[MUSIC PLAYING]
DAN COFFEY: All right.
Hello, and welcome back to another week of exploring digital media.
This week we're going to talk about the basics of video production.
We have wrapped up our still photography component which has been a lot of fun.
It's been really fun to see what you guys have done.
We're excited to see your projects.
And so now we move into the world of video,
where we're talking about more than just one frame at a time.
So speaking of which, as I said, we've been focused on one frame.
But now our camera is literally capturing at high speed
multiple frames at a time.
So there's a lot more that we have to think about as we do this.
So we refer to how many times we see an image per second
as the frame rate for a video.
And what is the frame rate of film?
Like, you go see a movie in the theater, what
is the typical frame rate you'll see?
Anybody know?
IAN SEXTON: A few answers from online.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah?
IAN SEXTON: We'll see 24 frames per second.
DAN COFFEY: 24 frames per second.
Yes.
Yes, exactly.
And certainly this graphic shows 60 FPS, 60 frames per second.
What IS 60 frames per second?
Why choose one versus the other?
That's kind of some of what we're going to unpack a little bit tonight.
But how about broadcast television?
How many frames per second is that shown at?
AUDIENCE: 24.
DAN COFFEY: 24.
No, actually, it's not.
So it goes back to some old standards, but 60 frames per second
is what broadcast television is sent at.
And that doesn't mean that the content that you're viewing
was recorded at 60 frames per second necessarily.
But it has been conformed to 60 frames per second as you watch it back.
All right.
So as far as frame rate goes, this all kind of comes down to human perception.
And how do we determine that 24 frames per second is the--
how did that become the standard for film making?
So let's look at a couple of clips here, starting
with just three frames per second, as you see on the top right corner.
Let's watch this and see how this little clip feels.
And to be clear, this is a video that was shot at a higher frame rate
and has been conformed to three frames per second.
But the effect is the same.
How did this motion feel?
Very unnatural, right?
Very kind of not pleasant to watch.
You're noticing every single frame rather than watching
the motion of the people walking.
So let's jump ahead here.
Here's six frames per second.
How does this one feel?
We're getting there.
We're kind of still seeing quite a bit of judder,
as we refer to as a frame rate that is very low and kind of clunky like that.
Let's move ahead to 12 frames per second.
OK.
Is that starting to feel a bit more like a natural motion?
Yeah?
And let's double up one more time.
Let's go to 24 frames per second, as we've already discussed
as the standard frame rate for film.
And so this kind of comes down to what it is that we're looking at.
We're looking at a group of pictures in a rapid succession.
That's all video is.
It's encoded a bit more smartly than that, but at the end of the day,
you're really just looking at pictures being--
it's like a flip book you open and flip through very quickly,
the images move forward.
So 24 frames per second has kind of become the standard.
Does anybody know the reasoning for why that was initially the standard back--
I don't even know the year that it was established.
But--
IAN SEXTON: I actually don't know off the top of my head either.
So I should look into it.
DAN COFFEY: So we'll look that one up.
But 12 frames per second is kind of where
we start to not be able to distinguish the difference between the still images
being flashed before us.
But 24 frames per second is the standard.
So my question is why.
No?
Go ahead, Alec.
AUDIENCE: I was just saying, to save money for 24 frames--
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
Well, that's actually interesting.
That's a part of it.
So on this film strip here, we had 24 frames per second.
I'm sorry, where you have your film, you've
got your picture encoded alongside your audio.
So the audio track actually ran alongside the picture.
And one of the reasons--
film is not cheap, so we wanted to find a way to use as little as possible.
But we also needed to have enough fidelity in the audio
that it sounded nice and clear and sharp and was not too muddy
and that you could actually understand it.
And 24 frames was a good frame rate for that-- didn't cost too much,
you had a good natural motion to it, and you had good audio fidelity.
So that's kind of where the standard was set.
So the audio, as I said.
