» Posts Tagged ‘tutorials’
I’m sure that when we all decided we wanted to become film directors it was a very serious and impassioned decision. We watched films made by the best directors in the industry, read the books that documented their entire life’s work, and waited for the day when we could pull off screaming into a bullhorn while wearing safari jackets and jodhpurs. However — it is the weekend, so why don’t we take a little break from the weightiness of our dreams and take a lighthearted look at what Vimeo’s Video School says about what it takes to be a good director. More »
While any number of shoulder rigs and supports have come out in the last few years for DSLRs, some either don’t want the bulk, or need to stay quick or stealthy, and not call attention to themselves. Whatever the reason, if you’re finding yourself in this exact situation, there are a few techniques that can help you get much smoother-looking footage without a rig of any kind. More »
Rian Jonhson’s newest film Looper has gotten a bit of coverage on NoFilmSchool, from the availability of the script, to Johnson’s original sizzle reel, to his interesting in-theater commentary track. While the actual title sequence for the film is a bit different, Antonio Cerra from CRR_NTN and Aetuts+ has taken inspiration from one of the trailers for the film and produced an After Effects tutorial so you can create your very own logo complete with lens flares. Click through to check it out. More »
Lighting does more than just expose your image. It’s one of the very basic tools that filmmakers have at their disposal to create an atmosphere for their story. While you need a certain quantity of light to give your movie the proper exposure, it’s actually the quality of the light that creates the look for your film. If you’re looking for a basic lesson in the differences between hard light and soft light, and what they can do for your image, look no further than the tutorial below. More »
It’s one of the simplest and most common scenes you’ll find in a film: two people talking to each other. Just because it’s one of the most common, doesn’t mean people still don’t get it “wrong,” especially those who are just making a movie for the first time. You may even subconsciously feel like something is wrong, but it’s possible you weren’t able to put into words what felt off about the scene. Embedded below we’ve got a great tutorial to help with choosing the proper camera angles and framing, and why the rule of thirds can make for a more interesting and “cinematic” scene. More »
Shooting Your Way Around the 180 Degree Rule and an Introduction to Composition Basics
As modern filmmakers, we have the benefit of hindsight in understanding what has been established in cinema, like the basics of scene coverage and shot composition. One of these shooting essentials is the 180 degree rule, which guides our coverage of a conversation between two subjects. Think of how commonly two people hold a conversation in films you’ve seen,
Not all glass is created equal. Some is shaped into things you drink out of. Some becomes windows, windshields, and portholes. And some become the tools you use every day to create beautiful images. Something as insanely resolute as 4K (or even 8K) broadcast and stereoscopic 48fps can only look so good with a junk piece of glass placed between the medium and the image — which can also work great if that’s the type of look you’re going for. Given all this, the birds and the bees of how lenses are made — and function, down to the basics — is definitely something many of us take for granted. More »
Tutorials Galore: Dailies in DaVinci Resolve, CinemaDNG to ACES Conversion, Plus What's a LUT?
Ever asked yourself, “What in the f#$% is a LUT?!” Or what a LUT’s relationship is with color space? Or what a color space is? If “yes,” not to worry — these concepts can be fairly confusing. Fortunately, engineering can and will work for you as an artist, so long as your understanding of it covers the fundamentals. And even if you answered “no” to all the above, you should still check out some of outstanding basic-breakdowns of these concepts below — including how to convert CinemaDNG footage into the Academy Color Encoding Spec color space (ACES) in Davinci Resolve, plus how to use that very program to generate dailies (like a boss). More »
Learning a new piece of software can be a daunting task, especially when that software may be nothing like any program you’ve used before. Even if you’re an expert, getting a well-rounded walk-through of a suite of programs can make you better and more efficient — and you might even learn a thing or two. For a limited time, you can get a complete set of training videos for the entire Adobe CS6 suite for only $100. Click through to learn more and check out some sample lessons. More »
DIY Builds: Portable Jib That Doubles as Shoulder Rig, Panoramic Head, Dirt Cheap Steadicam
There’s a variety of rigs out there for pretty much all your mounting needs — Cinevate and of course Kessler are go-to solutions for jibs running the gamut from heavy-duty to collapsible, respectively. The same goes for shoulder rigs, with options ranging from professional solutions to lightweight prefabs all the way down to homebrew kits. Of course, something that can pull double duty as a portable jib and custom shoulder rig — which you can put together yourself for $50, to boot — may be the best of, like, three worlds. Read on to check out some details — plus info on how to build your own 360 degree panoramic head mount, plus some hardcore DIY stabilizers — all geared toward the low-to-no budget but crafty shooter. More »
4 Tutorials to Help You Improve Your Green Screen Skills
