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Filming Gear Q&A

Yes, we do have your questions so you had mentioned that you prefer ru so the question is from adrian if you were to invest in either a glide camera shoulder rig, which would you choose for me to be a shoulder rig like games? Like I said it's a special team deal I'm not great at all at a glide cam it's not really something I'm interesting interested in perfecting it I think the god of glide came is probably devon supertramp on youtube do is amazing just runs around like crazy doesn't same things hey doesn't go the best route he's just hand held with it but I would go shoulder rig because that's more my style and mohr where I lean towards I guess specializing in in a way but glad can be very difficult. Okay, well then he had a question since we are talking about you know, on any budget what's your favorite low budget camera low budget camera right now would be the c one hundred but it depends on what that's it's a difficult question cause it depends on what your opinion of low budget th...

is and everybody has a different answer to that you are an absolute newbie and you're getting into it and you didn't have much money what would you think? I would say the any canon dslr are really like what those cameras do the t three eyes are great? I think somebody said they had one right? Tito eyes actually really great and I think you get on ebay you could get a tito I for extremely cheap so if you're really starting out you're just trying to get the cheapest camera possible I would go that route anything can t to I t three four I seventy five d all of those are are really solid cameras okay question does the c one hundred shoot in relation what's your thoughts on interlaced progressive, progressive all the way all the way if you could do when it starts starts panicking do you hearme hyperventilating? So progressive progressive is just you're seeing an image that an image that an image and that's always what you wanted, all right and question came in from manta as you've been talking a lot of a lot about expensive riggs. What about d I y how d I y projects impact production and whether or not it's worth your time to start making up your own stuff, what do you think about that? Yeah, of course it again. It's, you know, doing things that fit where you're at at that moment, so we're showing ideas so what? The idea of what it is that this rig will d'oh and then roping that back into what you could do right now I always talk about that we talked about the high end because that's, what you're trying to get to our emulate, that's, you know, these guys have figured out what the best way to do it rig was, well, now, this is what that rig is doing. What could you build it home? That would be something very similar that you can use right now, it's kind of like how I started doing my backyard filmmaking as I watch stuff like back in the day movie magic, and it was nothing about how I could make it right now, in my room, it was how the pros were doing it, but I was, like, that's amazing, I get the technique of what they're using, and then you wrote that back into where you're at right now and figure out a way that you could do it with where you're at currently, I mean in film, right? We've made a bunch of household riggs, including shoulder rig's it was just made out of pvc for, like, twelve bucks. We just bet the pvc with a you know, where those heat guns. So whatever you have at the moment, it's it's figuring out what you want, and then if you want to die, why build something similar? A lot of my rigging is like what you have here but a lot of stuff that works the best remain in certain areas this stuff I've just built on my own even if I've gotten ideas from film rights of like that the problem with some of that is as I show up to set with clients and they see my ghetto rich and is trying to explain to them like you understand how comfortable this is or how this is actually going to make everything so much easier today and they're saying duct tape pvc pipes of like how have you handled or have you had to handle trying to explain some of the set ups to some people? Yeah yeah I mean now it's easy because you know, people see film right now like this guy's a jackass so when I walk up with like rubber bands and duct tape like that's about right but before that it was just, you know, setting expectations and letting your work speak for itself they say your work and they love your work and then this is how I do it they're just going to trust that you're gonna come up with something amazing if they hired you there rooting for you too do the best job possible I mean, sometimes you're going to run into some people that are just difficult people there's not too much you could do about it, but if you said it expectations up front, like, you know, no alarming. But I make my own stuff because I find that this stuff doesn't work as well. And this is how I did this and that if you do that before you get on set, I found that, you know, it's an easy work around, like the same thing with actors tempering their expectation of onset of you know how this is, how it's going to be. This is running gun. This is going to be intense. Uh, and then when they get there, they know what to expect. And I'm not freaking out about it. But if you just throw it out, then when they get there, you know, you have some difficulty. And do you have a favorite audio gear that you recommend? Uh, again? That depends on what you do, it's. My favorite way to shoot running gun would be with the c one hundred. The