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Lesson Info

Creating Shot Order and Road Map

Okay so I guess what we do no sea here we should do some of our wide shots with the best life early so that the lake looks beautiful so maybe maybe they just get a little piece of tape and I'm gonna hand you some wide shots so I think this is half in half out of the water maybe we wait on that p o v we can wait wait on the reason I'm saying wide shots first like we want the big beautiful shots with the scene in the background to look fantastic you know the hardship the light the rougher it's gonna look so I think this let's we're moving let's put that at the bottom of the board that's gonna be you also do the wide shots at first just to set the location yeah we're establishing that being establishing scene and we want the scene toe look really beautiful okay so this is our still photo let's actually just get our stills temporarily up to the top and then we can decide where those they're going to sit in then here's still remember too I'll take a piece of tape for this detail shawn's an ...

ace pilot with gas tape it's a little bit okay um all right so that's so now this is we've already decided all of this is going to be on day three in the morning so which is great we're like taking some of the pressure off I would say these two shots should definitely be in the morning because they're kind of wide shots if at all possible I also think with the rc helly it would be nice to have low angle son so that we get shadows I mean it would be nice to actually have kind of beautiful light that's sort of an established so I would also put this rc hell a shot pretty early in the day and so both of these we also said this could be a gym shot and this has potential to be a gym shot so those are two things that we could work together with you and then this remember we were talking about the tight shots we can control the light on this so we could do this kind of ended the day we could almost do that actually when we have this here I mean let's temporarily keep it here just in case it would be nice to just check it off but if it has to roll into into that other shot we can so then I think this was the shot that we called was that p o p or we just cropped that way just to shot two shots so this is when we have the water housing out any nuts down here all right? This is the p o v p o v might be what with the best bet for p o v it's kind of like we're going to save you gonna end of after we've got everything else you have to rig something to the boat I agree okay so maybe that hangs out over here somewhere this is probably that's that tracking shot where he's kind of pulling the boat up maybe cream gimbal here attaching to gimble for when you were first kind of getting a story going visual piece of it were you also getting into them are you pulling rack focus on this are you where you moving through the spotlight now I guess that kind of a history of everybody working but when you're first getting into it did you go into that detail that as well? You know I would say that on ly uncertain job by you storyboards physically drawing storyboards that always work that even when I was a newspaper started for shop lists and it would be I mean I'm going to shoot report to july parade and I was in the car before I got out to shoot of the chevy lumina newspaper let me drive I would sit in the car and I was like brainstorm the shots I wanted to make I want to get this you shot a kid on the float with like the flag in the background you know I don't even know if the shot was there but I'd make a dream list of all the shots I wanted to capture this is kind of it that I don't want to say the highest level, but this is taking it one step further. It's now, not only are we making a shot list, but we're also drawing pictures you know, rough sketches mostly I'm doing this piece from a teaching perspective it's way easier for us to talk about if I just described the shot of you know, the rc howling from above your vision is gonna be different than your vision that my vision on shawn's visions but at least now we're kind of talking about you know we're all on the same page, you know, you know, the bigger the job, the more you want storyboards um and again, you know, these air pretty good storyboards I'm a mediocre you know, dane just did a much better job drawing that shot but it's, you know, it's just whatever is going to help you communicate your crew and to your client and ad agency what you're trying to do ad agencies love to do storyboards because it's, you know, they want to make sure that the client knows what you're doing and that's a great way to bridge the communication question I'm looking at a lot of these shots are you planning on doing multiple angles to get the same shot at the same time? We're gonna are just do each individual shocks and like one, when he's out casting and fishing up front is in the same kind of position as shot the other shot. Would you take the time to just do it? Do one one on camera angle perfected? Or would you say, well, things are going on the boat for time. Fans, would you shoot two camera angles to get the same time? Some thing about storyboarding. How would I can't kind of knock out? Sure. You know, two angles in one time, out on the boat versus having to go back. And now you go over there and reset, right? Every set, the shot for this, you were probably only gonna operate one camera, but certainly if we're under a huge time crunch, we might have to rely on numbers. Old ones is you get triple the time. Also. This is you need grant our client on. Lee wants to still photos. He's not saying I want still photographs of everything that you shoot in motion. That would be a totally different deal for us if they want shots of everything and still in motion. Is that a video like having two yet? Then we constantly have at least two camera