency of the s. Some shots are shot with very wide lenses. While others are shot with a very long telescopic lenses with a shallow depth of field. You can imagine that the list of camera equipment for this film was quite extensive, right? Now, let's watch a trailer of a different film, which is on the other side of the spectrum. This is call me by your name, and the entire film was shot using only one lens, which is 35 millimeters. It's quite unusual for filmmakers to limit themselves this way. Mr. Perlman. Thank you so much. Go through. I can show you around. That'd be great. Thank you. So what do you do around here? Read books, transcribe music. Swim at the river. Go out at night. Sounds fun. Alright. Later. Just watch. This is how we'll say goodbye to us when the time comes. Later. Meanwhile, we'll have to put up with him for six weeks. Muscles of firm. Not a straight body in these statues. They're all curved. Sometimes impossibly curved. And so chant hence their ageless ambiguity. Changing lenses on the set takes time about 10 minutes and deciding on one single lens for the entire films makes some things easier. But it also makes other things really hard. For instance, if you want to make a close up with the same lens that you've used for white shots, you will have to physically move the camera closer to the actor. But what the filmmakers gained by using only one lens is the uniformity of the image. You are watching the action from only one perspective. And 35 millimeter lens. Let's call it geometry of vision is very close to how human eye sees reality. I would say that 35 millimeters best mimics the human vision, and this was the main motivation behind the filmmakers decision to pick this lens for the entire film. Now, I showed you these two examples because I wanted to demonstrate how your vision will dictate the kind of equipment and crew you're going to need. If the style you have chosen is raw and documentary like as in breaking the waves, you won't need sophisticated equipment and crews. But if you'll choose a very sophisticated camera movement with a doll or steady cam with lots of different lenses, your crew will be larger, is obvious. And you'll also need to hire a grip who is going to operate the dolly. This kind of decisions always come down to the idea that you have. Fortunately, in this day and age of small digital cameras, you can imitate this kind of expensive camera movement with fairly cheap equipment. The most important thing to note here, that you don't need to buy it. The industry standard is to rent the needed equipment for particular days of shooting. Some of those renting places even operate 247, so you can return the equipment right after you shoot. Apart from the equipment, you also need the team to operate it. At the beginning of your journey on amateur independent films, you will be doing most of the stuff yourself. Now, professional DPs have built teams, they can trust that work on many different projects and will often work with the same camera crews and lighting crews from film to film. They are also going to work with the production team to hire and fill out the film crew. The primary positions that interact with DOP the most include a camera operator. Obviously, also known as a cameraman, the first and second camera assistant, also the gaffer for lighting and the key grip. Now, being a part of someone else's team is the best way of learning the cinematographers craft, and this is how you can advance. We've already discussed your mental preparation and choosing the visual style of your film. We've also talked about preparing a photo storyboard and other materials that are going to help you on the set. We've discussed choosing the right equipment and crew. Now you're ready to shoot the film, and if you've done everything correctly, your work on a set should be the execution of what you have prepared beforehand. As always, some things are going to change. And when you and your director see opportunities, you're going to take them to make the best film possible. Once on the set, the DP directs the camera and lighting technicians, paying attention to such cinematography techniques, composition, framing and exposure. This includes choosing the camera lens and filters that determine the ideal depth of field of the shot and discussing with the director which shot should be a close up medium shots or is shot. The DP will also instruct the camera operator as what type of a camera movement and camera work is necessary at a given shot. Now, as I said before, this whole thing should be predetermined earlier on, but it's subject to change during the shooting if you see if another lens would work better or another camera movement would work better. A very important thing to understand is that your plan your preparation shouldn't limit your creativity on the set. Now, when you're filming during the production, you're going to watch the materials you've already shot. We call it Dailies and discuss the progress of your shooting. Dailies refer to raw unedited footage that was shot that particular day or the day before. Dailies are reviewed by the director, DP, and the producer to ensure that everything is going according to plan, and that you shot everything that you've needed. I don't want to talk too much about the production period because for me, it's the execution of what was planned before. Obviously, the vision changes, and there is a lot of creative process going on the film set, but it's mostly intuition, working, is magic, and it's really hard to teach about it. And that's why I always tell my students to try to spend as much time on a film set as humanly possible. We are going to talk about ways how you can meet people from the camera department and get yourself working on the film set in the next lecture of this course. See you there. Okay. 6. Post-production and Color Grading (Project#3): The role of a cinematographer doesn't end when the shooting period wraps up, right? You still have to oversee the post production of the image. The image captured by the camera on the set is not going to be perfect, which is why you need to correct it with the help of a colorist in a process called color grading. This part of a post processing begins when the film has been properly edited by the editor. Color