How I TRANSFORMED My Amateur Film 10 Years Later | Beginner vs. Pro Cinematography

Look at this unintentional Dutch angle. I don't think I knew how to level out my tripods back then. Hey, it's Valentina V, and welcome back to set. We usually have a lot of things that we bring, but I get it, like, you might be starting out, you might not have anything but a camera, and that's how I started out over a decade ago. I'm gonna show you something that I made that we're gonna remake today using everything that I've learned since then. Let's try to make it better this time. I am recreating an old short film over a decade ago. First, I have to react to it. Get in a mental place to be able to react to something this horrendous. The concept behind this is that the kids are cosplaying as their parents, and they're putting on a show to demonstrate to their parents an intervention, like how they act. All right, let's do it. Okay. I hate this shot. Now, when I shoot fridges, I tape down the lights in the fridge, and I put my own lights inside the fridge, but obviously, didn't have that knowledge back then. Look at this. Look at this foreground action and background action. Okay, I knew something. I knew something. Your mother birds are on this. Okay, okay. She stars them. I was really into cutting people off. This is called giving people a haircut. I was really into giving people haircuts. Also, because I didn't have any lighting, right? And I didn't have any production design, really, so this kitchen was really ugly, so I was like, let's not show it. She stars them. Slightly. I don't mind this shot. It's a front side key, though. It is always more than having a wife. You can trust me with your delicacy. Oh, no. Wait a second. This shot. This reflection here, this expanse of white, this scribbling. I guess they had a kid. These random artifacts, but nowhere else. Wait, this looks actually really good. I remember, I used this exact frame as the thumbnail for this video. Can we just stop here? Can we just stop at this frame? No, we gotta keep watching, huh? Look at this. Beautiful. Wait, where was the cut seamless? There might not even have been a cut, actually. No. No, there was no cut. Yeah, I went from her medium, and then I just whipped over to them. And then you can see that the letterbox bars come in. And I also like that the light isn't too frontal. That's the sunlight, and that's what I was using. It's a back side key. I mean, it's very blown out. It's also out of focus. This is such a flat, flat lighting on her face. Nothing in the background. I'm so sorry. I'm forcing you to watch this. The windows here are also super blown out. I didn't really know anything about exposure. I just wanted to have enough light on his face. I can't believe adults, full-fledged adults, allowed me to make this video of them. I mean, thank you. I appreciate these actors for being in this and helping me out. That's the only way you improve is if you keep trying. So let's actually go back to set and see what I can improve. Yeah, I'm sorry you had to watch that. It was shot with a T3i, which is the only thing I could afford at the time. This time we're shooting with this guy. It's not as fancy as our other cameras because it's not about the camera. It's about the lighting. It's about the technique. It's about the production design. It's about everything else. So let's get into that a little bit. Points, points. Hot tip, when you move stuff on a set, it doesn't even matter if you're moving camera or lights or production design or anything. You just say points. And that way everyone knows what direction you're coming from and that you are carrying something to get out of the way. Do you want to sit in for this? Do you want to be our little boy? Here's one thing that I did in the old, in the old, you saw it. What'd you think about it? It was awesome. Yeah, it lies. Here's what I did in the old short. I just shot in an order, but it doesn't make sense today because you want to get the most intense setups done first. By the time the actors come, the shot is more or less ready so that they don't have to sit here for like four hours. Okay. You count, count to 10. Ready? Kid actors are a little bit different because you have to be like playful and nice to them and tell them stories and not just like get down to brass tacks with adults. So if everything's set up, my brain can focus on talking to the kids and being like, oh my gosh, hi, how are you? What grade are you in? Like all that jazz. It's all money. Nice. The good thing last time was that I just used natural light. This time it's the same thing. So all of the windows are going to be what motivates our lighting. This is a 600D Pro on a Mambo combo stand. And it is that harsh backlight motivator. Originally we were going to bounce that fake sunlight over on