Microphones

Here's a good microphone primer from HD Video Pro:

One of the major benefits of the digital revolution compared to production 20 or 30 years ago is that with the proliferation of inexpensive cameras, editing gear and software, there also have been huge strides in the variety and types of microphones available. There’s a microphone for every job, and within each of the most popular categories of mics, there are dozens of choices available. How do you determine which type of microphone to use, and which model to consider buying or renting for your project?

iPhone 4 Video

Here's a video about a motorcycle race up Pike's Peak in Colorado - shot entirely with an iPhone 4, and an article about it...

Day for Night

Jay Holben has a nice article at DV.com on how to use natural lighting and your camera's white balance to achieve a nighttime look while shooting during the day:

That in mind, I decided to challenge myself to create a “night” look utilizing natural daylight — shooting day-for-night — without any augmentation with artificial lighting.
A day-for-night effect is, generally, achieved through gross underexposure. You’re rendering your highlights down to below middle gray and plunging your shadows into the abyssal blackness. Day for night works best when the natural light is backlighting the subjects and when you can keep the sky and the ground out of the shot — two things that will give away the cheat very quickly.

And here's an article on why night is usually colored blue in the movies, from The Academia Dictionary via io9. 

The Purkinje effect (sometimes called the Purkinje shift, or dark adaptation and named after the Czech anatomist Jan Evangelista Purkyně) is the tendency for the peak sensitivity of the human eye to shift toward the blue end of the color spectrum at low illumination levels.
This effect introduces a difference in color contrast under different levels of illumination. For instance, in bright sunlight, geranium flowers appear bright red against the dull green of their leaves, but in the same scene viewed at dusk, the contrast is reversed, with the petals appearing a dull red and the leaves appearing bright green.

Flip Ultra HD camera

Stefan Sargent's column in the back of DV Magazine is always interesting.  Usually he shares a story about one of the unbelievable shoots he's been on, but this month he talks about using his new Flip Ultra HD consumer video cam.  I've read some good things about this camera and have been thinking of picking one up for myself.  Stefan seems to be enjoying his...

While the rest of the world is drooling over the latest fare from RED, Sony, Panasonic, the new HD-capable DSLRs, I’m in love my $150 widescreen HD gizmo. I call her Flipa.

The good thing is I’m using her professionally; I’ll get my return of investment back on day one, which just happens to be yesterday.

He goes on to talk about how he mounted it to a truck, and links to the video of the shoot.  I can think of all kinds of uses for this cam.

Canon 7D

 I'm slowly becoming convinced that my next video camera will be the Canon 7D.  It has quite a few drawbacks, especially for one-person run-and-gun shooting like I do A LOT of, but the video looks fantastic and the price tag looks even better.  I'm sure with all the accolades surrounding it, Canon will come out with a version specifically for video within a year, but I'd really like to upgrade from my PD-150 this summer.
Here's an article from Tubefilter News that lists some pros and cons:

Cons

The biggest negative is that the 7D doesn’t yet have a sensible solution for recording sound directly into camera. This means whoever’s running sound will have to record it into a small digital recorder and then you’ll sync it all up in post. Fear not though, it’s often helpful to not have your sound guy tethered to the camera and there are now programs like Pluralize ($150) that will do the heavy lifting of synchronization.
If you’re dead-set on shooting quick whip pans around a room Office-style, this may not be the camera for you. It has a rolling shutter which will produces jello-y vertical lines on quick movements. It’s also more sensitive than usual to tight patterns, so leave your plaids at home. (Note: The Red One and Sony EX-1 have these same problems)

A Dose of Reality

Here's an entertaining article about life as a Hollywood vfx artist from Cracked.com.  Worthwhile reading for anyone dreaming about life in the Big Leagues...

Everyone assumes VFX happen in an office that looks something like Mythbusters except with excited artistic types gathering around computers, talking about what kind of dinosaurs they want to make today. And for the top ranking people, the ones who get to talk on the DVD special features, it might be.
But several steps down the ladder from those guys, you have an army of peons whose job descriptions seem to have been created as part of some cruel psychological experiment. If you dream of a career making super heroes fly, these jobs are where you'll start, and you may never leave.

 

We Got That B-Roll

From Funny or Die.  Don't judge the B-roll!

WE GOT THAT B ROLL!! - watch more funny videos

Follow Focus for DSLRs

Everyone's talking about the new Canon HD DSLRs, so I'll jump on the bandwagon...
Mark Wilson at Gizmodo has put up a couple of posts about DIY focus rigs for DSLR cameras. This one's ugly, but looks somewhat functional. This one's pretty, simple, and cheap, but probably not very useful as a follow focus. I like this one, posted by a commenter. It seems to be a nice combination of simplicity and usefulness:

"I'm not an experienced cinematographer. But I want to use the Canon 5D Mark II to shoot decent quality video—without expensive rails, follow-focus rigs, matte-boxes, etc.

