Telling stories with your DSLR equipment

I like cinema because I think that it is the best way to tell stories. Like I said before in this blog, the story is the most important.

I like DSLR cinema because :

• You can tell a new kind of stories, DSLR brings its own cinema style, between the documentary and the fiction...
• Both DSLR and Film bring the beautiful shallow depth of field
• The equipment is more affordable and you can keep a good quality if you know how to use it
• Working with actors is different because the camera is less impressive and the film stocks are not limited
• The post-production workflow is more flexible (no original camera negative, just an external hard drive and a non-linear editing software)
• On the technical side, making a film with these little cameras sounds like taking pictures with some protocoles... Am I right Shane?

If you want to tell story with a low cost equipement, a Mid-Range DSLR package seems to be the solution. Today, more than ever, you have a great choice of DSLR camera bodies, lenses, tripods, support gears… Don't hesitate to walk through different options available on internet to make your own opinion and get a feel for what digital SLR camera package will suit you the best. Choice is good, but can be overwhelming. There are a lot of videos on internet about DSLR equipments : Low Cost, Mid-Range, and High-End... Here is one good example of DSLR equipment but you can find many other videos like this one on youtube. It's difficult to understand what is the best choice. Make your own selection.

Choose the one that will correspond to your needs. But, be careful to the price. This is not always a guarantee of quality. I mean that sometimes the price is not justified. Let's take an exemple. Most of the DSLR steadicam are expensive, but this one is 10 times less expensive and it gives you a perfect result. Of course, this is not exactly the same quality but it doesn't matter when the shooting result is perfect.

Internet is an infinite resource, you can also find hand made DSLR equipments... Have fun with your equipment!

My ideal library

In the last years, I have read several books about filmmaking. Here is my short selection. They all complement each other (it's only my point of view). I put them in order of preference, my favorite is first. There are books in English and some are in French...

Dans les dernières années, j'ai lu plusieurs livres sur le cinéma. Voici une petite sélection qui est à mon avis assez complémentaire. Je les ai trié selon ma préférence, le premier est mon préféré. Il y a des livres en français et d'autres en anglais...

Cedric Klapisch, today more than ever my favourite french director

Today, I'm glad to announce that my preferred french director used some DSLR cameras to shot his last film. Cedric Klapisch used the Canon 1D Mark IV to shot the feature film Ma part du gâteau that is out in france at the moment. I don't know if it is good because I didn't see it yet, but the trailer looks really nice… What an evangelist!

Cédric said : C'était assez improbable, on a vite vu qu'en nuit, l'appareil photo était bien meilleur que la pellicule. Nous avons obtenu des images qui étaient pratiquement impossibles en film. Outre leur taille très réduite, qui permet de les embarquer dans des endroits inaccessibles, les appareils photo permettent surtout de laisser beaucoup de liberté aux acteurs, car on n'a plus à se soucier ni de la durée ni du coût de la pellicule. Et vu le prix réduit des appareils, on peut aussi en utiliser plusieurs pour une même prise. Cela a été une nouvelle façon de travailler, qui permet plus de naturel, voire même qui nous rapproche du documentaire. Au final, l'image est différente à la fois dans le rendu technique, mais aussi dans la mise en scène.

Here are several pictures of Cédric with the canon cameras...

Voici un autre article sur le film qui parle notamment de Sébastien Devaud qui est un pionnier en france du cinema DSLR... L'article donne des arguments pour l'utilisation d'appareils reflex tel que l’EOS 1D mark IV dans les productions d'aujourd'hui.

First of all, Filmmaking is a serious business!

There are several online film schools where you can learn filmmaking through articles, tutorial videos, and interactive forums. As an engineer, I know since a long time that I can learn everything on internet, especially for the technical stuff.

At school, teachers learnt me how to work. It was probably the most important. Internet learnt me everything else... I exaggerate, but internet is an infinite knowledge resource, and today it's impossible to work without internet.

Let's come back to filmmaking... The next generation of digital cinematography using the large sensors and manual features available in still DSLR cameras has lowered the barrier further towards creating inexpensive digital video that compares closely to 35mm film (DSLR Filmmaking Comes Into Focus). The consequence is that you can find a lot of good (and bad) free tutorials on internet. Make the selection yourself. Podcasts or tutorials could give you enough of the basics. For sure, you can learn all the technical stuff.

However, two things are not really available on internet. The first one is talent. I can't say more about that, because it's impossible to learn talent on internet. Go and see Quentin Tarantino or Tim Burton, ask them how they do, and if they are able to answer, you will probably have your answer. The second one is how the filmmaking business works. Is filmmaking mostly an artistic or a technical domain? Neither of them!

