Lessons

Lesson Info

Introduction to Setup

what I want to start with first is just a little bit about production for a shoot here is the thing um I've seen I peeked in on a couple of their creative lines about like big production video they have not one or two or three they have many p ace production assistance on these shoots and so their job is to take care of is dilating there is the food there on time did you get the right props so their backup props is the front like they carry take care of all the logistics for most of us it's we don't have that luxury we have to take care of it all of ourselves the other thing that we don't have the luxury of is a whole lot of money but maybe some of us but for our production so I didn't want to talk about something that I frequently address when I speak and it's about bartering or trading for your services so most of the videos that I've done if it's on in a really cool location I didn't pay a lot for the location what I did is I figured out what they needed visually from me to let me s...

hoot there for free so for example it might be something like to shoot at that location I'd say you know what I'm going to have a model there and everything but if you don't want that all of this film some nice shots of the property in each room that that we should all make sure shots with no models and then you can do that and we'll we'll keep it together and maybe a twenty second clip you can use on your website even the inclusion of having something of theirs onset makes them want to do it and be part of something creative so it's really cool like the harley commercial the garage iq after free based off the fact that it was in harley commercial the guy is strictly harley persons he's like my my bike's gonna be in a commercial I'm all for it um so okay so start location for example today I really wanted some flowers like I just really wanted some flowers in her hair and something soft and romantic and so flowers definitely big ones and orchids and things like that can be expensive but what I usually do is I reach out to somebody and say I will snap some photos that you can use on facebook or for your promotional material of course you have to talk to your client and make sure that's okay but I've done tons of shoots where everything on my set was borrowed and didn't cost anything and I would actually say honestly if you look at would you say almost all my shoots and they can only think of a couple where anything actually cost me any money the only time pay for stuff is like if there's a big budget they know that so they're like where's my piece the pie uh I have a wonderful florist back in new york city named ivy joy and so whatever haven't idea I just call her up and she's a creative artistas well I mean so for her floral design is her expression so or maybe it's a prop stylist too okay you know maybe they do a lot of theater but they love to do something for a video shoot or maybe hair and makeup same thing one of the things that call is tf trade for people are working in exchange for credit now some people are interested but you skip over them you find the people that want to work with you so today for example they did uh rent this couch but like a lot of things like this I would borrow from say an antique shop or it might be a proper rental place but I would give them credit or maybe it's a furniture store and I said I'm gonna take a beautiful photo and you can use it on your website to show the type of furniture you feature except that accessories like julie you can get from etc you could just ask a couple of vendors and say listen look can I borrow a couple pieces I'll make sure shoot them and feature them in a certain capacity and you guys have great photos that that's a great point etc etc is a website where it's people who make in self stuff I mean that like and anything and everything everything from floral head pieces to vintage lingerie to scarves from turkey I just got a nice car from uh funky goggles and breuder's with bedazzled and stuff you can find anything there so he's absolutely right sometimes I work in exchange for images or just in exchange for the credits sometimes they'll send you stuff you just have to send it back all the times let you keep it so when you look at our sets today um mine is actually pretty simple I have um just like sheer white fabric that you would get at bed bath and beyond for example to be like little curtains or sheer fabric so twenty thirty bucks something like that a cheese if you wanted you don't need one you could photograph this on a bed or a couch maybe covered in white sound because it doesn't look the way that you wanted to but you know everything today you could absolutely don't do with low budget so I don't want you to think anything is a huge production most of time for us we avoid it because that's not our specialty either and I don't have the budgets where if you look at the set I mean everything that that physically here's something you can use in the photography set I mean this is stuff you could multi purpose for video by all means I mean we're using for the for the blinds there three sheets there were using light stands to hold him up nothing significant by all means definitely so the next thing that I want to talk about is kind of planning what you're going to shoot so most likely today I am I'm not like I said I'm not necessarily a story border for something like this because the boudoir shoots let's say that you want a story my story isn't like she does this she does this she does this the store would be like she's in fluid fabric she's laying on her back and she's looking in a mirror like that's the story it's not narrative um and so I like I set up a couple different sets for myself something where she can play with fabric something she could be on a chase I do have a mirror if I want so what I do personally and I don't storyboard I write down like morally stream of consciousness like the types of shots that I'm picturing in my head when I'm shooting I can totally throw this out the window but if I'm stuck I can come backto or make a only shot close ups then you need to build at it a lot of different things together so I'm just going to read you roughly what I had for my shot list and so I kind of categorize them as like extreme close ups what do I want to get and you'll notice that we're gonna be referencing the same sheet throughout the day as we're shooting this to help us kind of keep track and make sure that we get every single shot so if you guys aren't set kind of do the same thing and by the way probably we would spend maybe an hour and a half if it were you and I shooting maybe to get like a two minute piece a minute and a half peace depends on you know you were wise and testing you go two minutes what we wanted doing if we're sitting at dinner for whatever reason on dh we have time will sit there and our iphones or ipads or whatever it is and just write our notes down for the shots for the next day so by no means you need to print this out just keep your laptop keep something next to you so you can reference so so I have extreme close ups for me I'm like okay really close details something that they referred to in movies is that cutaway shots so if you're doing something narrative and like you know you don't quite have the next shot in the road like you just kind of way to the ashes of the necklace or something so I have my extreme close ups I'm thinking I would be shooting with my one fifty macro um now macro lens is the same thing you would use