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How to shoot a no-budget horror short film

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Shooting short films is one of the greatest creative outlets for many video shooters, especially those that might otherwise be trapped in the corporate world, always shooting to a brief. But shooting a film, even a short one, can be quite expensive, depending on what that story is, and how you think you need to tell it.

This short film above, Whispers, shot by filmmaker Joris Hermans, however, was shot on no budget at all. Of course, there are some prerequisites. You need to have a camera (Joris used the Canon EOS M50) and other basic gear, but they’re things that almost all those interested in shooting with video will have already.

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Maxima 3 LED spot announced – Maxima 7 sunlight simulator LED spot finally available to buy

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This one’s taken a while. Initially announced in February 2020 to much fanfare, the Maxima 7 LED spotlight is now available to buy. And it’s brought a little one with it, the Maxima 3. All the specs of the Maxima 7 were previously released at launch, and you can see those here, so let’s talk about the new Maxima 3.

The Maxima 3 is a 300W COB LED light with a CRI of 96+ and a TLCI of 97. It’s available in two versions that are either tungsten or daylight balanced, with a COB LED life of 50,000 hours. As with the Maxima 7, the Maxima 3 LED contains a focusable 8″ Fresnel lens and accepts Bowens mount modifiers.

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100 camera angles, shots and movements in 10 minutes for filmmakers and photographers

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Camera angles are a funny thing. There are so many different camera angles out there that we see daily in photographs and movies, and they’re not all suitable for every shot we might wish to create. Sometimes only one will work. Scottish comedian Billy Connolly said, “there’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing”, and I think the principle holds true with camera angles. There’s no such thing as a bad camera angle, just the wrong context.

The trick is to understand the purpose and intent of different camera angles and learning how and where they’re appropriate. In this video from Wolfcrow, we take a look at 100 different camera angles, shot types and camera movements in just 10 minutes. And while it is intended more for filmmakers than photographers, many of these can really help you to tell your story in a still, too.

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Watch and learn the difference between “YouTube lighting” vs “cinematic lighting”

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I thought this was quite an interesting video. It’s an interesting take on how we light for different subject matter. It isn’t saying that one method of lighting is necessarily better or worse than the other, just that the goals of the shoot are very different, the final use for the footage is also very different and so the lighting needs to be different.

In this video, filmmaker Tyler Stalman shows us how we can light both ways using the same equipment. But as well as simply showing us, he also goes into the why of how we light these two things differently and the motivation behind it.

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5 useful gear and camera tricks to get difficult shots the easy way

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There are certain techniques that ubiquitous to commercials we often see on TV. But achieving some of them can be quite tricky and/or expensive to achieve. They often utilise difficult-to-master techniques or require expensive equipment like motorised camera sliders.

Well, in this video, commercial filmmaker Joris Hermans blasts through five camera and gear tricks that he uses on actual shoots. Tricks that let us get some of those shots without requiring any extra gear. Well, maybe just a little cardboard and some gaffer tape.

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Stop shooting bad b-roll – here’s how to take yours to the next level

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Regardless of what you think b-roll is or how you might use it in your productions, b-roll has become a hot topic lately. It’s something that just about anybody who shoots video needs to incorporate if they want their work to stand out. And while exactly what b-roll is and how it should be used are discussions for another day, how you shoot it is relevant to all potential definitions.

It’s easy to get lazy with b-roll, especially if you just see it as a way to break up boring monotonous shots or a transition between sequences. But even then, it needs to tell a story or expand on what we’re hearing and seeing in other shots. And it’s easy to shoot it badly. In this video, filmmaker Thomas Alex Norman shows us how we can adjust our shooting techniques to make the best b-roll we can.

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Build this DIY fully stabilised DJI RS2 camera mount rig for under $500

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If there’s one thing that many of us would love to be able to do, it’s attaching a fully stabilised gimbal camera to a vehicle. It lets you get shots that would otherwise be impossible. But such a task is not cheap. Commercial rigs cost $20,000 or more and that doesn’t even include the cost of the actual gimbal.

Bestboy Adam, though, has come up with a pretty neat DIY solution in this video that you can put together yourself for as little as $500, including the gimbal, using a mix of items from various manufacturers to which you can attach your DJI RS2 gimbal (or probably any, with the right brackets) to get that nice clean stabilised driving footage.

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This open-source DIY 6-axis motion control rig is almost entirely 3D printed

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The only thing cooler than a 6-axis motion control rig is a DIY 6-axis motion control rig. And the only thing cooler than that is an open-source one that anybody can build and modify to suit their own needs. And that’s exactly what this is from Chris Desrondiers at Do It Whenever? An open-source 6-axis motion control rig that’s made entirely from 3D printed and off-the-shelf parts.

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This spinning Lego camera rig looks like a portal to another dimension

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We’ve seen all kinds of Lego stuff here on DIYP: cameras and lenses, TV show recreations, quarantine projects… YouTuber Brick Experiment Channel has created a pretty wild camera rig. It spins so fast that the footage looks as if someone’s opening a portal to another dimension.

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The Zhiyun Crane 2S is a powerful 3-axis gimbal that’s small enough to fit in a backpack

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I’m going to open this post with a very subjective, but completely honest, opinion. The Zhiyun Crane 2S (first look review here) instantly became my favourite gimbal as soon as I took it out of the box.  Ever. That’s it. Review over. Ok, not really review over, but it really has become my new go-to gimbal for DSLRs and mirrorless cameras.

The Crane 2S is the followup to Zhiyun’s extremely popular Crane 2 (review here), launched in September 2017. Although already a very capable gimbal, the Crane 2S offers some very noticeable upgrades over its predecessor. So, let’s talk about those.

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