shooting, one still one video of everything. And so we and we tried dane and I did this a lot where it's you know, someone owns the scene for video and you're shooting stills at the same time then someone owns it for stills and then you try to move on as quick as you possibly can you can do that alone it just adds time just kind of like having taking two of the video shots knocking out two video especially if it's not a story boarded video yeah I mean we're doing dual coverage on things because it might be the athlete can only do something once so your subject could only do something once so you've got five cameras running on you know like so it all just depends on the project a lot of times when it's something that's storyboard it out now you're specifically trying to now you know these angles because you've already thought of the edit you've pre produced the edit kind of in your head so we've got let's see we still have this water shot jim so I guess that's probably late in the day actually is people be like the last thing maybe for you that housing this moves over so maybe these guys you're in the water and then I would say this portrait of jim with the fish and that could wear notes on this same my only fear is just from an instruction respecting this thing we're gonna be packing a lot and although he's not reading many lines, why don't we let's stack it here? And if we if we start running out of time, we'll skip these two shots. Do you guys feel like even when you're not unnecessarily storyboarding like this, but just coming up with your shot list, but there's an algorithm that you always use twenty percent of your shots? Ariel there's always one p o v shot there's. I mean, is there like a format that you basically stick teo in your storytelling? No, I would say the one formula that has turned out to be really through is every time we say we canoed in an hour six, three so that's actually probably the best takeaway know there's no formula for, like this percentage of burials, this percentage of sliders, this percentage of kimble, but is universally in the production world. My experiences, even when you're trying to be realistic, you say, oh, we can do we could do that shot in thirty minutes that shot in thirty minutes, that junk, it just never almost never works that way. So it's, like, you know, being super conservative and budgeting a lot of time is key, especially when you're a small crew and that sometimes an advantage to having fifty people on set. You know, guys, they're setting up a shot it's like already and then you walk in and you shoot it we don't have that luxury it's going to be you know, the three of us and blye out there trying to capture steps oh allowed time, I guess is my point and then also you are small crew, but a lot of people watching are just a crude one person, so they have to figure out when you said video and stills you need to think about double the time if you're a once person act, then you're quadrupling your time that's right? And the reason the reason I brought a small team is so that we could pass along a lot more value in a more compact amount of time. That's exactly right if I were doing this alone it's just man, I have my kid it's it's not only it might be two or three or four times longer to get this stuff done because I'm literally than I'm physically setting up that shot, shooting that video shop, then switching to still then setting up the next shot so it's, you just you ratchet wave athen terms one you can't get much done where you spend a lot more time getting it done and there's a beauty and doing that I mean you have total control over shooting when it's all you although there's no one to blame if the audio screwed up that's the only that's the only problem with shooting alone so now so we do have to still photos and this is with that got it ok, so now these air piggyback so I'm actually just gonna like even layer them on top of each other like that's the same photograph still in motion and then we have this unique still photographs so that's a real setup maybe this we actually tie too this shot okay, because that's really similar and so now the way we're approaching stools on this shoot this is identical, right? We're doing the same shot for still in motion it's identical like one there's going to be motion and the other one we're trying to just you know, we're capturing that that one single moment these air similar enough that we didn't group the scenarios so in this case, you know, there's still can only be one person in the water with that camera, so I'll probably be in the water. Now at that point, you know you'll see how we help one another it's like whoever needs to hold the reflector at that time holds the reflector you know, in a lot of these shots dane will probably be shooting and we're doing that said that one I can continue to like explain what we're doing or if dane just finished one shot I might be setting up for the next shot toe operate the camera so that we can just it's kind of a game of tag right there the baton getting handed off to keep the production moving with this scenario it's really gonna be we have to change years we're going to shoot we're gonna set up the light to do the still shot which is gonna be strobes we're probably gonna put a scrim over the top we can pull it off with reflectors we will but then to do the video shot you know the strobes aren't gonna work so we're going to strip the strobes out of the shot and have gym holding the fish and so you're going to see like the video side of the production stops for twenty minutes while we're shooting the still and then we come back to the video side of the production so you know there were talked about a few different ways of shooting still in motion together I thought this was the best example of shooting simultaneously still in motion on a single production and it still comes down to one person