And so as we define our frame rate, we can kind of pick and choose this.
If you open up Shotcut or Adobe Premiere, or whatever
nonlinear editing system you're using, you
can say, hey, I want my project to be at this frame rate.
And so you can also additionally set your camera and say,
I want to shoot at 24 frames per second.
I want to shoot at 30 frames per second.
I want to shoot at 60 frames per second.
It kind of depends on the hardware that you're actually using.
But common frame rates that we might see--
24 is equivalent to what we usually see for film.
A common video standard is actually 30 frames per second.
The soap opera effect where everything is very smooth,
that comes down to a 60 frames per second playback.
And then you've got some higher frame rates
at the other end that can be used for specialty things.
So you might have a camera where you're kind
of saying, hey, how do I actually set my frame rate in my camera?
And so if you've got a Canon, it might look like this.
If you've got a Nikon, like this, and a Sony, like this.
And the idea is that you're going to choose
your frame size, the actual width by height,
as well as how many frames per second.
And so looking here at top left with the Canon frame size,
we've got 1920, which is short for an HD frame, or 1920 by 1080
as the resolution, at 30 frames per second.
The "ALL-I" in this case just refers to how the frames are actually encoded
and means that it's easier for a non-linear editing system to actually
access every frame.
When you get these IPB frames, it's just a lighter weight
version of encoding where it's harder to decode is really what we need to know.
But it's much more space efficient.
So if you're given this option on a Canon camera, choose the ALL-I.
And so you can choose 30 frames per second, 24 frames per second,
or you can jump down to the next, the smaller resolution of HD video,
which is 1280 by 720, or 720p for short.
And so you can choose either of those as well.
You know, Nikon looks pretty much the same.
And with Sony, you actually need to choose your Kodak, what
the video is actually being stored as.
Kodak is simply that kind of container that holds all the frames together
and defines how it is actually encoded.
But we don't need to know those details.
We just need to know that you can actually choose on this camera.
And if you're using Sony, XAVC is just the newer video
codec that they are using.
So choose that.
And then you can choose what frame rate and frame size you want.
All right.
So overcranking and undercranking-- does anybody
know what these terms mean offhand?
We're talking about frame rates.
That's a little hint.
This "jif" here-- or GIF, however you want to say it-- is a hint as well.
Overcranking, what might this be?
Any guesses from online?
So what is this hand doing as it cranks?
What's happening?
What are we looking at?
We're looking at an antique camera.
But we're seeing two kind of things happen in the camera.
We're seeing this kind of wheel go around,
and we're seeing this bar here kind of slide up and down.
Any guesses?
AUDIENCE: Does it mean maybe that the [INAUDIBLE]
the succession of the images up and down?
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
Benjamin is saying is this actually control
the speed, the images moving up and down.
So this is the shutter that we're seeing.
We're used to talking about shutter speed from still photography.
And then this is the--
I don't know what this is technically called,
but it advances the frames of film down through the camera as it moves.
And in the old school cameras, it literally
was a matter of kind of keeping a constant crank going
to determine your frame rate.
IAN SEXTON: It's called the claw.
DAN COFFEY: The what?
IAN SEXTON: The claw.
DAN COFFEY: The claw.
OK, yes.
So the claw hooks into the perforation on the film and pulls the frame down.
And so what happens if you start to crank this more quickly?
You overcrank.
The film advances faster.
And so what is the effect of that if you were to play it back?
AUDIENCE: Fast motion.
DAN COFFEY: Well, fast motion is what you would think.
You record a lot of frames very quickly.
But if you were to play them back at your normal frame
rate, the 24 frames per second, it's going to be slow motion.
So it's kind of counterintuitive in that sense.
But it's because you're cranking very quickly, recording a lot of data,
and then playing it back more slowly, you get slow motion.
So we thought to kind of show what this example
looked like, we'd set up in this beautiful Harvard Library and recruit
a boxer to kind of come in and show us what different frame rates can
look like.
