Don't know where to begin...

[Aapo Lettinen]

By my opinion, framing and composition are the easy parts of filmmaking. They are pretty natural and intuitive and can be learned quickly. 

Lighting can be hard because it is based on experience and you will need to instantly find the best (or one of the best working) approach because you don't have time to test every single possibility or to build it from ground up for every single take. Basically it is constantly reinventing the wheel again and it will take infinite amount of time if you have no idea where to start. For example in the student films we made it was typical that all the lights were completely rebuild for every single shot. Or at least 90% of the lighting. This makes the single images look very very nice but it just takes too much time to be practical in every real world production. It was very typical that it took about 2 or 3 hours per shot to shoot and the days were typically from 14 to 20 hours when the longest practical days on a professional set here are about 10 or 12 hours ( longer than 10 hours are avoided because they are too expensive) .

Another reason why it took so long to light the student films was that the lighting was judged by the monitor, not by eye like it is faster to do and how most professional gaffers do it here. It is just so much faster to work that way (you can still check the monitor if needed but you don't check it after every little tweak to see how they affect the final image). And there is rarely any monitor on a student / low budget indie set which is properly calibrated with the proper custom LUT made by the colourist which accurately resembles the final grade. OR even a good enough monitor to see anything colour/contrast critical. And even if there would, it would still take too much time to run back and forth between set and the monitor for every little tweak. 

Personally I have gone so far that I rarely keep any camera or viewfinder with me on recce or when planning anything. By my opinion, framing can't be fully pre planned if you don't have possibility to build the sets entirely from ground up. In most situations, you have to live with what you get and the final framing and composition has to be decided on the actual set and every little changing detail will affect it. So when scouting or on recce I like to "shoot by eye" to just see how wide lenses I will approximately need and what the angles of the lights and camera will approximately be. I will judge composition by approximating the physical camera positions and actor height and checking the parallax of different set elements from that position (when actually shooting a scene I actually judge the camera position the same way. Then moving the actual camera there and fine tuning it if needed. It is easy to get the exact camera position right this way by couple of inches accuracy at the first try without even seeing the image/having the camera switched on if you just know what to look for. Have to mention that I mainly use prime lenses nowadays so no possibility for fine tuning the framing with a zoom lens) . So I am lighting mainly by eye (lights placed and tweaked by watching the subject, not the monitor), pre planning the shots mainly by eye and moving the camera to the almost final position mainly by eye without even seeing the image. Then just checking the monitor for last moment small tweaks and to fine tune details if needed. This is to make the working fast and efficient: no need to constantly run back and forth to check everything from the monitor and to physically move heavy equipment back and forth to see how this affects the final image on the screen.

