Depth of field

So what is depth of field? And why is it so important? You may have read something about this, or perhaps this is completely new ground for you. But you may have seen in movies you've watched that often the back- or foreground is blurry.
This is because the focus of the lens is on a different part of the shot. It's an effect that is created by the lens, and used extensively in movies. Watch any Oscar winning movie, and you'll see that in most of the shots not everything is in focus.
Now there are two main reasons why filmmakers want to have this blurriness in their shots. First of all because it looks more natural. You may have noticed that if you look very close at your fingers with your own eyes, that the background gets blurry. This happens because our own eyes can focus on only one point at the time. The exact same things happens with the lens on a camera. Therefore your lens behaves much more like your own eyes, and gives everything a much more natural look.

Changing the focus will change where your audience is looking

The second reason why filmmakers use this, is because it gives them the power to control where the audience is looking. You might for instance have a very busy shot, with lots of action happening in the background, but you want to show what's happening to the person in the foreground. If you focus with your lens on the character in the foreground, the background, will go blurry, and the audience's attention will automatically go to the character in focus. You can even use the focus of your lens as a storytelling tool.

Let's say for instance that you have place a character in the background, and keep the focus on the character, and change the focus to the foreground to reveal a key when he looks up to it. In this example, the character, doesn't even need to talk. Because without saying a word, we made it perfectly clear to the audience that he was looking for the key. This kind of effect is called a focus pull. Focus pulling is a frequently used filmtechnique to reveal or hide certain things in your movie. You can also use a focus pull to switch between talking characters depending on who is talking.

So once you understand how you can use the depth of field in your storytelling, now we can begin to focus on the technical side. Because how can you create this effect? Which camera do you use? And what do you need to look for in camera's and lenses?

F-stops on a lens

First of all it's important to understand that it's the lens that creates the effect. And the basic rule  here is, that the more light falls into your lens, the shallower depth of field you will have. So you want to have a lens that allows you to let as much light in the lens as possible, giving as much exposure as possible, in order to create a nice shallow depth of field. Now don't make the mistake in thinking that if you put the ISO (or ASA for filmcamera's) higher your lens will get in more light, because it doesn't. The ISO only over-exposes your footage after it passes the lens, so it will not actually give you a shallow depth of field. The only thing the ISO will do is over-expose your image, and therefore create a grainer image, which can look bad if you put the ISO too high.
What you need to so in order to let as much light in the lens as possible, the lens need to open as much as possible. Basically see your lens as your eye. If you close your eyes, no light is comming in, and you can't see anything. If you open up your eyes completely, you can let all te light in the room fall into your eyes, and you'll have maximum exposure. The same things goed for a lens. The more the lens opens up, the more light it lets in. How much a lens opens up to let light fall into a lens is called an F-stop. The F-stop controls how much light the lens let's into the camera, and therefore the exposure.

Higher ISO just means more grain

So we need a couple of things to create this effect when we're looking for a camera and lens which can achieve this. First of all we need to have a camera and a lens that allows you to control the F-stop. Most digital camera's won't allow this, except for DSLR camera's, the RED One camera and analogue camera's like 8mm, 16mm and 35 mm camera's. Obviously most of them are quite expensive, except for the DSLR camera's which can range in price from between 400 euro's to 5000 euro's max. Of course it's your pick to choose which camera you want, but remind yourself that a cheaper camera will also result in a smaller sensor in the camera, resulting in less quality (although the qualilty of any DSLR camera is still better than most digital camera's).

Now you can choose to buy a DSLR with a packaged zoom-lens, which is a nice starters-kit, but the zoom lens is not the kind of lens you want to work with when you're trying to do some nice shallow depth of field shots. That is because most of these lenses will begin with an F-stop of 3.5 going up to 22. To create a nice shallow depth of field you want to keep your F-stop below 4. This will mean that the zoom-lens will probably only give you a low F-stop when you're using wide shots, but when you zoom in the F-stop will go up, and you'll loose that shallow depth of field effect.
The best thing you can do is buy (or rent) a couple of prime lenses, lenses with a fixed size, that have a very low F-stop. These lenses will range in price going up from 99 euro's, and of course the question is how many lenses you want to buy versus how many lenses you need. Buying 10 lenses could become an expensive investment, so it's better to think about which lenses you need, using your storyboards to figure that out, and than buy stratergically lenses which you absolutely require.

4 different 50mm Canon lenses with 4 different F-stops

Remember with buying lenses that all of the lens sizes, in terms of perspective, are named in mm's. Which means a lower number of mm's is a wider shot, and a higher number of mm's is a tighter shot (like a close-up). Look carefully at the lenses you might want to buy at what mm they are, to match the type of shots you want (wide-shots, medium and close-ups), and combine that with looking for a lens with a low F-stop and of course something that fits within your budget.
You can also think about renting lenses for your movie, to spare yourself the costs of buying lenses you might not use every day. A good thing would be though to have a DSLR of your own with at least one prime-lens, so at least you have some experience with your camera before you go and shoot with it.

