See the Light... - Become a Film Maker Without Quitting Your Job!

Lighting is by far the single most important factor in moving imagery in my opinion.

Light is what provides the illumination to enable a correct exposure (even at 20,00 ISO you still need some light  source albeit a small one)

Light enables you to create shadows which in turn provide contrast allowing you to create a sense of depth and persepctive in your otherwise 2 dimensional frame.

And finally Light allows you to put colour into your scene, warm or cool (and everything inbetween) and that's what accounts for the mood in a story.

It's actually pretty simple.  The rest is just technique so i'm amazed at the never ending 'me too ' discussions by some people on social media about pixels, low light performance, type of media , my format  is better than your format.  etc etc 

blah, blah , blah,

When I went to film school I had a lecturer, a feature film director called Mark Bender.  I never really warmed to him, but he did say something which has stuck in my mind ever since.  He said there are two types of people in the world of film making:

Those who love to make films

and

those who love to watch films.  

That was in 1990.  In 2012 I'd add a third group.  

Those who like to talk about making films.

The democrotization of film making tools has allowed anyone to buy a relatively low priced film making tool and turn out 'cinematic' images of sorts (bokeh, bokeh, bokeh...) Whatever.

I'm not trying to antagonise anyone here but please can we gather some perspective for the good of our professional film making reputations.  

Collectively we have a responsibility to educate our clients about the benefits of a well made, professionally produced film. (I'm mainly talking about corporates here)  

I was talking earlier today with Micky Jones in Australia.  He runs a company called Lit Up Digital  We were discussing the revolution that happened when Final Cut first came on to the scene.  

At that time Anyone who could afford the software and machine to run it on was calling themselves a Final Cut Editor and in some cases clients were being takin in and in some cases had their fingers burned.  

Why?  

Because the people calling themselves editors weren't very good in a real world 'clients money on the line job'

they'd get the gear but have no idea...

The result was that when an experienced editor came on the scene (i.e. Mick Jones- who cut his teeth on three machine Linear systems ) he was faced with clients who were suspicious of anyone using FCP.  

Me too I started life cutting two machine betacam using the front panel of the edit deck while sitting in the back of a van editing news stories to a deadline. But i still wouldn;t call myself an editor- Yes I can edit and yes I can cut on FCP but I'd never dream of coing out to get work as an editor.  I'm a cameraman.  Simple.

Now in many ways Mick and I were lucky because we were taught a craft by much more experienced people.  And we were employed in the TV industry producing programming that went out on air on a daily basis. That's accountability calling. 

I'm not sure the same opportunities exist today for the new breed of aspiring film makers and thats a shame. Because the gear is way more accessible now than ever before and yet there seeems to be a large number of people who actually only ever talk about the gear.

Please, Please, Please...

Please go and film somethimg other than a camera test. You'll make mistakes, and you make screw it up altogther but boy you'll learn a bucket load on the way and you'll not make the same mistakes next time.

So what's the moral of the story?

Beng Pro is about learning your craft, knowing how to dig yourself out of the shit when something goes wrong on a shoot, and delivering the goods to the client on time and within budget.

And clients could not give a shit about what media you use, what camera you use or any of that stuff so long as their film looks good and it sells whatever message, product, service or widget is they'll be happy and come back for more.

But the same principles can be very valuable to the aspiring amateur also.

So if you wanna become a better film maker, (regardless of wthere you wnn aturn pro)  go out, shoot some stuff and make mistakes.

But please don't call yourself a title unless you can categorically deliver.

There are some great articles writen by my buddy Robin Schmidt about breaking into the industry and how to make money in film making over here at Wide Open Camera