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TRANSCRIPT

In the intro to Cinematography video we went over 9 key shots, giving you a better understanding of what each one brings to your story.

Now it is time to take what you’ve learned and shoot a mini movie – we call this our 5 shot challenge. For this exercise we recommend coming up with a story that requires little to no dialogue – this way we can focus  just on the visual components of storytelling.  If you need some inspiration – see if you can turn someone exiting a room into a really compelling story in only 5 shots.

Now, plan out your mini movie by figuring out how to introduce the world of your story, what the conflict or tension is and how it’s resolved (or not resolved) at the end! 

Once you have the story in mind, you’ll want to decide which shot is best for the beginning, middle and end of your film. To help you plan, open up the FILM template in the iMovie Storyboard feature to see some suggestions on shots that typically go well in the introduction, conflict and resolution parts of a movie.

Apple uses slightly different terminology then what we covered in our Intro to Cinematography video, so after you’ve selected which 5 shots you want to include, let’s go in and re-label them.  For our example film, we’re going to start with the “Environmental Shot”  – which we call a Wide Establishing Shot.  Tap the PENCIL to rename it.Next we want to introduce our main character and show more details about their environment, so we’ll rename the “Character Shot”  to “Medium Shot” next we’re going to use a close up for the “Emotional Shot”] to build the tension in the film, then to show our main character’s fear we’ll shoot a high angle “Reaction Shot”  for the climax, and we’ll end with a doing a tracking shot of our main character safely getting away as our  “Storytelling” shot to wrap it all up. Try and use as many different angles in your film as you can.

Now it’s time to start shooting! For our example film our first shot will be a super wide shot on a tripod where we’ll pan the camera left to right to show as much of the environment as possible. Launch the Filmic Pro App and make sure you’ve already set your resolution to 16:9 and frame rate to 4K or 1080p. Select your wide angle lens in the lens selector menu. Next, let’s set up the CMS or Content Management System so you can label your shots and make it really easy to cut together later.  In the production text box write in the name of your movie.  Even though we’re shooting 5 different shots, they’re all a part of the same scene, so we’re going to label each shot starting with the number 1 and then a different letter. For our first wide “Establishing” shot we’ll call this 1A. When we shoot our next shot which is our medium “Character Shot” we’ll update it to say 1B.  To make clips even easier to find later, we’re going to add the name of the shot to the label – so name this one “1A - Establishing”

Make sure the take is reset back to 1. The random box automatically adds 4 random letters and numbers to the end of your file name to make sure you don’t accidentally override any other files labeled the same way from other shoots.

Now you’re ready for your first shot! If necessary, adjust the exposure, and focus then announce the scene and say action! Record your wide Establishing shot and leave a few seconds at the end before saying CUT to give you room to edit later. Stop the recording.

If you feel you need to retake the shot, hit record again. Filmic Pro will automatically update the take upwards for you in the CMS. Once you’re happy with the take and are ready to shoot your next shot,  go into your CMS and label the Scene as “1B - Medium” and reset the take to 1 before you roll camera again.

Do this for all the different shots you planned out.  A good rule of thumb is to shoot one extra take of each shot just for “safety” reasons to make sure there wasn’t an error you didn’t see like the exposure being off or camera gear in the shot.

Once you’ve gotten all your shots  – congrats! You’ve just wrapped production on your first mini-movie!  You can start assembling your film in iMovie right away! Attach each of your favorite takes to the corresponding 5 shots you selected in the template and delete any extras. Play it back to see your movie taking shape –in the next video we’ll trim some of the clips, add titles and change the music to fit the tone in Final Cut Pro!