Acording to Dov Simens, filmmaking is a serious business. Sometimes, I disagree with Dov's point of view, but I agree that it's become more business than art. Unfortunately, it isn't a bisounours world... You have to know how to make money if you want to make a film, except if you are a billionaire. Finally, I have to say that the Dov Simens film school was really an interesting 2 days formation. I'm not always ready to go along with his wild ideas, but Dov was funny and amazing.

Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Lightworks : Parlons un peu de Montage...

Voici une bande annonce familiale pas comme les autres... Ce montage n'a que très peu d'intérêt sur le fond mais sur la forme il me permet de saluer la qualité de la dernière mouture de iMovie, le logiciel de montage Apple destiné au grand public...

Pour les cineastes indépendants, Final Cut Pro est à mon sens inégalé et inégalable (rapport qualité/prix optimum). Cependant, iMovie est largement suffisant si votre montage est assez basique, ce qui est finalement souvent le cas, même pour des professionnels... La seule fonctionnalité PRO qui m'a vraiment manquée, pour ce montage dans iMovie, est la possibilité de faire mieux au niveau des couleurs, ce qui aurait été un jeu d'enfant avec quelques fonctionnalités avancées de Color Grabing.

Au niveau Professionnel, Sony Vegas et les produits Avid ont aussi beaucoup de succès. Et finalement, en ce qui concerne les logiciels de montage open source, je commencerais par dire qu'ils ont encore quelques marches à franchir pour atteindre le même niveau de qualité, et de finition... Enfin, là aussi les choses bougent... Lightworks, qui a notamment permis de monter Shutter Island et Gangs Of New York, est passé sous licence Open Source depuis fin 2010... To be continued...

Shallow depth of field with your digital camera

Let's focus on an important technical concept that you need to understand if you want to get the film look with your digital camera. Would you like to direct your audience's eyes? Yes of course, like every cinematographer... So, use shallow depth of field! This is an important way you can use to bring emotion and make the audience captivated. It helps to get the spectator right into the part of the character, even if it's a cat ;-)

In the previous image, you have a short depth of field and the foreground isn't sharp, but for me the best way to go is to keep only one plane of your image in focus (the background chair shouldn't be sharp). A small depth of field is often called shallow focus. 

The more simple way to get a shallow depth of field with a DSLR camera is to use a lens with a fast maximum aperture, like for instance the Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50mm f/1.4... Choose the maximum aperture (i.e the minimum f/ number) if you want the shallowest depth of field.

Choose a cinematic shutter speed : 1/40 or 1/50... Concerning the ISO settings, choose the lowest number that brings you a good quality. Remember... The lower the number, the better the quality. But, you need to rise the ISO number when you don't have enough light. This is just a question of dosing...

Video cameras can't get narrow depth of field like DSLR's and Cinema movie cameras.

Go to wikipedia to get more details on the depth of field concept...

Screenplay with Celtx - An important piece of the puzzle

Is it possible to make a good film without a good story? The answer is probably "not"! The story is clearly the main piece of the filmmaking puzzle. The screenplay is the written work that is made especially for that. The standard format of a screenplay is well defined.

There are several differences between for instance the french format and US format, but in my opinion, it doesn't matter. Both are nice... The most important criteria for me is if there is a good software to write and format the script... Formatting the screenplay with the default settings of the software is good enough. Don't waste your time with that. The only reason why I keep the US format is that it is well defined in my software.

Screenwriters often use softwares like Word or Open office to write their stories. Why not if you want to waste your time to format the final draft... Hopefully, you can also use dedicated softwares for screenwriting. My point against the formatting addicts is that you have a better choice if you are not really strict.

One of those software is free, it is called Celtx and it is perfect for what you really need to do when you write a screenplay.. Celtx is more than a screenwriting software. It is a fully functional media pre-production system. It replaces paper & binder pre-production with a digital approach that's more complete, simpler to work with, and easier to share.

And "cerise sur le gateau", Celtx is open source... It is licensed under the CePL license.

Open source filmmaking

La Chute d'une plume is the first french film made under an open source license. It has been released on october 2010. Unfortunately, it isn't a full feature... but, Rome wasn't built in a day... and it's a nice 11 minutes short film... Open source filmmaking has a recent history. Valkaama is one of the most recent open source feature (probably not the best, but it's a movie with a real open source production and distribution approach) and The Last Drug seems to be a promising production (not yet released)... Open source films are films which are produced and distributed by using free and open source software methodologies... (See wikipedia for more information)