I hope this explains a lot to you, and if you do have any question, feel free to email them to me on: basilios85@gmail.com. Good luck and happy shooting!

Storytelling

The basis for every movie is the story. Without a good story a movie has neither function nor soul. And although it may seem easy enough to make a story, a lot of work goes into it. But how do you make a good story? What does every good story need? And how can you check if your story is good?

In this blogpost I'll show you the trick to build a good story, by using examples of real Hollywood movies. I'll explain to you how to build up your story from scratch, and how to construct storylines, character arcs, plot devices etc. So let's get started!

The origins of storytelling
To make a good story for your movie, we first need to understand where stories come from. What are the origins of stories and storytelling? Why do people enjoy stories? Well, first of all of course, because they're entertaining. But that's not how they started. Stories go ages back, to a time long before movies, television, radio, even books. Stories come from a time before the written word. Stortelling has been used for thousands of years, to pass one story on to the next generation. Sometimes the same story, or sometimes a new story with the same basics.
The goal of telling a story was conveying a message to the people the stories where told to. You could of course try to lecture someone, but that would be rather boring. And just telling someone to do, or not to do something, without giving them reason, or any understanding why, would be ineffective. So in order to make people understand why they needed to do something, or not to do someting, they wrapped it around a short story, displaying the reason why to do it or not to do it. For example: I could tell someone not to touch the fire. But not giving them a reason why not to touch it, you can just wait until they're going to try and find out for themselves why they should or should not do it. But if I tell them a story of a little boy who was obsessed with fire, and his parrent always told him not to do it, but he still wanted to do it, and in the end he touched the fire and burned his hand, which now looks like a potato. Now we can understand why we don't want to touch the fire. Or perhaps we could end the story, leaving the people to think what could happen to the boy if he touched the fire, and let the audience think for themselves, and draw their own conclussion, without pressing your opinion or conclussion onto them.
This basic is the basis for every story told in every medium. Whether you're reading a book, listening to a radio play, watching a tv show or movie, or playing a video game. Every story has this basic of sending people a message, or making them think about something. This is the goal of every story, telling your audience something, or asking them a question. It could be personal, general or social critisism, but you have to try and tell something with your story. Without that, you're just telling a story just to talk, without any reason, and you'll notice soon that nobody wants to listen to you anymore.

Sending a message
So now that we know we have to send them a message, how do we do this in a movie. Well, let's look at some examples. Let's take the first Spider-Man movie from 2002 directed by Sam Raimi. The message of the story is obvious: 'With great power, comes great responsibility.' That's the message of the movie.
It's a universal message that works for everyone across the world. Whether you're a garbageman in China, or the president of the USA, we all have to learn, that the more power we have, either physical, political, mental etc. we have to take our responsibilities for them. For instance, if you have a son or a daughter, you have the power over your child, since it's your child. But that also means you have to take care of that child, take your responsibilities and feed it, dress it, nurture it, love it. And the same thing goes for the president of the USA, he has much power, but also has a lot more responsibilities, because he has the responsibilities over everyone in the USA, and that's quite much.
Let's do a pop-quiz. I'll write down here some movie titles, and you have to guess what the message of the movie was. The answers are at the bottom of this blogpost.

1. Spider-Man 2
2. The Matrix
3. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearle
5. Batman Begins
6. Jurassic Park
7. Finding Nemo
8. V for Vendetta
9. Star Wars IV A New Hope
10. Inception

There's no such thing as a bad or good message. Because in the end, the message you're trying to convey in your story is your own personal message, it's your story, and therefore cannot be right or wrong. The only thing you can do wrong is not incorporating a message at all. You can talk about anything you want, as long as you keep the message or question in the movie the basic of your movie. This means that everything in the movie has to be based on sending this message across to your audience. Any scene you write, any character in the movie, has to add something, some importance to message of the story you're trying to tell. Your message in the movie is ultimately connected in some way to the goal of your main character.
And easy way to check if you have any scenes or characters that are not adding something to the story, is to take out the scene or character completely from the story, and see if anything important changes to your story. A good example of trimming out characters or scenes are the Lord of the Rings movies. People who've read the book have noticed a lot of scenes are missing, or sometimes altered, or sometimes even complete characters from the book are missing. This is because the characters and scenes that are missing from the book, in the end, did not add any importance to the story or the goal of the main character.