The solution, for me, needed to be portable/ultralight, SIMPLE, and as cheap as possible. Most often, I’m rack-focusing between preset points. The sample movie shows the rig in action. Remember, I am new at this, so you can probably rack more smoothly and might use a better tripod. The rig itself is very smooth and does not create much vibration. With two people, it should be okay for follow-focus.

Just for fun, I’m calling this “The Scocus Ring”-- for Scott focus ring--but call it what you want! It is essentially an off-the-shelf MegaClamp with foam buffers to protect the lens, a simple picture hook “needle” indicator, and a bag of rubber bands."

Doritos spot

I'm not sure if this really qualifies as a low budget spot for most of us, but Film & Video has an interview with Director Eric Heimbold on a spec spot he did for Doritos that aired during the Super Bowl:

Director Eric Heimbold's spec ad for Doritos, "Power of the Crunch," didn't win the grand prize in the company's "Crash the Super Bowl" contest, but Doritos decided to air it during the game anyway, along with the eventual winner, "Free Doritos." That's a testament not only to the fan enthusiasm Heimbold was able to drum up for his irreverent spot online, but also to the production values apparent in the self-financed spot — which Heimbold shot on a single day in downtown L.A. with a donated Red camera, a tiny lighting package, and a dedicated, fast-moving crew working free or for peanuts as a favor. (It didn't hurt that Heimbold opened the spot with that vaudeville standby, the girl in the Velcro dress.) We got Heimbold on the phone to talk about working fast, fixing it in post, and bringing sexy back.

Slo-Mo

My friend Mark Wilson over at the tech blog Gizmodo has a nice basic primer explaining slow-motion, along with sample clips of various frame rates. Here's tip 1:

1. Use Lots of Light
When you shoot slow mo, you are taking pictures quickly. And when you take pictures quickly, light has less time to create an image in your camera. Shoot in plenty of light, or you will get dark and gloomy slow-mo.

In real terms, that means that super high-speed shooting might not work indoors. On the Casio EX-F1, for instance, you can shoot 300fps indoors, and maybe 600fps if you're near a window, but you can't pull off its 1200fps setting without adding bright light. For the same reason, night shooting may very well be out of the question, depending on your particular rig and just what you expect from the image in terms of detail—artsy stuff may be fine, but don't expect to film a hummingbird under the soft glow of the moon.

More Free Stuff

Here's a Free Media Directory, with links to Icons, Fonts, Images and more:

At first the point of this section might not be apparent. Finding images, music, and other media on the Internet is much like finding sand on the beach... it doesn't take a whole lot of effort. However, if you plan on using artistic material in your works, then the net gets a whole lot smaller. Most established artists have customized terms of use that are vague (is use in FOSS projects a 'personal' use?) or restrictive ("these images may not be cropped or modified"), if it allows for free use at all. Though the net is littered with wonderful art, most of it becomes useless when it comes time to release.

The net has permissively licenses media... it just takes some looking to find useful works free in the libre sense rather than just no-cost. This section has resources I've found helpful in my projects. If the license matter in your work then double check that I'm right before using it. Please let me know of any mistakes or especially interesting free content out there.

Free stock photography

Digital Image Magazine's blog has a post featuring 25 Free Stock Photo Sites. If you check the comments, you'll find a few additional listings. Read the fine print on each site. Some offer their photos only for non-commercial use.

When I began the research for this article, I knew of only a handful of free stock photography sites. I set out to find as many good ones as I could, thinking maybe I’d find a dozen. I was quite surprised to find 25 good, solid resources out there. There are probably more, but these are the ones I found. If you’ve got a favorite and it’s not here, send it along.

Note the terms of use for each site. Some of these sites offer free images in addition to images for a fee. All of them are worth a look.

Keep in mind that “Royalty Free” does not mean the images are free; it means that you don’t need to pay the photographer a royalty each time you use the image. These sites offer free royalty-free images.

Affordable Mics

Audiotuts has a good article on affordable mics and what to use them for:

Making music is perhaps one of the most expensive hobbies in the world—that is, aside from tasting truffles. When you’re looking to set up a decent home studio, it’s hard to find a way to stay within budget without ending up with a terrible sound. Here are ten options to minimize expenditure while still getting a decent sound out of your system at the end of the day, by buying smart when it comes to one of the most important types of studio equipment: microphones.

