Lessons

Lesson Info

Live Feedback Session

(dramatic music) Yeah, so for everybody that's joining in right now, we're just gonna wait a couple minutes here. We've got some small talk going on and we'll let some more attendees roll into the session here. But my name is Graham. I'm taking place of Joel, our community lead at Wildest. Unfortunately, he couldn't make it today 'cause he's sick. So you guys are stuck with me. You're in good hands, though, 'cause RJ is basically gonna be going over a few of these sequences and talking about what he loves, what could improve, those kind of things. And we're also gonna bring in the creators of those sequences as well to talk about their stuff. So just a couple quick housekeeping things. Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. Couple quick housekeeping things, you know, you can throw some things in the chat. You just wanna say, hi. Tell us where you tuning in from. Maybe you're in France and you're drinking a beer already. Love to know what kind of beer you're drinking, you know? Yeah. Even i...

f you're in the US and you're drinking, I don't judge. I mean, I could go grab a beer, I guess, but. You could grab, it's what, 11 there, so it's not bad. Yeah, it's happy hour time. It's almost 12. (men chuckling) And then also if you have any questions, like actual questions that you want to ask RJ, throw 'em in the Q and A box. So there's the chat and then there's the Q and A. And towards the end of this lesson, we're gonna go through all of those question and answers or as many as we can, I should say. So if there's something that you want to know, make sure to put it in there, especially if it relates to part two or assignment two, and getting your pre-production ready. So if there's any questions that came up for those then make sure to let us know. Oh, there's Jens. Hi. Jens, I'll mute you and put you in the corner here. Nice, Jens looking good. Looking good, man. So yeah, we've got the students that the sequences were selected kind of ready to go. And so as we go through them here, we're going to unmute them, bring them onto the screen and let them kind of chat with RJ, so. Yeah. Yeah. Excited. We've got some fun things to go through. Definitely. No, this is super cool. I mean, it's nice to be able to actually see the product of what you guys have been doing. Mm-hm. Yeah, I mean, this is just a start of it too. This is just a small little blimp into kinda the bigger picture of some of the short films everyone's planning out, so. Excited to also hear some of the bigger ideas that are gonna be coming to life soon. Definitely, definitely. Hopefully, we'll get into some of that at end of the Q and A here. Mm-hm, yep. Awesome, man. Well, yeah, quick couple other quick things, you know, if it is four in the morning where you are, feel free to go to bed, we're recording this. As you might know, when you probably had to click in it, it would've said, we're now recording. Don't be worried. It's just so we can put this online as part of the workshop, so. If you're tired and it's 4:00 a.m., go to bed. You can watch this later on. We got your back for you. And yeah, don't worry about the record icon either. Yeah, throw your comments in the comment section, Q and A in the Q and A. And yeah, let's get rolling. RJ, you ready? Let's dive into it, fire it up. Cool, man, cool, cool. So yeah, first up we've got Callum. So Callum, I'm gonna unmute you here and bring you into this chat. And should be good here in a sec. Beauty, can you hear me? I can hear you, man, yeah. Oh, there we go. What's up, Callum? Guys, what's up? I know Callum, we're both in Sherlock right now, so. Netted. Oh, this is like an insider trading deal. I don't know. Oh yeah, it might be. It might be a little insider for sure. (men chuckling) Very cool, very cool. So Callum, yeah, tell us about your sequence here. Yeah, man, well, I mean, mine was pretty inspired when I saw RJ's. I was like, he had a lot of skate shots and like around here, all I really do is skate around. So I'm like, and my girlfriend's learning to skate right now. And I was like, dude, that looked pretty sick. And it was golden hour right as I finished the seminar and I was like, man, I'm just gonna go with no plot. 'Cause he said no plot and just film stuff that I was like, I'd like to see this. If I was scrolling through Instagram and I saw a skate video, I'm like, doesn't need to have a plot. I'd love to see this. So I just filmed a bunch of cool stuff. And then we had beers in my back porch. So we just filmed it and I was pretty hyped on it, to be honest. I didn't think it would turn out looking pretty cool, but I thought it turned out pretty sick. That's awesome. So you filmed that right after you watched the episode? Yeah, it was filmed and done in three hours 'cause I wanted to just do it, just to rush it and see what I could do. Nice. And I was pretty pumped. That's awesome. That's sweet, man. Well, fire it up. Well, should we get into it and kind give it a watch here? Sure, yeah, let's do it. Okay, I'll share my screen. Host disabled, my screen sharing. Graham, you gotta enable me. Gotta give you the permission here. The admin permission. Make it co-host. Oh, there we go, let's try that. Sure sound, I'll make sure that's checked. Optimize for video clip. Okay, there we go. Okay, we good, can you see this? All right. Okay, open Callum's here. (upbeat music) Should have paused. All right. (upbeat music) Digging the track choice. Mm-hm. (upbeat music) Did I do it? Yeah. Did I? Yeah. (RJ chuckles) (upbeat music) (man laughing) Awesome, that's fun. Nice work, Callum. That looks sweet, man. Super sweet. Thanks, man. Yeah, I feel like you definitely captured the vibe of the, I'm just gonna start scrubbing through, I think you definitely captured the vibe of just like a pretty chill evening. It's nice work. I love the clouds. I love the, it's not like full, full sunset, but the clouds just make it look like just a beautiful, happy, happy summer day. So that's super fun. Let's just start scrubbing through some clips and I'll kind of tell you what I love and maybe a couple things we can improve on. Sweet. So, first off, I love the first opening shot. Just get nice and wide, get a good idea of kind of where you are, time of day, stuff like that. (upbeat music) Super fun. Nice like kind of medium shot. Introduce your girlfriend, which is awesome. She's obviously the main character. (upbeat music) I like this. I like the title kind of just popping up halfway through. It's kind of fun and quirky. Yeah. I love the color of the title too. The yellow is sweet. I probably would've put it in the middle. Yeah. I think it's fine if she's cut off a bit, but kind of the title should take a bit of priority. So I probably would've put that there, but yeah, it's fun. I like it. (upbeat music) Here's a shot that we could have done a couple different ways. So we went from this wide to a bit of a medium close up and the shots are very similar. So I probably would've shot this maybe a little bit differently just 'cause it almost looks like a jump cut almost. So I probably would've shot it a little bit wider and then got it a little bit closer. Just so there's a difference in the shots. So they don't pop up as similar or I also probably would've tried to sync it just on the motion. So when she pushes and gets back on, I probably would've started this shot with her on the board. Just so it looks like a cohesive sequence. Yeah, yeah. And less of a jump cut, but so, I probably would've done that a little bit differently. Oh that's, Mark. This shot, just a little, it's kind of just out of focus. So I maybe would've just done without this one just 'cause we know it's a skateboard, but it just feels a little bit unintentional just 'cause it's outta focus. So either would've used a shot of it with it in focus or just maybe cut this one. (upbeat music) Yeah, true. I love this. Yeah, this is the best part by far. