You want to become the Roger Deakins or Rina Yang of your film crew, you’ve got your camera, your lens, maybe some lighting, but your cinematography just isn’t up to your own lofty expectations. In this article we break down 5 different ways you can improve your cinematography!
Consistency: Setting exposure properly.
Exposing evenly is pivotal for making life easier for your colourist, no one wants to grade a film where one shot is over exposed, and the next is so dark even Batman would fall over. Fortunately, there’s a range of tools now to help you expose properly.
How many of you have a light meter? Probably very few. How many top cinematographers have light meters? Probably all of them. There’s a reason this tool has stood the test of time, because it’s great.
Using a light meter is a fantastic way to make sure you know how much light you need to use to correctly expose your subject, particularly useful when you have a bright background and you want to make sure you can expose both the foreground and background at the same level.
A light meter works by taking the data you enter, including the ISO, shutter speed and framerate, and then by taking a reading it will tell you what F stop you should be at for the correct exposure. This doesn’t mean you need to set you F stop to that number, but what it might mean is you need to increase or decrease your lighting in order to achieve your desired aperture.
For example, you set the ISO to 800, the shutter speed to 1/50 at 25fps, you are hoping to shoot at F2.8 but the light meter tells you should set your aperture to F6.3. So here you have too much light hitting the subject, to rectify simply adjust the lighting or lower the ISO and try again, and hopefully your light meter will edge closer to F2.8. Make sure you are placing the light meter where you are wanting the focus of the shot to be, there’s no point taking a light reading from behind the camera!
Nowadays it’s relatively common to see a shogun or small HD monitor kicking around on set, and these monitors have some incredible functions to help you achieve a consistent and cinematic look.
False colour and wave forms are tools to help you expose your subject, and come in very useful during the take to watch out for any exposure changes through natural light.
The way false colour works is by separating different levels of IRE into colours, so you can determine what is over or under exposed by the colour that it appears. Different monitors have different colour schemes, so make sure you know which colours mean what on your monitor, but the aim is to get your skin tones to 70% IRE. This video breaks it down and simplifies it for you, and will help you understand IRE if you aren’t sure what that means.
Histograms are more readily available and will most likely be an option on your camera, however they only provide an overall reading, so even if your skin tones are exposed perfectly, if there’s a blown out light in the background, it will bump up the entire histogram.
Wave forms are a great way of measuring the overall exposure, and can also be used to see the colour balance (use vector scopes for even more accurate control), the waveform display gives you a spread out chart informing you of the different layers of IRE in your image. For best control you don’t want anything crushed down the bottom or flat up the top; it is always best to make creative choices in post-production.
Zebras are somewhere between a histogram and false colour in their accuracy. Zebras are so named because they place zebra like patterns on anything over a set IRE, but the important thing to remember is that you set the desired IRE, so whereas false colour has pre-determined settings for over and under exposure, zebras are up to you.
As mentioned before, 70% IRE is a desired level for skin tones, so if you set your zebras to 70%, then anything that peaks above 70% will be over exposed. This is a quick and dirty approach, but one that works well for corporate or documentary work when you haven’t got time to light a scene and the priority is making sure the subjects (people) are exposed properly, and you can sacrifice the background.
Bear in mind that it is better to underexpose the entire shot slightly and retain details in the highlights, as they are far harder to recapture than details in the lowlights, but you don’t want to be pushing your footage too hard in post so be careful how low you go.
Capturing cinematic shots is about being creative with your lighting, but it is also understanding the technical basis to start from and how to shoot consistently. Cinematography isn’t all about being arty and inventive, it involves a lot of knowledge, skill and education.
Sticks, rig or gimbal?: Adding the right movement.
Gimbals are great, no doubt about it, in fact we are some of the biggest gimbal fans you’ll meet over here at GripUp. But is the Zhiyun Crane 2 going to be the best option for every shot? No.
Being a good cinematographer means understanding which tools to use, when to use them and why. Yes gimbals do capture great cinematic shots, but imagine Saving Private Ryan being shot on a gimbal, it would have a completely different feel. If you can shoot something on a tripod that blows people away, you’ve just next levelled your cinematography skills.
There is a tendency in the industry to overuse the latest tool, we all remember the slider craze, so it can be hard not to reach for that tool. But there’s some simple questions to ask yourself in order to help you choose which tool to use, the most obvious being ‘what kind of job is it?’
For a corporate job handheld will be the last thing they want, and you’ll quickly be on the way out if you try it. Stick to tripod shots for interviews, and gimbals or tripod for b-roll. Yes we know it can get dull and you want to freshen it up so you might be tempted to try off-the-cuff handheld shots…DON’T.
