Set design is not only important for narrative fiction, it’s also something to take seriously in documentary work.
Five Tips for Making an Interview Subject More Comfortable
When interviewing subjects who have no media training, it’s your job as the director to get the “performance” you need. Here are five tips.
The Importance of Lighting Design
Ask any professional filmmaker or photographer worth her weight in lens caps, and she’ll tell you that light is tantamount to a successful shoot. It’s because of lighting a set properly that significantly adds to how long it takes to shoot a film. I would guess that most of you out there who make this your profession […]
Evernote vs. Bookmarking and Some Evernote Tips
Yesterday I did a review of Xmarks, a terrific way for synching your bookmarks across multiple computers and/or browsers. Another way you could technically sync “bookmarks” is by saving bookmark links in Evernote. I frequently do this. But there are some uses where traditional bookmarking is better, and some when Evernote may be best. How […]
Literal Truth vs. Emotional Truth in Event Filmmaking
When I first started in this business (nine years ago this month by the way), I produced wedding films in a style that today people call “cinematic short form.” They were cinematic…and they were short. 🙂 (That is, short compared to the 90 minute to 2-hour wedding videos that a lot of studios were doing […]
Should Documentary Interviewees Look Into the Camera?
To look or not too look into the camera. THAT is the question.
Five Tips to Perfect Your Pre-production
Ask any filmmaker worth her weight in salt and she’ll tell you that perhaps the most important part in the filmmaking process is pre-production. The more planning and preparation you can do ahead of time, the better the rest of the process will be. Today I want to share with you five tips to perk […]
Four Tips for Better B-roll
If you do any sort of documentary, educational or promotional video work, chances are you will need to use b-roll: video footage that plays usually during an audio voice over, e.g. an employee being interviewed for a corporate promotional film is talking about how fun it is to work there, then the video cuts to […]
Recapturing the Love of Your Craft – Five Suggestions
It started just as a hobby. A side thing you did because you loved it. Then at some point a friend, or a colleague or a family member said, “You really should do this as a living. You’d be so great at it.” Their words encouraged you. You thought to yourself, “Yeah! I could be […]
Film Editing Tips – There’s a Reason They Call it “Cutting”
Did you ever stop to think about all the filmmaking terms we use nowadays that harken back to the good ol’ days when “films” were actually shot on film? (Uh, wait. They’re still shot on film. Hmm?) Did you ever stop to think about all the filmmaking terms we use nowadays that harken back to […]