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love the music cut. It's fun, you can see that she's fired up or at least asking if she got it for the first time, it sounds like. So it's just a cute moment. So I think that's fun. And yeah, I like the music cut for sure. Did I? Yeah. (men chuckling) That's awesome. Did I? Did I get it? So with handheld and, especially, handheld follow movements, one thing we have to be careful, sometimes going a little bit too wide, it can feel a little bit personal. I like this shot. It looks like you're probably at 24 millimeters, but we almost feel like we are the cameraman almost when we almost wanna feel a little bit more like a bystander. So I probably would've just maybe gone a little bit tighter, like a 35 millimeter or a 50 even. I'm not sure what you were on, but. Yeah, 24. Yeah, 24. Yeah, so I probably just would've gone a little bit tighter. Would've felt like we were, it wouldn't have felt like we were breaking the barrier and feeling like we're the cameraman, more so a bystander, if we went a little bit tighter. Just on those ones where there's movement and we're coming into our subject. You know what I mean? I kind of noticed that too, yeah, for that, like walking up to it, it kind of took me out of it. I didn't really realize, but. Yeah, it's probably just your focal length. So it's about, yeah, if you're wide at 24, sometimes you just have to be careful with that. 35 would've done really well too. Sweet. That's usually when I do handheld, a lot of handheld stuff, I try to stick around 35 and 50. I really like that focal length. It's wide enough where you can still get a medium shot, but you can also get a little bit closer and not feel too, too personal with the subject. (upbeat music) Fun. And that's awesome. Savor fun. That's a good day off, man. Yeah, this is a perfect day off here. Skating and beers. I love that jump cut. I used to not like jump cuts, and just over the past few years, I've just learned to love it a little bit more and I think that's cool. Just kind of same shot going from, just cutting a little bit of the time out and still seeing something different. Like I think that's fun, it's a little quirky. Yeah. (upbeat music) That's awesome. Cool, man. I think the last thing would be, it would've been nice just to have a little bit more of an ending, even if it's her, you know, walking in the tall grass and just the music fades out a little bit more. Here, I'm just gonna quit my screen for Graham. Where are we? There we go. Even if it's just her walking in the grass and the music fades out and maybe it just fades to natural sounds for a bit, that would've been nice just to give the viewer just a little bit of time to just know that it's coming to an end. Right, yeah. But yeah, dude, that's tons of fun, man. I think it's awesome. I think what you should try, just with the edit, when you have some time you might like, what I always do is when I have my final cut, I always spend a little bit of time, and I'll save that, I'll save it in a new sequence and then I'll just see if it works better sometimes if I just cut things down. And sometimes it works with the song, if I just speed things up. And sometimes I don't like it. Sometimes it's nice to have things drawn out and feel the scene a little bit more and hear the sounds. But, sometimes, I surprise myself and be like, man, I just cut 30 seconds. And I feel like I didn't lose anything either, so. Yeah. If that's, you know, something you can give a try too. But no, I think it's fun, felt like I was there, felt like I was right there in Greendale, the best place on earth. Yeah, dude. So that's sweet, man. Thanks, man. Yeah, I'm excited. Have you shot anything else since then? Yeah, I actually just, I was over on the sunshine coast over in Gibson's and I filmed a video. Cool, fun. I'm like, I'm gonna drop some questions about it 'cause I got a couple questions about music. Just figuring out like copyright stuff. Sure, sure. Yeah. Hopefully, I should be done that soon. Nice, okay, man. Well, we'll talk about those questions later. That's awesome, sweet. Thanks man, yeah, thanks for the feedback. That's awesome, especially on that focal length. That helps. Yeah, that's a big one for sure. I think once you start to understand, 'cause even when you're looking at a screen, it's hard to know sometimes. And then when you play it back there, like something just feels off. I've had that tons of times when I was first starting off, but yeah, nice work. Sweet. Sweet, thanks buddy. Cool, no worries. Thanks, Callum. I'm gonna kick you back out. Sounds good. Ah, rock (indistinct) Yeah, I love that video. So fun, so fun. Greendale, it's just a little, I don't know if, it's not really a town, it's just a little section of (indistinct) the city that we live in and it's just lots of farmland and beautiful fields and stuff. And that's where I grew up as well. So it's fun to see back into that world. Nice, very cool. Yeah. All right, well, I'm going to put Callum on hold there and so, I might have actually kicked him out of the room. Bring him back in there. No, I think he's there. Zoom problems, oh man. You'd think we could work these out by now. Doing it a little bit differently than we have in the past, so. It's been a year and a bit, Graham. I know, man, I know. Rock on. So yeah, we're gonna jump into the next video and, really quick, I don't think I mentioned this before, huge thanks to everybody that submitted a video. Yeah. Sadly, we just don't have enough time to go through everybody's but we've got four awesome, or three more that we're gonna go through here. And definitely I think there's lots to learn just from seeing RJ kind of review and talk about those people's videos. So check it out here. We're gonna bring in Alex. Alex Shaw here. So Alex, if you wanna go ahead and start your video. Yeah. Bring it on screen. Nice. Nice. How's it going, Alex? How you doing? Hello. I'm good, yeah. I'm in Lake Tahoe and it's perfection outside right now, so. Oh nice. Gonna be a good day. Yeah. Oh that's sweet. It's so fun. We hate to make you stay inside, it's kind of bad timing. No, no, no. It's good, this is good. Very cool. Awesome. Alex. Cool. Alex, what do you do? Are you shooting full time or, what's your story? Yeah, so I'm a full-time primarily photographer. I've done video on very small projects for small businesses and social media