Online Film School Blog

Click here to learn more about The Complete Music Video Production Package.

www.musicvideotrainingcenter.com/freefilmschool.html

Don’t read this …

unless you’d like to become a successful music video director.

A few days ago I posted about how doing music videos was a great way to break into filmmaking. There are musicians everywhere who’ll pay you to make short, creative films to promote their careers. You can get paid to have fun while you gain experience and build your portfolio.

Since then I’ve met a very nice young man who HAS become a successful music video director. His name is Jag Johnson and he’s put together a very awesome training package that will teach you just about everything you need to know to break into directing music videos. He’s even offering a significant price break to anyone who orders it through freefilmschool.org.

I you think you might have ANY interest in shooting music videos then click on the link below on my blog, or go to the link you see in this video, and check it out.

I recommend this product.

So get the course, then go make a music video.

Click here to learn more about The Complete Music Video Production Package.

www.musicvideotrainingcenter.com/freefilmschool.html

So get the course, then go make a music video.

Tags: entertainment business, film directing, film marketing, filmmaking tips by Jerry the Prof
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Here’s a question I hear a lot. Hey Prof, I think I’ve got talent. What’s the easiest way to get started as a film director?

The fact is Hollywood doesn’t have a lot of openings for new directors. But there is always demand in the film industry for really talented people who have demonstrated what they can do.

So how do you get experience and get noticed? You can go broke making your own indie films and hoping someone notices. But what are some other ways to become a film director? Where do new directors come from?

Well, in the early days of the industry the directors were mostly theater directors. In the 70s they were hiring sharp kids right out of the film schools. But now I notice that many of the new directors coming on the scene got their start in one of two ways: Either shooting television commercials or shooting music videos.

Breaking into television commercials is about as hard as breaking into Hollywood.

You’ll have to do a lot of self promotion to get the big ad firms to take a chance on you and you’re never going to make it into the big time unless you have your own studio and a lot of expensive equipment.

So, what about breaking in by doing music videos? That’s a great way to start for this reason.

There are musicians everywhere who are trying to get there break and they realize a good music video could be just the thing that gets them noticed. If you’ve got the basic skills and some basic equipment you can approach local bands and offer to do a music video for them. Chances are you can get them to pay at least a few hundred dollars for your expenses, especially when it turns out well.

Once you get going and gain a reputation the bands will come to you and you can start to make a decent income while you get great experience. Eventually with any luck at all one of the bands is going to make it big and everyone will want to know who shot their videos.

Then your fabulous talent will get noticed by the people who are making and financing films. And that’s when someone will say to you, “I’d like you to direct my new film.”

In the mean time you get to have a lot of fun working with creative people, trying new ideas and getting paid for it.

Go make a music video.

Tags: film directing, filmmaking tips by Jerry the Prof
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No me! You say.

But listen up. The problem is your video camera can only capture a very small range of the brightness value that are present in most scenes. Even if you’ve check your camera’s histogram and zebra (if it has them) and decided you are nailing the exposure you may be wrong.

There may be important shadow or highlight details that are going off the ends of your histogram. Are you consistently exposing your talent’s faces? If you are using green/blue screen to substitute a different background do you know if you are exposing it right?

Chances are you are not getting the exposure you need. But you ask, “How can I possibly know until I get into the edit suite?” This is a big problem for many indie filmmakers whether they know it or not. The Hollywood films and TV shows shot on video take advantage of banks of video monitoring scopes to ensure that exposures are right and consistent between takes. But those scopes cost tens of thousand dollars. What’s a poor indie to do?

If you’re filming with DV or HDV there is a solution you probably can afford. More about that in a minute.

A couple of years ago I produced a DV comedy short that used a lot of blue screen to help put my actors in elaborate settings trying to reproduce the look of old films. I ran a few tests before I started production and realized I just couldn’t get the exposure accurate enough to pull a clean mask. DV is a terrible format for shooting blue screen because of the limited color information in the images under the best of circumstances.

In most of my tests I discovered that my blue screen exposures were too bright and washed out or too dark and gray to get anything close to a good mask. I invested in a software product named DV-Rack (since bought by Adobe and sold as OnLocation). This program takes the fire-wire signal from the camera and performs a real-time analysis in order to reproduce the look of a full set of video scopes on the display of your computer.

Without going into a lot of detail those scopes allowed me to see all the important details about my video signal and adjust the lighting and exposure for the best results possible.

OnLocation is a Windows only product at the moment but can be run in BootCamp. A Macintosh version is in the works or, if you are in a hurry, a similar product for the Mac is Scopebox.

Are you still shooting your films blind? Get one of these products and your eyes will be opened.

Tags: filmmaking software, filmmaking tips by Jerry the Prof
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