this side of his face, but we realized it wasn't enough light. The building's kind of covering some of that light. And so we can't really bounce it anymore. So we're just going to try to augment the light coming from there and bouncing it onto the B-board so we can give it more wrap on that side. And then we're going to put floppies on this side so that this side of his face can be a little bit darker on this side. So imagine like a whole wall here. That is a technique cinematographers do to make things more dynamic. One of the ways that you can really upgrade your kit if you can't afford a cinema camera is to really think about diffusion and filtration. So here we have a Black Pro Mist filter. The blacks are going to be a little bit lighter because we're taking away a little bit of that digital look. Scene. Camera speed. Two alpha, take one, marker. Right now I'm using my guides up. He is positioned one third on the right, just like a very classic framing for talking shots like this. Because her shoulder and her hair is on the left side, it goes completely dark because there's no light on her. So that's why I have been here just Hollywooding a little MC light just on her hair a little bit. And three, two, one, action. Cool. Awesome cut. That was awesome guys. So the shot that I'm trying to achieve right now is the other half of the conversation. Obviously we saw the girl's back, but now we need to see her deliver her lines so that we can go back and forth. Right now what we're doing is we're cheating, which means we are moving the table around. We're moving the actors around in order to get the best frame. I feel like when I was a beginner, all I could shoot was what I was given. Didn't realize that, hey, the viewer doesn't really know the layout of this house. The viewer isn't gonna catch on. Is that a cat meowing? Oh my God. Camera speeds. Scene two, cattails, take three, mark. Now we're flipping the world 180 degrees the other way. So imagine if the table is here and then the parents are here. We're also adding a hair light for our couple because we have a lot of interesting stuff in the background, but they're gonna sort of blend into it if they don't have like a physical separation. So that is a 300X. Or if you just have a daylight light, just gel it with some color temperature orange CTO gel. As you can see clearly, the couch is so much farther from the wall. And in the old one, as you can see, it's just very flat. Whereas here, I'm trying to take full advantage of this place. As soon as we walked in on the location scout, I was like, this is the shot. This is the money shot right here. Three, two, one, action. A Pop-Tart again? I didn't have enough time to get groceries yesterday. Oh, but you got your hair done. Duh, that's why I didn't have enough time to get groceries, keep up. Well, how much did that cost? What it cost? How much? 100, 200? Okay, why are you being like this? It's my money. It's our money. What's that? It's our money. Stop it. That's enough. Dad, I told you not to say anything until we're done. Yeah, we had this whole thing planned. A thing? Okay, so we saw this thing on TikTok and somebody's doing an intervention for their brother. He was taking Coke. And you're getting divorced. We're not getting divorced. Look, me and your mother disagree on a lot of things, but we work through them and we always have, okay? Now, who's cleaning this up? Should we tell them? And it's so good, that's a wrap! Woo! Good job, guys. Yeah! That was interesting because it was the first time that we actually did a full short. There was probably a lot of soul-searching happening throughout the episode. It was weird because I remember the last time I did it so much faster. There was no slate. There was no lighting. There was nothing. You just aim and shoot. We can actually make high-level decisions, like this thing is covering up the frame just a little bit or this is distracting. Let's get rid of it. Let's take a look at some side-by-sides. So this is the before and this is the after of the boy at the table. Whoa. But it really goes to show how much more you know and how much that translates on screen. I believe we have a question from the net. Put in your questions down in the comments. We've pretty much covered almost every topic when it comes to actually lighting a scene and shooting it. Well, this question comes from your green screen episode. What would be the alternative solution to eliminate reflective surfaces without sacrificing light temperature? Would filters be the case? You can eliminate reflections with a polarizer filter. Polarizer filters is the way to go. Really have it on handy because reflections, they're everywhere. Great episode. Okay, we'll see you next time. Bye. I'm gonna check the script. No papers in my house. Mostly because I don't own a printer.