content. But I am actually gonna start for the summer being a wildland firefighter. So that's a plot twist. Sweet. So that'll be the summertime, but primarily photography, but I'm wanting to do more video, so. That's awesome. That's awesome. You should document the firefighting. Yeah, that's my plan. I need like a little Pocket 2, to just stick with me. Yeah. You know, just get some good content, so. I'd love to see that. That'd be so interesting, a little bit of video, a little bit of photo, that'd be fun. Yeah, that'd be super fun. Awesome. We'll have to put everybody's Instagram handles down below the video once we get the record up and it'd be neat to follow along your adventure this summer, if you're putting anything online on social, so. Oh yeah, definitely will be. That's awesome. Very cool. Cool, cool. All right. Well, I'll share my screen again and we'll dive into your film. Okay. I wanna give it a pause here. (uptempo music) (footsteps echoing) (uptempo music) (footsteps echoing) That's awesome. Oh, I wanna go camping. (group chuckling) That's sweet. Love that closing shot with the stars too. Good ending. Oh yeah, yeah. It's bringing the natural fully. Yeah, no, I love it. Nice work, Alex, that looks fun. Thank you. So let's just go through a couple of these here. First off, love the tracker. Those are awesome. Is that your vehicle? Yeah, it's pretty sweet. It's actually my boyfriend's, but it's a '96. Oh, that's fun. Yeah, the thing is in good shape. So that's fun. Yeah. I like the music. It's just fun and simple and kind of quirky and yeah, it's fun, I like it. I think that's a good choice for this, for sure. (uptempo music) I love that shot. This isn't weird at all. I probably would've cut that shot a little bit earlier. I don't think we needed to see like the pan away just there. So I probably just would've cut that one just on the nice, I feel like it's always good to end a shot on a bit of a high note. So even if it's a shot of someone's face or someone's eyes, I never like to end it when they're blinking. I like to end it usually with their eyes open or something. So Sam would go for this kind of idea. Like let's just end it on a high note where the shot's just on the glasses. I probably just would've cut that one a little shorter. This is isn't weird at all. I like that shot. I like the color grade. Just like soft and vintage and like some warm shadows. Yeah, I think it's good. Do you add some grain as well, looks like. I did, yeah, I did an overlay. Nice. Of a grain. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, that looks sweet. (uptempo music) I love this tunnel shot. It looks fun, looks like it's from the '80s right here. Super fun. Mm. So this shot, I probably would've cut. This, or I wouldn't have cut the whole shot, but I would've cut the middle out. So this shot is quite a bit different than this. And there's a lot of space in between where it's just out of focus. So I would've just gone right from the wide, cut all this middle stuff right here. Cut all that stuff where it's outta focus and then just cut right to this. And it would just saved us some time. And yeah, it just would've looked more intentional just 'cause it's less stuff outta focus. (uptempo music) Here's one thing, you know, most of this shot is kind of out focus before you hit focus. So I would just probably only use the end of the shot where it's in focus and just make sure next time we just get our focus pretty early on. (uptempo music) That's awesome. (uptempo music) I love that shot, nice and wide, sweet. I like how we started to hear him blowing up the mat before the shot came in. It just makes it flow nice. So that's a sweet move. (uptempo music) I probably just would've cut half of this shot just 'cause it's, you know, we're just seeing the mat, which we already know he's blowing up the mat and it's just a little bit outta focus as well. So I probably just would've cut that down. (uptempo music) This scene is awesome. (footsteps echoing) Yeah, these last shots are amazing. I would've, I love this natural sounds here. I almost would've loved to just hear the song fade out earlier, even around here and just started to get that natural sound 'cause it really, you feel it at the end here. It really brings you into the scene, which I love. So I would think that would probably be my last thing would just be, don't be afraid to not let the song guide the edit all the time and sometimes you can just end it and just let the scene play out with some natural sounds for a little bit longer. 'Cause you did it at the end here, which is awesome. But I would've even loved to hear more of the natural sounds. I feel like it would've brought the viewer into the scene even just a little bit more. Even right there, if the song just kind of ended and we just started to hear, just started to feel the peacefulness of the night just a little bit sooner would've been awesome. Yeah. Yeah, no that's sweet, though. That's awesome, nice work. Thank you. I wanna go camping. So I think it did it's job. Okay. Sweet. No that's sweet work, that looks awesome. Hey Alex, a question came up in the comment section. What equipment were you using to shoot that? So I was using, I've got a Canon 5D Mark IV and I was filming with a 35, but it was filming 4K. So it cropped it to probably about a 50-ish. Yeah, probably a 50, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I had a Rode VideoMic GO. So really basic. Yeah, sweet. Nice. No, it's amazing what you can make with just like a pretty basic setup like that and it looks awesome. Like, you know, it doesn't take too much and that 50, that's a good focal length too just to keep on your camera to get a sequence like this. Like, oh, I do that all the time. Just kind of between the 35 and the 50 is a good length. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Nice. Well, awesome work. Should we should move on to the next, Graham? Yeah, Alex, thank you so much for your submission for your time and, yeah, I'm gonna mute you here. If you don't mind turning off your video and we're gonna roll into the next person here. Thank you, guys. No worries. All right, cheers. So, and I really hope I'm pronouncing this right. So my apologies if I'm not, but Magalie. If you wanna go ahead and start your video. I've got you unmuted now too, so. Hey. How's it going? Hey, how are ya? Good, thank you. I'm good. Good, good. Awesome. Did I pronounce your name right, is that? Magalie. Magalie, okay. Magalie. Very cool. I think that was right, Graham, for sure. (Graham chuckles) It's the French Canadian influence coming through. There you go. So Magalie, where are you calling in from today? I am in France. It's lost in the middle of nowhere. So I think you won't know it. (men chuckling) Yeah. That's awesome. Even the French people don't know this place, so. It's in the middle. Sounds like a good place to video. