Perfectly Named 'Film Set Objects' Adds Polish to Your Prep

There is a school of filmmaking that just wants to show up and figure it out. That's a legitimate way to operate. But others like to plan, previsualize, organize, and prep, and often need to share those plans with other team members. For them, Evan Oliver has created Film Set Objects. It is, as its name sets out in brilliantly simple fashion, a collection of pre-built illustrations that look like all of your favorite film set tools. For use mostly in Photoshop and Illustrator, they are designed to make your previs and prep more attractive.

Over 250 objects in all, there are pretty much objects to represent whatever it is you want to plan for in your shoot, including lighting, modifiers, support, and even specific cameras that help you remember, for example, that the Weapon is much smaller than the SXT. 

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Credit: Evan Oliver

The PNG files will work with whatever your tool of choice is (you can even plug them into Word documents), but they are clearly intended mostly for life in Photoshop and Illustrator and even come with prebuilt files for both programs in the Creative Suite.  Currently, they appear to be PNG only, with a resolution that will work well for most common uses, though a vector version that could scale up for demonstration purposes could be extra useful as well.  While it doesn't happen often, we all dream of someday giving presentations at NAB or Cine Gear breaking down how we pulled off something extra complicated, and the scalability of vector might be helpful. With the current resolution PNGs, there is plenty of res for working on previs docs, or even using them in Youtube animations.

Credit: FilmSet Objects

Film Set Objects are also a great reminder that there are countless ways to make revenue in the film industry, and one of them is making stuff for yourself that others might want too.  After all, to be filmmakers, we also have to be inventors.  Evan Oliver is a Cinematographer, he wanted nicer looking assets for his previs, so he made them, and now he sells them for a reasonable price to others so we all benefit. They seem like great tools for helping team members effectively and quickly communicate,  saving time and thus money on set.

Credit: Evan Oliver

Now, what we really want is a sense of what would be the best tool for using these objects as a real-time teaching tool, when breaking down setups for students. Is there something faster to use than just firing up a Photoshop file?  Ideas?  Let us know in the comments. Check out Film Set Objects for more info.

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