grading tweaks the look of the color of the film. The DP is responsible for the film color palette. So they advise the colorist on how the color palette should appear. Color grading is a post production process, common to filmmaking and video editing that alters the appearance of the image for presentation in different environments and also in different devices. So, various attributes of the image, such as the contrast, the color, the saturation, the detail, the black levels, the white point may be enhanced. In today's day and age, color grading is a digital process happening in a dark studio and dark environment. Now, ideally, you know what kind of colors you want in your film before you'll start shooting it. Some decisions are irreversible. For example, if you're going to use a lot of desaturated light, you won't be able to achieve a high contrast in the shadows. Desaturated light will flood the whole set. There are still a lot of things that can be done in the post production, but some things you just can't do. Now, as an ending to this lesson for inspiration, you can revisit the website I mentioned before when I was talking about making mood boards Flynn AI, and you can search films just by entering colors, palettes, or other features of the image. But if you want to start playing around with somebody else's footage or your own footage, install and use Da vinci resolve. It's a professional software that is free to use by non professionals and film students. Uh, I will link it to the sources on my web page so you can find it easily. As a project for this class, remember project number two, when I ask you to recreate a shooting board of one of the three scenes that you've seen before. Now, I want you to take the shots that you did for the photo story board and try to color correct it in DavinciRserve. Or other graphical editing software that you're maybe familiar with to look similar to the scene that you were recreating. For example, bringing out the dead had high contrast and over exposed whites. Pyco was well a black and white film. Breaking the waves, had a sepia greenish and orange tint and was very grainy like a 16 millimeter footage. Now, you need to find ways to achieve these kind of features in Da vinci resolve by using its filters. Now, image post processing is a very enjoyable and rewarding work, and I find it very relaxing. I hope you like it as well. See you in the next lecture. Okay. 7. 3 ways to Systematically Gather knowledge: Learning cinematography is an ongoing process. You learn it by making movies, but you also need to understand the basics that will organize your knowledge. There are many books that can serve as a textbook for beginning cinematographers. I'm going to mention only two that I think excel in this matter. The first one is cinematography theory and practice, image making for cinematographers and directors by Blaine Brown. And the other one is the five Cs of cinematography, motion picture filming techniques by Joseph V Massel. I believe that textbooks work best when you read them partially, but deliberately. For example, whenever you come up with an idea to use a certain kind of light, you take the book and read about it and then just do it. This is how you learn it practically. I'm not a fan of reading textbooks from cover to cover. The second thing that you need to be proactive about is refining your taste. Let me propose a very simple and quick exercise. Grab a pen and paper and take a moment to list three films where the cinematography made an impression on you. Then go ahead to IMDB webpage. It's a database of films and find the profiles of these movies and look for their DOPs. You'll find them under cast and crew. It's kind of embarrassing that you have to click so much to read who is the DOP of the film, on this particular website. But this is how it is. Anyway, you'll end up with three names of cinematographers. Now, check their other movies. At least watch the trailers of the other works. I'm sure that in the body of their work, you'll find films that you will want to watch and then repeat the exercise. That way, you'll start to develop a taste of what you like in cinematography. You'll start to remember the names of the artists you admire and hopefully watch a bunch of good films in the process. The third thing is that you need to get to know your local industry in your country. Most likely, you don't know anyone from the business, and it's normal. I've been there. We all need to start somewhere, right? What I would suggest you to do is to start reading the industry press. Well, I'm from Poland, and our local industry press is a magazine titled Film and TV camera. In America, it's American cinematographer. There is also film and digital times. And in Britain, it's British cinematographer. It should be rather easy to find your local industry press to see what's going on in the business. And you need to proactively look for this kind of knowledge about your business to network better and find yourself in the situation where you meet other cinematographers as well. 8. Honing Your Camera Skills: Cinematography is not just a conceptual art. It also requires technical skills, particularly in camera operation. As a beginner, it's important to start filming and taking pictures with whatever equipment you have, even if it's just a cell phone camera. However, I recommend investing in a digital camera that offers a manual mode. This allows you to manually adjust the lens length, commonly known as Zoom and focus and choose the ISO and sensitivity and shutter speed and even, you know, like operate the focus ring. By manually operating these factors, you'll gain a deeper understanding of how they work. Professional cameras like red or Ari operate on the same principles, but they are more complex and their workflows can be less user friendly. Now, I own a next five Sony camera, which I received as an award at the film festival in Mexico. As a director, I find it useful for documenting rehearsals and location scouting. You can purchase a similar camera with a lens for around 200 or $300. Using the manual mode on a camera of this class, allows you to experiment with different lengths of the lenses and depth of field, right? Now, if you're considering a larger investment, you might want to look