So here we go.
We've got Conor Doyle here being a guest for us.
So yes, just a little hint as to what the setup looked like.
So the things we want to keep in mind here, I've kind of alluded to these,
are the captured frame rate-- this is the frame rate
that you set your camera to, how many frames per second you're
recording-- versus your project frame rate or your timeline frame rate--
how many frames per second are being played back over the sequence.
And they matter.
If they're the same thing--
so here, if you look at the top right of this frame,
we've got 24 frames per second being played back at 24 frames per second.
This is going to be a real time playback.
So as we watch this, Conor's punching the punching bag here.
All right, feels like normal time.
If you were standing there watching him, this is the speed at which it happened.
But if we look at--
we overcranked here, we cranked very quickly,
we recorded 250 frames per second.
And we play it back at 24 frames per second, roughly how--
what's the time delta here?
How many times slower is this going to be?
10 times?
Yeah.
Because 24 times 10 is 240.
We'll round up to 250.
So 250 frames per second, his punching should be about 1/10
of the speed of normal time when we play it back.
And here it is.
So it really matters here, what is it that we want to do?
Do we want to slow things down?
We need to shoot at a higher frame rate.
But how much higher do we need to shoot?
And that depends on how fast your sequence
is, how many frames per second you're going to playback
that your viewer is going to watch.
All right.
We'll go through a few different stops.
Here is 250 frames at 250 frames.
So what do we suspect that we'll see in this version?
AUDIENCE: Again, lifelike.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah, real time, lifelike.
Let's see, is this lifelike?
It feels very different, though, doesn't it?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, it does.
It feels faster.
DAN COFFEY: It feels faster, OK.
We'll unpack this a little bit.
IAN SEXTON: But the time it takes for him to punch
feels sort of the same amount.
But it has a different feeling.
That's really it.
DAN COFFEY: Exactly.
All right, how about 120 frames at 24 frames per second?
I don't need to keep beating this over and over again.
This is still slow, not quite as slow as it was before.
But you get different amounts of detail as we kind of do this as well, right?
Good job there, Conor.
If you don't know, Conor is one of our camera operators in this class,
so he very nicely volunteered to work with us on this.
All right, 60 frames per second.
All right, so we're getting faster.
We're getting a little bit more--
we're actually losing a little bit more detail.
All right, 30 frames per second.
So this is almost real time.
This is very slightly slowed down.
All right.
And then 12 frames per second.
What's going to happen here?
So we're not talking about--
this is going to be on the undercranking side,
so we're turning the frames per second more slowly
than what we're playing them back at, which
is going to result in-- we've just looked at slow motion.
This is going to be fast motion, right?
It's almost like an old-timey film.
All right.
So this is how fast compared to real time?
Because it's easy math to do.
AUDIENCE: Twice as fast?
DAN COFFEY: Yeah, twice as fast.
Exactly, exactly.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
And then 12 frames at 12 frames per second, how is this going to equate?
It's going to be real time still.
How is it going to look, though?
AUDIENCE: Slower?
DAN COFFEY: It's going to be--
well, defined slower.
AUDIENCE: It's gonna feel slower.
DAN COFFEY: It's going to feel slower.
OK, let's see if it feels slower.
It's just more choppy, right?
You got a lot more judder in this frame.
But the action is still happening at the same rate.
So very interesting the choices we make with how much we capture at
and how much we play back at.
And then four frames per second--
so this is going to be a quarter of real time, or four times real time.
I've got to invert my math.
Very quickly here.
So we're looking at a lot of extremes, but you
can see that there's certainly in between where things could be useful.
If you want to kind of have this dream-like fashion,
maybe you want to record at 60 frames per second
and play back at 24 frames per second.
Or if you really want to highlight something that happens quickly--
let's say, like, a whip hitting something--
you might want to shoot that even faster, 120 or 250 frames per second--
and then play it back at 24 frames per second.