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. Nature only. That's awesome, super nice. Well, tell us about your film a little bit here. Yeah. So I went back from New Zealand a few weeks ago after a long trip in nature for one year and a half. So I missed my friends and I wanted to make a movie with them and I spent the weekend with them into nature again, 'cause I love nature. So I wanted to show the vibes of this weekend and we are used to go there a lot of times during the year because we are making a music festival there. So I really wanted to show this vibe and I didn't want to prepare all the scenes, but also show the real moments. So some of the scenes are prepared and some are not, some they are not. And yeah, I wanted to focus on emotion more than the quality of the image 'cause I didn't get my filter on time. It wasn't in the middle of the day. So, but yes I'm okay, yeah, with this. Awesome, super cool. Cool. Okay, well, thanks for sharing. Well, let's dive into it. Lucky for you, you were in New Zealand the last year and a half. That's pretty perfect time to be stuck somewhere. Yeah. (Magalie laughs) Oh, where is it? Oh, there we go. All right. All right, let's give this a watch. (gentle music) Hmm, it's fun. (indistinct talking) (speaking in foreign language) Hmm, that's awesome. Nice work. That looked, I feel very at peace already and I'm not even the one visiting that place. So I think you did a good job. What a stunning place. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, it looks amazing. Awesome, well, let's scrub through it and go through it a bit here. I love the opening shot. The colors look sweet. I like the color grade, looks fun. Introduce kind of all your friends, which is fun to do in the first shot. (gentle music) (indistinct talking) This shot, I think it would've been nice to, I love the handheld shaky feel, but it feels like we're kind of going back and forth to the right and to the left a little bit. So I probably just would've tried to keep it a little bit more straight. Okay. (gentle music) I love this shot, it's amazing. She looks very at peace in this moment, which is awesome. That was prepared, it was not natural. Oh, yeah. (indistinct) No, it looks great. (gentle music) I love this lake scene. This is awesome. I love that cut. I love cutting just on mid-action for something like this. Just create some energy, especially when it's mid-action, like he's right about to hit it. I thought that felt really nice. (gentle music) And you didn't hold it for too long, which is awesome. Like your pacing's really good. You kind of just cutting from scene to scene really, really quickly, which is nice. Kinda keeps the energy going. (gentle music) (friends shouting) I love that. Even that just a quick shot of him running past, like that's, what is that? 31? That's like a second and a half, right? So those little quick shots are super fun. They add lots of energy. So nice work on that. (gentle music) Hmm, it looks like here, there's a little bit of, it looks like you used either in-camera stabilizer or like a warp stabilizer after. Yeah, I did the DH5 and it's- Okay. I don't know why it's doing that. Okay. Since. Yeah. Hmm, so that was an in-camera thing. Yeah, so that's just something to keep in mind for next time. Try to, yeah, I honestly don't like to use many in-camera stabilizers just 'cause sometimes you get that weird warping on the edges. So that's just something to kind of keep in mind for next time. Yeah, and I just... Go ahead. You did with your movie, your visual segments, and you used a Canon and it was not- That's right. But not at all because it looks like it's quite light and it's like, you can do handle with this, so. Mm-hm. Yeah, I don't think I had any of the in-camera stabilizations on just 'cause I kind of wanted a bit of that shakier feel, but there's also a fine line sometimes, if you don't want the small little shakes. So sometimes it just takes practice to just keeping it steady and not getting those like micro jitters. Okay. But yeah. (speaking in foreign language) Nice, it's a sweet spot. (gentle music) Good use of the music for the edit. Yeah, no, I love the music. It just kind of, this looks like a very peaceful place and the edit definitely is, or the song is a very good choice for the... (gentle music) It's awesome. This is fun. I like how you just kept it to one shot per activity. You know, we don't have to dwell on these shots too much. It's just nice moving on from activity to activity and keeping the energy going, super fun. (gentle music) Here, I would just be careful. I never like when we go from one movement to another, just feels like it's less intentional. So I would've just either cut it when we are moving to the left before we start moving to the right again. Or, mostly in person, I would just be more intentional with just lengthening out that one movement to the left instead of panning back to the right. Okay The ending is great, though. Like the song ends like super nicely on that note. And then I love the sound of the window closing. It's so awesome. Like that's a great ending. So yeah, no, when I watched this, I felt very much just at peace and like I got a glimpse into that world for a little bit. So I really love that edit, that's sweet. Okay, thank you. Yeah, no worries. Nice work. Cool. I'm excited to see what you make next. Yeah. Awesome, well, thank you so much, Magalie. Yeah, and welcome back to France. Hopefully, you have a good time. (group laughing) Yeah. Don't miss New Zealand too much. Okay. All right, so I'm gonna mute you here, Magalie. If you don't mind, turn off your video and we're gonna bring in the next guest here. So this last guest, Jens, I'm gonna unmute you. If you wanna turn on your video, go for it. We'll bring you on here, so you can- Yeah, sure. Start chatting about your project. What's up? What's up, Jens, how's it going, man? Great. And I'm starting to see a theme here. We've got another skate video coming up. RJ, I think you're a little biased. Maybe, I don't know. There's a lot of skate videos. Yeah, actually, I've been long-boarding, a big part of my life. So when I saw your video with skating, usually, we always like in sports, we film everything like slow motion and everything. Yeah. But I was motivated just to use 24 frames and the approach I had for video, like just bring the camera with my friends and everyone grabs the camera to film, just- Oh, cool. Fun. Yeah. So you and everyone kind of take a shot at it for this edit. Yeah, so everyone had fun. So everyone who wants to just take one shot, grab the camera now, just is your turn now. And then we grab all the camera and then I just put everything together. I just try to have some shots in mind, like the end, a little bit of the beginning, and just like portraits, but the rest is everyone filming. Actually, there's a lot of me skating, my friends. So yeah, that was the approach I had for the video. That's awesome. That's very cool, man. I used to do that lots, especially when I would go on trips with friends. I would get them to just take the camera and even I would sometimes just ask them just to record like a vlog of just what's happening. What do they feel? Or just record clips of what they see. And it's nice on some moments too, where it's, you know, you might not use the footage or whatever, sometimes it's just good to remember some of your friends' point of view. So that's super fun. Awesome. Well, let's get into the