You're practicing filmmaking the WRONG way

Practice makes perfect. Of course, we've all heard that like a thousand times before. What you may not have heard is a slightly different version with a subtle but very important change by Vincent Lombardi. Perfect practice makes perfect. So what does perfect practice look like to us, to filmmakers, to cinematographers? Have you ever noticed how a lot of us, maybe even you, don't actually practice? Most of the time when we think about practicing, we're really just testing. Maybe it's trying out a new lens or a new camera. Maybe you're messing around with new lights. When you're doing this kind of testing, you usually end up shooting pretty boring, pretty lifeless stuff. Busy streets or buildings or like trees or flowers or something. Regardless, so much of the stuff we do in the name of practice barely ends up scratching the surface of our intended art. Think about athletes. How many kids try and go onto the court and imitate Michael Jordan's form? They study his posture. They study his movements. Hell, I mean, I think some of them probably even stick their tongue out like he used to. Don't know if that'll actually help improve their shot, but I don't know. I know nothing about basketball, so. And what about musicians? You want to learn the guitar. So of course, you study the basics, start working on scales and chords. But they don't just sit around playing scales for hours on end in order to actually get better. They study the work of people who inspire them and learn to play those exact songs until they get better. And the most important thing is that they do get better, and they do it so much faster than if they were to spend all of their time just practicing the theoretical, you know, by the book stuff. Because when you learn the basics and piece them together in the context of a complete piece, your brain can more quickly understand how they all work together. So why don't we do this as filmmakers? Instead of just aimlessly shooting the things around us, why don't we just try and create the things we see in the films or the shows that we watch? Use what we know is actually good cinematography or filmmaking and try and model what the top professionals in the industry are doing. This isn't copying or stealing. We're not literally recreating the exact scenes or shots from a movie, but instead break down the key components that make up a great frame. So in today's video, I want to practice composition and framing. We're not going to worry too much about getting technical with the lighting or camera movement. Just focus on the frame, the camera position. That simple. Okay, so here's what we're going to need. A camera, of course, doesn't need to be a cinema camera. I know I just did a video talking all about my red Komodo, but today we're going to be using the Sony a7IV. On this, of course, we have the Tamron 28-75mm f2.8, super versatile lens, going to give us a lot of flexibility here. On the front of it, I've got a Pro Mist filter. Also, we're going to use a circular ND filter. Make sure we have that 180 degree shutter. We're going to need a tripod. This is a really simple kind of compact travel one. The whole point here, just keep the setup as minimal and simple as possible. One thing that is really helpful is, of course, a monitor. If you don't have a monitor for your camera, I highly recommend getting one. You'd be surprised just how much of a difference it can make being able to accurately view your image on a decent size screen and not just the little one on the back of a camera. It's going to make a world of a difference, especially when we're trying to recreate these frames. You're going to need a phone or a tablet, just something to pull up those images that we can look at or reference while we're out shooting. And then, of course, we need a movie or a TV show or something to actually get some ideas from. My fiance introduced me to The Lobster a year or two ago, and it's a film that I've found myself revisiting quite a few times now because, simply put, it's just striking if you've seen it or you're familiar with the director, Yorgos Lanthimos, then you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. His films strike an almost poetic balance of dark humor and the mundane aspects of humanity. The cinematography, of course, plays right into that. The director of photography, Themios Bakotakis, makes every shot feel so boring but so unique at the same time. Now, it's tempting to immediately go find the best, most amazing-looking frames out of these shows or these movies, but look, it's important to be realistic here, to keep things simple, not pick shots with crazy set design or unattainable locations. We want references and ideas that we can model after with the resources right around us. Remember, this is practice. Here's a really beautiful yet simple shot of the main character, David, laying against this tree in the forest. Beautiful depth with all the light kind of layering through the trees with him sitting down on that bottom right third. It's a really thought-provoking frame. I think it does an excellent job of conveying a very particular emotion that's kind of shot from higher up, kind of a unique perspective. Let's see what we can do. Okay, so I think there's a pretty good spot that'll work like right up here. The tricky part about this frame is that they shot it pretty high above him and a decent amount away, so finding the right trees and being able to get the camera in the right position was definitely tricky. We ended up having to hold the tripod up in the air because I just couldn't get the camera high enough for the perspective and kind of the way I was sitting on this hill, but I think overall the result turned out pretty close. It's definitely a little bit different because we kind