Cinematography

Tutorial Review: SHUTTERSTOCK’S TIPS FOR SHOOTING UNDERWATER

Presented in an amusing style, this 7-minute Shutterstock tutorial offers practical and easy-to-implement tips on such topics as lighting, frame rate, weights, overcoming panic, and taking regular breaks. It’s especially valuable if you’re shooting in a swimming pool without SCUBA gear. The presenter discusses the things that he did right, and also mistakes that he…

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Tutorial Review: How to Film Underwater Using a Fish Tank

If our current Mobile Movie of the Week “Submerged” makes you want to shoot underwater, here’s a BBC Earth Unplugged tutorial to help you get started. While the 6-minute video offers a variety of clever, low-cost tips, the most interesting one is to use a small fish tank. This will enable you to get split…

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Tutorial Review: “The Difference Between Beginner and Pro B Roll”

You can find many YouTube tutorials on every aspect of filmmaking. If your time is limited, sometimes it seems as if they are too many choices. To solve that problem, we’re going to preview tutorials for you and recommend those that we find most helpful. When we find several of value, we’ll let you know…

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Finding Stories Close to Home

The main message of “Snowbrawl” is obvious: the iPhone 11 Pro features a terrific movie camera. No surprise given that Apple paid for the 94-second action movie (aka commercial), which has attracted plenty of attention: 21,743,028 views as of December 2. But there’s a subtler lesson here, namely that finding stories doesn’t require exotic locations or…

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Apple Commercial Teaches 13 Filmmaking Techniques

“Bounce,” the latest Apple commercial, carries on the tradition of providing amazing visual surprises. Here, normally rigid objects—such as sidewalk grates and car roofs—turn out to be trampolines in disguise. Directed by Oscar Hudson and starring Mehdi Baki,  the two-minute AirPods promotion involved some Hollywood trickery, like a set rotated 90 degrees to give the…

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Location as Movie Star

Hollywood, producers seek familiar stories with a twist. In “Comme des Loups” (“Like Wolves”) French filmmakers Benjamin Lapierre and Alexandre Gaudou demonstrate mastery of that “give me something old but also new” formula. This two-person film company—which goes by the name “Little Walk of Fame”— is gaining attention worldwide for the quality of their productions (made…

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