it's gonna be one guy in the water maybe with the reflector maybe not with the reflector and that's it it's how do you do them both and it's going to be complicated because where you know there's a lot going on we're gonna have you know, sometimes it could be me holding the fish or maybe I get blye in the water with me flopping the fish around then we need to take the housing out of the water, pull the camera out, turn it on to video mode or switching back into still mode to make that happen so those were kind of a few of the approaches how about some question? Absolutely you know there's no shortage of questions are something you learned from uh, shooting with underwater housing both video and still getting between a navigating through your settings and adjusting for the different shots, right? You know one thing that's really valuable with underwater housing, specifically scuba diving housings where you can really manipulate you know all of the controls is having a muscle memory of you know it helps if you use that camera body a lot did you really difficult if you hardly know your camera and then you're at a hundred feet and big housing is not transparent and you're trying to remember which button does what you're burning on your burning air and you're actually looking at your you know could dive computer and it's telling you like you only have ten more minutes of this death that you haven't figured out your lights I guess the lesson is practice above water in a swimming pool a lot because it's that's the worst time trying to figure it out well you'll see us fumble tomorrow and it's been a while since we used this architect housing so if this were a real productive if this wasn't just you know education combined with production you know we'd probably be up for a few hours and fooling around with the housing I'd also say it sounds simple but especially using housing that's really important to make sure you don't have dust on the glass that you're looking at you know the inter element of the lens is well you're looking at your sensor because once you get it in there you kind of don't want to pull the camera out it's cumbersome to do so it's all about making sure that once you stick a camera in there everything's clean so that when you get back up again you're looking at your footage you're not disappointed that you just you know, wasted that opportunity that you had we've done everything we're giving my advice the way of advices because we screwed it up several times that's why you are teaching us how to do it right another question in the audience have you ever been in like a climate where you have to let your gear acklin mates it's like not fogging the censor and you can't freak out like I need to be shooting but yeah I mean going into from cold to hot or in really humid conditions where then you bring hot too cold and in going from you know, the human boat into cold water, you've got to be really sensitive, so we'll put silica packs inside of the housing and then the opposite is true like before shooting in a ski or snow environment cold weather environment you know you're outside all day ski touring, the gear's getting kind of wet but it's really cold and then you're going to go into that cabin now the best case scenario in that environment is just keep your gear in the camera bag sometimes we'll even put a trash bag over the top of it, bring it into the room and might have come back up to temperature for you know an hour too sometimes just so that it doesn't just fog up because then you're shut otherwise then you're sitting there with lens tissue for thirty minutes strand the other tip justin, this is a little off topic, but in the ski world you know it's it's a lesson it just takes once but when you set your bag down and you know you're going to shoot skiing and then some guy and you decide you're kind of move so fast you never close your bag and then someone skis in and spray snow and fills your whole camera bag that's another one of those it takes once and then you remember are always going to close my bag because then you're shut down your now you're in the lodge like trying to dry off your you know, camera gear with paper towels for two hours doesn't work very well. Okay, we have about, uh, see about six or seven minutes left so we can ask a few more questions. How did you deal with the varying exposure going half underwater and then up top, how do you handle some kind of revenge is like, how how do you manage keeping they say the fish, right expose and not over exposing the sudden right? Well, you know, one thing that you saw when we're looking at the inspiration images, the coolest pictures were the ones in like the turquoise is perfectly clear water the gin clear water is what they call it in the dive world and the reason people love to shoot engine clearwater is the exposure is very comparable underwater the top five feet of water and above water so you can, in a still photograph in the raw file there's enough exposure latitude that you can kind of make the above the water exposure matched the below the water exposure what's a little bit of photo shop work and of course, with video it's even more important it's you want clear water, this is going to be tough in this murky water it's going to be less about we actually see money underwater it's going to be more just thie effect of having a water line, and if we're really shallow, you know the top six inches of water, we might see some of the surface, there might be enough light so it's, the answer is clearwater clearwater, or you can go to great lengths to at a filter inside and change the explosion above water. You know, a lot of post production happens to make that work, all right, let's, take a couple questions from the chat room pro photographer asked this earlier, and I know we kind of skin by this topic, but she here she asked how much given take is there with