Script Formatting

I don't have much desire to write a movie, but I found this interesting. Hollywood Script Express, a script printing and shipping service, has some tips on how to format your script by Hollywood standards. I didn't realize script readers were so specific. Since the business is for sale, the site may down soon, so I'll take the liberty of printing the whole thing here. Visit the site anyway, though, because there's other good info there and it seems like a good service if you need that sort of thing.

Professional Script Formatting

Feature Film Screenplay

Your average overworked and underpaid script reader slaving away in some Hollywood hotshot’s Century City office is just looking for an excuse - any excuse - to tear your submission apart. And nothing will make that screenplay contest judge's temper enflame more than a poorly formatted or shoddily presented script. Thus to save you the embarrassment of such a shredding, the recommended Hollywood standards for formatting a feature length motion picture screenplay are below:

1] MATERIALS:	Paper – U.S. Letter or die! Hollywood does not do metric; so keep that A4 away from American airspace. 8 1/2" X 11" plain white 20 lbs stock (i.e. US Letter) with no watermarks. Covers -- Card stock (80-120lbs) should be used on the front and back of the script to provide protection. Once again 8 1/2" X 11" US Letter size only. Avoid adding any logos, illustrations, etc… The cover should be solid a color, but plain. No fancy rag stock. Cream or Ivory should do the trick. Binding -- Two solid brass paper fasteners (1 1/4") a.k.a ‘brads’ should be used to bind the script. Avoid the flimsy Staples kind. 3-Hole-punched -- Covers and Pages should be three hole punched. Fasteners should be placed in the top and bottom holes with the center hole left empty. Guru's Tip: Once bound, gently pound the fasteners on the head with a hammer or hard object - I’ve found a baseball works quite well - to tighten script. Note: Hollywood Script Express has you covered, providing all the recommended materials!
2] FONT:	“COURIER” (typewriter) font 12pt is the one and only font you should use. Use "old" if at all possible but "Courier New” will do in a pinch. You are a screenwriter not a layout artist, so no kerning the letters or fudging on the line spacing. 12 pt only!
3] TITLE PAGE:	The less the better with title pages. Just start down from the top about a quarter of the page and center your screenplay title, either in all caps or surrounded by quotation marks. Double space two lines below and add the words “written by” and of course… your name. In the bottom right corner add your contact information, including your address, phone and e-mail. If you have a WGA registration number or US Copyright PAU number, then it is a good idea to put it down here. Try to avoid adding any specific dates or draft numbers to your Title pages as it might make the reader think your material has been around the block a few times… And everyone in Hollywood is looking for a virgin…err, material that is. Also as noted above, resist the urge to add any graphics or logos. For an example of a stellar Title Page click here. If you are entering screenplay contests via Withoutabox.com please be sure to put your entry tracking number on your coverpage!
4] LENGTH:	The general rule of thumb in the biz is: 1 script page = 1 minute of screen time. Thus it is advisable to avoid submitting scripts longer than 120 pages or shorter than 90 pages. Obviously films over two hours do get made all the time, but Guru's advice for new writers who are trying to get their foot in Hollywood’s door is to hang on to that 4 hour epic until you are an established player! Don’t give that overworked reader an easy excuse to bin your baby! If you are using a program with 'word count', your final draft should ideally weigh in at 18,000 - 22,000 words. The lower end of the scale for comedies and the upper for dramas or action.
5] MARGINS:	There is no 100% rule to margins, but rather very firm guidelines one should attempt at all costs to follow. Please do not stray off the reservation with margins and tabs to lengthen or shorten your script, as any professional reader will spot this junior league tactic a mile away. Guru's Tip: There are plenty of good screenwriting packages out there that will put your screenplay into the correct format. The most popular of which you can find in the left margin including: Final Draft, Movie Magic Screenwriter and Dramatica Pro. The left side of your script should have a 1 1/2" margin. The right side of the script should have 1/2" to 1" of margin. The top and bottom margins of your script should be 1". Sluglines or Scene Headings are spaced 1 1/2" from the left side of the page. Dialogue should be spaced 2 1/2" from the left margin. That's 1" from the Slugline or Scene Heading margin or about 10 spaces. Character names should be 3.7" from the left margin or 12-13 spaces from the start of Dialogue Parentheticals aka Dialogue Directions should be 3.1" from the left margin or 6 spaces from the start of Dialogue. MAX lines per page: 52 – 56 (including blank lines). Do not exceed 56 lines per page!