AUDIENCE: Is this what's happening in the old Charlie Chaplin
films or [INAUDIBLE]?
IAN SEXTON: Yes.
So that really comes down to the fact that they were sort
of standardized in their frame rates.
The very early film was hand cranked.
And so you can imagine if you had to crank through 100 feet of film,
you would start fast and sort of slow down as you got more and more tired.
So there's a sort of a variable frame rate to those.
And then when it became mechanical, a lot of films
were shot at 18 frames per second, which is slower than 24,
and it has that sort of staccato feel to it,
where everything feels a little bit sped up because it was then--
we now watch it at 24 frames per second in playback.
So actually, that translation is happening there.
But that's exactly it, yeah.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
So if you want to actually watch these examples, download the slides.
And this is just a link to a playlist where you can
watch these videos in your own time.
And so here's a more extreme video for you.
You can watch how much time passes here.
This is actually over the course of five days.
So this is an extreme version of undercranking,
where we get to watch some rain, watch these flowers kind of grow up
and bloom.
So kind of like not as pretty as an actual nature
show, but the idea is the same, where you're compressing time here,
which is a really interesting thing to do.
So, given that we know a little bit now about how different frame
rates play back and gives a little bit different feeling,
let's put this in context and actually watch a clip and discuss this together.
So this is a clip from Mr. Robot, season 8.
And they do a really interesting thing in this clip.
So we'll just take a look.
It's just a short clip, and then we'll talk about it.
If we can dim the lights, please.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- I've got to do that now--
security token, Gideon's phone.
I need his phone.
50 hours and 19 minutes left.
Damn.
She infected me with her time paranoia.
We're all living in each other's paranoia.
You definitely can't argue that.
Is that why everyone tries to avoid each other?
I need to calm down.
I wish I could be an observer like you.
Then I could think more calmly.
[SOOTHING MUSIC]
This is comfortable, less stressful.
In fact, I feel like I can see everything, know everything this way.
Hm.
Do you know more than me?
That wouldn't be fair, my imaginary friend knowing more than me.
So what would you do now?
We need a distraction to get Gideon's phone.
[TRAFFIC AMBIENCE]
- Darlene?
I need you to do something for me.
- She can help.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
DAN COFFEY: All right.
So let's talk about what we just saw for a second.
So just to give a little context, Elliot here, our computer hacker,
is under deadline.
There's something looming that's going to happen.
And so he starts off a little bit anxious about what's going on,
and he kind of takes a moment to talk to us--
his imaginary friend, the audience--
and put himself in our shoes for a second.
But visually, what do we see?
Let's talk about this.
Let's back up and actually look, if I can find my mouse.
There it is.
So at the beginning, describe the frame rate for me.
How does this part feel?
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- --now, security token, Gideon's phone.
I need his phone.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
DAN COFFEY: I'm sorry, what was it?
AUDIENCE: Overcranked.
DAN COFFEY: Overcranked?
Why overcranked?
AUDIENCE: Or faster.
DAN COFFEY: Faster?
Potentially, but a relatively normal frame rate.
It felt a little bit frantic, I think, is the kind of description
that maybe fits the feeling of it.
And so we'll talk about that in just a second.
But it was probably pretty close to real time, right?
There was not-- we didn't feel like we lost a whole lot of data necessarily.
All right.
And then what happens?
There's a change.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- She infected me with her time paranoia.
We're all living in each other's paranoia.
You definitely can't argue with that.
Is that why everyone tries to avoid each other?
I need to calm down.
I wish I could be an observer like you.
Then I could think more calmly.
[SOOTHING MUSIC]
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
DAN COFFEY: So there's actually a frame rate change
that's ramped up in the clip, right?
So we actually change the rate of playback,
which is done in post-production, over the same number of seconds,
because it's overcranking, where we see a slower playback.
And it gives us this kind of dreamlike effect, right?
