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hooting for the Edit

If you guys watch any good movie, any movie that's really worth its weight in salt, it's gonna have elements of this because there's always gonna be a conflict. There's always gonna be a climax. There's always gonna be a resolution, Okay? And sometimes that resolution drags on and on and on, like Michael Bay movies, you know? But if you really start to really watch movies and watch them not just for your entertainment and enjoyment, but watch them to glean and learn something from, you're going to find out that they're really good movies do this well. And the really poor movies don't. And it has to do a little bit the writing a little bit with the acting, but at the root of it all, if it doesn't have a good story and it's not worth it, right. So when you guys start to look at your film and you start to do stuff, think about the concept is gonna have a beginning, a middle and end. It's kind of a character or two gonna have a conflict. There always has to be something that the character ...

needs or wants. Okay, so, um, in theater, always refer back to my degree because that's what I got. Um, we call it raising the stakes. Okay, So that last one we watched I needed to really pee, didn't I? Why did I need to pee so bad? It was just gonna drink one bottle of water, just like you're like fifty. So when you raise the stakes, it almost makes it hyper real, which engage your audience, which makes things a little more fun. Now, I'm not saying that you're gonna make your bride's your portrait or your client to drink lots of water and film than being No, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, when you practice, if you continually raise the stakes for yourself, you will understand. In real life, when the stakes are already high, you'll understand. In real life, when you've got that moment and you know you've got that moment what to do with that moment because you've practiced it over and over again. I really believe in practicing your craft, practicing your craft to the point where when it matters, you just react off of reflex and not off of thought. So when you do it that way, when you really, really focusing. You're just gonna be an instinctual filmmaker, which is great. Okay, now, off course. I can't just say Oh, yeah. Here. Start off and shoot something simple, right? Yeah. All right, let's do that. Guys, you're off. Okay, we're done. I don't need ninety minutes. I'm done. Yeah, we're done. No. So I want you to shoot for the yet. Can we shoot for the edit? We mean we're shooting for the specific shots in that story that you want. So if you take a look at this video, this is what most people who think video think, like, who aren't used to doing video. Think that video is just one shots really boring. It's long dudes going to the cabinet, going to the counter. He's gonna make himself a PB and J sandwich. A real filmmaker and someone who actually does motion is gonna go. OK, that one. That shots way too long. It's way too long. So they're gonna add something else. They're gonna go, OK, Dude's gonna go to the cabinet. Maybe after he goes to the cabinet and goes back to the counter, I'm gonna change my perspective. We're gonna go there. He's gonna add an angle and then automatically When he adds that angle, your perspective changes like, Oh, hey, Now, I'm starting to feel something. You know, it's not just one angle anymore. Or as like, the first shot was like dad at the graduation. One angle, like shooting his kid from, like, seventy thousand feet away. And the kid gets on stage and he comes off and it's gone. He like, Whoa, I'm never gonna watch that video. I love you. I love your kid, but I'm never gonna watch that video. Okay? That's a thing. You've got to think like that. Would you sit there and watch video? Absolutely not. That's that awful. Okay. And you get the next shot. Okay, he goes in. Oh, hey, that's a different beginning. Different angle. Changing the perspective, changing your lens. Okay, I'm gonna go back. Oh, hey, there's that first shot. Oh, wait. He's at the counter. Oh, hey, wait. Now he's making the sandwich. Do you notice something about the edits? As they get further and further, they get shorter and shorter, shorter and shorter. Because our brains are really, really smart guys. They can complete actions without seeing them so so long as I give you the Q and give you the intention with what the character's gonna dio your brain is going to finish it. Okay, so, yeah. So now this is okay. Kind of kind of boring again. It's too long, right? All right, so now we're gonna go to the next video. Okay, so he's gonna come in, open the county. Whoa, whoa, whoa. What the heck just happened there? See, when you start to think about different shots and different perspectives, you give yourself an opportunity to really mix things up. Video is about telling a story what it's about showing your viewers something they don't typically see. Okay, we sit in an audience, and we look at, ah, graduation ceremony, and we all know that graduated sermon. Looks like we all know that wedding looks like, right. We all know that if you give your viewer the exact same view that they've already seen. Not interesting to them. So when you make your little deals and you right out your little topics and you make your little stories, take a step back and think about okay. Where can I put some shots in here? that changed the perspective and give my viewer something different, something unique that they're not used to seeing every day. And that's where it gets fun. That's where it really gets fun, because now you go. Alright. Well, here's my first round of, like ideas. All right? I'm gonna filter down to the next round, then filtered down to the next round, and then you start to go to production. You start to actually film stuff. It becomes like, Oh, that's a great shot. And then you start to understand the meaning of capturing great footage. It's not that it's in focus. Is not that it's good exposure. It's that it actually feels a certain way. And that's the mark of good footage. Okay, so here's the final video. I won't talk over it. Oh, yeah. Okay, so when you look at shooting for the edit, okay, you're looking at a very simple, mundane thing. Okay, so I'm gonna ask you guys for an