6] SCREENPLAY TERMS:	V.O. - VOICE OVER: This is narration that does not originate in the scene itself. It can be a Narrator or Inner thoughts of a character on screen, or it can simply be a disembodied voice coming over a radio, telephone or speaker that the filmmakers can later add in post production. O.S. - OFF SCREEN: Dialogue or sounds that are heard in the scene/location, but not actually seen. For example, FBI agents outside a bank siege who are shouting through a megaphone. Or a on a lighter note, maybe a sweet little ole granny calling her children in for dinner when the scene itself is set with the kids out on the playground. P.O.V. – POINT-OF-VIEW: This is a way of showing a scene as seen from a specific character's perspective. INSERT or CUTAWAY: This is used when you need to draw attention to a specific object in a scene that is away from the main action or dialogue. Note: It is as close to a Camera Cue as you can get away with! See below for explaination. SUPERIMPOSE: This is for written information (time, date, location, etc…) given to the audience that appears on screen. i.e. “One month Later” or “The Pentagon, D.C. - 08:00 hours”. INTERCUT: This is often used when showing two or more characters interacting from two separate locations… A telephone call is the most obvious use, but it is also quite handy for parallel action such as the opening of Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train. MONTAGE: This is used for a series of related or contrasting images that are often set to music. SERIES OF SHOTS: Varied shots and locations used to establish a scene or sense of place. RE: Often used in parentheticals as short hand for ‘reference to’. Useful when multiple characters are speaking to each other or in reference to props or objects. For example. JOHNNY HERO (re: the fallen knife) Go ahead, tough guy. Make my day.
7] CAMERA CUES:	ZOOM, PAN, TILT, DOLLY IN/OUT, BOOM UP/DOWN, ANGLE ON, etc should be avoided if at all possible in your first few scripts. Nothing screams amateur more than Camera Cues. Until you are established enough to be telling the director how to do his or her job, you should stick to your own… telling the story! A good trick is to find any place where you have used a Camera Cue and simply WRITE! what that movement would reveal. For example: Instead of writing: “As Johnny Hero cleans his gun, tilt up to reveal a missile streaking across the sky”; You could write: “Dropping his M16 and snapping his gaze skyward, Johnny Hero watches a missile streak across the sky.” Also try to avoid the royal “We”. As in “We see”, “We hear”. If we, the audience, hear it then why don’t you just bloody WRITE IT! So instead of, “We hear a blood-curdling scream in the distance.” You could just as easily type, “A blood-curdling scream echoes in the distance.” Guru's Tip: Camera Cues and the royal “We” are nothing more than lazy writing! Avoid them at all cost!
8] SPELLING:	Check it once, check it twice and then by golly, check it again! Poor spelling disrupts the reader’s suspension of disbelief and really pisses off a professional. Guru's Tip: Search (aka ‘Find’) for Homonyms as they often go over-looked by computer spell checkers: They’re - There - Their Your - You’re We’re - Were Its - It's
9] EASY ON THE EYES / TEST READ:	“The One Big Haiku Theory” - Sounds odd to say that a properly formatted screenplay should be as elegant and precise as a Haiku, but alas it is true. A good script – like a good poem - should be lean and mean with only the essentials on the page. Sooooo…. prior to submission take a good honest look at your pages. If the pages are margin to margin description (aka “all that black stuff”) or page after page of dialogue (aka “pictures of people talking”) then maybe you need a second opinion prior to sending out your baby. Reading a good script should be just like watching a good movie. Ideally it can be enjoyed cover to cover in a single 90 minute to 2 hour session and have the audience (reader) sucked in from the first page to the last. Guru's tip: Give your script to a friend and ask them to read it in one sitting. If they can’t… you need to go back and trim the fat! Or perhaps find more literate friends.
10] CLEAN PRESENTATION:	Last but not least… and also coincidentally Hollywood Script Express’s speciality! You only get one shot with professional readers in Hollywood (Agents, Managers, Producers, Screenplay Contest Judges) so make your first impression, your best impression. A fresh, clean copy of your screenplay on the proper paper (US Letter) and securely fastened with two solid brass brads is essential. Laser printing is also a must, as many a script will see some poolside or happy hour reading and ink-jet runs when wet. Not only would your script be ruined but maybe that hotshot producer’s jacket as well! Add in a crisp cardstock cover, proper margins and a professional envelope with typed address and you, my friend, at least have a fighting chance!