audio in camera. Great. I love it. Beyond that, h for end is great. If I could have my choice, it would be a sound guy with a mixer and the sound devices on the side doing this thing and making everything. Everything sound amazing, so depends on what level. You know it's a lot if you're going to use a lot and you have to go in camera would be juiced linc ifyou're going external on your super low budget I'd go h foreign if you could do and came with something c one hundred that's great and if you're in the really high end you have good money to get a budget the sound guy and they usually have their own gear well, I think we have one more uh it's not so much a question as it is like a statement so mostly probably familiar with the show sherlock and so in season three they did this kind of bullet time effect where they had this camera that swept around benedict cumberbatch and it's actually like you washing behind the scenes it's literally like untreated two by four like a metal like screw and the camera freddy was just like he's a funny anyway, like so even these guys they're doing you know super so surprised how much d I y and just like backyard filmmaking happens in the higher and shane hurled it who did transformers are terminator salvation had such time to our need for speed he's working on a new film flags of our fathers not flying my father's fathers and daughters forget it shameful but you should know he is ok he did save right he's done everything but he's, an excellent cinematographer and some of the stuff that he uses constantly on everything has to do with two by fours and, you know, the fixtures bought from home depot that he's just nailed to it, and the light that he gets is gorgeous. I won't explain what the rig is, but I was sworn to secrecy, but basically it's two by fours and home depot lights, and it didn't say and that's, what he's using he has, he has this entire line of, like, these massive lights got a frickin ten k sitting there, you know, these lights that caused thousands, thousands and thousands of dollars with crazy rigging and do the live, you know, hauling up over in the thing and then a shower curtain. I kid you not a shower curtain, which works great and looks exactly like the equivalent diffusion that you would use, so, you know, whatever you're mean is you can find a way to it, and and if there's something that doesn't exist, that needs to do the job that you want like you're talking about or even that sherlock thing, uh, you know, use your brain, come up with something. To do that that's what takes you to the next level that's what gets you doing something that nobody else is doing in bullet time that's a bullet time was invented the guy just came up with a way to do that thing somebody came up with a way to do this you could do you say it doesn't have to be thousands of thousands of dollars that's just a lazy man's or the privilege dudes way of doing it you know if you can read the gear that's great if you don't have it figured out awesome conversation all right, well let's let's take another five minutes and go over the questions from the first segment since we got kind of cut off. All right, so these are more kind of big picture questions. So jake hafner had said often the hardest part of writing a script is forming the initial idea how do you get the creative juices flowing? And I know you talkto you had a few on the list, but you want to get into that little more it's just consumption man watch as much stuff actually going to tell a story that I said I was going to tell ryan vance last night at dinner was telling me about martin scorsese watches one film every day and I'm like, how is that possible? I'm struggling and watch a film a week but he watches the film every day, and then he was telling me how he comes out of the you know, his trailer with an idea because of this film that he watch it's just consume, consume, consume just bring things inasmuch as possible to inspire you, but not just art of any kind or entertainment of any kind, but just life around you get involved with legs like a psychology psychology for dummies. You don't to get deep in it philosophy, just be a student of life and those things will end up inspiring you to say something to put some kind of story together. I mean, that's where it all comes from, you dry up the well, you focus on just trying to figure out your story. You got nothing in there. You gotta fill the well so you could pull up from it. And I think once you do that and not just live life but experienced life and know that you're living it and really focus on it and analyze everything that's happening to you, even the most mundane, stupid thing, you know, one of the day, one of the best ways I put it, if some people say, oh, it's a bird, it's blue. You should be thinking about the bird houses flying one of those feathers why is it blue? What makes it blue that's what that's how a filmmaker and a storyteller's mind works and once you start thinking that way you fill that well, you know, toe overflowing and it's a lot easier to dip in tow ideas great and video cut production wanted to know is it better to write storyboard or just create the camera perspectives while shooting eso so storyboard or making up on the fly? Basically, yeah, I guess specifically to the camera perspex I think it's I think it's great to make storyboards and you're just starting out I think making storyboards is really good and shot lists are really good to practice such but I think at some point something that I've found just by necessity because I didn't have time to make shot