Ahoj! This is Zdenka. Here's the first one. I tried to film a cinematic video yesterday
except it didn't turn out to be that cinematic. Another one. Help, how come my videos are
not looking like yours? Andd third one. I'm struggling
framing the shot. I completely understand. I will try to help in this video. Let's talk
about framing and composition and how to get your videos look a little bit more cinematic
that way. Instead of me telling you rule one, rule two, rule three, I decided to pull out
some of the clips I filmed in the past, some of the
videos I filmed in the past and I'm gonna try to go through those clips individually
and tell you exactly why I framed those videos, why I did what I did and give you some extra
tips so you can reach a little bit more cinematic
look. And for the new faces, welcome. My name is Zdenka Darula. If you want to learn how
to take better photos and videos with the latest
gear and possibly participate in creative camera challenges, consider subscribing. First
of all, when I get to location, whether I'm filming outside or I'm filming indoors, even
a product shoot, few things are always the same. I never
shoot just with one lens. If I'm filming with smartphone, I take advantage of the other
lenses, if I'm filming with my mirrorless camera
then I bring extra lenses. I like to get mixture of wide shots, medium shots and close-up shots.
When I'm framing my shot, I'm doing exactly the same thing like in photography. It
doesn't matter if I'm taking photos or I'm doing videos, I'm doing the same thing. Let's
look at the first four clips. They have two things in common. Balance and symmetry. What
you wanna do is leaving a clutter of stuff on
one side and then leaving an empty room on the other. The first shot is of a tree going
from a bird house slowly down, revealing housing left
and model on the right. It gives sense of balance. Both sides are balanced properly.
They're balancing the scene. Tree is dividing the middle. Second clip of a makeup artist.
Here I wanted to see her expression as she's fully
concentrating on what she's doing. I could have just filmed her face but then I would
not tell the the whole story. I needed to see the model
as well. To complete the story, I still kept only her face fully in focus so the attention
is on her. However placing her on the left and model on the right side made the shot
well balanced. And I do this in any type of view.
If I'm filming forward, if I'm filmming down up or from above. Here's the same scene. Make
up artist with model. Both of them on each side
balancing the shot. This time I have them both in focus because I'm not seeing the face.
I'm not seeing the action but I'm showing entire scene. The whole action, what is going
on, so in this case I have to have everybody in focus.
Baseball field is a perfect example of symmetry. Boring object, an ugly object like benches
can look interesting. I made sure everything is
very symmetrical and straight. Straight lines, just circling from bottom up revealing the
scene behind it. What I find is that if I have a beautiful natural scene then I do very
nice beautiful shot but if there is something very
ugly in it that can totally break the look, so I actually go like I said very close to
the object, the ugly object and try to do something
creative around it. Go very close to it to reveal what's behind it and then I find different
angles. So I don't actually see that ugly object in the whole shot. Next three clips
are all about horizon. They teach you in books that
when you pull out on the screen the great rule of thirds, it looks like that, then your
horizon should be perfectly on the lower lane or on
the upper lane. Well, I don't exactly do it always that way. I use my own judgment and
choose what scene really looks good. What I really like in the video or photos. In the
first clip I do have the end of the lake closer to the
top line, however what made my decision was the tall green grass in the front which is
nicely in focus. I wanted to see most of it and I also
like the rocks and water at the bottom of the grass. Second clip was shot on my cell
phone, has horizon pretty much in the middle. I get very low, I never shoot in the mid range.
I always go very low if I'm doing landscape. Like this
third clip has a very low horizon but that was not the intention. I simply wanted to
see the whole light which is litting up the whole
baseball area. Whenever you film or take photos of horizon, you want to make sure it is perfectly
leveled. You don't want to go like this and I know it's not easy when you film handheld
or even if you are filming with gimbals. Some of the gimbals are not perfectly balanced
even if you do calibration. Sometimes it's still a little bit tiny off. If you don't
have further settings in the menu then you can't really
fix it up. Luckily in the post when you're editing your videos, any programs like Adobe
Premiere Pro or Da Vinci Resolve which is free. You
should try it out, are options there, where you can certainly level it up. Leading lanes
can be straight or they can be curved and they are leading your eyes towards the object
in the middle and it can be anywhere. It can be fence,
it can be path, it can be road, it can be alley of the trees, all kinds of stuff. First
clip is showing a huge staircase with railing. What I did is getting close to one side leading
the railing as I was stepping forward. Next shot is just following the curve of the skates
and lighthouse time lapse. Shape of the ground follows us to the lighthouse and lastly here
I was circling this tall pole as close as I could. The shape was leading us to the lights.
The next three clips have a lot to do with depth
of field but first let's talk about shooting through stuff. Whenever I want to create a
mystery or candid moment, I choose to shoot through something. Tall grass, branches, anything
in a way, making sure that the foreground, those branches, the tall grass is nice and
blurry, and the object or whatever I want to see behind it is nicely sharp. If I don't
have anything like that available, then I literally just
grab a leaf, stick it right in front of my lens to the corner and take a shot or video
like that. Plus sometimes it also creates a sense of
balance. For example if there is a lot of stuff on the right side but I feel that this
area is just way too empty, if I bring that leaf in or something in a foreground in, it
will actually balance the shot way better. Here's
one clip shooting through grass to show sunset. Another one here is shot through grass as
well revealing woman looking at passing by boat.
Here is a sense of candidness. It's a very candid shot and then another one is shooting
through grass one more time. For that though, you need to select right aperture or the depth
of field and select the right lenses as well.
I actually created a video shooting in aperture priority mode and I also created another video
about 50 millimeters prime lens. I'm going to
link it below the video in the video description. That can be helpful, you can watch it after
this. So whenever you're shooting these kind of things, you want to make sure your aperture
is very low and the best lenses you can get is prime lens 50 millimeter lens or telephoto
will work as well. First shot here is set at low aperture f 2.8 close-up shots of the
leaves with 50 millimeters prime lens. Rock with
water passing by. This was done with telephoto lens, also low aperture sets to f 2.8 as well.
Another one is close-up of a hand. Here I actually
placed a bit the hand on the left not in the middle. And close up of the face. Make sure
that whenever you are filming a facev, you always focus on eyes. Eyes need to be sharp.
Speaking of not placing the object right in the middle.
There's something called the rule of thirds. Let me pull out that grid one more time. Basically,
where those intersections meet at those spots, that's where you want to place the
object. It just makes it very attractive to the eye. Well obviously I don't alwaysv place
exactly the objects on those intersections. Again, I
use my own judgment. I place it maybe close to it but not always there. I see the overall
scene and I just leave it the way I like it. In the first shot she's a bit closer to the
center but to me it looks kind of right. Also, make
sure person's face is facing center of the image, not outside. The same thing goes with
the sunset shot. I also didn't place her exactly to the side but a bit more inner center. I
simply like the curves and the shapes of the tall grass. What I wanted is the sun shining
through to be the exact center. I hope this video
helped you to start seeing the compositions a little bit easier in the future videos.
I hope you did, hit thumbs up if you found this video useful and don't forget to subscribe
to all future videos like these. If you have any
questions, comments, simply want to say hi or Ahoj, or if you want to suggest a topic,
you want me to create a video about certain things, please
don't be afraid to write it in the comment section below and I'll see you my friends
in the next video. Cau... Ahoj..