But when it comes to narrative work the decision of what tool to use for your cinematography can become stress inducing, and all eyes turn to you on set, gazes more intense than owls. So how do you make the right decision and make it quickly? Ask yourself this key question.
How does the character feel?
This one question will lead you to the answer you seek, because it reminds you of one of filmmaking’s great principals…
Motive Motive Motive
What is the motive of your character? What is the motivation of the scene? What are you trying to tell about your character? Cinematography is more than pointing at actors delivering dialogue, cinematography is it’s own storytelling mechanism in itself. The way the camera moves, when it moves and what it moves to and from, if it even moves at all, all of these are crucial elements in guiding your audience through the narrative at the pacing you want the story to reveal itself.
Let’s break it down.
Say you’re filming a someone in an office and you are trying to show the mundaneness of the environment. Your character is a bored middle-aged man who has been in the same job for 20 years and feels like they’ve reached a stalemate in their life. Hyperlapses and aerial shots? I don’t think so.
A locked off shot is the perfect choice here because it replicates the character’s internal thoughts and feelings. Tripod shots make the audience stop and really examine a scene, taking it all in, which is why shooting on a tripod is what separates the men from the boys (and the women from the girls). Shooting on sticks allows the audience to really analyse your shot, the lighting, the framing, the focus, all of it. Cinematography is about more than camera movement, it’s about exposure, mise-en-scene, lighting and composition. Some of the best films ever shot have been mostly on sticks, and you would be foolish to undervalue the tripod’s importance to your filmmaking development.
Of course, that said, shooting on a tripod isn’t always the right option, and if you are in a high-octane environment (think action films) then you may want to introduce pace into your shots, and shooting handheld on a shoulder rig can give you that right amount of frantic movement to create a different, yet equally cinematic experience.
Filming handheld works great when your character is nervous or panicked, and it demonstrates a deeper understanding of cinematography if you able to switch between tripod, handheld and gimbals with no one even realising. Children of Men switches between some of the most complex motorised set ups and raw handheld shots with a maturity few films can replicate (we tip our hats to you Emmanuel Lubezki). Check out the first scene as a great example of using handheld motion in a subtle way to set the mood.
As for gimbals? Well we all know why we use gimbals…because they are cool! So bearing that in mind, perhaps the time to use gimbals is when someone is feeling confident or sophisticated. Best examples of this would be spy or heist films, or even political dramas when introducing the suave American President (obviously not set in 2018), verses our awkward stumbling British prime minister (maybe it is set in 2018).
Shooting on gimbals hides lighting and composition flaws, because the movement itself is a feat that is admired and draws the audience in, but that is why it is dangerous to use all the time. If you want to become a great cinematographer, leave the gimbal alone for a while and see what you can achieve on a tripod or handheld.
Having Gear doesn’t make you a good cinematographer, knowing which gear to use does.
Invest in lights and a fog machines
You’ve saved £1000, what do you buy? Maybe you can buy that shiny new camera lens finally, or save an extra few hundred and pick up that new camera that does 120fps?! But you already have lenses, and you already have a camera, sure they may not be great but you have both those things. What don’t you have? Cinematic lighting.
Lighting is cinematography. Being a director of photography means being a director of light, in fact the Greek origin of ‘photography’ actually translates to ‘drawing with light’. Yes you need an exceptional knowledge of cameras and lenses, but what will get you employed is what you can do with lighting.
The milestone for lighting over the last decade is the progress of LED lighting, allowing compact, battery powered and powerful lights to find a home in your kit bag, and there’s lighting for every budget.
Knowing what lights to get can be a hard one, so here’s three suggestions for a low budget, mid budget and high budget.
Low budget
ikan onyx 15w bi-colour 3200–5600k on camera LED light
These little ikan lights are a fantastic little panel that will never let you down and improve your cinematography for sure. Small enough for any DSLR set up, but powerful enough to cover every situation, they are a great purchase if you’re starting out.
Being able to control the kelvin is a massive feature, and will make your life easier to balance the lighting in any room, you can just buy some gels and crocodile clips but having control in the lights itself is a life saver!
Mid budget
If you’re looking for something a little more ready-to-go, then take a look at the iled6 3-point light kit. Cinematography is all about lighting, and in truth you will need more than one light source most of the time to shoot, not necessarily, but having three lights gives you options for back lights, fill lights, green screen lighting…
Daylight balanced, but with a tungsten and diffusion filter, along with a bag and light stands included, these are good to go straight out of the box.
