Leading lines, negative space, rule of thirds, all of these compositional elements are discussed ad nauseam in the world of photography. This short video ignores all that, and instead focuses on a different, but equally powerful element in an image: geometric shapes.
Digital Bolex burst onto the scene four years ago through a highly successful Kickstarter campaign for its first cinema camera. But despite the admiration they've earned from cinematographers since March of 2012, the company has announced that it will soon close up shop.
Start your day off with a bit of high-flying inspiration, courtesy of some of the most talented aerial filmmakers out there. From extreme athletes to roiling volcanoes, this footage ought to get your heart pumping at least as well as that half-finished cup of coffee on your desk.
Here’s a short and sweet educational video by the YouTube channel What Is… …
Lens flare was once considered a problem in filmmaking and something that should be prevented with well designed lenses and special coatings, but now it's something that's embraced and seemingly in every movie that hits the silver screen. How and why did this change happen?
Here's a neat example of an ultra-telephoto lens being used to add a dramatic effect to a scene. For this scene from the 2011 film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, director of photography Hoyte van Hoytema used a 2000mm lens to compress the foreground and background so that they look much closer than they really are.
While other photo brands are busy announcing their latest and greatest digital cameras, Kodak has a rather unusual unveiling: it's bringing back the legendary Super 8 camera as a film product with digital features.
One of the gripes Star Wars fans have about Episodes 1, 2, 3 is that George Lucas relied heavily on CGI rather than the brilliant practical effects that were found in the original trilogy. Many of the action scenes were simply actors waving light saber sticks around on giant green screen sets.
RED today announced the RED RAVEN, a 4K camera for the sub-$10,000 market that it has been teasing for some time now. It's a powerful and portable 4K, Canon EF-mount camera that costs "just" $5,950 -- an extremely low price when it comes to RED cameras.
RED has been teasing an upcoming camera that's intended to make a huge splash in the filmmaking industry. It's called the RED Raven, and it'll be a $5,950 Canon EF-mount camera that brings RED's 4K video recording to the masses.
For the past few years, video effects specialist Robert McIntosh and another buddy of his have been working on creating a better way for consumers to stabilize video footage. What they've developed is a proprietary video stabilization program called ReelSteady. The first consumer version of the software just launched today.
Apple aired a new iPad commercial during the Oscars ceremony last night. The ad touts the iPad as a tool that anyone can use for creating films. What viewers may not have known while watching the spot, however, was that the commercial itself was filmed entirely on an iPad.
In the above video by filmmaker David Sandberg, we see once again how, as with many things in the creative world, simple is quite often better. The behind-the-scenes video shows how he used nothing more than an IKEA lamp, some existing lights in his house, a coffer, and a bit of clever editing to put together a quality short horror film.
The film 'Afterglow' by Sweetgrass Productions doesn't even officially release until October 19th, and yet it's already being hailed as "one of the most cinematically profound ski movies ever made." The three-minute teaser above gives you an idea of why.
It's not unusual for still photographers to dabble in videography at some point in their career. With almost every high-end camera on the market capable of shooting HD video almost as well as it can capture stills, the potential is just teasing still photographers to jump into the motion picture realm.
Many of the compositional principles used in photography also apply, but motion picture adds an entirely new dimension to creating compelling work. To help ease that transition a bit, Filme von Draussen has shared a video called How to Make a Mountain Bike Film. And while the title sounds a bit specific, the 10 steps he shares in the video are universally applicable.
Long before there was any way to capture colors on film, filmmakers were hand painting their short movies frame by frame to breathe life into black-and-white productions. The desire to capture color, it seems, far precedes our ability to do so.
In the Filmmaker IQ video above, John Hess takes you through a comprehensive history of color in filmmaking. From hand-tinting, to Technicolor, to digital color manipulation, take a look and see just how far we've come when it comes to capturing the reds, greens and blues of our world.
Think it's difficult to juggle multiple aspects of your photography business? If you want to see an example of a highly motivated creative individual, check out what American filmmaker Shane Carruth has been up to in the film industry.
In 2004, Carruth released the indie sci-fi movie Primer. It had a ridiculously low budget of $7,000, and went on to gross over half a million dollars and gather a large cult following.
There's some pretty big news over in the cinema camera world today. RED founder Jim Jannard announced that massive price cuts have been made to the prices of his company's high-end cinema cameras (which are also used for still photography).
Don't worry Canon 5D Mark III shooters: Canon didn't forget about you after all. Less than a week after announcing a highly-requested firmware update to the Canon 1D X to address AF complaints, Canon has revealed that a similar -- but even better -- update is also coming to the Canon 5D Mark III.
The upcoming firmware update will not only add support for cross-type AF using lens/extender combos with a max aperture of f/8, it'll also allow for clean uncompressed HDMI out!
Lets say you find an imaginative kid, put a pen in one of his hands, put a camera in the other, and ask him to create a movie. What would you get?
That's the basic idea behind Kid Snippets, a cute and hilarious new web series by BoredShortsTV. For the short above, titled "Salesman", filmmaker Ryan Haldeman had a couple kids come up with an interaction between a salesman and a customer. He then took the resulting audio, and had actors John and Brett Roberts act it out and mouth the words. What resulted was the humorous sketch seen above.
If you're creating a short film that requires a "through the viewfinder" clip, there's an easier way to create it than pointing your camera through an actual viewfinder (does anyone actually do that?). In the short tutorial above, Luke Neumann of Neumann Films shows how you can simulate the look of a viewfinder by overlaying your footage with some focusing screen images. All the necessary image and audio files are available as a free download.
One of the notable features of Alfonso Cuaron’s 2006 film “Children of Men” …
Here’s a helpful video that shows how you can optimize your Canon DSLR for video recording based on …
Canon's historic announcement is here, and as most people predicted, it's geared towards filmmaking rather than photography. The company just unveiled its new C300 cinema camera in an effort to break into a Hollywood digital filmmaking scene that's dominated by the Arri Alexa and the RED EPIC. While it's not particularly powerful in any specific category, the new camera comes in EOS or PL lens mounts, shoots 1080p video with a 4K sensor, has dual CF card slots, and offers high quality footage in a relatively small form factor.
Filmmaker Philip Bloom recently helped Lucasfilm shoot parts of their upcoming film …
If you look at the Top 100 Movies chart in the iTunes Store, …
In 2008, the Nikon D90 became the first DSLR to offer HD video recording, a feature that has become …
Update on 12/18/21: This video has been removed by ABC Nightline.
Remember the controversy last year surrounding the use of a captive wolf in an award-winning wildlife photograph? Turns out this kind of deception might be common practice in the world of wildlife filmmaking.