Character arc
An easy thing to remember, is that the message of your movie is also the question or quest of your main character. Your main character is the one that has to experience this, and find out the message of your movie for himself. This message he has to experience is connected to the goal of the main character.
If we take again the first Spider-Man movie as example, it's the main character, Peter Parker, that has to find out during the story that with more power comes more responsibilities.
This means that at first he has to get more power, than not take responsibility to experience what happens if you don't take the responsibilities, and after that of course to make the right choice, and do take responsibility to show what happens if you do take responsibility.
Now, let's check if this also matched with what happens in the movie Spider-Man. He get's more power (gets superpowers from being bitten by a spider). He doesn't take responsibility (he should've stopped that thief who stole the money with all the power he has, but he didn't). Experience what happes when he doesn't take responsibility (Uncle Ben got killed by the thief that he could've stopped). Make the right choice and do take responsibility (he becomes Spider-Man and saves people on a daily base). Show what happens when you do take responsibiliy (the whole city of New York loves him in the end, and he wins the heart of the girl of his dreams by saving her multiple times).
Always remember that whatever you want to tell to your audience, whether it's not playing with fire, taking your responsibilities or something else, it always happens to the main character. He or she is the one that your audience can identify with, as you tell the story through the eyes of the main character.
Therefore also the story arc is also the main characters 'character arc'. The journey your main character takes is the message of the movie. And once you understand this, you can begin to see how we need to construct a story.

Story arc
In order to build a good story you have to understand the three acts. Every movie, book, theater play etc. consists out of thee acts. The first act consists out of your character introduction (in a movie this takes about the first 20 minutes), followed by the introduction of our plot. The plot is basically what drives the movie, it's our quest, our goal. The plot is what sets our main character into motion, and guides him towards the message of the movie. It doesn't matter how simple or complex the plot is, as long as it gets us where we need to be, namely to get our message across to the audience. The plot will test our main character.
At the end of our first act, our main character will start to slowly slide down a negative spiral, not very deep, just a little bit. This is the point in where our main character hasn't understood or learned the lesson (our message) of the movie yet. To do that, he first needs to change. Untill he changes, things will start to go worse and worse for him.
This brings us to the second act. Some people might describe this as bringing your character to hell. You want to bring your character to the lowest point possible. Everything he tries to do, has to fail, because he hasn't understood the message of the movie yet. The lower you'll get your character, the bigger the uprise will be in the third act, and the bigger the excitement and climax will be at the end of our story. Try to bring your character to the bottom, destroy everything what's important to him, both physically, financially and emotionally.
The third act is where our main character gets to be the hero. After all that failing in the second act, he has finally understood the message of the movie, and applies it in a way how he can prevail from his demise. His chances will turn swiftly back into his favor. He will not just win, beat the bad guy and win the girl, more importantly, he will be changed according to the message in our story.
If your main character is not affected by the events in the movie, you're missing something. In the end your main character needs to change. And whatever that change is, is the message you're trying to tell. Characters that don't change are never the main character.

Constructing a story
Now let's say you have a good idea for a movie. You want your to make a zombie movie. But how do you construct a story around that. Well, first of all you need to think of a message you want to send to your audience. Zombies and all are nice, but in the end, your movie needs to have a heart, a message that makes sense to everyone. In the end people are looking for something to connect to, so we're going to give it to them. Let's say we want to talk in our movie about never giving up, no matter how hard. So no matter how difficult things may seem, never give up upon yourself or others. Always keep believing, no matter how hopeless things may seem. Because once you give up, it's easy for other people to win, and you'll certainly loose. If you give up without a fight, that doesn't just mean you give up because you don't think you can do it, but you're surrendering yourself. This is perhaps a message that all filmmakers should keep in mind, while working on their movies, to never give up.
So now that we have this message, we can start working out a story. If our character needs to change following this idea, that means that in the beginning he needs to be the opposite of what we want our character to end like. So in this example, he needs to be someone who gives up easily. That's his major problem, he gives up things way to easy, and it hasn't gotten him anywhere.
So once we set up the character in the first 20 minutes of our movie, our character introduction, we can begin by setting the plot into motion. Now the plot is nothing more than a bunch of obstacles in the story to land us where we want to go. So it's important that we place them very carefully in our story, to send us in the right direction.
Let's say that our main character constantly gives up on things too easy, and he starts loosing things because of it. Still he doesn't do anything. But when we begin with the plot, which are the zombies, things start to change for him. The zombies are threatning the girl he's in love with, but saving her is going to be difficult. And because our character is someone who gives things up too easy, he already begins to back away from it. He runs the entire movie away from the zombies, yet in his heart still wants the girl. He keeps running, and running and running. Untill he's backed up against the wall. Then our character has no choice anymore. Now we're already at the end of our second act. We've taken our character, took everything away from him, and things look very grimm for him. He may even not make it.
But then he finally decides to fight for it. He isn't gonna give up that easy. He fights, and hey(!), he wins! He beats the zombies, and perhaps he could even save the girl. But saving the girl isn't going to be easy. But fighting the zombies has tought our main character something. When he was backed up against the wall, and he was about to die, he decided to change himself. He wasn't going to give up easy anymore. He wasn't going to let the zombies get to him that easy, and he fought. So our character starts to believe that perhaps he could save her, even though things are not looking good. He fights the zombie, saves the girl, and in classic Hollywood fashion, the girl loves him for it and the story ends happy.
Now we've executed a perfectly good story, in where we took our main character with flaws, and in the end changed his flaw into a hero. He's learned that fighting against all odds is worth something. That no matter how grimm things look, there's always a chance. And that every chance is one worth fighting for, now matter how small the chance is. Our character isn't going to give up easy anymore.

