Ninja vs Penguin

Penguin July 31st, 2007

Now, for the fun part! Actually shooting your film.

1. White balance. The first thing you want to do after you’ve taken the lense cap off and turned on the camera, is to white balance the camera. This is especially important if you’re shooting inside or using ambient light. Some ways to white balance are, to use a gray card, the lid from a Pringles can, or a white balance card. Put any of these objects in front of your camera, and hit the white balance button. Done! If you don’t have a white balance button, see if your camera has presets for different lighting conditions, such as, fluorescent, day, etc.
2. Use a slate. Sometimes known as a clapper board, it’s one of those things you see at the beginning of the shot with the shot number and the take on it. When using a slate, make sure that the information is clearly visible on the camera. Also make sure you’ll be able to see the motion of the clapper. This will make editing much easier because you’ll be able to see the shot information without have to actually watch the footage. Make sure the slate is in front the camera before you start shooting.
3. Use a shot log. Print the shot log provided below and make sure you have a pen. The key information you want to capture on the shot log is the scene, the shot, and the take. At a minimum, write that down! If you capture if the shot was good or not, even better. If you can capture the times that you start the shot, that would be fantastic! If you storyboarded, use the same shot numbers from that. If you end up shooting stuff that isn’t on the storyboard, just start one after the last shot in the storyboard. On the template, you’ll see a column for “code”. I use this column so I can quickly see which shots were good, and which weren’t. I use an “X” for shots I know I won’t use. And an “O” for shots that were good.
4. Rehearse the shot. Before you shoot any actual footage, make sure you walk your actors and crew through the shot first. Hopefully, your actors have their lines memorized. This will also give them a chance to warm up and for you, as the director, to give them direction. Your cameraman will also be able to see where your actors are going to move so they can track them. Or if you have a pan or zoom sequence, they’ll be able to show you what that will look like before committing any of it.
5. Call quiet. Give people a heads up that you’re about to start shooting. You don’t want to mess a shot because someone didn’t realize it and started talking in the background.
6. Call camera. You do have the slate in front of the camera, right? Good, now call camera. This is the signal for the cameraman to start recording.
7. Call action. Give your slate person a chance to run out of the frame. Wait a bit, and let the actors know that they should begin.

Tomorrow, part 2.

Here’s the file: shot-log.pdf

-Penguin

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