Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Grinding an editor’s gears is easy, most cinematographers can do it blindfolded. If you shoot video – for any reason at all – and you’re not an accomplished editor – you’re undoubtedly indulging in at least one of the Six Sins of the Cinematographer.
If you want to master video production — and become every editor’s favorite shooter — here’s how to avoid the Six Sins:
There’s been a lot of buzz around the new Panasonic S1 full frame mirrorless camera. Some of it good, some of it not so good. People like to complain about the size and weight, and the fact that it doesn’t have a flippy out LCD like the GH5. But how about the good? Well, cinema5D has been having a play with the Panasonic S1, and when it comes to low light performance, they feel it could be the new king in town.
The Fast & Furious franchise is notorious for using CG in their movies. Even though they have very highly trained stunt drivers, and even gave the actors some rather intensive driving lessons, some things are just easier and safer when done with CG. But they also do a surprising amount of effects practically, when possible.
One sequence that seemed fairly obvious as CG in the imaginatively titled fifth instalment of the series, Fast Five, sees our heroes dragging a 9,000lb vault containing $100 million through the streets of Rio De Janeiro (although it was actually filmed in Puerto Rico). Except, it wasn’t CG, it was shot for real, with a real 9,000lb vault.
While the long take is more famous in movies than in anything else, it’s become sort of a thing for vloggers, too. Often they’re walking, holding the camera while they talk and it can go on for several minutes. But it can be difficult to add creativity to these types of shots, especially when you’re filming on your own.
In this video, Peter McKinnon shows three camera tricks to help add some interest to your long shots talking to the camera, surprise your audience and leave them wondering how you pulled it off. The secret? You’re not filming on your own.
Five years ago, filmmaker and YouTuber, Brannigan Carter posted a video called “You don’t NEED 4K“. And five years ago he was probably right. It was only just starting to come out, the cameras were still ridiculously expensive to acquire, as was the kit to play it back. Unless you were a big Hollywood production company, there just wasn’t all that much point.
But here we are today in 2019. Just about every new camera coming out has 4K video. And 8K is on the way. And now Brannigan is back with a follow-up video saying that we still don’t need 4K, and that 8K is “crazy talk”. Let’s talk a little about that.
It has no name, right now, other than “8K Video Camera”, but this 8K Micro Four Thirds camera from electronics giant Sharp is currently on display in prototype form at CES 2019. It was spotted by Dave Altizer at Kinotika discovered wandering through the CES show floor. And he decided to make a short video to tell us all about it.
DJI has just launched a dedicated website for professional cinematographers and filmmakers. According to the company, DJI Pro is created to provide “comprehensive user experience for cinematographers and filmmakers around the world.”
I just love seeing a clever use of household items for filmmaking and photography. But did you know that Amazon Prime show Hand of God has some awesome DIY solutions in certain scenes? The show’s director of photography Rasmus Heise used a simple salad bowl to create a “door spy hole” effect, and he shared with us a couple of BTS photos from the shoot, as well as the end result.
Shooting video usually isn’t as simple as just pointing a camera at something and hitting record. Sure, sometimes it is, but if you want to try and tell a story with your films, you need to think about how the camera can help you to tell that story. In this video, Jordy from Cinecom shows us 10 tricks to help tell better stories in our films.
One of the big features in the new Nikon Z6 and Z7 cameras is their ability to output 10Bit video through the HDMI port for use with external recorders. But we haven’t seen too many samples of video shot this way. Dreaming is a short film by filmmaker Marin Marinov shot using a Nikon Z6 prototype.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
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