The next aspect to consider is cinematography. Because this is a visual oriented class, one of the most important factor is how the film is going to look. And because I'm a very visual person, this is something I focus on very strongly. I know that script is the most important thing. And I'm not denying that you need to have good script before you get to camera. But once you have a good script, and hopefully you do, making a film, visually special is going to sort of make you rise above the rest of the sea of content out there.

Everybody now can pick up a camera and make something look good. You don't necessarily need to have much skills, I'm sorry to say, to get a film. That is, you know, that ticks all the boxes of a professional film. Nowadays, for you to make your mark. You need to be different. You need to be either better or different.

I'd like to be different, because you can't really be better than everybody Else, there's always going to be somebody better than you. However, this is not what a film is more, some directors can focus more on dialogue fast cutting a general emotional state of the film. And this is not to say that you have to focus your the entirety of your film on only visuals, but this is a visual class. So I'm going to talk about cinematography. First of all, you need to define what you want to do with the film. And the general mood and tone of the film is very important.

Are you going to do fast cutting, or slow long takes? Are you going to use odd angles? Are you going to use a lot of macro photography? Are you going to do something inherently different from other movies out there? You need to define the style of framing and images that you like. I usually start by referencing other films that I like.

And something to be careful about is that I don't think you should copy a film because it's You can't really copy you know, films that I love, which is Blade Runner, which is alien, which is Terminator two, or the matrix like all these films are iconic and on their own. And if you want to copy them, you'll only fall flat on your face. So what you need to do is you need to define what excited you about these films what they did well, and you need to inspire yourself. And it's better in my opinion, to really know how a film a singular film did something really well so that you can focus on directing your vision towards that goal in your own way, rather than looking at the number of different films and trying to do everything that all these films did, because that's a lot harder and it's all it's confusing, and they'll lack direction, which is what we're trying to focus on today.

Because I'm a visual director, I like to concentrate on a few things. One of those things, is lighting. I like to focus on a color, a general palette of colors, that film is going to be. And that's going to give the film a very distinctive edge. For example, in temple everything was very orangey. Because of the mixed lighting I love, I love to mix either neons or tungsten or cold and warm temperatures.

And I think it gives more character to a to a film that just monochromatic lighting or colors. So this is something that is a personal taste of mine. It doesn't necessarily need to be that for you. But you need to define what you like and what you think will make this stand out. One other thing you need to decide is are you going to shoot this film, mostly exterior interior, there are benefits to each. I usually try to tend to shoot interior because I have more control over the universe and building.

Because I mostly do sci fi I need to do extensive production design. And that way I can control exactly what I want and frame rather than using something Outside that, you know, you don't necessarily have control over like cars passing by in the background that look like it's from today. But your film happens in 2050. So that's, that's something very important to consider. And there are benefits to both exterior you need less lighting because you can't really light exterior most of the time especially on the budget and interior you need to spend more time building the set that you need. However, it gives you a more controlled look for the entire project.

In order for you to build the universe, you need to really restrain everything you show only to that universe do not show something that belongs to today, when your film happens in the future or in the past. So it's very important to keep the frames tight, especially in a low budget because you don't have the money to build extensive sets and only put the money on very specific things that you know you can achieve. Or do you have all the money to do this one wide shot this Do it. And then the rest of the shots can be medium close ups or close ups or extreme close ups. And that way you can really make the viewer feel like they're part of that world and not pull them out of it because they see something that doesn't belong. The next thing to think about is the camera and lenses you're about to use.

This being a visual class, I want to talk about that. But I also want to say that in this day and age, you do not necessarily need the best camera, the best lenses to achieve anything. There are many, many different ways to shoot a film now. And there are many, many different companies that produce really good cameras and really good lenses and really good everything that a filmmaker needs on the budget for you to achieve what you want. However, because I know Blackmagic very well I collaborate with them. I tend to use Blackmagic designs line of cameras and software.

The reason being is that These are very high end professional cameras on a very consumer friendly price. They also give out for free a whole range of software that used to be only available to professionals in Hollywood, such as the Vinci resolve fusion, fair light. In resolve, you can edit, color and finish your film entirely using that one software. In fusion, you can create high end VFX shots, using only that software for light you can sound design and mix your films and all of these are available for free which is unheard of, you know, just a few years ago. So this is a company I highly recommend you looking into because it really gives you professional results. There is a learning curve to this.

But once you've mastered these tools, you can really hope to achieve high end results on a very limited or no budget shoot because these again are free to use on Most of my projects, I use anamorphic lenses, I like anamorphic because that's the way I see things. But you need to plan for these things if you shoot them anamorphic for example, you need to plan your set design because your shots are going to be much, much wider. And you need to cover a lot of, of your location and set design. So in this shot, for example, you have a fight, but then you have so much information on the left and the right of the character, and you need to build it, you need to create something interesting in it, and you have a lot less room for overhead. We also use the pocket cameras in temple to rig it in different places such as, as a third person view behind the character as we're fighting, or in hard to reach places to give a different sense to the action.

And we combine these weird angles with editing techniques that gave it a very exciting and impactful flow to the fight so that we could keep the viewer interested. We also experiment With different techniques such as lytro cameras, which was a light field camera that could refocus on, on one shot, and we tried different things. So don't be afraid to experiment. Even if things are not, you know, professional, you can still find ways to shoot things in a more interesting way than just setting a camera up on a tripod and holding a shot. Not to say that holding shots don't work holding shots. For example, on demo, we could have held a shot and just did the whole fight sequence on one shot, which is something that I've done afterwards on other projects.

However, you need to be careful when you do things like that. You have to be aware that most of the of the burden of the fight or the sequence per se will rely on your actors because they are the ones that are going to carry that sequence and there's not going to be that much cheating that you can do. after the fact, if you feel like something is off or you need to edit around certain things, if you hold a shot, you hold the shot. And that is what you live with. However, these things are very specific to my projects, your project may be completely different. So keep that in mind.

I just want to remind you that a camera is a camera, I don't want you to focus on the hardware or the the gear that you're about to use. Because again, today, the most important thing is to have a clear vision and a clear way to make that that film look different. If you're going to use a camera, it's most certain that it's going to be good enough. What's important is mood, tone, art direction, cinematography, lighting, you need to light a shot to make it look good. You can't just slap a camera into a room and start shooting an auto mode. It's not going to look good, and that's why people will dismiss yourself.

So that's it. I let's move on to The next section