Some friends and I have decided (goodness knows why) to make a 10-15 minute film for kicks, and while none of us are expecting it to be that great I’m rather hoping to at least make it watchable. None of us have any background in film or theater, and thus far we’ve written a script and storyboard, assembled our props, scouted locations to film, and gotten permission to use said locations.
However, when it comes to lighting, camera work, and cinematography in general, I was hoping I could get some general tips, or at least references to some decent sources where I could try to at least work some of the basics. Right now it’s looking like we’ll be sticking to the “Digital camera on tripod” approach, and at the very least I was hoping to learn enough to improve my composition skills.
The Rule of Thirds:
Imagine there are two vertical lines in the camera frame, evenly dividing it into thirds. Place the important element of the shot on one of those lines, i.e. a little off centre of the frame.
Crossing the Line:
When you place the camera for each shot, think about the shots immediately before and after it, and make sure that someone facing left in the previous shot will continue to face left in the next shot. When a character is entering a door on right of frame, make sure they enter the room in the next shot from the left. i.e. don’t swap the camera back and forth.
Angles:
Don’t move the camera back and forth and back and forth all the time. Shoot all the scenes from one angle, then shoot them again from another angle, and maybe a third angle. You don’t want to constantly reset the camera all day.
Bwahaha, done and done. I did run into an unexpected problem when we started rehearsing, though: we cast most of the actors by going “Which of our friends would be a natural for role X?”, and this has worked really well in 99% of the cases… but since we failed to consider physical attributes, one of our actors ended up being almost a foot taller than the rest of the cast.
You have some terrific advantages over Robert Rodriguez. When he made his film, he had to use film; video camcorders just weren’t good enough quality. With decent lighting, virtually any digital camcorder can get excellent results. Bad looking digital films are nearly always the result of a “cinematographer” annoyed that he didn’t get to play with a millions of dollars in grip equipment. Spike Lee got amazing results with standard DV cameras.
Cameras are cheap. Foam core board is cheap (and the Sun is free). Editing is cheap. You don’t have the problem of a noisy film camera like Rodriguez, so you can record sound - just get the mic as close as you can to the person speaking. Decent mics are cheap - you can build a boom arm from PVC pipe. Heck, you can make a “Steadicam” that will work for a DV camera from parts available at any hardware store.
Well I work in linguistics, which gives me access to a whole host of shiny electronics owned by our department, so I was going to sign out several wireless lapel mics that could be easily concealed in the actor’s wardrobe. I’ll probably end up carrying a portable recorder and passive mic to the shoot, so if our wireless stuff fails I can just use the Rodriguez trick of recording twice in quick succession, once for video and once for sound, and using quick cuts to disguise the sections where the audio doesn’t sync up.
I do have one question for Gaffa, though: I see how the steadycam in that video goes together, but am I right in assuming that you’re supposed to already have a harness and gimbal available, to insulate the camera from operator motion?
My tip for composition–make sure you get the camera close enough to the actors. It’s ok if you don’t have extreme close-ups, and a lot of switching between shots of various actors, but you need to fill the frame with your actors as much as possible. If the whole film shows all the actors from above their heads to below their toes, it will have an unmistakeable air of someone stuck a camera on a tripod and recorded a show intended to be viewed live.
In my inexpert opinion, anyway. It is worth noting that I developed this opinion while watching my church’s Passion Play on DVD. It certainly was a production intended to be viewed live, but as someone involved I did not see it live. Watching it later, the sound was spotty but tolerable, the credits were adequate, the pacing was ok, the lighting was iffy, but the thing which made it nearly unwatchable was the fact that one always saw the entire stage, and the actors never filled the screen like they do in “real” movies.
That page links to half a dozen different DIY “Steadicam” projects. A lot of them don’t have any gimbal - the pivot point is resting on top of the operator’s fist. I remember seeing a video about Garrett Brown, and his early stabilization experiments looked a lot like those DIY projects. Most of the complexity of a full-sized Steadicam is compensating for the weight of a film camera, and transferring that weight to the operator’s body. The current Steadicam Merlin has an optional arm and vest, but that’s for long shoots like TV shows. Shooting a short, most operators can hold the camera, stabilizer and weights easily enough.
I’ve shot hundreds of hours without a stabilizer. It’s on my “nice to try it” list, but I’ve found I can get good results hand-held. Just do what RR said - shoot as wide as possible, and get in close. With a video camera, that means zoomed as far back as possible. I’ve shot with small cameras literally balanced on my fist and gotten decent results, only showing shake when zoomed in.
I’m late, and a lot of good suggestions – including Rodriguez’s videos – have already been posted.
Eureka makes a good suggestion. Fill the frame. Not necessarily with the actors; but be aware of what you’re shooting. What is the purpose of the scene? Vilmos Zsigmond has done some beautiful panoramas. Isolating actors in a very long shot can be effective to show how alone they are, how beautiful are the surroundings why’re interacting with, etc. Cutting from a close-up of a pretty woman to an extreme close-up of her lower face as she delivers lines can bring out her sensuality. Think about what mood you want to convey and compose the shot with that in mind.
A low angle (looking up on an actor will make him more intimidating. A high shot (looking down) can make him appear vulnerable. David Lynch often films mundane scenes with strange camera placement, making the normal seem surreal.
Get a tripod. IMO handheld shots have been overdone. OTOH, handheld shots can be effective. But personally I prefer a tripod. Don’t move the camera too fast. Stay away from in-shot zooms unless you’re going for a wacky '60s psychedelic vibe.
Get the actors to act naturally. I hate it when I can see an actor ‘act’. If the actor can’t deliver the dialog convincingly, often the dialog can be changed to make it easier.
If an actor can’t do an accent, don’t do the accent. I’m pretty good at accents, but most of them for a little comedy among friends. I’d hate to have to do one for an entire film. In one feature-length film I worked on an actress was supposed to use an affected English accent. She just couldn’t pull it off, and a certain plot point was weakened because of it.
Improvise. If you don’t have The Machine That Goes BING! or whatever piece of equipment you ‘need’, work around it. Use what you have. Rodriguez used a wheelchair for a dolly. We’ve used one too, and it works very well in a pinch. (Although now I have a ‘skateboard dolly’ I built, and also a ‘doorway dolly’. I wish I had some proper Matthews track, but PVC works well enough.) gaffa mentions foamcore. It works very well to light actors who have the sun behind them, or for softening shadows.
