The Best of Filmmaking & Video Production January 2018

This is the 28th instalment of this feature here on Filmmaking Lifestyle, where we chart the best-of-the-best from around the filmmaking and video production world. This article covers the best posts from January 2018.

Every month, I post a round-up article featuring the best things I’ve found around the web on filmmaking and video production. If you missed one, we have a complete archive here.

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.

One thing before we jump in: this is a dated archive. Cameras and software from 2018 have moved on. The business and craft questions in these links often have not — how you get a short into a festival, whether crowdfunding actually funds a feature, and what a filmmaking career looks like when you are still paying rent.

The Best Posts Of January 2018

Hey!

Had the opportunity to go to Egypt in January. Need a holiday! It’s a stunning place. If you haven’t been, I’d highly recommend it!

No pictures of the pyramids, I’m afraid (you’ve seen enough of those!), but here are a couple of iPhone images from the trip.

I have lots of great content lined up for you in the first quarter of 2018. Been in touch with some awesome folks who are going to be bringing the how-to guide quality your way this year. Just putting the finishing touches to the grand re-opening of my Video Business Coaching Program, too. Good stuff ahead!

With that out of the way, let’s get to the goodies this month!

Filmmaking & Video Production

Here’s What I Learned Watching 891 Short Films in 43 Days, or How to Get Your Movie Into an International Film Festival.

Watching that volume of shorts is a programming job, not a hobby. Festivals are not mysterious black boxes. They are people with a pile of submissions, a slot count, and a taste they have to defend in a room. If your film does not tell them quickly what it is — tone, craft, and why it belongs next to the other titles — it does not matter how hard you worked on the grade. Submit fewer festivals with a better match, and treat the festival circuit as distribution research, not a trophy cabinet.

Next up, here’s how to add some creative “crane shots” to your videos with

.

A crane is a motivation problem before it is a kit problem. If the move does not reveal new information — a face, a geography, a change in power in the frame — it is just a fancy way of saying you owned a gimbal. Pairing a gimbal with a monopod is the same idea as a lot of low-budget production: steal the feeling of a bigger tool without hiring the truck. Use it when the story needs height or a settle, then put it down.

You might remember Kung Fury, the satirical retro style 80s action short film that was funded via Kickstarter a few years ago and became an internet hit? In 2018 it was announced as a feature with Michael Fassbender attached; the sequel was later shot but remains unfinished and unreleased amid financing disputes.

Crowdfunding a short that the internet actually watches is still one of the cleaner proofs you can show a producer. The hard part is not the campaign page. It is whether the short has a voice strong enough that people want two hours of it, and whether you can hold that voice when a name actor and a feature budget arrive. Most “internet hit to feature” stories stall in the gap between attention and a finished, releasable film. Keep an eye on the ones that actually close that gap.

Did you know Amazon has an open door policy on submitting film ideas?

Open-door submission windows come and go, and they are never as open as the press release sounds. If a platform will look at unsolicited work, they are still looking for a finished piece they can sell, not a vibe in a PDF. Treat any “send us your idea” desk the way you would treat a cold producer email: one-page clarity, a sample that proves you can shoot, and no fantasy that the inbox is a shortcut around making the film.

So what did we have on Filmmaking Lifestyle this month? We started out the month with an guide to the best places to have photos printed online.

Print still matters if you work with clients who live in the physical world — weddings, galleries, directors who want a leave-behind that is not another Dropbox link. A still from a job, printed well, is a quieter sales tool than another reel on a phone. If you are building a video business, do not ignore the stills. They travel into offices in a way a Vimeo password does not.

Next up, we had a detailed guide to your filmmaking career, entitled The Filmmaker Career Roadmap.

Careers in this game are rarely a ladder. They are a messy mix of paid work, unpaid proof, and the year you finally stop saying you will “go full time in the spring.” Map the skills you actually get paid for — producing, shooting, editing, running a room — and be honest about which ones you are avoiding. The roadmap is useful because it treats filmmaking as work with stages, not as a personality.

Then rounded out the month with an article on live streaming equipment.

Live is still the unforgiving cousin of the polished deliverable. You do not get a second pass on audio, and clients notice that faster than they notice your camera body. If you are adding live to a video business, start with sound and a backup connection, not with a bigger sensor. The gear list will date. The requirement that it cannot fail on the hour will not.

Software, Hardware & Visual Effects

Here’s

.

You will light a lot of jobs where there is no friendly wall socket — campsites, car parks, a spare room a client called a studio. Battery lights, practicals, and the sun are the whole kit on those days. Hard light from behind, a lantern in frame, a bounce off a tent wall: that is craft, not a shopping list. If you can make a night scene readable without a generator, you will be useful on more sets than the person who only knows the hire house.

Want to pull off

?

Wipes are comedy and geography. They work when the outgoing and incoming frames share a shape, a colour, or a joke. They fail when you drop them in because a tutorial made them look clever. Premiere and After Effects will let you copy the mechanic. Your job is to decide whether the cut is a gag, a location jump, or showing off. If it is showing off, lose it.

How about a Cinematography YouTube playlist? Here you go.

Playlists are how a lot of us actually studied when film school was not on the table. Watch for decisions, not for gear porn: where the key is, why the camera stops, what the frame is hiding. Steal one idea per film and try it on a real job the same week. That is worth more than another saved tab you never open.

Picture Of The Month

This month’s Picture of the Month is a really cool graphic from Digital Camera World. From a photography perspective, but as we know, photography principles apply in many ways to filmmaking:

Composition, exposure, and “where is the light coming from” do not care whether you are stills or motion. If a photography graphic makes the rule obvious — leading lines, negative space, a face in the right third — it is still a filmmaking lesson. Print it, stick it near the desk, and use it the next time you are tempted to put the subject dead centre because the client is standing there.

Anything else you’ve found in the filmmaking / video production world online? Let us know in the comments below!

What to read on Filmmaking Lifestyle next

If you found this roundup from search, these are the pages on the site that sit next to the themes above:

• The Filmmaker Career Roadmap
• How Darren Aronofsky funded films
• Lighting your videos
• Roger Deakins cinematography
• Making a low budget feature film
• Film grants

Some third-party URLs from 2018 may have moved.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you!