edit here. Yeah, definitely. Jens, where are you from? Where are you calling in from? From Chile. Chile, nice. Cool. Yeah. So is this spot where you guys were long-boarding, is this close to your house, or? Yeah, like 50 minutes. Oh, sweet. Yeah, I live in (indistinct) so there's a lot of mountains. So we have a lot of roads on the outside of the city. Hmm. Where we just can skate without many cars and it's pretty safe. Hmm. Very cool. So awesome. Yeah. Yeah, let's hit play. (indistinct talking) (uptempo music) Hmm. Yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! Go, go, go, go, go! (uptempo music) So fun. (energetic music) (indistinct talking) ♪ Can't seem to face up to the fights ♪ ♪ I get so nervous ♪ ♪ Can't sleep 'cause my bed's on fire ♪ ♪ Don't touch me, I'm a real live wire ♪ ♪ Psycho killer ♪ (singing in foreign language) ♪ Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa feather ♪ Hey, hold him through, hold him through. (man laughing) (singing in foreign language) ♪ Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa feather ♪ ♪ Run, run, run, run, run away ♪ ♪ Oh-Oh-Oh-Oh ♪ ♪ Aye-Aye-Aye-Aye-Aye-Aye ♪ That's awesome, that's fun, man. Nice work. Thanks. You guys are gnarly. I don't long-board, so I'm terrified of that. Yeah. We used to skate a lot when we were in school. Every Friday we went to long-boarding, so we have really good memories. And since I started filmmaking, I had never done a video like we were used to because we used to film like this, but with a GoPro. So it's another feeling. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, I used to find that too, where when I was first getting into it, I would film with my friends so much. And then somewhere along the line, I just stopped doing it, but it's important to just capture those moments and those fun memories. And when you can capture it and create the feel like this, this is the stuff that you can look back on in 10 years and you're just gonna love to watch, right? So yeah, that's awesome, dude. Good for you, it turned out sweet. Thanks. So I love the song, the song's sweet. I think it captures the energy quite well. One thing I probably would've, I like the fake super eight. I probably wouldn't have done the fake super eight and the wider 16 mil 'cause I really like the way, where is it, when you go to the actual, like, I love the look of this wide as well. I probably would've just cut from some fake super eight stuff to this wide. 'Cause I think, I mean, this footage looks awesome. What did you shoot this on? On the A73 and 20 millimeters, 1.8. Okay, cool. Yeah, that's sweet. Yeah, nice depth of field. So I think it comes across nice in this wide. So I probably would've just stuck without this 16 millimeter matte and just done maybe the eight mil and then the wide as well. Otherwise man, it looks really, the edit looks really sweet. Really fun. (energetic music) It has such great color to it too. Yeah, no, I really like the color. I think you did a good job color grading, looks really cool. Thanks. (energetic music) I love these, these are sweet moments, just fun. You know, doesn't have to be perfect where you're not always looking at the camera and stuff like that. This is just, it's fun memories. Yeah. (energetic music) (indistinct talking) ♪ Can't seem to face up to the fight ♪ I love the shot of the chicken or whatever. It's just fun. Yeah. Just creates the vibe of the area. Yeah. I also, usually I don't cut along with audio. But now I think the audio was like a big part of the video. Absolutely, no, I think the audio sounds good. It would be very different, I think it would hold less energy if you didn't have the audio in there. So yeah, nice work. (energetic music) (indistinct talking) ♪ Can't sleep 'cause my bed's on fire ♪ ♪ Don't touch me, I'm a real live wire ♪ ♪ Psycho-killer ♪ I think the biggest thing that I would encourage you to do is the film is about two minutes in length and I mean, you guys are going fast. You guys are hauling. So I would encourage you to maybe speed up your cuts a little bit. Yeah. 'Cause you guys are going fast. If we speed up the cuts, it's gonna speed up the whole energy of the film and it's gonna give the feeling and the illusion that you guys are going even faster. 'Cause some of your cuts are just held a little bit long. (energetic music) (indistinct talking) You know, even something like that, like just end it with his face on the camera. Okay. ♪ I'm a real live wire ♪ Yeah, even something like that, like end it mid slide and then quickly go into the next shot. It's just gonna create more energy that things are just moving faster and you guys are actually going faster than you are. Okay, perfect. Mm-hm. That's the one thing when I started shooting, I think I realized that on an edit when I was shooting some mountain biking, I was actually holding the shots. At first, I was holding the shots like when he entered, when the mountain biker would enter the frame and then when he would exit the frame. And I was like, this does not feel very good here. It just feels, for me, it just felt amateur what I was doing. And I realized, man, I need to be cutting mid-action, especially with action sports. So not always seeing the whole clip of them coming in the frame and coming out and it just felt so much better and it felt way more fast-paced. So I would encourage you, if you're gonna shoot more long-boarding, just cut on the action. Even now, go back in the edit, see how you can speed it up and just cut it. Cut it just a little bit shorter and I think you'll like the results. Yeah, I'll try it. (energetic music) That's awesome. Super fun, man. Thanks. Super fun. Yeah, no that's awesome. Sweet film. I would, I think for the next one, like I said, just encourage you to just cut on the action a little bit more and it's gonna just speed up the energy a bit, so. Perfect. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah, no worries, man. Nice work, I love it, looks like a ton of fun. (Jens chuckles) Sweet, all right. Well, I'm gonna kick you outta here, Jens. I can't thank you enough for the submission man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it turned out awesome. All the submissions. It was fun to see, fun to see them rolling in. Very cool. So yeah, I mean, those are the four videos that we're gonna go over today, guys. But we've still got a little bit of time left for some Q and A. So if you've got a question, especially if it relates to the assignment two with planning your projects, so you can basically finalize your pre-pro, so you can get out and shoot your film for part two of the workshop. Make sure to drop it in the chat right now. And actually maybe if, we'll give you guys a couple seconds here to put those chats in, if you want. And RJ, should we roll that trailer? Should should we drop the trailer? Oh, yeah, we should. Okay, yeah, so we're all done part two. It's all edited. It's ready for release. If you like part one, part two is gonna be sweet. So yeah, we basically, during this, I was shooting my short film that we planned out in the pre-production part of the workshop and yeah, a lot of part two is just based around that. Just learning