clients in the story morning process, and do they sign off on it as you create it? How can you talk a little bit more about that pressure? Sure, I think there's a continuum of of clients, some clients, really, they're hiring you to be a creative person. They're hiring you to use your brain and help them build the story and those of the clients that I mean that's a super fun for me, you know? And I think for all of us, when they're hiring us to be that creative team and other times you're hired and this a better example with that agency's it's very common with that agencies they're hired me because you have a skill set but they're creating the idea and it's not that they don't want to hear your ideas it's just they've already put a lot of man hours into building the storyboards and selling them to the client you know when we show up on the job we don't have the context of the whole dialogue that went into building the storyboard so they're less interested in my opinion on the story boards or my team's opinion on the story boards there more interesting can you guys execute these boards in your style in that creative way that you shoot your projects so it's it's really there's both ends of the spectrum clients that they really hand you the key to the city and say do it your way and in fact we build the entire story board that's the jackson kayak example and then the other end of the continuum is I think I showed you guys the polartec shoot they wanted our style but they knew what they wanted we had storyboards that we were shooting tio and you know I think we went above and beyond what the storyboards were and that's the goal you always wanted you know give the client even mohr than anticipated if you can the question is does your day rate change no, I think that's mostly based on how big the company is, the largest accompany the larger your fee, just coincidentally goes, but, um but no, I mean, I think truth is it's it's more about time and sometimes the jackson kayak model, you know, the thing about doing all of this takes more time. So it's, you know, there's more energy that goes into this, the beauty of working for an ad agency sometimes that you don't have to worry about the creative. You just show up on your ultra creative and when you do the best you can with those shots, you do it your way and that's what? They fired you, too. Do you have another question from s greg p who says you move the camera a lot? Have you had trouble with rolling shutter and jelly video? And how do you combat that? I think originally, yeah, there was a lot of issues with that. I think as the cameras have kind of progressed, the reeds feeds off, the sensors are a little better. The nikon. We've been a lot of action shooting and it's the one hundred and the d for performed really well, I think a lot of that just has to do with the cameras were using and stabilizing your shots is going to help a lot against that jell o that you get because it's still there but but it's it's you know using these cameras to their strengths and not just shaking them around of course you're gonna see some artifact ng from that so thes cameras do a great job for what they're intended to do you know you know it used to be in the still photography world you know you could have a camera that's fifteen years old maid no no effect on the quality of their image infact maybe it was a better camera than the modern camera that's all changed those we've gone to digital cameras there's a you know there's a great improvement each generation often of camera and so adopting new technology you don't have to be an early adopter but actually moving your kit forward really makes a difference then we can see what we shot on the ninety versus what we're shooting even on a mirror list camera today it's like night and day when they're huge advances in this technology with each generation I think we have another question in the studio audience before we go back to the topic of negotiating in dealing with your client beforehand is it seems to make sense to me that a lot of the costs and expenses and stuff associated with the shoot would come from your your side does the does the agency tectonic do they handle all the negotiation for rights and usage an ideal yes they do. They do. I mean and that's I just wanted to give kind of a full disclosure you know, they do negotiate for me the guy's tectonic but pre tectonic I was the guy negotiating for everything and it's it's really? Just a checklist it's a punch card of you download that estimate and every every line on that estimate its just you need to come to a decision. It's hey, what do you guys want for usage? Because that usage effects how you're going to build the project and so I will say this in the still photography world because I think there's a lot of the folks listening online come from the still photography world. I'm guessing there's more folks on line coming from the still photography world interested in dabbling in the video world but they're too, really distinctly different business models convention like the convention and the video world is you just don't own your content in the aftermath that's sort of the norm you do a video project, you're the dp you don't own your content of the after at the end of the project in the still world that's like a rare deal it's becoming more common but you own your content and they get a license for certain duration of time so that's a new language that still photographers in a new model and philosophy that you have to learn how to adapt to and work with clients and there's. A lot of education that happens in that process. But, you know, as I have a foot in each world, you know, I've shot more content that I don't own in the last few years, once I've started shooting video than in the previous twenty years of shooting. Still photography, where I could count on two hands, the buyout shoots that I did.