idea. We're gonna walk through a simple idea. We're gonna walk through kind of like a process, okay? And we're just gonna think about it. Conceptual, e. So that you guys could start to think. Okay, We've watched a good number of video. You thought about a good number of things here. I want to make sure that we all leave today understanding that we're shooting for unedited. We're shooting for something simple. We're gonna make it work. Okay, so let's say, given ideas. A group? Yeah. Come on. I'm relying on you guys here. Getting ready for work. Getting ready for work, okay. Making popcorn, making popcorn, taking a dog for a walk. Okay, three really great ideas. Dissect them down. Okay, so getting ready for work, making popcorn, taking a dog for a walk. Now, a good film is a succession of simple actions. All right, think of a good wedding film. Okay? It's bargain ready. I'm getting ready. They're all a collection of very simple actions. And so what? I'm trying to train you guys into thinking and try to train you into believing is that if you can learn to capture a simple action, you can do anything. Because that's all the movie is. That's all the film. This it's all capturing motion is is thinking in simple actions. Okay, so you take that first idea getting ready for work, okay? So getting ready for work is a very large ideas we're gonna circle out. We're gonna pinpoint one thing and pull it out. Okay? And in getting ready for work, what do you do? You can, like, shave, right? You can iron your clothes. You can brush your teeth. Ty, Ty, Ty Ty. Those air Four simple actions Turn off the alarm. It's five. So when you're thinking about in action, it could be broken up into smaller actions. And then it's not so scary, is it? All right, So you think about it. Okay, well, I have this fear of capturing a wedding from beginning to end. Its eight hours of stuff. It's eight hours of stuff. Eight hours of content and it freaks people out. Start off. What do you getting ready for getting ready. Okay, then. First look first look, then the groom's getting ready. Parents right. Ceremony, formals. Portrait, thes air. All really easy, manageable chunks. Right. And then once you start to look at that and start to break that down, can I start thinking about shots? Okay, so you start thinking about different angles, different lenses and different stuff, So let's go back. Ah, Couple slides here. I'm gonna play this clip, and we're gonna start to look at different angles that we can pull out. All right, So we can pull out that perspective of the Cabinet, which we did. But now, doing it again, you know, we could have put a camera up there and gotten that bird's eye of him opening right? Him coming across. Maybe the camera could have been on the counter and gotten that perspective of him coming across. So as you're looking at a scene, so what we typically like to do is we like to scout a location. All right, so I'm gonna sit here and stand with you guys. I'm gonna look at that scene, and we're gonna think of every single position that we could put a camera. And theoretically, when you're thinking about that, you'd write it down and you'd make a short list of what you think is really good. Okay, So when you're shooting for an edit, it's not just spraying and praying. I don't believe in that. It's not just throwing caution to the wind and hoping it works out. No, it's being planned. It's being deliberate. It's being the professional It's being good at what you do. Okay, So I'm gonna give a couple camera angles, and I'm gonna rely on you guys to give me a couple, okay? I'm very interactive. And by the end of this class, you're gonna love me or hate me. All right. Okay. So, knowing that I've already done a video like this, I'm not gonna use the same angles. Right? So if I'm looking at this is my first frame, maybe what I would do is, you know, suspend the camera up top. Okay, so he's walking up. And what? You could envision that, right? He's walking up, and it's his head going to the cabinet. And there's that shot. There's that first shot or a second shot. Okay, My next frame. I said it over here. I'd probably put a camera on the counter and get him as he's coming. Okay, Who wants a volunteer? One. So maybe a camera on the floor getting his feet walking. It's a great one. Fish island. That's a great one. Okay, so he just said on the floor fisheye lens. So we just upped our game, Didn't we just changed our lenses, So let's think about it. We all know fish eyes. Okay. Now fish eyes tend to give you the feeling that something is wet or something is got around perspective from the ground. So if I throw a fish islands on my camera and tossed on the ground, I'm insinuating that an animal or something weird or of fish bowl is on the ground or something that that give me that perspective so that could be confusing. So I just want to pay attention to that. Like we have different tolerances for different lenses. Like if I'm watching a skate video, I don't mind the fish. I look, if I'm watching a narrative film, there has to be a reason to use that fish. I We can't just use a fisheye because it looks cool, right, because he's a fisheye because it says something. But I do love the shot on the ground. Shot on the ground is great. I do that a lot. Okay, we'll take a look. You know, next few days on tools that will help like you get stable footage while you're low on the ground. Because, oddly enough, when we're shooting a picture, it's really easy to get low right, pop, pop pop. When you're trying to capture stable footage, it's a little bit more difficult. So another angle through the glass, I would take a shot. Maybe through this glass door. Yeah. Okay. Cool. So we can fake that. Really? Well, we don't have any shoot through the glass because it's frosted. We can shoot through that door, opened up the door and shoot through that door. Okay, What lens would you pick? It depends on the framing. Demeaning. If I was gonna use. Well, if the doors open, then I wouldn't. I was think about using the windows of the frame to frame him. But okay, if that was the case, and it depends. Depends what it looked like when I was standing there, either. A seventy two, two hundred meaning depth of field thing, fooling around the depth of field. I want to show what the weather was outside. I don't know what is going