all the tips along the way, seeing me shoot, seeing me direct talent and stuff like that. So I will share my screen and then let's run into the trailer. (Graham chuckles) And it is amazing guys. Part one was pretty incredible, but part two is just next level. So I can't wait for you guys to see it. We are releasing it next Wednesday. It'll be in your account, so get ready for it. Okay. Let's talk about directing. Look up and look around a little bit. You're gonna look right at the lens for this one. Directing is all about communication. Read question number one, get an answer. Read question number two. That's not what we're looking for and that's not how we're gonna get good emotion out there. What's the energy of the scene? Just like embracing the forest, yeah. Yeah, just like that. When we're getting some natural moments, that's what we're wanting here. Cut. Okay, welcome to part two. Now is when we put all of that hard work and all that time that we put into pre-production and we bring that all to light. Everything that we have planned, now we're taking that to the field and we're executing it all. Shot number one is gonna be this one take. I composed it so we're just getting a little bit of the sky and we'll just fill in the frame with the green. Don't be afraid to curate a moment. And then from there, we can just document it. A lot of our movements are coming in with her, gives the impression that we're coming into the scene. Cool. That's it. Did it. It's a wrap. Don't be afraid to go beyond the plan, leave everything out in the field. We save our beautiful stabilized movements for stuff like this. When we do use it, it just amplifies emotion 'cause it stands out more. Let's really communicate what the issue was. We wanna build intimacy with not only our talent, but our whole crew, everyone on the set. Whoa. You like that one? Can you feel it? I felt that connection. We connected on a deeper level because of that one right there. We only have a few shoots to get everything that we want to get. And now it's your turn. Go out and shoot your short film. Load it up here. And we could possibly get a few light rays and just soften the whole image over there. Keep my chest level, camera nice and close, compose my shot. I'll gather focus and then I will make sure I'm keeping the same distance away from Kathy. The promax is doing its magic and getting some (indistinct) soft flares. Yeah, this is not something that we are anticipating, but. Is it hailing? Try your hardest to leave everything, all your creative energy, out in the field. Oh. Nice. That's just fun for me to look back on 'cause we had so much fun filming that. That is awesome, man. And it is jam-packed too. I mean like even, even that trailer, there has so much, so much good detail of like little tidbits of knowledge there. Mm-hm, yeah, the whole workshop, it's jam-packed with a lot of those. So I'm excited for everyone to see it. Yeah. You know the worst part I think is gonna be waiting to see the actual final film with Kathy. That's gonna be the toughest part. Yeah, well, we gotta build that anticipation up here. You gotta get people excited. Really teasing it out there for sure. Yeah. Awesome. So we got a couple in the Q and A, couple in the chat going on here, so. Yeah. Should we start firing off some of these? Yeah, let's do this here. Let's answer this one from Tom Roland. So you touched on this in part one, but to go on a little more in depth, how do you convince someone to let you do a short film on them? I know a lot of people with great stories, but I'm worried they will not be open to making a short film. They might think it's silly or they don't like being in front of the camera. Let me know your thoughts. That's a really good question. And definitely something that it takes, sometimes a little bit of humility just to go and ask. And it can be tough sometimes asking someone to make a short film about them. It takes a couple things sometimes. First off, just show them that you're excited, show them your energy, your interest. Second off, just share with them that they do have a unique story. Sometimes it takes just us convincing ourselves that we have something amazing to say. So make sure that they're hearing what it is about their story that you love. And then if you can also show them something that you've done in the past, that's been really big as well. Like, hey, I wanna do something similar to this with you and your story. And as much as you can with anybody, get them invested in the project. If they see your energy, if they see your passion, most of the time that's enough. And then just gotta ask, and that's okay if they say no. Like I, you know, me and my team, we ask people all the time for short films and we get people like, yeah, I'm not really interested. And sometimes it's even like an older crowd. Sometimes they don't understand even what you're doing and that's fine, and sometimes you're just gonna get no's. But sometimes it just takes asking a few people and you're gonna get someone who gets it and they're pretty excited to be a part of it. I think that's such a common theme too even from some of our instructors. I was just talking with Isaac the other day about the amount of no's you have to get before you get a yes. So really- I saw his IG reel today. Oh man. Oh yeah, yeah. Did you see that? I did, yeah. A little TikTok thing, that was so funny. Yeah, TikTok man, it's happening. It's here. It's happening. Yeah, no, Isaac knows, yeah, it takes a lot of no's sometimes. And in business, in pitching, you know, essentially you're pitching an idea, right? Even if it's just a self-funded story, you're still pitching something and you want them to invest in it, just with their time. So just be okay with your no's, right? Yeah, and definitely showing them that interest, right? You know, if you can relate to them and really prove that you're gonna tell their story properly, I mean, that's gonna make all the difference. They're gonna trust in you, so. Exactly. Let's tackle this one from Alex. So RJ, do you use more than an audio recorder? And, Mike, during filming in case of redundancy? Right, so more than one at a time. It just depends. It depends on how important my audio is for a scene. Like when I am shooting, you'll see it in part two, when I'm shooting an interview, I'll use a lav mic on the lapel. And I won't plan on using it 'cause I like the sound just of a shotgun mic from overhead. But I'll still connect the lav as well. And just in case something goes wrong, I'll have two options. Most of the time in the field, I don't do that. Most of the time, it's just shooting on a shotgun and, if it's important, I'll just be monitoring the levels in my headphones during it. And if it's not, like sometimes we're just shooting in a forest, I'll still be monitoring the levels on a screen, even if I'm not wearing headphones. But I've used my microphone enough that I trust it and I know that if it's not peaking that we'll be in good shape. But if there's no dialogue and all I need is natural sounds, I know that worst, worst, worst case scenario if something goes wrong, I can even rerecord those sounds. So it always depends