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Welcome to the 2nd addition of this feature here on Filmmaking Lifestyle, where we chart the best-of-the-best from around the filmmaking and video production world. The article covers the best posts from November 2015.
Every month, I post a round-up article featuring the best things I’ve found around the web on filmmaking and video production.
We’re talking articles, videos, infographics, all sorts. Anything that stands out to me and that I think is worth keeping in an archive, I’m going to include in these reports.
I post these articles at the end of each month, along with all the regular posts you get on Filmmaking Lifestyle as usual.
This is a dated archive of what working filmmakers were reading that month. The cameras, plugins, and platforms will have moved on. The craft points — colour as story, how you choose a writing tool, how a side-by-side test actually helps you buy — often have not. Some 2015 third-party URLs may have moved.
The Best Posts Of November 2015
This has been another busy month around the web, with plenty of solid content providers delivering sold information as usual, as well as a few up-and-comers stepping up to the plate, too.
Scale the company without burning both ends
Client selection, boundaries, and follow-up systems that protect your calendar while you grow — pulled into one readable guide.
I’ve put the links into a number of sections to separate them from each other and make things a little more specific.
That second-instalment structure is the whole point of the series. October was me proving I would actually file the scrapbook. November is me trying to make the scrapbook usable: directing in one pile, kit and software in another, one video at the end. If you are here years later, you are not shopping for an URSA Mini price. You are watching how a working month of reading looked when the tools were in flux and the jobs were the same.
Filmmaking & Directing
Pretty cool to see Tim Ferriss interviewing Casey Neistat on how Neistat Breaks Rules, Reinvents Himself, and Gets Thanked For It.
I filed this because Neistat was (and is) a useful irritant if you run a video company and have started sounding like a brochure. The Ferriss conversation is about career design as much as cameras: how someone turns a personal way of shooting into a public practice people recognise. You do not have to copy the bike helmet or the daily vlog. You do have to notice that a distinct point of view is easier to hire than a generic “cinematic” reel. When I get stuck on branding a production business, I would rather replay a filmmaker talking about their rules than another template About page.
Amy Clarke, of Amy Clarke Films, has an illuminating article (pun intended!) on 6 Examples of Color Theory in Film.
I kept the pun because I meant it. Colour theory is not a LUT pack. It is whether a scene’s palette is doing narrative work — complementary tension, a restricted scheme that holds a world together, a practical that actually reads as the key. Examples from finished films still beat most software tutorials because you can see the choice in context: wardrobe, production design, and grade pulling in the same direction. If you light interviews or branded films, this is the difference between “we graded it teal” and “the picture has a temperature that matches the story.” I would pair it with lighting your videos before you buy another look.
If you’re a filmmaker or videographer, you should certainly check out our 24 Things To Right Now To Improve Your Filmmaking Today.
That list is the in-house antidote to gear month. I wrote and keep pointing at pieces like it because most of what makes a shoot better is boring: prepare the questions, arrive early enough to see the light, record wild sound, get a safety wide, actually watch the take. November 2015 was full of new bodies and new software. The 24 things are the part that still works if every shop on the list below has since changed SKUs. Read it when you feel behind. You are probably behind on habits, not on firmware.
Software & Hardware
News broke this month that Amazon is releasing its own proprietary screenwriting software. Called Amazon Storywriter, the software is cloud based and has most of the same features as big name screenwriting softwares already on the market like Final Draft.
I logged Storywriter because the interesting story was never “Amazon made a Fountain-compatible editor.” It was that screenwriting tools were already splitting into desktop incumbents and browser-based challengers, and writers were going to have to care about export, collaboration, and whether their pages still open in five years. Cloud tools arrive with a press cycle and sometimes leave without one. The durable question is the one I still ask: can you get a properly formatted script out, can a producer open it, and are you renting your archive from a company that might lose interest? Final Draft was the comparison then for a reason. Compare features, then compare lock-in.
Sound sharp on your next discovery call
A printable checklist built for video company owners: what to ask, what to listen for, and how to qualify leads without sounding robotic.
Meanwhile, on the equipment side of things, Hybrid Camera Revolution did a Blackmagic URSA Mini 4K vs. Sony A7s II – side by side test, which will be of interest to anyone considering purchasing either of those two cameras.
Side-by-sides are how you should buy, and they are also how you get lied to if you only watch the thumbnail. URSA Mini versus A7S II was the 2015 version of a question that never dies: do you want a proper cinema-shaped body with built-for-video ergonomics, or a stills hybrid that sees in the dark and fits in a smaller bag? Skin, rolling shutter, codecs, and how the camera feels on your shoulder after hour six will not show up in a single daylight chart. Watch tests like that for the methodology. Then go rent both for a job that looks like your actual work, not a store window.
Speaking of Sony, a recent announcement by the company in November indicates that they’ll no longer be making betamax tapes. Read more about Sony’s Betamax, long thought dead, officially gets last nail in its coffin.
I kept a format-death story in a filmmaking roundup on purpose. Betamax was already a museum object for most of us in 2015, and that is exactly why it belongs here. Your current card, codec, and NLE project are not immortal. If you cannot play a tape, you do not have an archive, you have a box. The takeaway is not nostalgia. It is: pick formats you can still transcode, keep a copy that is not only in a proprietary library, and do not assume the manufacturer loves your footage as much as you do. Every generation of “this is the last time we’ll have to migrate” has been wrong.
Video Of The Month
Here’s something cool. A [Watch on YouTube](
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I am leaving the month’s video where I found it, syntax and all. Process films, essays, and odd little internet clips were how a lot of us actually learned between jobs — not from a syllabus. If the embed looks broken in a future CMS, the URL is the part that matters. Watch it the way I meant it in 2015: as one more thing a working filmmaker might steal from, not as a canon entry.
Find anything else that was great out there in cyberspace. Drop some links in the comments below!
What to read on Filmmaking Lifestyle next
If this November pile is your second stop in the series, these are the pages I would open next.
- 24 things to improve your filmmaking today — the in-house list from this month, still the fastest way to get better without a new camera.
- Best script writing software — the comparison Storywriter walked into, written for people who have to deliver pages.
- Screenwriting software — the wider tool conversation if you are choosing a home for your scripts.
- Starting your video production business — because a roundup of kit and interviews is not a company.
- Lighting your videos — colour theory only lands if the light was a decision.
That is the second instalment as I filed it: a filmmaker interview, colour as craft, a checklist, a cloud writing tool, a camera test, a dead tape format, and one video. Same series as October. Same job: keep the useful bits, let the SKUs age.
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