No matter if you’re shooting photos or videos out of the studio, location scouting is one of the essential steps. Ted Sim from Aputure meets Jeff Shepherd, a veteran location manager and a great professional at his work. Jeff has worked on the shows like Shameless, Parks and Rec, Straight Outta Compton and many others. In this video, he shares his top eight tips for location scouting like a pro.
6 ideas to help you start using color gels
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The use of color gels expands the possibilities and helps you create plenty of different looks. If you’re just discovering color gels, Ted Sim of Apurture shares eight ideas for using them. These will give you some inspiration why and how to add color to your shots. And while Ted focuses on moviemaking, you can also use gels to add color and change the mood of your photos.
5 DIY lens tricks for under $10
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When you’re a filmmaker or a photographer, you can get various effects by using filters, or in post. But there are plenty of cheap DIY ways to make photos and footage more interesting and achieve the mood you want. Ted Sim of Apurture shares five DIY lens tricks you can do for under $10, or even for free. These will give your movies or photos different looks and feels, and you won’t need to spend a lot of money or a lot of time editing.
This is when you shouldn’t shoot video at 24fps
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The standard frame rate is 24fps and it’s used for most types of videos. However, there are times when 24fps is not the way to go, but you should use higher or lower frame rate. In only three minutes, Ted Sim of Apurture shares eight scenarios when you shouldn’t use 24fps for shooting videos.
13 essential camera movements to get amazing footage with your gimbal
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A motorised gimbal is one of the most useful tools you can get today for camera stabilisation. They’re much easier to get to grips with than a steadicam style stabiliser, and their prices have come down dramatically in the last year or so. For mobile phones, action cameras, DSLRs or even big RED setups, they are absolutely invaluable. But using them effectively can be challenging.
The temptation is just to hold them static in front of you and shoot away. But this can lead to pretty boring footage. This video from DP Justin Jones for Aputure’s Four-minute film school goes through 13 essential movements that you should know. You don’t need to use all of them in every production, but they will give you many interesting and exciting options when it comes time to edit.
Create cool lighting effects for video and photos using a projector
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Adding a projector to your kit might seem a little old fashioned these days. But projecting images toward your subject or the background can be extremely effective. Whether you’re shooting video or stills, it offers results that would otherwise be impossible to create.
Doing it with video is relatively straightforward, and there are many different ways you can apply it. This video from DP Justin Jones and Ted Sim at Aputure shows us three great ways we can use projection in our work. Specifically they cover music videos, but the techniques can be applied to anything. When it comes to photography, it can be a little more tricky, but it’s definitely possible.
How to easily create four natural lighting effects with LED studio lights
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Recreating practical lighting effects for video and photography is a fairly straightforward process. You just need to think about how the lights are constructed in the real world, and then recreate your own version of it. When it comes to creating natural lighting effects, though, things can be a little more tricky.
Natural lighting effects can be extremely effective, but are often difficult to capture as they occur in the real world. So Ted Sim is back with another Four Minute Film School showing how to recreate four very popular and common natural lighting effects with studio lights.
4 super easy practical lighting effects for video or stills
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Effects lighting is an extremely fun area of lighting to explore. In this context, they’re about recreating the light that we see in our daily lives with studio lights. While aimed more at video, the techniques and setups can apply equally as well to stills photography, too.
In this 4 Minute Film School video from Aputure, Ted Sim talks to DP Julia Swain about recreating several practical lighting effects. A TV screen, a projector, city lights and police lights. And they’re all done very simply with the minimum of kit.
6 essential tips to get the best sound and comfort out of a boom pole microphone
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If you shoot video for long enough, and you’re interested in getting quality sound (you should be), then at some point you’re going to use a boomed shotgun mic. They’re not as easy to work with as you might first think, though. Bad technique can lead to the microphone picking up vibration and handling noise. It can also quickly get pretty tiring for the boom the boom operator, too.
In this video from Aputure, Ted Sim and Stephen Harrod provide six tips to work with boom poles on set. Some of the tips help to improve the audio quality. Others simply help you last for the duration of the shoot.
5 Tips for lighting a green screen for a clean key
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One would think that lighting up a green screen would be similar to working with something like a white seamless backdrop. But there are a few differences. Unlike a white seamless, green screens aren’t blown out beyond your camera’s dynamic range. They can also reflect colour back onto your subject. And you’re usually shooting on a green background for different reasons than white.
In this video, Aputure’s Ted Sim teams up with David Carmichael from Corridor Digital to bring us five tips to light our green screens. The tips, are, of course, aimed primarily at video shooters, but green screen is becoming a common technique with photography, too. Many of us also shoot both stills and video, so having a single set up that can work for both is ideal.