on the situation, if and how important the audio or the dialogue is. But most of the time, no, unless it's an interview. I think it's also, you know, it might be important to note too, your camera, shooting on a C300, you've got two separate audio input channels of recording separately, right, which not all DSLRs are gonna give you that option, of course, so. Yeah, exactly. So it's almost important just to shoot with one and just make sure you're just monitoring it and you're knowing that you're getting what you need. So just with those headphones. Every camera's got a headphone jack, so. Even if it's just sometimes, I used to just use the iPhone headphones and just have one in my ear. I won't always be wearing over ears. Just so I know that there's nothing funky happening, so. Definitely good tip, man. This is a great question and definitely something that it's kind of funny to put the cart before the horse, you know, we haven't gotten to editing, but we're talking about having these students put their visual sequences together. So it's about music. So wondering how you go about putting music on a video, if you aren't planning on monetizing the video, just planning on putting the video on Insta, Vimeo and my site. Are you allowed to use any song or will it be taken down because of copyright? I usually use Epidemic Sound for royalty-free music, but really want to use a Caamp song, ha-ha. Oh, yes. And that is from Callum, boy, Callum. Callum. Yeah, that's a tough one. There's a lot of songs, like I love music, I love finding new music. And a lot of the time these songs will cost quite a bit of money to license, especially if it's like a Caamp song, they're well known. So I think the safe answer is, no. Unless you license it from the artist or the agency or production company, you just can't use it. That would be the safe one. 'Cause I think anything like, even if you upload to Vimeo, still be taken down. Instagram, I think will most likely take it down. You might get away with it every now and then. But I think the safe, you know, I used to, when I was first getting into it, didn't have much of a budget and back then Musicbed was all per license. Like you'd pay for one song, I think it was like usually like 300 bucks a song, so it was pretty expensive back then. I would try to get away with it and just try to figure it out. But I wouldn't recommend that because there's so many good options. There's, you know, Musicbed is a great option. And if you're just using a personal subscription, I love the music on there. And they've got some amazing songs. Like even just recently, they've started uploading some songs from the '80s. I don't even know where, who they're talking to. But it's pushing beyond just your classic royalty-free sounding song now. So it's cool to see that. So I would just recommend going with one of the subscription music licensing ones. And if you have a song that you've listened to on Spotify or you want something different, I would just go try to find a smaller artist that has the sound that you're looking for and reach out to them. And, sometimes, they're super game with you just using it, but for the big ones, the big dogs, yeah, most of the time their hands are tied and they can't really license it to you for free. So I would say use smaller artists and just have a few cheap subscriptions to Musicbed or Epidemic Sounds or any of those ones. So that's a tough one, though. I've got so many songs that I've wanted to use in the past that yeah, I just can't go ahead with, unfortunately. That's tricky, man. Yeah. It is amazing, the variety, like you're saying, especially on sites like Musicbed where you can really find something that you're looking for. You've just gotta kind of spend some time and really do some digging. Yeah, they have some good songs on there, man. Some really good ones. So they're my favorite. Musicbed has always been kind of where, my go to is for music, so. Very cool. And I think in part three, we're actually gonna cover this in more detail as well, aren't we? Yeah, you're just gonna see how I come into it with a song in my head and then, yeah, I just go find the song on Musicbed and then how I test out a few in the edit and we'll go over all that, so. Nice. Yeah, super fun. All right, so here's another question from Magalie. One of our submissions here. She's doing pre-pro on a web documentary about the beauty of community for an organization. And the main challenge that she's having right now is how to tell a story about community. Each person has a story. How can we tell a story for a few people at the same time? One episode is about one community and it's only about five to seven minutes each. So it sounds like we're trying to feature a few people in one episode, if I'm getting that correct. Right, one episode is about one community, awesome. And there's multiple people in the community. Right, I would start to focus on themes rather than full stories. So find the themes of what makes this community unique and then multiple people can touch on that theme without having to go into their full story. Or if somebody has a really, really unique story, you can also share their whole story and then maybe the rest of them kind of touch on an overall theme, but don't feel the need that you need to tell everyone's full story. 'Cause that might just take too long. So just find out what is like the overall arching theme that you want to tell within this video and then try to, within your interview process and your dialogue with these people, just make sure they're touching on those themes. And then you can kind of have those interviews coming in and out rather than having to tell everyone's full story. Great, great idea. And definitely in that pre-pro stage, that interview stage, just keeping asking those questions, you know, like once you hear that answer, ask it again another way. Make sure you're just kind of pulling out those deeper meanings behind it to find that common theme, I like that. Yeah, exactly. And in your interview process, just go deep. Like when we shot our interview with Kathy, I think we shot, I think it was like two hours long, which is quite a bit of time to be talking to someone, but we'd go over a topic two or three times. I'd ask a similar question that I did, just in a bit different of a way. And her answers would, they wouldn't change, but we would just get different details each time. So you'll see that in the next part of the workshop. But yeah, like Graham said, just keep going deep and asking more questions and being curious. Super key. Very cool. Yeah. Let's take this one from Andre. So how do you deal with people in the background that don't belong in the film, especially in a crowded environment? Yeah, it always depends. I'm trying to think what scenario. So I'm shooting in the mountains lots and in environments where I just don't get a ton of people. But then there's times where you're shooting a commercial and there's people in the background. I just try to keep things low key. Sometimes in those scenarios, if you keep the set low key, the biggest thing that I'm trying to avoid is just people looking into the camera and stuff like