of ended up in a big shadow, so light isn't super accurate between the two, but I do think we managed to get in the right ballpark here. I definitely get the same feeling looking at the two of these shots. Light got a little crazy in here and honestly, like, I don't know, getting the perfect trees in the background and stuff in the foreground, pretty hard, but I think we did the best we could. I'm pretty happy with it. Okay, let's try some interiors. I love this clean and simple silhouette up against a window. Another frame that's borderline kind of boring in a way, but somehow it still manages to capture your attention. There's a perfect balance of negative space, subtle framing within the frame. What's great about this is that really everyone has a window, so in all honesty, what's stopping you from going and trying this, like, right now? Okay, so I think this window right here will probably work pretty good if I just close that upper blind, drop that down, and then probably, like, just scoot this dresser over and then probably do something with these curtains. I think we'll be able to get pretty close. So I think if we were to actually just put some, like, gaff tape along that part of the window, we could actually kind of recreate a little bit of the framing of the window in the actual shot. Of course, the window and the walls between, you know, my bedroom here and the shot look different, but I think we actually got this one pretty close. I love the way the light kind of falls off. I think they did have a little bit of fill coming back into the room to give him a little bit more separation so it's not super hard silhouette, but again, especially after we throw a good color grade on it, pretty impressed with how these look. Quick little pause before we get into shooting the next scene here. Need to talk about the sponsor of this video, which is, of course, Canva. Seems like every day I find myself looking for new tools, new ways to improve my workflow, improve the quality of my work as a filmmaker, as a freelancer. But without a doubt, Canva has honestly been one of the most effective tools that I've ever incorporated into my work. It allows me to streamline my creative process, help create more content, higher quality content with less effort, whether it's creating simple but super engaging content for my social media or creating proposals or pitch decks for my clients. Canva takes the headache out of all of that design work and makes it so straightforward to create engaging content for your brand or business. The best part is it's free to use. But with Canva Pro, you get access to so many more assets and templates and tools to really take everything to the next level. Still pretty surprised at how many people didn't know about the one click background removal. You can like instantly mask objects out of photos. Pretty insane. If you're interested in trying Canva out, of course, they're going to hook you guys up with a free 45 day pro subscription if you click the link down below. Gotta give a big shout out to Canva for supporting these videos, making them possible for you guys. Back to the video. Final shot. Kind of starting to lose light. But here's basically the opening shot of the movie. Another really creative perspective sort of looking over his shoulder downward makes you feel maybe a little sad or concerned. And as with so many scenes in this movie, if you go watch it, this shot just literally pushes in for like 30 seconds. Yorgos loves to let these awkward shots just like breathe on screen for an uncomfortable amount of time. It's so unique, but I don't know, it's it's so inspiring. It's so captivating. We ended up moving around a lot of the furniture in the living room to make this shot look right. I could have just kept it simple with just sitting on the couch, but we just so happen to have a chair out on our patio that looks really similar to the one in the frame. So I figured why not bring that in? And then we got the coffee table in at the right position. Yeah, you have to like slouch really hard. I think composition wise, this one's probably the closest out of everything, just with how similar all of the elements in the frame kind of came together. The only thing that's really different between the two here is, again, the lighting, not what we're focusing on in this video. We want to keep it simple. We just want to break down one fundamental and practice that. But overall, again, throw some color on it. And not bad. I was like sitting, holding, like flexing my abs to like maintain the slouch because this couch cushion just kept like squishing up and not looking straight. That was hard. I got to say, I think this was a really interesting exercise, and I'm kind of frustrated with myself that I didn't just start implementing this sooner. I mean, I've thought about doing it for a while. My fiance has encouraged me over and over, like when we're watching movies and films, like, oh, why don't you shoot something like this? Well, we took our favorite film and we went out and tried it. And I got to say, I'm pretty impressed with some of these results. And we really didn't spend that much time on any one of them. We didn't really do anything with the lighting, but I'm surprised with how close we were able to get some of these frames. And it makes me feel more confident now knowing that these movies that I watch that I think the cinematography is beautiful, I'm capable to a certain degree of creating frames that look like they could fit or belong in those movies. I hope this gives you guys some ideas, makes you a little inspired. I highly recommend getting out and trying to create some shots from maybe some of your favorite movies or films or just use the same ones from this video and see what you can come up with. I think you'll be surprised.