I hope these examples make some sense for everyone, and that this helps in constructing a good story. Remember, there are no wrong stories, only stories without a story. Once you get that, you're on the right track. And you'll also notice, that once you've picked a subject for your movie, a message, that you're story is forcing you into one direction. I always like to think, that if you give two different people the same message for in their movie with the same type of movie (zombie movie, or perhaps something else), that in the end you get the exact same story. Perhaps character names are different, and places are different, but the same basic things happen in both movies, despite the fact that they where made by two completely different people.

And now here are the answers to the pop quiz:
1. About sometimes giving up things you really want, to do your obligations 2. About believing in yourself, and not having doubts if you can do things 3. That family and friends are more important than any treasure in the world 4. That making the wrong choices in life, for the right reasons, can be the right choices in the end, and vice versa 5. It's not who we are underneath, it's what we do that defines us (talking is not enough to say you're like this, you actually have to do it as well!) 6. Don't mess with nature, because it could bad! 7. You cannot protect your childeren forever, once you'll have to let them go and trust they'll be allright. 8. Goverments are their for their people, and not the other way around 9. Trust in your own insticts and learn not to be to dependent on technology around you 10. What would you prefer more? A horrible truth, or a fake dream world?

Blue screen or Green screen?

There has been a long debate from filmmakers and visual effects people about the use of blue and green screen. Is blue screen better than green screen, or the other way around?
To understand this debate and pick the right colour for your blue/green screen work, we'll first need to understand the process of this technique. So let's dive into the world of keying and compositing.

Chroma keying, as the technique is officially called was created already back in 1933, but really gained it's full purpose during the making of the Star Wars movie back in 1976. The idea of this technique is to seperate part of an image you do want in the shot from the part that you don't want in the shot (the blue or green screen) in order to replace it with something else using visual effects. But since the use of film compositing, and later the use of digital compositing don't understand what the eyes are seeing, they needed to make it clear to the film or digital compositing system what they wanted in the shot, and what had to be deleted. In order to make it clear they decided the best way to do this, was by using a strong contrasting colour. Selecting a colour as a background, completelt different from the foreground object which we do want in the shot, allowed the compositing system to easily erase the background colour, only leaving the foreground object in the shot.

Since the idea is that you use a contrasting colour, that has to contrast heavily with that which you want to leave in the sho, I guess you could come up with lots of arguements about whichcolour is better and why. Some people claim that when shooting digital green screen is better than blue screen, others claim it has to do with the skin colour that would contrast better against a certain colour. In the original Star Wars movie they used blue screen. This decision was made because of the colours of the models. And in the end, that's what it comes down to.

There's no real better colour when it comes to keying. It all just depends on what contrasts the best. Think about the colour of cloths, if people are wearing jeans, blue is going to be a dominant colour in a shot, and perhaps green would contrast better with that. And when you're shooting a forrest or plants, perhaps blue would be a better pick. My advice to any filmmaker would be to always involve the visual effects supervisor, or someone who has a good knowledge of visual effects, to consult on these things. Let him be there on set with you when you're shootin it, so he can help you out with what would give the best result.

Most important with blue or green screen is that the blue or green screen needs to be as flat as possible. Shadows on the green or blue screen break the even colour, and therefore create a contrast in the the contrast you're already trying to create. So try to avoid wrinkles in your green screen, and try to light it as even as you can. What also helps your end result is avoiding spill. Spill is what visual effects people refer to when the green or blue colour from the blue or green screen, gets reflected on the object or person you're trying to shoot. The picture below displays an example of green spill on one side of the actors face, which will make it more difficult to remove the green background, without erasing a part of her face.

The best way to prevent spill on what you're trying to shoot, is to keep the blue or green screen only on places where we actually need them, and keep it behind the object or person you are shooting. So don't put it to one side. Of course this will not be always a possibility, and it is possible to do it with spill, but the result without spill will always be better.

Storyboarding

So you've just finished your script and you're ready to shoot. What are you gonna do next? Well, fist of all, pack all your camera's back in their case again, and call off all of your cast and crew, because we're not gonna shoot yet. Because although you've written down everything in a script, you still have no idea how you want to translate that script into a visual story. Because in the end, it's not the words in the script, or the dialogue that's so important about a movie, it's the visuals that make a movie a movie. Otherwise you would just turn it into a radio play with images added to it.