to photograph flowers and close ups of jewelry and whatever it may be the reason that I have the signal one fifty is focal length makes a difference it does actually affect compression but one of the reasons it makes a difference is you may have maybe a seventy millimeter macro let's say was taking video of his eye for a seventy millimeter macro maybe I need to be here to fill the frame with this eye one fifty I can be back here or maybe here to do the same thing so I'm considering my subjects personal comfort you have to have one fifty even one o five is fine I just I wouldn't I would stay away from like seventy millimeter you know maybe ninety would be as ah ahs short of a focal length that I would go for so I have extreme close ups eyelashes fluttering eyelashes diesel of eyelashes lips then I wrote rack focus across the flowers so we're really it's so she's going to have a floral headpiece so I'm gonna have the focus kind of just track across the head piece maybe um maybe a shot where it's extreme close up where I switched the focus from the flowers down her face to her eyes down her face over her lips kind of some things I could do um I have hands on her skin so maybe even just to get a detail of her hand on her neck I'm thinking of all the things that air are sensual beautiful pretty details I'm sorta have close ups those you're like really tight details the next one for close up might be like hands on the hips like even just playing with the side of the laundry close up hands intertwined with hair so it's playful it's setting the mood I have tool or fabric in front of her face so would be close face shot their flowers in her hand maybe next to her face we could do that so that was like my extreme close ups my details um the next one I have is my medium shots so I have k laying down medium shots and so maybe she's one where she's laying on her stomach and it's medium shots in different angles there one where she's laying on her back and then another where she's standing up and that could be full length or medium and so I wrote down a bunch of different options for that so we're going to show you guys how to use the tools today that we spoke about yesterday and make this come together just know that boudoir isn't the easiest of things to shoot right off the bat because it can go from going pg to pg thirteen beyond very eso you'll notice that's being pretty cautious on how we're shooting things where we're angling things so we don't have a misrepresentation of weber shoot and so this is why I went with like white on white high key super pretty yeah and it's all about like is it about the mood or the parts and how much about the parts versus the mood you're going back yeah and then we'll talk about tomorrow using the wrong music even if you have great shots totally brings it back into the other room so that's funny that's so true um okay so if the camera can got kind of get a shot like this um what I usually do is personally for me oh funny fitz personally for me posing is one of the more difficult things um if I'm doing video cause I'm like thinking about everything so if the person might be like slouching or like I'm missing a detail I can't photo shop it so now I have to worry about posing well I won't worrying about lighting and moving my camera and all of that so the thing that I like to do is I bring posing references and that helps me think of like okay I know that I want her photographs I'm on her back with their eyes and focus a little bit of a wider shot one where she's facing towards me I know I want to focus on curves here's a couple of nice vertical poses so I do that these are actually images that I've taken a za reference for my own posing but it doesn't have to be I went to pinterest this morning and I was looking up beaujoire on pinterest by search like hi ke r and like wait where you are and like bright such romantic and all those keywords because I didn't want likes super sexy before like I was trying to go for something that is fitting my mood so I definitely recommend bringing references of posing and um I mean something that we've done in the past it's going even to sites and video on youtube you know find other forms of inspiration sometimes that aren't the best sometimes people just have metadata and it's the pg thirteen beyond and I went up searching just by looking at what war we really can't find many good boudoir video is like for me and tasteful dispute and tables okay yeah just meet maybe technically ok they're just a pg thirteen or greater yes which was not what I was aiming for so I'd actually find any inspiration for this the inspiration I found was not video it was photography which is great so I'm just gonna literally use photo inspiration so I definitely started like this and then I also do mood boards so in fashion photography a mood board is a collection of images that expresses the feel of the shoot so usually what you have is a photo that represents kind of what you're looking for for hair and another one for make up another one may be the type of poses another one for lighting maybe props and so ideally when you look at this piece of paper which I mean it's usually just digital but could be a piece of paper like this when you look at it it should be able to be passed to another visual person on your team and they know what the final result will kind of look and feel like uh so this is another thing if you do a shoot has production maybe something like this where there was hair and makeup being done and there was sets and lighting don't leave it up to last minute try to explain they do the hair it's not right a mood board is invaluable because a lot of times visual people words don't communicate so they just need to see it and with video going backto can't photoshopped tedious to try to fix things to try to fix it in camera on set so it's good practice even for your photography to make sure getting things right out of camera which means there's plenty of video that doesn't need a full team I can photograph a video for children for example the grandfather and child yesterday that had no hair and makeup it had no set it was a couch in a window and the two of them however if you are going to do but you are or like a video of a female or a couple hair and makeup becomes much more important than it was to your photography because you can't enhance and photo shop and depending on your confidence you may want somebody there just to hate this just look okay to you somebody who's a little more I guess visually oriented for whatever reason or just somebody to give you a little emphasis on its okay it looks great yeah so that's something to keep in mind is that that might be something you'd want to consider in a budget maybe introduce into video your business that you do engagement video sessions the woman that is used to knowing oh you can fix it in photo shop you can get rid of my wrinkles so she shows up in her lipstick isn't even where there was just that big blemish that she couldn't fix if you have a lot of budget like hollywood movies they can fix that that's why those those actors they have great makeup but they also are actually photo shop it's not photoshopped you know they have retouching done to them so in other words consider that that might be important part of a budget that you never thought of before that you might need hair and makeup now all right so I'm going to keep that with me for a reference I'm also going to keep my shot list reference again I don't need to stick to it but I'm gonna check it off long