Cinematography Crash Course DSLR

After going on a 'Cinematography Crash Course - DSLR', I have decided to write this post because I believe that it will help me, when making my coursework trailer to make my work have the 'cinematic' feel, and will let me achieve the shots I desire for the trailer. I believe that I will shoot my coursework piece differently due to this crash course and have already seen the difference in my personal film projects. These simple, but very effective tips will help us to design our coursework effectively, so it has the most professional style possible.

Anamorphic Lenses

Feature films and therefore trailers are always shot with anamorphic lenses, which give a shot a cuboid look instead of a square. Whilst you can't get anamorphic lenses for DSLRs, we can get the appearance of an anamorphic lens during post production. This involves us cropping the film during editing above and below the shot - this consequently means that when we're on set for filming the trailer, the Director of Photography has to bare in mind that we will be cropping the shot, and will have to position the shot accordingly, leaving room at the top and bottom of the shot to crop the image.

Cropping the image in Final Cut Pro X

The result of an anamorphic lens

An anamorphic lens

Depth of Field

 Depth of Field is the amount of subject in the foreground, mid ground and background are in focus. A shallow depth of field is when only one plane is in focus, a deep depth of field would be when all planes are in focus. On DSLRs, depth of field is determined by focal length and aperture size. It is not uncommon for films, and trailers to play on this idea and switch a shallow and deep depth of field - perhaps to hide someone/something in the background, or even to make the audience focus on one minute object in the foreground which is crucial to the shot. Changing from one focus in a shot to another is called a 'focus pull'.

Aperture and DoF

Depth of Field

 ISO

When shooting a scene in a dark place with little lighting, it can be difficult to see your shot properly as it's so dark. By increasing the ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) you are increasing your camera's sensitivity to light. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive, and the higher the ISO number, the more sensitive it is to light. However, the relationship between a high ISO number and amount of grain (distortion) on the shot is linear. So to achieve a nice shot with little grain in a dark place, we will need lots of external light for the camera to recognise so we can decrease the ISO setting. If we wanted to darken the shot for any effect - for example, it is a horror trailer and we wanted a dark, mood filled shot, we could always under expose the shot during the edit by grading it.

Shutter Speed

The shutter speed on a camera also effects the camera's light intake. The shutter speed of a shot refers to how long the shot is exposed for. In the UK the standard shutter speed for film and television production is either 25 or 50 frames per second. However, when shutter speeds change, they have different effects, allowing for more 'filmic' looks. High shutter speeds create 'jerkier' images, such as in 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'Gladiator'. Lower shutter speeds create 'smoother' images as there is more motion blur.

Lighting''Just like with human eyes, a camera can only capture the images for a movie through light.''

Without the correct lighting surrounding your shot, it is going to be difficult to get the audience to have the cinematic experience we want them to. Some cinematographers say that lighting is more important than composition, because light can connote so many different things - a shadow on the face usually symbolises horror/thriller, where as too much light connotes a ghost like, stylistic feel. Other effects such as lens flare can add atmosphere to a shot, by holding a light box under a camera with a high aperture to catch the light. 

lens flare

Tungston Lighting

LED lights

As we are working without a budget, for our coursework we would only have access to two types of lighting at most; open faced tungsten lights and LEDs (along with practical, diegetic lighting). Whilst tungsten lights are powerful and very useful for low budget films, they do give off an orange glow, which is ideal for in house lighting but not much else. We could either grade the colour in post production or use lighting gels to achieve the colours we want.

LEDs would be useful in our cinematography for our coursework because they are very energy efficient, and they are not hot to touch, which is very useful for health and Safety purposes, especially when holding the light to create lens flare.

Within film, I strongly feel that both lighting and sound can either make, or break a film, and without it being as good as possible, our trailer will not be as good as we want it to be. So whilst shooting for our trailer, these two crucial aspects of film making will be at the forefront of my mind.