So let's first sit down, and talk about what storyboarding exactly is.

Storyboarding is the process of turning your script, which is written in words, into something visual.

Since you need to translate your written words into images, you'll need to think about what the camera positions are going to be. It also helps with the planning, since you'll get a better sense of how many shots you'll need to do, and you can actually help the storytelling by picking the right shot, and tell the story in a visual way, without the need of any dialogue. Because in the end, storyboarding is about how you can advance your story with camerawork. It's not just about how many shots you need for your planning, it's also about where you're going to place things in your shot, basically it comes down to composition. Think about it as making a painting. You don't want to have a borring painting. If you can create an interesting shot, people will be more likely to be interested in your movie than if you have some boring standard type of shots.
And using composition, you can actually help your storytelling allong, if you play it right. Storyboards also help to prevent you from making mistakes on set, like the dramatic axis.

In my opinion you have three types of amateur filmmakers. The first type, is the type that doesn't make our use any storyboards at all. They just finish their script, get their camera, and just shoot their script as is written on the page. Sometimes this can result in a fun packed film, but most of the times it will result in a unimaginative film, full of standard shots which sometimes don't even make sense.
The second type of filmmakers are the type that make storyboards, but have no idea why. They make storyboards because they know it's part of making a movie, but lack any sense of why they're doing it. They often draw very standard storyboards, resulting like the first type in a unimaginative film.
The third type of filmmakers are the type that both make and understand storyboarding, often resulting in strong visual shots, with original camera camerawork.

Let's get an example to see how storyboarding can help you advance your storytelling, and cut down screen time, so you'll have more screen time for more important things in your storytelling. Let's say we have a girl, she has a boyfriend and another good friend, but things aren't going so well between her and her boyfriend. She just got fired from her job and needs someone to talk to. We want in this scene to make it clear to the audience that she feels more safe and secure with the other friend than with her own boyfriend, basically she's doubting about her relationship with him. We could shoot a whole scene with a voice-over of the girl, telling us how she feels. But than again, an image can say more than a thousand words, so it's probally quicker if we can capture this visually. So let's take a different approach. Let's say we have a her sit down somewhere in a park on a bench, and she grabs out her phone. Then we see a shot of the phone, with the name of her boyfriend selected. We cut back to her face, and see doubt in her face. Then we cut back to the phone, and she picks the name of the good friend, and then presses call. Nothing more needs to be said here. It's perfectly clear to the audience that she now prefers the friend over her boyfriend with these things, without even saying a single line of dialogue.
Let's get another example. Let's say we want the same girl to find a job somewhere as a waitress. Not the most classy job, but it demonstrates her emotions very well, that she'll even take a job as a waitress in a bar to make money. We could show this in a lot of ways, with many shots covering one or multiple scenes, but you could also do this in one good shot. Let's take a crane shot, and have the crane start at the top, not too high, but just high enough to let the girl pass under the camera towards the bar. She walks into the bar, and the camera slowly moves down and closer to the window, where we have a sign hanging saying: 'Waitress Wanted'. As we move closer a man comes and takes the sign away.
Again we're not using any dialogue, plus we're only using a single shot to tell a whole story! It saves us screen time, it saves us shooting time, and we get the same message across as with a longer scene.
As you can see, thinking about how you can visually tell a story, and planning things out, by drawing them in a storyboard before you go to shoot, might not only save you shooting time and screen time, it also helps your storytelling getting across quicker to the audience, and you don't need to bore your audience with a boring scene that is necessary or your story, but is not too interesting for the audience itself. In short, it leaves more time for the interesting parts of your story.

Now, besides making things look visually more fun, storyboarding also has a function. With storyboarding you can get a better idea of how long scenes will run. You can also get a better idea of the logistics of a scene, what equipment you'll need, what kind of lenses you'll need to use and how you can shoot your scene quicker. Basically it helps to plan out your shooting quicker. It's much easier and quicker to shoot if you have a plan of attack than if you don't have anything planned, and you need to figure things out on the set. Also it's a great communication tool, since you'll be working with other people, it might be usefull if they understand what you want before you come to the set. You'll also find out what you're missing in your storytelling. You might be so focusses on set shooting one person, that you'll almost forget that other person that has no dialogue, but is still there in the scene. Reverse shots, cut aways, reaction shots, mood shots, all kinds of shots that you don't really think about, or don't think are so important for the scene, untill you start storyboarding them, and realise there's something missing.

And remember, storyboards are just to give people an idea of the composition of your shot, and the movement of characters in the scene, and the movement of the camera. It's not about the design of things for your movie itself. So it doesn't really matter if your storyboard character looks like your actor, as long as you and other people understand which character is which character. It doesn't have to be stunning art work, it could be simple figures, as long as people understand the what's happening in the scene, you're good.