We’ve all seen it: mismatched subject and background lighting, dancing edge pixels, and color spill; some of the hallmarks of a bad green screen composite. There are multiple factors to consider for a chroma key shot in preproduction, on set, and in post, and in the following videos Richard Harrington will take you through those factors and show you how to pull a good key and produce a believable composite. More »
Anyone can go out and buy a computer system, but to truly get something that is customized for video editing, and won’t cost you a bundle, you’ll probably be looking at buying the parts yourself and putting it together. We’ve got our very own Hackintosh guide to help you build a computer specifically designed to handle Mac OSX, but your options are certainly less limited if you’ve decided that you just want to build a Windows PC. Dave Dugdale, from Learning DSLR Video, is building his first computer, and he has compiled all of this information to help you along in your own journey. Here is the video from Dave: More »
Want an Interactive Master Class with Legendary Spielberg Color Timer? There's an App for That
Is it possible we’re losing something through the non-destructive way in which we decide the final look of our shots? The answer, quaintly enough, is absolutely yes — but what, exactly? Simplicity. True finesse in color timing is something Dale Grahn (Saving Private Ryan, Gladiator, Munich, Apocalypse Now: Redux) knows a lot about, and in a true chemical timing sense — which says a lot about the power of bold and minimal control over imagery. Lucky for any of us looking to learn from the experience, Mr. Grahn is asking you to match his own color grades by way of a new iPad app — and in the process interact with the very essentials of color grading. More »
We’ve already seen a little bit of what is possible in the After Effects plugin Trapcode, but now we’ve got a short called EXODUS from Magnus Östergren that was commissioned by Peder Norrby, the founder of Trapcode, to specifically show off what Trapcode Mir (a part of the whole suite) was capable of. Click through to check out the short: More »
Setting marks for your actors is one of the easiest ways to ensure that everyone is on the same page. It helps make sure that not only is the blocking correct, but that the camera team knows exactly what’s going on and they can get proper focus. There are many different ways to actually set these marks for the actors once blocking is complete, and in the video below, Jared Abrams from Wide Open Camera takes a look at some of those used most often. More »
Learn How to Do a 3D Match Move Using the Free and Open Source Program Blender
One of the great features in Adobe After Effects CS6 is its built-in 3D camera tracker, which helps realistically integrate CG elements into footage that have a fair amount of camera or subject movement. But what if you want to do a 3D match move shot, and you can’t afford a copy of After Effects? Not a problem. Andrew Price of Blender Guru has a great hour-long video to get you started with 3D tracking and compositing CG elements in the free open source 3D program, Blender: More »
Getting Started with Color Correction: Using Waveforms and Scopes with Colorist Steve Hullfish
The colorist’s job has gotten a whole lot easier since chemical baths stepped out of the picture in many cases. Non-destructive color timing is the future in which we now live — that said, the principles at work in creating properly balanced imagery is as important as ever. Each camera we may be shooting on has its own unique implications in chromatic reproduction, and the ability to delicately correct a given color mixture (regardless of its source) is key. Ironically, or not, tools such as waveform monitors and vectorscopes — staples of the bygone analog video world — are as relevant today as ever in filmmaking, if not more so. A recent presentation by noted color correction author Steve Hullfish demonstrates precisely this point, as well as the basics in using your scopes to full advantage. More »
Lighting an Interview with $26 Worth of Equipment: a Free SMAPP Tutorial from Stillmotion
The team over at stillmotion has come all the way from wedding films to producing Emmy Award-Winning television content, and along the way, they’ve done their part to try to teach as much as they can about their techniques and how to achieve professional-looking results. They eventually created the SMAPP App, which began its life as a low-cost app with quite a few in-app purchasable tutorials — now they’ve made it completely free, and in celebration, they are releasing a great low-budget tutorial we all can appreciate: how to light an interview with just $26 worth of equipment. More »
The anamorphic look has been around for a long time, but its popularity at the budget level has increased in the last few years thanks, in part, to the availability of inexpensive interchangeable lens digital cameras. If you’ve been interested in how people are getting the look and what they are using, Ryan Connolly over at Film Riot has put together a video giving an overview about your options out there and some of the advantages and disadvantages for some of the options. Click through to watch that video below: More »
Filmmaking often comes down to problem-solving, though not that every task we face is necessarily problematic. I think we arrive at many solutions by way of new, situation-specific techniques that are built by a combination of the techniques we already know. When it comes to digital effects, it can help to possess a variety of techniques in our experiential arsenal. Who knows, perhaps having learned a basic tool within a software will help time-budget an effect, or maybe even save some money? In this vein, we’re happy to bring you this After Effects tutorial from AE.Tuts+ — in it, Axel Sorenson explains how to reshape one subject’s face into another, without the use of (paid) third party plug-ins. His example uses stills, but remember, in AE, anything you can think, you can track! More »
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