listen the story but I just had to go out and do it proximity wasn't storyboard, it was hardly shot listen, there was a few scenes in it that were very hectic, which we'll get to very hectic fight scenes and I had to just put it all on making sense in my head and I think that's really, really good practice to be able to go out and just do that because sometimes things go awry it does not with sometimes things always go wrong nothing will ever work that usually have you could prep all you want the second you get out there everything falls apart you can be is not working we just lost two lights and now you got to just figure it out so if you have it, all you do is focus on your prep and then you get on set you're not able to just work on the flight not able just go with cd your pants and just roll with it you gotta expect those changes expect craziness toe happen so that's a really, really great thing to practice if you're just starting out come up with scene right it shoot it without any storyboards any shot let's make it up in your head as you go just know that it might not come out good maybe it's not something that you're going to do anything with it's just practice that's really good practice to get into so you khun you know really dial in how you work, how you work on the fly and it'll be less stressful when those things happen we're like all right, well, everything broke okay, I got an idea I mean in proximity we rewrote of segment on the spot because of something that happened on set that adjusted everything only well, now we can't do that and we had to, you know, go on entirely different same thing with help there's a whole scene and tell where we realized that I had this huge continent continuity issue that totally like would have flipped the film over and we already showed this but now it's totally gone so I just took two seconds went sat down rewrote the scene in my head came back with a fixed we shot it moved on so doing things like that is really really good practice but in a bigger project storyboarding is a nice safety net okay uh saw clark wanted to know benefit of film scrolls excuse me film school versus using the money to buy equipment that's another question that's it's all up to the part I got giggled like good luck ryan uh it's it's really up to everybody who asks me I say the same thing I would never tell somebody go to film school ever I mean it's really expensive some people get out of it decide and you know what that's not what I thought and I don't want to be a filmmaker I think people glamorize filmmaking a lot I mean it's really cool and before time it's really cool and after when you release it if people dig it it's really cool but everything in the middle is just how you hate yourself do you think everyone else hates you you'll never be successful it's very very difficult even on set it's something very difficult even if you're not the the one you know sailing the ship if you're just one of the people on it it's very difficult so it's one make sure that this is absolutely what you want to do what I always say is if you wouldn't rather live under a bridge then not do it they pick something else it is really one of the heart of professions I mean, that sounds so ridiculous there's plenty of hard professions but as far as normal things uh you don't have much of a life as a filmmaker I mean you guys know so if you're going to go to film school I would first make some films make sure it's absolutely one hundred percent you want teo but it depends on the person I think now uh I don't know that I would have went to film school I picked the film school that was one year film school that just showed me where the buttons were and pushed me out the door didn't want somebody teaching me how to tell a story I wanted to find that on my own I want to be my own filmmaker uh where is nowadays online? I mean stuff like we're doing right now stuff like philip bloom vincent law ferree shane has his new inner circle thing that looks unrealistic basically following him around while he makes things so this information is so available now where's back then it wasn't so I would say I think my advice should be followed try that first and you know if you get to a point where you had a wall and not going past that well then consider film school purely because you'll be paying it off forever or you could just watch ryan connelly on incredibly or that that's a good substitution okay pyott wanted to know if you could cover the topic of four k abilities so they're going to say we're still not watching for k on tv so what advantages do you think as far as you know shooting with that and as faras postproduction we're actually going to get into that it adds a lot but well actually show that all right we'll just wait on that one okay and then we'll just do one final question when you talked about shooting with your iphone medic control wanted to know if you have a favorite app or anything for shooting oh did forget to mention that yeah filmic pro is great you can add the bad box are the widescreen right on it I want it because that's processing time but it has guides on it you could set the frame rate on it it's a really, really great hap I think you khun turn the iess on and off to I might be wrong on that one but I s image stabilization sorry you can uh you can yes yeah, great. So that's. A nice feature to have to, because you could throw it on the tripod, and it doesn't have that extra crop factor to it. So it's, a really great app, and I don't think it's you know much. It is it's four ninety nine. There you go. Five bucks.