Special Effects vs. Visual Effects

Lot's of times I see people using the wordt special effects and visual effects as if they are one and the same thing. And perhaps in the eyes of those people they are the same thing, but there's a big difference between them. Knowing the difference between special effects and visual effects is not just usefull information, but mandatory for each director or filmmaker. Because how can you use them if you don't even know what it is?

So what's the difference between special effects and visual effects. Well, the difference is acutally quite easy. Special effects are all the effects that get created in front of the camera, while shooting principal photography. Visual effects are any alterarions that get made after shooting, in post-production, to change your shot.
An easy example is a body shot of a bullet from a gun. This could be done with special effects as well as with visual effects. With special effects this would mean using what is called a squib, a small pack of blood that someone is wearing under his clothes with a small explosive that blows open the blood pack and a part of the clothes a person is wearing to sugest the idea that someone is getting shot by a bullet.
The visual effect would mean that we shoot someone acting like he's getting hit by a bullet, but nothing's happening. Later in post-production, we add the explosion with some blood flying out in the computer to the shot, to make it look like the person was actually getting hit by the bullet.

A dinosaur made with special effects

A dinosaur made with visual effects

If you understand that a special effect is a physical effect that happens in camera, and a visual effect is an effect that gets added to a shot after shooting it, than you understand that they're two completely different things. You can also understand that in one shot you can have both a special effect ánd a visual effect, depending on the needs of course. For instance, you could shoot a special effect, of someone being hit with a bullet, by using a squib. And than later in post-production add a digital bullet to add more realism.
If you understand the difference between this, than you also can begin to wonder why people mix them up sometimes. But the answer to that is quite simple. They have no idea what they're talking about.

Yoda is a good example of a visual effect that could've been a special effect as seen above

So remember the difference when you want a special effect of a visual effect, because not knowing the difference could be deadly for any filmmaker. If you don't know the difference, you might be talking to your visual effects supervisor about a special effect and visa versa. So remember the difference, and also remember, a special effect is always better than a visual effect. Simply because trying to make someting look like it was there, while it wasn't really there, is a lot more difficult than having it actually there on the set and in the shot. So my advice would be, shoot as much as possible special effects and real things, and try to avoid visual effects as much as possible. A visual effect is basically nothing more than a panic button you can hit, when all other options are out, than you revert yourself to visual effects. I've already seen too many movies been made with visual effects, when they could've used special effects instead.

Which camera to use?

So you've decided to shoot your movie, the script is finished, everything is ready, but what camera are you going to use? The choice of the right camera can make a big difference for you movie. It controls the way your movie will look and the quality it will have. But there are so many camera's out there these days, which one to pick?
In this post I'll talk about the different type of camera's and their pro's and con's. And let me first of all say, that there's no wrong camera in this list. Each camera has their own pro's and con's. The choice for camera depends very much on a number of things like your budget, type of movie and the kind of effect you want to create. So here we go:

Smartphone camera

This may seem like an odd thing to you, but camera's on smartphones are getting better and better each day. And although the image quality itself obviously isn't as good as a professional film camera, many filmmakers have chosen to shoot their movie on an smartphone to achieve a specific look or feel.
No, this camera won't let you shoot images like most of the movies you've seen in cinema, but if you're going for a 'Blair Witch Project' type of movie, or want to incorporate some handeheld camera-phone kind of footage to your film, than it's a perfectly good option. Please do remind yourself that a smartphone has very few options compared to more professional camera's. Shooting against very bright or very dark backgrounds is probably not a good idea, and shooting in the night will give you poor quality.
Pro's:
- Low budget
- Light weight
- Easy to operate

Con's:
- Poor image quality
- Not many options to control the image quality of your camera
- Gives very shakey footage
- No changeable lenses
- Bad quality in the dark

Digital camcorder

A lot of first time filmmakers start out their first home-made movies with a simple digital camcorder. Although not the best quality, the overall quality is a little bit better than you can get with a smartphone, and the cost are low. Downside is that the image quality is low, no changeble lenses, and few options to control your image. There's only the standard lens, so you only have one size of shot, just the wide-angle, which may look odd for some good close-up work. Of course you could zoom, but it doesn't change the size of the lens, so it just comes down to a digital blown up picture, which will be of poor image quality. Of course you could be going again for that 'Blair Witch Project' film look, but if you think good about it, and invest a little bit more money in a good camera, there are better options out there.
Pro's:
- Low budget
- Easy to operate

Con's:
- Poor image quality
- Not many options to control the image quality of your camera
- Still gives shakey footage
- No changeable lenses
- Bad quality in the dark

