Hey guys, today we're going to be taking
a look at the cinematography for 3lau's
song "Tokyo"!
Welcome to the Filmora Music Video Series! My name's Jony, and today we're
going to shed some light on the
cinematography of 3lau's "Tokyo". In short,
cinematography is how you visually tell
a story;
it covers how a film or music video is
shot, spans from deciding on how you want
your scene lit, to what kind of camera
gear you shoot with, to how you frame your
shots and decide your camera movement,
plus a lot more. There's a lot of cool
cinematography on display here so let's
get into it!
[JONY] What kind of vision did you bring to
this music video specifically?
[ALFONSO] Well with cinematography, a lot of it
has to do with collaborating a lot of
listening as well so I was trying to
paint with lights.
While you may think
that cinematography is all about the use
of the camera, lighting is just as big of
a component. When composing your shots,
you need to consider how your scene is
lit and how your talent is lit.
[ALFONSO] So Kevin
had a vision that he wants to do a
particular way and I have to interpret
that visually and poetically so a lot of
it is how do we use that way from using
hard lights more a lot softer look and
and type of lenses that we could use to
achieve that, and also some other
elements like haze, actually better, so we're using haze.
Hard and soft light are
different types of light that are
commonly used in photography and
filmmaking. Soft light refers to light
that tends to wrap around the object,
casting diffused shadows with soft edges.
Hard lights, on the other hand, are
typically point light sources that are
relatively close to your subject. This
often gives them a harsher and more
dramatic look. To achieve a soft look, add
diffusion to bring the intensity down. We
further softened our lighting and added
atmosphere with a haze machine; in fact
we actually used haze in pretty much
every shot and every scene. Now let's
take an example from the shoot and look
at how we lit our bus set. In the middle
here we have our bus which was
surrounded by several tungsten lights
shooting upwards onto white boards to
resemble streetlights; they're all set up
to automatically switch on and off with
an offset to simulate real movement. To
add more realism to the movement, we also
had three projectors shooting at the
back walls with street footage playing.
Finally, we had three lights sitting on
the cue by the lighting team to come in
on the director's call to initiate the
memory of our protagonist. We also put
soft lights on top of all the upper
windows on the bus to simulate a cool
blue interior light in the bus. Music
videos can vary widely in terms of what
sort of cameras they're shot on. We'll
mainly be focusing on theory and
techniques, so while we shot Tokyo on an
Arri Alexa Mini,
you can also apply this to DSLRs or
even smartphones! The lenses we used are
called prime lenses meaning they all
have fixed focal lengths, so there's no
zooming that happens with them. Instead
to choose the right level of zoom, the DP
will pick the right lens for the shot.
For example, a close-up might require a
higher focal length and a wide shot
might require a shorter focal length
with a wider field of view. This also
depends on the aspect ratio you chose to
shoot in.
[ALFONSO] We framed for 2.35 which is most
commonly used for in films and that's
sort of like when people talk about
something
cinematic it's because of the 2.35 aspect
ratio... You know 16:9 you see a lot more
top and bottom, and 2.35 is you have
this sort of- gives you a more narrow
perspective... normally I
think it's used for... the way I like it used
for relationships- how far away from each
other people are, or how close they are,
so you really see the distance. It's like
when you look at microscope, you study,
you know, what's going on in that world
so our way of doing is this with our
aspect ratio, that we kind of narrow down
to where you want to look at and how you
want to frame things.
Framing is another
important aspect of cinematography; this
includes concepts like the rule of
thirds and leading lines. Let us know in
the comments below if you want to learn
more about those topics. In the meantime
a good rule of thumb is to give your
subject headroom: this is space between
the top of the head and the top of your
frame. In addition to framing, the camera
movement in your music video can also
tell a lot of story. There are generally
six prevalent camera moves that you'll
use on set: dolly,
pedestal, truck, pan, tilt, and roll. The
main two we'll be focusing on are "dolly"
and "trucking". When our protagonist looks
out the window of the bus, we cut to a
wide shot of one of her memories of the
past passing by outside. We did a
left-to-right motion called "trucking" to
simulate this; this was less for
emotional purposes but more to add to
the illusion of our subject being in a
moving bus. However one camera move that
can invoke a lot of emotion is a push-in
or pull-out shot. This is when the camera
is on a dolly and moves towards or away
from the subject. This can often give a
sense of importance to the state of mind
of the character. For example we've got
this push-in shot of our actress as she
approaches the window of the bus and
sees what's going on outside. While
making the shot more dynamic and
exciting, it also makes what the
character is seeing outside the bus feel
more important to her. A pull out shot on
the other hand is a good way to give a
sense of finality to a scene or
interaction. We have a lot of these shots
in this music video since our main
character is literally leaving her old
life and memories behind.
[ALFONSO] It's very important to- when you're starting out with cinematography or anything in arts
is really developing what you
like [and] what you don't like and developing a
taste.
I always like to try things out for
myself and then- oh that didn't turn out
well I didn't like that but then
sometimes you'd expend something and
you're like you know okay I want to put
that somewhere and at some point I'm
going to use it because I like how it
all turned out I don't think there's any
rules in cinema or filmmaking.
So that's a look at the cinematography of 3lau's
"Tokyo" music video. I'll see you guys in
the next video where we bring all this
footage onto the editing floor, and
remember, there's no limit to what you
can make.
