SEVEN BEST PRACTICES TO IMPROVE YOUR CINEMATOGRAPHY SKILLS
In this post we share Seven Practices To Improve Your Cinematography Skills. These are fundamental cinematography practices to improving your cinematography.
Without further ado:
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1) PHOTOGRAPHY
Yes, learning photography will absolutely improve your cinematography skills. Similar to photography, a good cinematographer must become good at framing, depth of field, focus and must know about concepts such as the rule of thirds, focus, foreground, middle ground and background.
2) FRAMING
Framing is crucial because through out your entire movie viewers will be looking at shots you framed. With that said you don’t want to frame shots haphazardly. Your shots must be framed intentionally and on purpose.
Some don’t dos in framing are don’t use too much headroom, don’t overuse negative space, among others. But keep in mind, anything can go in filmmaking if it’s done purposefully.
3) STORYBOARD
You do not need to be a master drawer to story board. You can simply story board your shots by drawing stick figures on paper.
You can also take a bunch of still photos, doesn’t need to be of your subject(s), doing relatively the same things you’re subject(s) will be doing in the scene and use them for storyboarding. In film software programs like Celtx you have options to upload storyboard elements.
There’s also story boarding apps.
4) COLOR GRADING…AND EDITING
As a cinematographer you need to know how an image is going to color in post production so that you know how to light it in production.
The same is true with editing. You need to know how a scene is going to cut in editing so that you can shoot it as such.
5) KNOW LENSES
You must know lenses and what effects, feel they provide. Lens choices are extremely important in setting the mood of a scene. For example, do you want your subjects to appear close or far apart from each other in your over the shoulder shots? Well, your lens choice will play into this.
6) TUTORIALS
Learn from other via tutorials. There’s some great ones on youtube. For example, this one by Tom Antos where he details lenses, composition and camera angles.
7) PRACTICE
You must become familiar with all of these practices. The surest way to becoming familiar with them is to practice. Get a camera, lenses and shoot. Then edit your footage. This is certainly the most recommend of these Seven Practices To Improve Your Cinematography skills.
BONUS
Read books on cinematography. Check out these best sellers and highly rated books on amazon: The Filmmaker’s Eye: Learning (and Breaking) the Rules of Cinematic Composition and The Five C’s of Cinematography: Motion Picture Filming Techniques.
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