AUDIENCE: It's very contemplative.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
And the effect for us, the audience, as we watch this,
is that the rest of the world literally slows down.
It's narrated still in real time, so it feels like we're kind of--
as Elliot takes a look around and kind of sees things, I think he says,
we kind of feel that with him.
All right, a fun example there.
So as far as what happens to us as we start
to shoot video and look at more than one frame at a time,
going back to our exposure triangle, where we are now controlling
our aperture, our ISO, and our shutter speed, what limitation rate
are we going to bump up against if we're shooting
some number of frames per second?
One of these is going to kind of get locked off on us.
Anybody know?
AUDIENCE: Shutter speed.
DAN COFFEY: Shutter speed?
Why?
AUDIENCE: I feel like what I've learned thus far that it is directly
tied to the frame rate.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
Well, if you think about what is actually happening with shutter speed--
so yes, the answer, shutter speed is kind of locked.
So the shutter of the camera--
in the old mechanical camera here, we've got this notch that's cut out
and that rotated around and exposed the film.
If we look at the modern equivalent of that, let's say with this shutter right
here, we've got time when the disk spins around
where the film plane or the central plane is exposed
and when it's closed off.
And so that represents how much time is exposed, how much time the film is
actually exposed for.
So if our frame rate is 24 frames per second,
that means that the film needs to advance past this thing here 24
times per second.
So what's the longest--
if we had no shutter covering this and it was just light coming through,
what's the longest exposure we could have, if it's 24 frames per second?
AUDIENCE: Is the answer on the bottom?
DAN COFFEY: No.
It's 1/24 of a second, because there's nothing to block any light.
So the answer is 1/24 of a second is the longest exposure that we could have.
And so just shooting your digital photography, 1/24 of a second,
is that a long shutter speed?
Is it fast?
What kind of motion would you get from that?
AUDIENCE: You're going to incorporate motion blur.
DAN COFFEY: You're going to get motion blur, right?
Yeah.
So what if you're shooting faster than 24 frames per second?
Let's say you're shooting, I don't know, 120 frames per second.
With no shutter involved, what is the most exposure
you can get from your shutter speed?
AUDIENCE: With no shutter involved?
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
I mean, digital cameras don't actually have a physical shutter.
Some do, most don't.
So let's say we take the shutter out of the equation.
What is the longest exposure time we could have at 120 frames per second?
AUDIENCE: I don't know the answer to that question.
DAN COFFEY: It's 1 over the frame rate, right?
Because it's literally 1/120 of a second.
And so again, thinking back to when you're out shooting with your camera,
can you get motion blur from 1/120 of a second?
AUDIENCE: Depending on the subject.
If it's moving quickly--
DAN COFFEY: Sure, if it's moving very quickly, yes.
That's a good point.
I shouldn't say you can't, because you can.
But your kind of natural motion blur that we're
kind of used to seeing as humans, we're going to lose that.
Everything will be sharper.
And so if you think back to old film cameras,
we had to actually close the shutter for some period of time
so that the film could advance.
Otherwise everything would just be this kind of blur effect
as you advance the film through the camera.
And so at 24 frames per second, kind of a typical shutter
that gives us natural motion blur, is 1/2 of your time being exposed.
So the frame is covered for half of the time and then open for half the time.
So basically for 24 frames per second, that's
why we get a 1/48 shutter speed as kind of our natural shutter speed,
because we're exposing for half the time of the frame rate.
So if we were exposing for the whole time of the frame rate,
it would be 1 over 24.
But because we're exposing for half of that, we doubled that number,
and it goes 1 over 48.
Does that makes sense?
Did I bungle that?
IAN SEXTON: No.
DAN COFFEY: OK.
So if we spin these, we kind of get a sense of this.
So we've got the film advancing through, getting exposed.
