EXTENDING THE WARRANTY: GETTING MORE OUT OF YOUR CAMERA

It's obvious but I feel it needs to be said: a better camera doesn't guarantee a better video. I've been involved with enough of them to know that in competitions rarely is the winning entry the one with biggest crew and most expensive gear.

The inverse is true, too; in general a half-decent camera can hit above its proverbial weight class. Practically ever year a movie is shown at Cannes that really shakes things up. One documentary used old footage from a family camera and cut together on a $50 editing program caused major ripples some years back.

There are limits, of course. From the side of technical fidelity, you can think of camcorder shopping as flirting with the law of diminishing returns. There is no upper limit to how much can be spent on a camera, but generally speaking the higher you go in price the more you have to spend to get a significant and noticeable jump in quality.

The fantastic thing about videomaking is that the audience neither knows nor cares about technical specs. If anything I find people simply assume it's 'better than what I have' and leave it at that. Heh.

And while not all cameras are created equally (a good camera really does make a difference), there are ways to get more out of yours regardless of the price tag.

Don't believe me? Need proof? This video and this video were made with the same model of camera.

Yeah.

ZOOM DIFFERENTLY
When you hit the zoom button on your camera the pieces of glass inside the lens are physically moving further apart. This effectively making the lens longer, or more telephoto.

Most often this is used as simply a way to get closer to whatever you're recording. Moving in from a Long Shot to a Medium Close-Up, say. If you instead move the camera back so that your Long Shot STAYS a Long shot, some interesting things happen.

If you're scratching your head as to what a Medium Close-Up is, I covered shot sizes in a previous article.

The first thing you'll notice when you've zoomed in is that space is compressed. Jimmy, standing 3 feet behind Bob, appears about the same size as his friend. If you zoom out and move close enough that Jimmy is again in a Long Shot you'll see Bob appearing closer. A Medium Close-Up, say. It's all about ratios and distance from the camera.

The second thing that happens is that the area in focus, the depth of field, becomes narrower. If you have your subject move away from the background until he is the only thing in focus, the audience attention is more sharply focused on the subject and the shot is more intimate.

I won't go into too much detail as to why, but the depth of field is all about how open the iris is. On most consumer camcorders there is no way to control the iris manually. If you shoot somewhere with a lot of light, such as outside on a bright day, more of the frame will be in focus. If you shoot somewhere with less light, such as inside, the depth of field will be tighter. Knowing what's going on inside your camcorder means you have more control of your image.

STOP SEEING EYE TO EYE
The most common place people will place the camera is at eye level. Sometimes this is appropriate. Sometimes it's not. Even just getting the camera lower to the ground will often completely change the feel of the shot. Or a few feet higher.

Famously Orson Wells dug a hole in the floor of a set to get the camera lower to the ground. You probably don't need to go that far.

SK8ER B0Y
If there is a mantra of this blog, I'd like to think it's "Everything communicates.". Half of what makes movies feel cinematic is the way they move the camera. From a simple dolly to those smooth sweeping shots of expansive vistas. And while you don't have access to the tens of thousands of dollars of equipment the big guys do, I'll bet you've a buddy with a skateboard.

Or a car.

A wheelchair.

A shopping cart.

The basic principles still apply; wheels on a smooth surface gives you smoother movement than hand holding it. And if you want a crane, think outside the box. If you're setting is in a playground, why not get a couple people on one end of a teeter-toter smoothly lifting you on the other end with the camera?

Your ultimate goal is to make the camera man invisible to the audience. If that happens, it ultimately doesn't matter if you achieved it with a $10,000 a day rental package or a broom handle and some duct tape.

Of course, most of the above methods still require an operator physically holding the camera and soften any vibration. The final word on that? Lock elbows to your side and move the camera with your whole body.

FINAL WORDS
Camcorders are pretty incredible pieces of technology regardless of their price points. You're holding in your hands the culmination of 100 years of film history. Pretty cool stuff, all in all. The best thing you can do is push back against the comfort zone.

Give yourself permission to make mistakes.

Play.

Huh... Camcorder. Camera Recorder. I literally just got that. Why is it that all the cool sounding words have such lack-luster etymologies


This article is dedicated to Joshua The Anarchist for his comments on articles previous. He's got a pretty good blog of his own. Comments are what keep me writing this blog. If you like what you read, consider posting something simply to say so. It really does make my day.

Hey! Let's make this fun!

Post a comment saying what you'd like to be drawn as and the next article I will draw up to three commenters as they so desire to be drawn!

HOW LATE IS TOO LATE TO SAVE YOUR VIDEO?

There is a great quote*: "Every movie is made seven times and involves both sets of grandparents."