High budget
These three lights will set you back £1370.99, but they are well worth it. Lightweight, powerful, 5600k-3200k and dimmable from 0–100%, they will not let you down. Coming with batteries and chargers, they are one of the most versatile lights on the market.
Yes it is a lot of money but cinematography is all about manipulating light, and having three powerful and adjustable lights at your command is just as important as that new camera or lens, if not more so.
Fog machines
As for the fog machine, do you want to see those powerful sun rays through the window or not? You can pick a good one up for about £80, but there’s many cheaper ones out there too, you can even get ‘haze-in-a-can’.
Haze helps soften the light, taking away the harshness of your lighting. It’s not for everyone but it’s a great tool to use, just watch out for two trip hazards here!
- Even distribution throughout sequence. The last thing you want is to get to an edit and realise one of your shots has a wall of fog, and the next shot taking place in the same scene is super clean.
- Too much fog. Be careful your fog only adds an atmosphere, you don’t want to see swirling haze in the frame, looking like smoke blowing through your scene.
You don’t need haze to improve your cinematography, and used incorrectly it can actually expose your weaknesses, but used effectively it will add natural particles into your scene’s atmosphere that will bring you closer to that cinematic goal.
Add depth: Define foreground, middleground and background.
A basic rule of photography, but one often forgotten about in cinematography. Define your foreground, middleground and background. Getting depth into your shot is what separates the pros from the amateurs, whether that be through camera placement, prop placement, the character’s actions or even lens choice, and the easiest way to start to understand this principal is to be separating the layers of your shot.
Action will normally take place in the middleground, but how often are you considering what may be happening in the foreground of your image? The background maybe you’ll just blur out through the aperture, but are you most effectively utilising all layers of your frame to tell the story?
If you can use the different grounds of your frame to reveal different things about the character, then you have just seriously upped your game. Perhaps it’s a poker game and in the middleground we see an arrogant player smiling, whilst in the foreground we can see the cards in the hands of our losing protagonist. We’ve used two layers in one frame there to evoke an emotion, we are scared for our protagonist, but then in the background we can see a cloaked figure approaching with a dagger, and suddenly the audience knows something the arrogant player doesn’t.
Use your layers to advance the story and play around with creating depth in your shot as much as possible using leading lines between layers, such as a corridor.
Grading — LUTS
Now the first thing to know about shooting flat and using LUTS, is if you haven’t exposed and lit your frame properly then it isn’t going to save, in fact it’s more likely to highlight your flaws.
But if you have exposed and lit your scenes properly, then shooting flat and using LUTs to colour grade your film can give your cinematography that extra pop, the icing on top of the cake to really make your footage stand out.
Not every camera has a flat profile, most obviously the canon DSLR range lacks a flat profile (except the 5D mark iv), and even though you can download a very similar profile from Canon or some third party cinestyle looks, they don’t quite have the same latitude that Sony’s S-log profile offers.
Flat profiles captures more data and saves your highlights far stronger than a baked in colour profile can, effectively increasing the dynamic range potential of your footage. Fujifilm’s new flagship camera the X-H1 has incorporated a flat profile as well, F-Log. Filming in flat can help you capture more cinematic shots, but be wary, it becomes far harder to expose, focus and visualise the end product when shooting flat.
This is where LUTs come into play. LUTs, abbreviated from Look-Up-Tables, are essentially pre-created colour grades that you can place onto your film. A LUT works with the data in the flat profile to set the colour tones to a pre-determined look. There are thousands of LUTs out there for both cinematography and photography, and a quick google will take you to a world of free and paid-for LUTs waiting to be downloaded.
By importing a LUT into your project, you will see the image transform before your eyes, and not always for the better. Make sure you have balanced all your footage first, a LUT will highlight the differences in exposures and lighting between each clip.
LUTs are the lazy man’s colour grade in some ways, and not in others. By using this method you are able to simulate a colour grade that you would never be able to achieve on your own, and unless you know a very good colourist, this is the most effective way to create a truly cinematic look for your film.
But LUTs have another great purpose as well…
Many monitors these days, such as the small HD Focus, will allow you to import LUTs onto them, so you can shoot in flat, but view the footage live with the final LUT on it, or at least as a reference point for your client to see the final image. Two of our favourite packages for both monitoring and grading when it comes to Look-Up-Tables, are the Lutify packs you can get, such as this great free set, as well as the Osiri LUTs.
With a variety of styles, you’ll find something for everything in these packs, and if you are after something flatter still, try James Miller LUTS.
So get out there and start shooting, lighting and grading!
Originally published at gripup.com on April 4, 2018.