Digital videocamera

There's a wide range of digital videocamera's out there. And as wide as the choice range is, equally as wide is the price tag on these camera's. Digital videocamera's are mostly used for TV-work. All your basic TV-work will be done with these kind of camera's, including news, reality shows, soap opera's, etc.
These camera's are a bit more expensive than regular camcorders, but than again they also offer more options to control your camera, and therefore your image quality. And generally the image quality itself is better than with camcorders, who are strictly designed for consumers.
Many amateur movies have been made with these kind of camera's, but there is a backdraw. It's still a digital camera, which offers digital quality. Even though shooting in HD is nice, it's not the pixel ratio that will give you better quality. The image sensor in these camera's are digital, and is not good enough to compare itself to film camera's. And besides that, there's only a default zoom-lens. Which means you can zoom with the lens itself, rather than digitally blowing the picture up to a bigger size, but the image will go darker, and will not give you a nice shallow depth of field. Also shooting in the dark will be difficult, since the sensor isn't strong enough to catch the little light that there is, and the lens isn't good enough to let all that light pass through to the sensor. If you're thinking about using this for your movies, maybe you should also take a look at some DSLR camera's, and think about it again.
Pro's
- Good overall image quality
- Less shakey footage than with a camcorder
- Many options to control the image quality on your camera

Con's
- No changeable lenses
- Not the best camera in the dark
- Requires a bigger budget

DSLR

Since the comming of a movie recording option on DSLR camera's in 2008, people have been keen to use this camera to shoot their own films with it. And that's not such a strange thing, because the quality that a DSLR provides, compared to most other digital camera's is far superior. A DSLR comes closer to a filmcamera, than most of the digital camera's. There are two reasons for that. First of all because the image sensor is just better than in other digital camera's. It's bigger, and therefore can handle dark situations better than digital videocamera's. Plus you can actually change lenses, which means you can change the focal lenght of the lens. This changes the size of things in your image, compared to how far they are away from your camera. To give you an example. If you shoot someone with a very wide lens, close-up, the nose will apear very big. If you shoot the same person with a longer lens, the nose will apear smaller, and more natural.

The second good thing about changing your lenses, is that you can always have the maximum amount of light fall into your camera (and therefore shoot better in dark conditions), compared to other digital camera's.
In short, you have more control over the way your shot looks in perspective, have better lighting, and as a side effect, it gives you that nice shallow depth of field you always see in movies, that makes it look so professional. Downsides may be that the best DSLR can become expensive for an amateur filmmaker, but fortunatly there are also cheaper ones, with a little les quality, but still better quality than most digital videocamera's. Another downside is, that if you really want to shoot with more lenses, the lenses themselves can be sometimes quite expensive, so it's good to think about with which lenses you want to shoot before you start. The better (and mostly also more expensive) camera you have, the bigger the image sensor will be (and therefore better image quality), and the more control options you'll have on your camera.
Pro's:
- Very good image quality
- Changeable lenses
- Good to shoot in the dark (with the right lens)
- Shallow depth of field

Con's
- A little bit shakey if you don't use any rigs
- Prime lenses could be expensive

Red One

I wouldn't suggest the Red One camera to anyone, unless they really have the budet and knowledge to do it. The Red One is the digital equivalent of the 35mm filmcamera. It's cheaper that it's analog brother, and has the advantage to shoot on harddisk, which is much easier than shooting on film and having to go to a laboratory to scan the film in digitally. The quality of the Red One is unmatched in the digital world. There's simply no other digital camera that can come even close. It shoots with much more detail and contrast, en shoots much bigger images. Like any real professional camera, it comes without lens, and lenses can be bought seperatly from different brands.
The Red One has been used for numerous movies, like The Hobbit, District 9, The Amazing Spiderman, The Social Network and so on. Many filmmakers have switched already to the Red One from the 35mm camera's. And I think in a few years time, everybody will be shooting with it.
Downside of this amazing camera is obviously the price. Although much cheaper than a 35mm camera, for a normal amateur filmmaker it's way too expensive. But for semi-professionals or professionals this is a must.
Pro's:
- 35mm filmcamera image quality
- Cheaper than 1 35mm camera
- Shallow depth of field
- Changeable lenses
- Good for shooting in the dark

Con's:
- Expensive for low budget
- Requires a lot of knowledge of operating the camera

35mm Filmcamera

The good old professional camera with which so many Hollywood movies have been made. Although most filmmakers are moving on to the Red One, this camera is still the most used camera in the movie industry. This has to do with a couple of reasons. Because although the Red One has many advantages, most of the film studios still own lots of 35mm camera's themselves, and investing in a new series of camera's, although cheaper than their current camera's, is still a big investment.
The good things about this camera is obviously the quality, a little bit better than the Red One in image qualilty (although hardly noticeble), you will notice it in colour grading. The camera has many professional options, and lenses of course are changeable. Downsides are the high price and the filmscanning. Since you're working with actual physical film, you'll need to bring your film to a laboratoy to get it devolped, which of course is not cheap. And another downside is that the film you're shooting with inside your camera only last a limited time. That means you can't shoot for hours without loading in some new film into your camera, and requires again some time to set up the camera. In short: great quality, but don't use unless you know what you're doing. And if you're going to shoot with this, think about the Red One.
Pro's:
- Still the best image quality a camera can get
- Shallow depth of field
- Changeable lenses
- Good for shooting in the dark