on. All right, all right. So I'm gonna leave my thought process, my thought processes I was wide, I was wide. Therefore, the next frame should be medium wide or close up. Okay? Think like that. Think. Hey, My first shot was kind of wide. You know what? My next shot I'm gonna I'm gonna punch in a little bit. That way you get in the habit of just not shooting everything. Why? Okay, My first problem when I started doing video, was everything was wide. Everything was just seventeen millimeters one because you to focus seventy millimeter, but to because I didn't know any better, I thought, Okay. I can edit this together when you get it. The at any room you can't cut. You can't jump to anything. Okay, Get a shot. Um, I was thinking maybe an angle where it looks like the cameras in the peanut butter. Okay, Okay. Putting his knife and that's a great Okay, that's a great one. That's a creative production idea that we'll talk about later. And there's some cameras that we can use to kind of get that type of perspective. There's ah bunch of different ways you can actually get that shot, actually fake it. Um, but that's a great idea. It zits fun because you think of ideas for shots like this. And then the hard work comes when you start to dissect on how to do the shot, okay. And like I said before, when you roll back and you start to really think about okay, when you start to really think about what it is that makes a great shot and makes great content, it's the work that goes into developing that shot. And then once you kind of learned that that becomes your technique and you start to use it better and better. Maura, Maura, Maura over and over and over in different different scenarios. Like there was this one time where I needed to get someone pouring water. And I wanted that shot up, and we just way needed the shot. And so we moved the person to a sink and had plexi glass tilted down and shot through the plex and had her pour the water so it just would run right into the sink. But we've got the shot that way. Okay. I mean, it took a lot of brain power to kind of figure it out toe, light it property, make it look matched in all that kind of stuff. But the fact that we stopped for hot second thought outside the box and really started to focus on it, it made it so much better. Okay? It gave us that perspective that our client isn't used to seeing. And here's the funny thing. Used three seconds of it. Use three seconds of it. You take thirty minutes to set up the shot and use three seconds. So this was our first frame coming in outside of putting the camera in the cabinet. Which is awesome, by the way. Because De Solares could do that. If I was using a city camera like a really big city camera, I'd have toe mock up a cabinet, drill a hole through it, rig it up, light it, have some person lift it for me. Okay. So I mean, here's the thing is, let's go back. Okay? Outside of putting the camera in the cabinet. Where? What else can we do? Profile shot. Catholic side. Okay, so this is Ah, medium white shot. Okay. I'm not giving. I'm not giving you millimeters for a reason. I want you to think in wide, medium wide clothes punching. Okay, close up. And then there's extreme close up wide, medium, white, close up, Extreme. Close up. Because when you start thinking of it like that, you're no longer thinking in numbers. And I'm a real believer in right side, left side, brain. So when you're thinking in numbers your using the left side of brain when you're thinking in words like medium and long and close up your thinking right side and you're not, you don't need to jump between your have your brain anymore. You're staying on one side. You're staying creative. Okay, so think like that. Think like, Okay, I'm gonna medium wide shot right now, so, you know, Wait, Maybe I like that perspective shot. Okay, Maybe like, there could be a great, like, a low angle shot of him walking up to the cabinet. You know, like, as as if it's the perspective of the coffee maker And if it's a perspective of a coffee maker, it's round. Maybe you could use a fisheye there, okay? Or if there's a fish bowl here. So now we start to think about how we could dress are set, so I'm going to fast forward to the end because I know there are some people were thinking, Well, you know what? This is really narrative. It was really kind of like narrative type stuff, but I don't do narrative. I don't do this sort of stuff on a day to day. I have portrait clients that need films, and I have wedding clients that want their weddings captured. And I've got these corporate clients that want their interviews done. How does this help me roll it back? Guys, start simple. Think of a story. Break it down. It's all the same shots. Um, we're really good friends with production company, and they're really great. Their name ISS still motion and they said something really, really, really good because they wanted Emmy for a movie. They did call the game of honor. Um, and in the game of honor, it's a story. It's basically a film about the the, uh, I think the West Point Academy and the Army Academy in like the game that they play every year from football. And they followed one of the teams and it was really great scene where they kind of go back and forth between the cadet changing into his football uniforms and then changing into his dress uniforms. Great juxtaposition when they were talking about the movie. They're like, we were really nervous at first doing this because we hadn't done some like this. But then the guy started getting dressed in his foremost. We thought, Oh, this is like a wedding and they started treating it like a wedding and they got wonderfully beautiful shots. And that's what I'm saying. This may not apply to what you're doing today, but the sheer fact that you're going through the process of one filming something really silly that has no pressure, that has no expectations. That has nothing to do with what you do in a day to day gets you to think outside the box and really starts to get you looking at video and motion as a craft. Not just all right. I'm shooting stills. You know what? I just put a GoPro on top of my camera hit record and shoots stills, and then I'll edit that. That's not motion guys. That's spraying and praying. Okay, we're not here to do that. We're here to really dissect and think about it.