Lighting is normally split between "constant lights" which stay pretty much the same for the whole scene and "moving lights" which need to be fine tuned or moved for different shots and camera angles. If you would build only one lighting setup for the whole scene without tweaking and fine tuning it between shots there would be some tradeoffs like some of the shots looking worse than they could and the lighting restricting camera positions / shooting angles. If building the lights from ground up for every shot they will look nice but it is just too inefficient way of working and you will have larger risk of continuity errors. Additionally it is unnecessarily stressful for every department and makes the days very long and will blow the budget. So typically you would want to have "semi-fixed lights" which can stay the same for the whole scene or multiple scenes so that you can use time for building them and setting them right. Then you will fine tune with smaller, fast to use fixtures and reflectors which are rigged so that they can be moved and tweaked very fast for every individual shot. For example, if you are intending doing a night scene where there is a road with moonlight coming from up the hill from the left side behind the trees. You would probably use a larger fixture like a mid range HMI light to make the moonlight beams from behind the trees and just place the light to higher up the hill slope to get it to the correct height without using a lift. Then setting a generator to run the HMI from it. But if you would need to move this HMI light for every shot it would take enormous amount of time... so you would want to set it so that it works for the widest shot and most of the close ups without any adjustments at all. Then you would set some kind of ambience/fill light which is closer to the road and actors and can be moved quicker but is still pretty constant for most of the images. Maybe a smaller HMI with a softbox or a large led light or a Kino Flo or something like that. Smaller and softer in any case. This light would need to be moved for some of the shots and for others it would stay the same. So the "moonlight beams" hmi would be fixed for the scene and the "ambience soft light" would move between wide master and closer shots or when the actors position is signifiantly changed for some reason. Then you would probably need some additional small and fast to use lights and reflectors for eye light and close ups which are easy to move for every single shot if needed. Basically the more the light needs to be changed within the scene the faster it needs to be to use. Personally I like to use reflectors and small battery powered led lights for these fast tweaks and the "semi-fixed" lights tend to be the only ones which need generator power and are high powered. Personally I would for example rig from 1.2K to 2.5K HMI up the hill (enough power but still easy to use with a small portable generator and lightweight enough to rig in reasonable time by 2 persons even if the terrain is challenging) , then use a Kino Flo or something similar for the closer ambience (cheaper to rent than a LED panel) or a small HMI with a softbox or a reflector on a high stand which I would use to bounce a small HMI or a gelled tungsten fresnel. High enough stand to make it usable for the "ambience light". Then I would use a small battery powered led panel for getting additional light for closer shots and tweaks and couple of smaller reflectors for bouncing the "moonlight" or the battery led light. The HMI up the hill would stay the same for the whole scene and the "ambience light" would be moved between the wide shot and the closer shots or if the stand would be in the way or the light angle would just be plain wrong for the shot. But everything shot by shot based would be done with the battery powered LED and the reflectors to keep it fast and to stay on schedule. 

 

If being the OP, I would want to concentrate especially on lighting and post production first. Both are extremely important aspects of cinematography and both are pretty time consuming to learn and have to be learned practically. mastering the post production pipeline is crucial for maintaining the technical quality, the mood and contrast/colour accuracy of the movie and is vital when pre planning a project. For example if one needs to shoot a project on film and make a 4k DCP out of it, it does not hurt to be able to plan beforehand how to actually do it to make it look the same on the screen than you intended

[Stephen Sanchez]

@Josh Gallegos, it sounds like you want to shaddow a professional DP. It's not always an option; it's dependent on the DP, working situation, and your ability to be there. The next best thing is to shaddow local DP/shooters on short films or low/no-budget movies.

Your experience doesnt matter regarding shadowing. Ive had conversations with a fellow DP in Tampa regarding interns. And our conclusion was that it doesnt matter the student's knowlege or skill or experience, what we enjoy working with the most is a student with drive.

[Bruce Greene]

A couple of things:  It's never been easier or more affordable to make some kind of movie.  If you have a smart phone, you're good to go!  At this level, the idea is way way more important than the technical quality of the camera.

And secondly, please forgive me for what I'm about to write...

Please use paragraphs when writing long posts.  It can be really difficult, at least for me, to read such a giant block of words.  So I tend to avoid reading such posts.  I suspect that I'm not the only one, or am I?

Best wishes to you Josh!

Never give up, never surrender!!!

[Satsuki Murashige]

1 hour ago, Bruce Greene said:

Never give up, never surrender!!!

[Aapo Lettinen]

On 9/28/2020 at 10:55 PM, Josh Gallegos said:

I just want to jump into the world of filmmaking. At the moment I just want to shoot anything, even if it’s a horrible script, I’m getting on facebook since that’s where local filmmakers in Houston network. I figure I’ll shoot anything I can and make my own projects, this way I can develop connections along the way.

Just keep connecting with other filmmakers and never give up! It does not matter how long it takes, in the end you will get where you wanted or you can even find something better during your journey ?  

I have some playlists on YouTube which will help a little and will give you new ideas and motivation:  

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXvIUtmF3OxuGDEXV50C-1K4U81Jut4nu  

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXvIUtmF3OxueJFLL2bAteLsGjphxNF73  

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXvIUtmF3Oxtm-QRosXJk-A7U8yHMj4RS 

And you will want to follow the CookeOpticsTV channel and some others for cinematography tips and motivation. There was a thread somewhere here on the forum about filmmaking channel recommendations, you should check it out too  ?