While this is a great way of expressing how incredibly difficult and involved the process of making a feature film is, this has very little practical value from the perspective of WHAT IN THE F^CK DOES THAT MEAN?!! The traditional stages of making a film are Development, Pre-Production, Production, Post-Production, and Distribution. I guess the other steps are about... financing? Is he treating conception as a different step than writing? I don't know.

But the idea that each step in the arduous process of movie making in and of itself is weighted more or less equally is one I can get behind. For the purposes of this blog, I'm going to say this: EVERY MOVIE IS MADE THREE TIMES.

The first time when it is written.

The second when it is planned and filmed.

The third when it is edited.

That isn't exactly brain surgery, but it's useful to think of these steps as separate. Each of these steps require a radically different set of skills to do, yet each has a HUGE effect on the finished video. So let's go into it, shall we?

MAKING YOUR MOVIE THE FIRST TIME: WRITING
When you stop and think about it, the written word is diametrically opposed to a movie. It literally is a different medium. A camera can't capture someone's thoughts. A written story needs to spend time explaining in detail what intuitively comes across on screen. A camera is always doomed to show too much. Etc.

The process of writing a script for a video is often one people find tedious and frustrating. There's always the temptation to jump the gun and start shooting the second you reach 'Fade Out', but here's the thing; no matter how brilliantly it is filmed a bad script can't make a great film. The reverse is true too; Chinatown is a better script than a film.

...I can't really tell you how to write a good script within the confines of this article, but here's what I can say: writing is re-writing. With few exceptions a first draft is never so good that a second or third pass can't improve it. In more professional circles, it's not unheard of to do a couple dozen (my record is twenty-two). Subsequent drafts you want to edit for brevity, clarity, pacing and flow.

Everybody's process is different, and you have to find your own. Mine involves cue-cards.

MAKING YOUR MOVIE THE SECOND TIME: FILMING
From the placement of the camera to the set up of the light to the pacing and performance, anything happening in front of the camera shapes the experience. Everything communicates.

If you place the camera low it makes your subject feel more imposing. That might be appropriate introduction to your villain.

Or a parent from a child's perspective.

Or for delivering a fact about superheroes.

The same line can take on different meanings if it's instead filmed from a high angle. Or with different line delivery.

MAKING YOUR MOVIE THE THIRD TIME: EDITING
You ask ten different people to take the same footage and cut together a scene and you will have ten different scenes. Clever editing can hide issues with performance and production. Creative editing can make an otherwise bland video suddenly interesting. You can give a video a distinctive look and feel simply in how the footage is assembled.

And yes, if you've got a troubled film, a show can actually be saved in editing!

...Okay, lemme give a tangible example.

This episode had no script. I had a list of points I wanted to make and had structured a rough guideline around them. Everything else was improvised.

In editing I found I had some major issues with the footage I had shot. More than half just didn't work well on screen. I ultimately ended up rewriting everything in post. Lines were used out of context. Ideas were dropped entirely. It was a challenge, but it was a satisfying one; I kept pushing to get the film down to it's leanest and most engaging. And what came out looks nothing like what I planned it to.

I was able to do that because I shot with an eye to give me options in the editing room. I had changed up delivery in the different takes. I had shot non-sequitur sequences. I had shot the same content from a second, tighter angle.

What a lot of budding filmmakers do is essentially edit while they're shooting; they'll only film from each angle however long they think they'll need. They'll only shoot one take. That's all well and good if the end film works, but it often won't. And if there's no coverage, it means you're stuck. Or it means re-shoots.

But really the point to take away from reading this article is that each step of the process you are making the film anew. Not until you press export on the project and put it online are you done. And that can be a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Now it's your turn. Do you have a video where you completely changed direction after you'd written it? Or filmed it? Post about it in the comments! Next post will be dedicated to the author of the best comment.


*Sadly I do not know who made this quote save that they are a filmmaker and likely European. ...hey, by show of hands; who actually still remembers what this note is referring to?

FILM SCHOOL ABRIDGED - SHOT SIZES

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to start this undertaking off with and I ultimately decided to start with the subject covered in the one and only episode of Lens Cracker. Specifically; SHOT SIZES. This really is the most basic of the concepts on the cheat sheet to understand, as well as among the most helpful in the realm of planning your shoot.

So on your cheat sheet, look on the far right side of the sheet.

Hm, let's lay that out a bit cleaner. Click below to get a larger view.
And below is the same idea expressed differently. Right, let's go through this, eh?

ECU - Extreme Close-Up
CU - Close-Up
MCU - Medium Close-Up
MS - Medium Shot
MLS - Medium Long Shot
LS - Long Shot
WS - Wide Shot



Through these thumbnail descriptors, you'll be able to describe 99% of all shots you've ever seen in every film/video/tv show/comic book/advertizement/poster/video game/logo you've encountered, including your own (whether you used them consciously or not). If you do a search for 'shot size', you'll find every source will have slightly different names but this I find to be the most practical to remember and put into practice.