into a full frame sensor camera like Sony Alpha A 73 or Canon EOS R five. Well, these cameras are more expensive and you'll need to buy the lenses separately. However, they offer the same sensor size as professional cameras. The most common professional sensor size is 35 millimeters, the same as a single frame of a film in the days of the celluloid. With a full frame sensor, lens size like 50 millimeters or 80 millimeters will correspond to the same lenses used in professional cameras. However, such an investment isn't necessary at the beginning. Okay, so it's really nice to begin learning cameras on a full frame camera, but it's not necessary. This investment isn't necessary at the beginning. It's perfectly fine to start with a cheaper manual camera and upgrade later on. Okay. 9. Build Your Network: The Secret: You might be the most talented cinematographer in the world. But if nobody knows about it, then nobody's going to contact you for work. Therefore, you need to get yourself into a community and an environment that is going to reward your creative efforts and let you grow. At the beginning, it can be a local group that you meet on the Internet. There are lots of groups on social media like Facebook and Instagram. For example, here in Poland, there are several groups called work in film or work in cinematography, where you can join and try to meet people and introduce yourself to people. Ultimately, your goal is to find yourself on a professional film set. Remember when I told you to follow your local Cinematographers press, Well, this is how you can find information about upcoming movie sets. When you find information in the press that the production of a new movie is going to start, you can write to the producer and let them know that you're available as an assistant to a cinematographer, for example. Unfortunately, most of the time, it will be an unpaid internship. But sometimes they will be able to pay you something. And if you do a good job, then the crew is going to contact you to help them on the next film set. When that happens, the next film set will be a paid job, and you will be a paid assistant with experience. Apart from working on a film set as an assistant and learning how the film set works, I would still encourage you to actively pursue your own creative endeavors and make short films or independent films. If your life situation allows it, I would recommend going to a film school. Is an environment which is crafted towards growing your creativity, giving you tools and community that you can grow with. You're going to learn a lot on your own mistakes and from the mistakes of your peers. I myself was a student of a film school, and now I teach at my Almar I can attest that the two most important aspects of the film school are that it helps you produce your first short films and give you the community that you start your cinematography journey with In today's era of Internet and access to information, the film school isn't necessary. You can start your cinematographer work by going to a films that starting as an assistant and growing through all the stages to become the head of the cinematography department. But film school helps a lot anyway. Another way of meeting cinematographers is attending festivals. Now, here in Poland, we have a world famous festival for cinematography. It's called amar image. It's an international festival. It's one of a kind festival that focuses on cinematography. I'm very proud to receive a silver award. I mean, my cinematographer won a silver award for the film normal people, which we made during our years in the film school. Unfortunately, when it happened in 2011, I think, I wasn't able to go there, but my cinematographer went there and met many, many people. The jurors were, like, very successful international cinematographers, and I know that he benefited from the people that he met at the festival. So it's a great way to establish connections and meet the guys behind the camera. Many of my cinematographer friends from the school went to this particular festival, met older and more established friends in the business and then became their assistants on the set. That way, they began working on professional film sets. Now, I don't know if you have a local film festival that is committed to cinematography, but I do know for sure that there are registered communities of cinematographers in your country. I'm sure they have their gatherings, parties or premieres. Uh, most of the time, these will be closed events where an invitation will be needed. But sometimes there will be, you know, premieres or bank yet that you can attend if you are a participant of some kind of a newsletter. So it's always worth the check. And this topic brings us to the underlying theme of the class, which is the secret to becoming a cinematographer. In my opinion, the secret lies in humility and starting from lower positions on the film set. I have a cinematographer friend who, despite having achieved some success with his own work on two short films, continued to work as an assistant on professional film set. This individual who was creating brilliant short films as a cinematographer, was humble enough to serve coffee on a professional film set to his, you know, senior colleagues, the lighting department, the grip department, and anyone else who needed a coffee. And I wish you the same humility and hard work, not in serving coffee, but in your journey to becoming a successful cinematographer. Now, I understand that this class contained a lot of information. You can approach it step by step and revisit the lessons as needed. All the links to the sources, software programs, and notes will be attached in a public note somewhere here. This this link will take you to my website, Cinema explains, where you can also see how this class fits into the overall curriculum. If you've enjoyed this class, and I hope you did. I'd appreciate if you could leave a review. I read every review and discussion and provide feedback on all the projects that you guys create, right? It's always encouraging to see you apply the knowledge you've gained in the class. I look forward to seeing your projects and hearing your thoughts. You can also follow me and watch my other classes on cinematography. If you do, see you soon. Bye bye.