Christopher Nolen & Cillian Murphy (Left) during the filming of OPPENHEIMER (2023)/ Bradley Cooper (Right)
When it comes to making movies and videos, certain steps and skills must be applied at every turn to ensure that the quality is up to industry standard. I’m going to tell you how a basic shoot would go and what type of effort is put into ensuring the highest quality you could sustainably reach.
Filming Location & Times
At the beginning of any film shoot, you have to of course show up to where you are going to be recording. But before that, you need to decide WHERE you are going to be filming. When it comes to any blockbuster movie or a indie film in your parent’s basement – you still must figure out where the magic is going to take place.
Pick your destination and then pick your dates for shooting. It’s very important to keep track of dates and times when rooting out your schedule. Situations can occur where suddenly the weather is now a hurdle. Or perhaps one of your talents got food poisoning and must skip that shoot day. Allowing yourself room to make adjustments will make the workload a lot less and allow for smoother work days.
Camera And Lighting
Congratulations! You’ve arrived onto your set with the allocated time and appropriate talent lineup. Now, it’s time to place your camera and place your lighting to capture the art. Whether it’s a professional project, or an amateur piece of work, dealing with natural lighting and camera quality is a forever constant; therefore, here’s some quick tips on how to mitigate that.
Let’s say you’re filming outdoors; the sun is shining and on your camera, the talent in frame is overexposed and the details on their face are not noticeable. That is where you go to your camera settings and tweak the gain so that you can lower the intensity of the already present light without adding more or less overall.
Interview With a Professional
Now with your set created, your camera placed, and your lighting delt with, it’s time to hit the record button and let your.. Wait. What about microphones? Well, with microphones, it depends heavily on your budget and what type of genre your video is.
You can very easily just do voice over in postproduction or isolate the audio from your camera recording. But what would a professional in the field about video production overall?
Here’s a couple questions I asked Caleb Jordan, an Instructor in the field of Digital Media at Gulf Coast State College.