that. But I guess in this case, you don't want them to be in the film either. Have someone either know what shot you're gonna get and have someone just do crowd control and just stop them for a sec, ask them if it's okay. And some people will just walk on by and that's fine. You just have to wait. But yeah, if you don't want them in the background, the only way to deal with that is either shoot a different angle or have someone on crowd control, just stopping people during takes. Yeah. And obviously, time of day can play a big factor in that as well. Yeah. It can be a crowded place. If you can be flexible with your timing, you know, if you don't need that perfect light, you can shoot it a little bit more midday when there's less people around. That might make your life easy. Yeah, I mean, usually sunrises are amazing. Not a lot of people like to wake up for the sunrise. So it's always a good time to shoot. Yeah, yeah. Good point. Being low key, I mean, if you're not looking for people, viewing your camera and such, if you can be as discreet as possible, make less commotion, that's gonna make sure that people, bystanders are more natural as they're walking by. So yeah, that can be helpful too. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. When you've got a sound guy and a boom and you've got a massive camera on a movie rig that's gonna cause some eyeballs. It will and people get curious and they wanna chat with you and it just can get very busy. So sometimes just keeping it small, it can definitely help. Very cool. Mm-hm. All right, got another question from Tom here. We're just gonna take a couple more and then we're gonna cut everybody loose here. I know RJ's gotta get back in the editing room, so. Gotta keep editing. Keep hammering 'em out. Yeah. So from Tom here, in part two, will you go more in-depth on how to make a career out of short films? Are a lot of your projects, passion films or do you try and get all of them sponsored? That's a good question. No part two will not go over any of the business side of things. We gotta, I guess walk before we can ride. And this one's all about just making sure everyone has a foundation of their filmmaking and have a place to start their journey of filmmaking at. So before we're starting to charge money, we just gotta fall in love with it ourselves and find our style and find what we love to film. There's a lot of avenues to go down. So that might be maybe a different workshop that we film in the future, for sure. You know, I've had the luxury just to work on lots of different commercial projects and sponsor short films and a lot of that stuff. So there's definitely some knowledge there that I would love to share, but it will not be this workshop. The second half of that question, there are a lot of passion, a lot of your projects, passion films? Do you try to get them all sponsored? You know what, it's mostly all client work nowadays and I'll pitch them. If a client comes to me with an idea of this is the film we want or this is the type of story we want, usually I'll have a log of stories and ideas that I can pitch to them. But eventually, I'm still pitching ideas. I still have projects that I want to to do. And if at the end of the day, they're not getting done, I will just go out there and do it low budget and shoot it. But for the most part, when you can get a client involved and they're a good client, they'll give you creative freedom, Then you have a little bit of budget too, to bring some people on and make sure everyone gets paid and is happy too. So maybe that's something, like I said, we'll do in a different workshop. But this one's just all about making the film. Gotta leave the door open for another workshop there. Yeah. Oh yeah. I'm sure there'll be lots. There's lots to share still. Yeah, it's a really good analogy, though. You know, you gotta walk before you ride and I think, you've really gotta do the work before you get the work. And I think it kind of goes along with that passion projects sentiment. If you're putting out these pieces that you're passionate about, it's gonna show. It comes through in the energy of the film and it'll get some more eyeballs on your work and people will wanna start working with you, so. Do the work. Well, that's the thing. Yeah, a 100%, do the work. That's the thing, even if we were, in the future, to do a workshop like that, a lot of it's going to be those types of tips of just like finding your niche, finding what you love to make and just hitting it home, doing the work. Some of the most successful directors that I've seen, even around Vancouver, who are working on massive commercial projects, a lot of them, they invest in their own spec work. They do their own passion projects and they do it well. And they find ways to push themselves and elevate themselves above the rest. And that's really just what it takes, between that and doing and getting connections, and just building relationships, that's enough to catapult anybody, so. Nice, very cool. All right, so let's go ahead and answer this one last question here and then we're gonna cut everybody loose. Another one from Alex. Guys, with interviews, do you shoot this before the B-roll? Does the answers your subject gives you help influence what B-roll you shoot? Yeah, I think you answered it yourself there, Alex. Usually, most of the time we do shoot it before. It always depends as well. Like with this film we did with Kathy, I probably interviewed her on the phone and email maybe like three times. So I had a really, really good idea of what the B-roll was going to be. But for the most time, if you don't have the luxury of interviewing your subject that many times, I would just shoot the interview beforehand. 'Cause you get so many ideas. Always when I'm listening to their story, every time it's like, oh, here's this new idea of what we can shoot and here's this new idea. And if you're curious, you're constantly gonna be learning new things. So the last thing we want is to spend a few days on B-roll and then do the interview at the end and then realize, oh man, what we shot wasn't actually as important to their story as maybe this thing that we kind of missed. So yeah, I would probably do the interview first, most of the time. Very cool. Yeah. Boom, there we go. Thursday morning knowledge session jam-packed. Can't thank you enough, RJ. I love it, man. Thanks for setting this up, Graham. It's been a ton of fun. It's fun chatting with the students and just seeing what they're learning and seeing that come to life in some films. I'm really enjoying it. Definitely, definitely. It's cool to see the progress, for sure. And with that, everyone, thank you so much for submitting your work. Thank you for joining us here on this live lesson. We're gonna do some more here in the next couple parts. So stay tuned. Don't forget, part two of the workshop is dropping next week. That'll be live in your dashboard. So keep an eye out for it on Wednesday. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us or our team. And yeah, thank you so much for being here. I love it, thank you man. And we'll see you guys in the next one. Sounds good, thanks RJ. Cheers. Cheers.