Skot (Lost)'s Blog – May 2009 Archive (7)

Lost Zombies Film School #7: Breaking The Rules

"Hell, there are no rules here, we are trying to accomplish something."

- Thomas A. Edison

When is it right to break the rules of film making? First off, before you break any rules it's a good idea to truly understand them. Once you understand why a rule exists you'll have a good idea of what happens when you disregard that rule. Let's use the rule of thirds as an example; we know from an earlier discussion that by framing our subject a specific way (not just centered in the… Continue

Added by Skot (Lost) on May 22, 2009 at 2:19pm — 9 Comments

Lost Zombies Film School #6: Camera Placement

Today we're gonna talk about camera positioning.

Let's state some obvious facts, movies are a visual medium. Stories are told through images and sound. We see a zombie attack Shaun. Shaun bashes the zombie's head with a cricket bat. Zombie dies. This is how movies work. But what else is going on outside of the obvious action and story?

The answer is, a lot. Where you place your camera has a HUGE impact on your story and it's almost completely subconscious to the viewer.… Continue

Added by Skot (Lost) on May 13, 2009 at 5:14pm — 11 Comments

Lost Zombies Film School #5: Lighting

We could spend a lot of time on the subject of lighting. It's a complex and rich craft. However In the spirit of DIY lets see what we can learn in a few hundred words and apply quickly to our arsenal of tools.

The first thing you need to know is that different types of light have different color temperatures. WTF does that means? It means, quite literally, that different kinds of light will show up as different colors. Indoor light, called tungsten, shows up orange in color. Sunlight… Continue

Added by Skot (Lost) on May 12, 2009 at 9:11pm — 8 Comments

Lost Zombies Film School #4: Story Structure

So we've talked about composing your shots. We've talked about "the line". We've talk about how your camera works. We're doing a pretty good job of flying through the basics of film making. It's important to note that Im giving you the Cliffs… Continue

Added by Skot (Lost) on May 11, 2009 at 3:30pm — 10 Comments

Lost Zombies Film School #3: Using Your Camera

Today's lesson is about how your camera fundamentally works and how to use that to your advantage. These rules apply to both still photo cameras and a video cameras, but we are focusing specifically on video cameras for the sake of this conversation.

There are a lot of ways you can manipulate the video you are capturing. But fundamentally there are three factors that are crucial to capturing video.

1. How much light you are letting into the camera. This is usually adjusted… Continue

Added by Skot (Lost) on May 8, 2009 at 9:30pm — 5 Comments

Lost Zombies Film School #2: The Line

The Line...

This is easily the most crucial and fundamental rule of film making and also one of the most difficult to explain and comprehend. Once you get it your films will improve dramatically.

So let's say you're shooting a conversation between two of your characters. The characters are facing one another and the shot you've composed looks something like this...

Now let's says you want to get a different angle… Continue

Added by Skot (Lost) on May 7, 2009 at 10:12pm — 10 Comments

Lost Zombies Film School #1: Composition

I get a bunch of questions about film making on lostzombies.com. Actually I don't get that many. In fact I get very few... But I do have some film making experience, so let's see if I can put it to good use. My goal with these posts is to answer questions and provide a set of useful, hack and slash, tools that will help you make better films. These will be simple, straight forward and practical lessons you can apply to your film making… Continue

Added by Skot (Lost) on May 6, 2009 at 11:00pm — 25 Comments

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