Copyright 2005 Hollywood Script Express.com

Steal This Music

Here's a possible new source for music beds. Rifflet.com is a new site that encourages people upload and download short music clips to use for remixes. They describe it as "Like Twitter for Rock and Roll". I think it's more like Flickr for music. For now anyway, there's nothing preventing commercial use:

A rifflet is a piece of a song--a bass line, a guitar riff, a drum beat or something else entirely. Share your rifflets and combine them with others, or even upload a finished song.
Here's the catch: every rifflet must be less than 60 seconds. The idea is to only upload a part of a song, or an idea for a song, or just a couple of guitar chords you think are cool. Then, you can download parts of other people songs (like a drumbeat) that you can combine with your ideas.
If you're a dj, you can use all these great pieces of proto-songs for remixes without worrying about royalties or copyright restrictions, because these sounds are all on this site for the purpose of being remixed.

17 Rules

From the HOW Magazine blog - 17 Rules for Designers, but they work just as well for video producers. Here's a couple:

11. Take advantage of the perks.
Have fun. We’ll never get paid as much as the sales guy in the building next door. I guarantee we have more fun at work though.

13. Never, ever, ever stop learning.
The moment you think you know everything, your learning/growing/executing curve stops right there and you will be doomed to a life of simply repeating what you know. This industry is constantly turning over with new technology, new avenues of communication and new techniques to reach new people. The desire to constantly relearn the technical skills required to execute our ideas is crucial to our future success, but moreover, our desire to improve our ability to generate better ideas and conceptualize stronger solutions is of greater importance. Anyone can use Photoshop. Only you can decide why to use it.

Legal Advice

Photojojo has a post on Photography and the Law. I'm no lawyer, but I would think that it would apply to videographers as well. I've had a couple of the issues they cover come up over the years, like issue #1:

I. Anyone in a public place can take pictures of anything they want. Public places include parks, sidewalks, malls, etc. Malls? Yeah. Even though it’s technically private property, being open to the public makes it public space.

I've been stopped by mall security when shooting in a mall, even though I was hired to shoot a commercial for the particular store that I was shooting. Most security guards around here, though, tend to let you do whatever you want if they see you have a camera.
Of course, beware their disclaimer:

...we’re not lawyers. None of this should be construed as legal advice. If you have a legal issue, get in touch with a lawyer. Much of this information was gleaned from attorney Bert P. Krages‘ website, so we’ll go ahead and recommend him.

Teleprompters

I like to think up DIY projects and convince myself that someday I'll actually finish one. That's why Instructables is one of my new favorite websites. It's chock full of user-submitted projects of all kinds - some simple, some harder, some dirt cheap, some more costly.
Here's two Instructables on how to build a teleprompter:

Full-screen scrolling teleprompter
I needed a teleprompter to help me make better looking videos for my website on woodblock printmaking, so I built this one, using nothing but a few pieces of scrap wood and glass, and only free software.

When recording videos, I discovered that I'm not much of an actor ... namely, I can't remember my lines! I tried to get around this by printing out a large-type 'script' and hanging it up next to the camera, but when I looked at the resulting video, it was obvious that I was reading something, and not looking directly into the camera. There was only one solution ... build a teleprompter!

Here's how I did it, in just a few minutes, using a couple of scraps of wood, a scavenged piece of glass, and an old shirt ...


Teleprompter DIY for $50.00:

Afterworld

Afterworld is a sci-fi web series about a man who wakes up one morning in New York City, apparently alone. Each chapter is around 3-minutes long, so it's easy to watch. It's not really video - it uses 2-D backgrounds combined with characters created in Poser. It's a cool, relatively low-budget way to tell a story.
Mobi-lize.com has a good article about it.

Insomnia Film Fest

Apple's sponsoring the Insomnia Film Fest for high school and college students. On October 13, you'll have 24 hours to produce a 3-minute "film" based on elements that will be posted at 9am that day:

The Insomnia Film Festival is back—and while the world sleeps, you could be making film history.
Calling all high school and college filmmakers.
On Saturday, October 13 at 9:00 a.m. (Eastern time), we’ll post a top-secret list of elements — special props, dialogue, settings — you get the idea. Choose any three to include in your movie. Then all you and your team have to do is write, cast, shoot, edit, score, and upload your 3-minute masterpiece within 24 hours. No problem, right?
Once the films are in, your friends, family, and adoring fans will be able to watch them online and rate their favorites. The 25 entries with the highest rating on November 9 at 12:00 a.m. EST will be screened by industry professionals, including Barry Sonnenfeld, James Mangold, and Nora Ephron.
If your film is the biggest hit with either the public or the pros, each member of your team will receive a MacBook Pro, Final Cut Studio 2, Logic Studio, and Shake so you can get started on that first sequel. How’s that for a Hollywood ending?