June 10, 2017

Who Takes Better Images: A Pro with Amateur Gear or an Amateur with Pro Gear?

Which is the biggest contributor to great images: the creator or the gear?

As filmmakers, we’ve all had many negative experiences dealing with gear, but perhaps one of the more frustrating is feeling like your gear is holding you back from creating better work. Maybe you’re still dinking around with your Canon Rebel or low-level Nikon D series model, all with a kit lens, thinking, “I can create so much better content than this!” And you’d be right, but for the wrong reasons, because who’s really responsible for subpar work, your gear or you?

In this video, Mango Street Labs sees what happens when you give two professional photographers some “amateur” gear, a $300 Canon Rebel T3i (which is now discontinued), and an amateur photographer a “pro-level” $3500 Canon 5D Mark IV

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Source: NoFilmSchool

June 10, 2017

Watch: The Easiest Way to Memorize the F-Stop Scale

If you can’t keep track of all of those f-numbers, then you should learn this essential trick.

Knowing the f-stop scale is important if you want to quickly and accurately expose your images, however many of us have a difficult time memorizing it. If you’re like me and can’t remember your own phone number half the time let alone a long sequence of f-stops, then this super simple equation will help you be able to do it with ease. Filmmaker Griffin Hammond shows you how to do it in the video below:

This method of memorizing the f-stop scale is so simple that I’m wondering why I never learned it in college. As Hammond explains, all you really have to remember are two numbers: 1 and 1.4. After that, you know the entire f-stop scale, because all you have to do is double the f-number to get the next in the sequence.

For example:

1, 1.4 (That’s the beginning of the sequence. Now, double them to get the next in the sequence.)

1, 1.4, 2, 2.8 (Now that you have those, keep going. You’ll have to round a few numbers up/down occasionally.)

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Source: NoFilmSchool

June 10, 2017

Watch: How This Gatorade Ad Brought Water to Life Without a Drop of CGI

Using a “liquid printer” and strobe photography, this Gatorade ad is definitely one of the coolest videos you’ll see this week.

Sometimes a video comes along that reminds you of how infinitely creative human beings can be. The G Active ad for Gatorade is one of them. It has been making its rounds all over the interwebz, but just in case you’ve been on a tech fast for the last month, this video features what is essentially a human made of water droplets doing a bunch of athletic stuff, like running, jumping, and kicking a heavy bag. Sounds cool, right? The coolest thing, though, is that it was all done without CGI. Check out the ad below, and then continue on to find out how it was done.

Now, who is the genius (or geniuses) behind this incredible ad? UK-based production company Unit9 called upon DP James Medcraft to lens this thing, as well as come up with an innovative way to bring this water-droplet athlete to life.

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Source: NoFilmSchool

June 9, 2017

David Mamet Reveals Why Movies Don’t Need Dialogue and More No-Nonsense Screenwriting Lessons

Legendary playwright and screenwriter David Mamet discusses his no-nonsense approach to writing.

David Mamet doesn’t mince words. He doesn’t in his writing (Al Capone in The Untouchables: “You get further with a kind word and a gun than you do with a kind word”). He doesn’t in his dramatic writing MasterClass (“Godard said every movie has to have a beginning, middle, and end, but not necessarily in that order. And that’s why French movies are so effing boring”). And he certainly didn’t in his recent interview with No Film School, during which he told us, “Hollywood is a cross between a spa and a cesspool.”

Mamet has authored dozens of award-winning plays and screenplays, including The Verdict, The Untouchables, Hannibal, and Glengarry Glen Ross, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. He has also directed a number of his own screenplays, such as The Spanish Prisoner and House of Games, which won Best Film and Best Screenplay awards at the 1987 Venice Film Festival.

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Source: NoFilmSchool