Now, there's a reason I've got the abbreviated form of each shot size on the Cheat Sheet in place of its full description. Before I talk about each of those in detail, I want to talk about why.

One of the most important elements of directing is going in knowing exactly what you're going to shoot and being able to communicate this with everyone else. This gives a universal short-hand to aid in both. And while many more challenging shots are helpful to storyboard to assist others to visualize, most shots don't need anything more than 'MCU John, deep focus'. Often even a more complicated shot can be described this way, too: 'Dolly back from MCU to LS John; reveal MS Claire (facing camera) on "The world sucks...".' or 'Crane up MCU John to LS overhead, slow clockwise spin.'. This, as you can imagine, saves a great deal of effort; pertinent information conveyed in as little as 2 words per shot rather than taking the time and effort to storyboard an entire project.

Wide Shot (WS)
A good way to think of a Wide Shot is that it places your subject in the full context of their environment. This shot size can be used to make a person seem small and lonely, or just to help to establish location. In fact, it's sometimes called an 'Establishing Shot' for that very reason.

There is no limit on how far back you can take the camera.

EXAMPLE FROM 'YOJIMBO'


Long Shot (LS)
Head to toe. Because this shot shows the full movement of a person, it's often used in sitcoms or broad humor.

Like a Wide Shot, this shot size is good for giving an audience a sense of placement of the characters to their environment and relation to each other. You may notice that many older films use this size of shot quite a bit. Going for a bit of a tangent here, but generally that's for one of two reasons; first because early filmmakers often treated films like stage plays. And second because playing a scene wider meant the need for less coverage as everything can cleanly be seen on screen in a single frame. In many cases this allowed for tighter shooting schedules.

EXAMPLE FROM 'FAWLTY TOWERS'


Medium Long Shot (MLS)
Head to just above the knees. Also called a Cowboy because it was used in westerns to show the gun holster. This is used more often than you'd think.

If you're going to go wider than the knees, as a rule you should jump straight to a Long Shot; it really does feel weird when there's a picture that's framed so it cuts a subjects legs off half-way down the shins. Framing like that generally feels tentative and unbalanced.


EXAMPLE FROM 'COWBOYS & ALIENS'


Medium Shot (MS)
Head to waist. This is the closest shot size most sitcoms will go.

Now we're transitioning into more intimate shot sizes. It's less about the character in relation to the space they're in, or capturing the totality of movements. Starting here and especially moving forward, a closer shot size can capture more subtlety of performance. A medium shot is a good balance of that as it remains far enough away that the character isn't imposing on personal space.

Getting much closer than this during frenetic action scenes will make it difficult to comprehend what's happening and who's doing what. On a more practical level, this is still wide enough to smoothly follow movement with a camera during live events and such. Much closer and there's not much wiggle room.

Most homebrew review shows use this shot size nearly exclusively.

EXAMPLE FROM 'STAR WARS EPISODE I'... OR MAYBE 'EPISODE II'...


Medium Close Up (MCU)
Head and shoulders. Dramas tend to spend a lot of time here. It's more intimate than a Medium, but still allows for breathing room. Used heavily for conversations.

This actually has the most amount of wiggle room out of any of the shot sizes discussed so far save for WS. Framing belly button up still counts as an Medium Close Up. As does framing with just a couple inches of shoulders showing.

In addition to allowing more subtle performances to come through, the closer the camera is to the subject the more intense it feels. This is especially the case when used in conjunction with editing so it gets tighter and tighter. That approach can be seen in many interrogation scenes where the staging has little to no movement.

EXAMPLE FROM 'THE KING'S SPEECH'


Close Up (CU)
The full face. Can be as wide as head and neck. This is a very intimate shot size. A lot of subtlety comes across, and performances are often underplayed because of that.

Generally you're not going to want to have a lot of movement in a close up. It's hard to keep a close up when the actor is running down a hallway. Likewise, there's very little information in a close up alone as to where the character is in relation to the space they're in.

EXAMPLE FROM 'JCVD'


Extreme Close Up (ECU)
A part of the whole. An easy way to think of this is that an ECU is close enough on the subject that it completely fills the screen.

As with MCUs, there is actually a lot of variety for what can be considered an Extreme Close Up. If you get a little closer with a Close Up so the chin is cut off, you've got an ECU. Likewise is a shot where someone's eye is taking up the whole screen such as in this shot from Blade Runner.

Used to call attention to something such as being close on the eyes widening in realization, or close on a clock to establish the time. A shot like this is stylized by its nature. It was used to striking effect in the Dollar trilogy of Westerns by Sergio Leone when he juxtaposed Wide Shots with ECUs.

EXAMPLE FROM 'THE QUICK AND THE DEAD'


That's if from me for now. Next time... General tips! With less pictures! Probably!

Any questions about film technique? Leave a comment below, and I'll try answer them next article.