Con's:
- Expensive camera
- Requires a lot of knowledge of operating the camera
- Needs to convert the film to a digital signal in a laboratory

Conclussion
I will not try to dictate which camera people should use, since it depends on so many things that each different situation could require a different camera. However, for most amateur filmmakers on a low budget a DSLR would be the best option. It gives the best 'movie' quality for the lowest price, and compared to the other digital camera's the quality is much better, for about the same price or a little more. There's a wide range of DSLR's out there these days, so for every budget there should be a camera available.
If you have a bigger budget I would suggest you take a look at the Red One camera. Buying one might be expensive, but you can also rent one, which will be cheaper, and give you a very good vallue for your money.

Production phases

So perhaps you already know this, and you can skip this post, or maybe it's something new for you. But I thought it would be a good idea to talk about something basic, namely the three basic stages of filmmaking.
Because like with every project, also movies have different stages. And basically you can devide them into three stages: pre-production, production and post-production. In this post I'll explain what each of the production stages are, and why they're so important to making a movie.

Pre-production
The first stage of filmmaking is pre-production. This is the stage in where you are beginning to plan, build, cast, design and write the movie. Because of course before you start shooting you need a script. And a script is nice, but without any actors it's kinda difficult to shoot anyone at all. And how about the design of the movie? How do you want your movie to look like? Does it need to be a scary thriller, or a light comedy? It all affects how the design of the movie will be like. And of course you need to plan things, when are you going to shoot what, what do you need, and who needs to be there. All these things happen in this first stage of filmmaking, and it's really the most important stage of filmmaking. Because this is the moment you can still decide how your movie is going to look like. Once you start shooting, there's no turning back anymore. So spend as much time as you can on pre-production, because once production begins you'll have to continue, and there's no looking back anymore. Most movies already strand here, because people simply cannot realise the vision they have. So it's important to keep your visions realistic and to keep your passion for filmmaking going in this stage of filmmaking.

Storyboarding is an important process in the pre-production

Production
So after a long while of pre-production, we get to the most fun part of filmmaking, the filming itself. Because the production stage is the part where you can finally get out that camera, and start shooting things. The whole period in where you're actually shooting things is called the production stage. Of course it doesn't mean pre-production has to stop, as you could still continue doing things in pre-production while you're also in production. But, in order to make it easier for yourself, it's probably better to finish pre-production first completely , before moving into production.

Production is the phase of finally rolling the camera's

Post-production
This is the stage after shooting. You've shoot your footage, and now it's time to turn those hours of footage into your final product. At this stage everything you do, the editting, adding music, vissual effects, adding sounds effect, sound mixing, it's part of the post-production stage.
Most people think that in this part of filmmaking it's just putting thigs together, and that's it. But that's actually not true. Post-production can be very creative, if you know how to do it. You can still change your story, adjust a scene, or change the mood of your film with some creative editting.

Editting is one of the key things during post-production

Now of course all these different stages will happen in one way or another. It's not that you have to really think about it like: 'Oh, I'm now in post-production, now I only have to do these kind of things'. It sort of goes organic as you move your way through your film. But it is sort of usefull to know and understand in what part of the production you are.

Good luck to you all,

Basilios Mulder

Introduction

So welcome all to my Filmmaking For Noobs blog. Let me first introduce myself. My name's Basilios Mulder, I've graduated as a computer graphics artist in Amsterdam, and have worked on severel low-budget film productions. I'm also currently working on my own filmproduction, which I hope to finish in the next couple of years. Besided that I'm an avid filmcritic, I also consume every little bit of info, behind the scenes documentaries, audio commentaries and technological updates in the film and vissual effects industry.

In this blog I'll regularly do posts about filmmaking. From concept to final product, from the technical side to the creative side. I'll try to cover as much about every subject as possible, but would also like to envite people to send in their own questions. So if you have any questions regarding filmmaking, please feel free to send them to me, and I'll try to answer them as well as I can.

The reason why I started this blog, is because I felt there are so many people out there trying to make their own film, and so many people giving tips and suggestions, that's it's hard for a beginning or amateur filmmaker to find the right information. That's either because sometimes the information is incorrect, sometimes it's incomplete or sometimes it's just too technical to understand for people who are just starting.
Now I'm not someone who's claiming he knows everything about filmmaking, but I think I'm pretty safe to say that I know most things, both on the creative side of filmmaking and on the technical side of filmmaking. And even I'm still learning. Because that's the great thing about filmmaking, you'll never stop learning, and you'll never stop evolving.

So stay tuned for the next post!

Greetings,

Basilios Mulder