Honestly, just shoot.
Even if it's with your iPhone.
You know,
used to be a budget thing,
used to be access to equipment.
There's distribution
channels to put it up there.
There's tons of film festivals
and meetup groups to meet
people like minded filmmakers,
if you just come up with excuses
then, honestly,
you should probably not
be in this industry.
When you're shooting
something is a DP
know what your gear your
using isn't the answer
to why it looks the way it is.
My favorite is when someone asks
me what camera did I shoot this on
and they may be gas,
and they say,
it's a more expensive camera
and it wasn't.
What that says is we actually
spent a lot of time on the back end
that you didn't see.
Planning the lighting,
planning the shot selection,
collaborating with your director
and production designer.
Costumes and there's a
lot that goes into it.
You can make stuff look great,
you just need to,
you know, have the
experience, have a good team,
and just have a really
good plan of action.
Storyboards are very important.
I definitely had my fair
share of stick figure drawing
which totally gets
the job done though.
I'm a terrible artist.
I've definitely used
StudioBinder which also helps
once you build your shot list,
so you can kind of then create
storyboards by uploading images.
I'd say the biggest help for
me has been making mood board.
Were the director and
I, threw up references.
And its really really really helpful to
kind of get everyone on the same page.
Your shoot is only as
good as your tech scout.
So the tech scout
is a location scout.
He is of every department.
Go to the location
to scout it out,
and plan it out and take a
look at all of the variables
that go into a location
whether it be lighting,
space, sound, parking,
to figure out how can we
efficiently plan this shoot here.
Usually, the first thing
I'm always looking for
is obviously lighting,
if we're dealing with daylight,
which is the Sun.
"-It's beautiful.
-That is."
And luckily with technology,
there are apps
that help you tell
where the Sun's going to
be at a specific time.
Because the Sun is free,
and so if you can use it
to your advantage, well,
then you save some money.
So when I go on scouts,
I bring my DSLR.
That way, well,
I'm in the location,
I can really easily find
Oh, this looks great
in a 24 millimeter
or when we get to the close-ups
will go to the 85 here.
If you don't even
have that luxury,
you can use your iPhone.
There's tons of apps out there,
allow you to select,
your camera, your sensor size,
the type of lenses
that you're using
and it will give you an
approximate field of view,
which is really helpful and then
you can take that still image
and upload it to shot
list in StudioBinder.
Out the tech scout
usually comes a liberation
about the shot list again,
you also get inspired
of new things.
You notice that the wall
texture is beautiful
or the light coming
through that hour,
realized really quickly
that your shots in
this room won't work
because it's not big enough
or this ceiling is too low,
so you need to rethink.
The scout can really
kind of open up your eyes
and make you think of
new ways of shooting
because once that shoot
schedule is is in place, man,
it is it's going to be difficult on
the day off to make those changes.
"Just so you know,
I was up all night."
At the same time be flexible
because things do change.
I've been on sets where the shooting
schedule goes out the window.
And you have to be
able to adapt to that.
Stick to your instincts.
Speak up.
"Do you even think
about other people?"
Plan, but be open to
flexibility and adaptability.