But as we start to kind of close down the shutter,
as we talked about what happens when we shoot at faster shutter speeds--
like, again, these numbers at the bottom are all 24 frames per second
that relate to this, because 24 frames per second is what we're going to say
is the typical film frame rate, so we're going
to talk about that frame rate a lot.
So a normal shutter speed is going to be 1 over 48 per second.
And not all cameras can do that.
I know the Canon 5D, it's 1 over 50.
But that's close enough.
We're going to say we are in the ballpark for that.
So what is a 90 degree shutter angle going to do?
And it's literally because of the shape of this cut out here.
That's where the 90 degrees comes from.
That's where the 180 degrees comes from.
But if we think about what that actually means,
180 degrees means that our exposure time is half of our frame interval.
What's half of our frame interval of a 90 degree shutter?
Right.
Let's start down here.
So we know that 1 over 48--
AUDIENCE: A quarter.
DAN COFFEY: Is half, yeah.
So is a quarter, but we double the 48, and we get to 96.
So 1/96 is a 90 degree shutter.
But what is the visual effect for us?
Forget even knowing these numbers, because ultimately
at the end of the day you can look through your camera
and change your shutter speed and see what effect you get.
But what happens as we sharpen up our shutter and make it more quick?
Sharpen up our shutter is the key there.
AUDIENCE: Sharper?
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
We lose our motion blur.
This is really what I'm trying to hammer home here, is the faster
the shutter speed, the less motion blur we have.
We know this from digital photography already.
And the same is true with video.
But with video, images move in sequence.
We kind of expect a certain amount of blur,
and that goes away when we shoot higher frame
rate because our shutter speed is maxed out, or if we change our shutter speed.
And that's why I put the lock on the exposure triangle.
Because if you want to have natural motion blur
and have video that we are used to seeing over
the years of watching movies and films, you want your shutter speed
to be roughly 1 over 48 at 24 frames per second.
And so here's the slide for that.
IAN SEXTON: So again, this is sort of conventional motion,
the natural feeling motion in video.
But you can definitely push and pull it in either direction.
You just can't go below the frame rate, the period of the frame
rate for your shutter speed.
So you can't get any blurrier than 1 over 24
if you're shooting at 24 frames per second.
AUDIENCE: But what would happen if you did?
DAN COFFEY: Well, you couldn't, because you
would ask the camera to record an image for longer than one frame.
So you'd be trying to record a single image for two frames, which you can't.
So you can't go any slower than 1 over 24th.
But you can go faster.
You can take a shorter image in that 1/24 of a second.
You just can't go longer than that, because then it
would be recording over two frames.
And your frame rate wouldn't be 24 frames per second.
AUDIENCE: Because you wouldn't be able to use that in post, would you?
IAN SEXTON: You just couldn't do it, because if you
tried to record longer than 1 over 24, then
you're not shooting at 24 frames per second.
You're shooting at some smaller amount than that.
AUDIENCE: I want to try this.
DAN COFFEY: Your camera will not even let you do it,
because the laws of physics will not allow it.
AUDIENCE: Oh, yeah?
We'll see about that.
DAN COFFEY: All right, Ralph.
Let's see it.
And so I mentioned this already, but some cameras can't actually
do 1 over 48, so use 150 instead.
And this is really a guide.
If you're coming into this class and you have not touched video before
and you're not sure what to set your camera to,
if you want to have a traditional cinematic look,
set your camera to 24 frames per second.
Sometimes that is abbreviated as 23.98.
It is, for all intents and purposes, the same thing
with a shutter speed of 1 over 48, which is our 180 degree shutter angle--
potato, po-tah-to.
You know, we showed the graphic of what the shutter looked like back in the day
when there was a circle and you actually would open and close the angle of it.
And so now we typically talk about shutter speed as fractions,
and it's all about the exposure time.
So 1/48 of a second is equivalent to a 180 degree shutter.
And refer back to the graphic I just showed that kind of animated
to see why.
OK.
So what happens as we start to play with the shutter speed in the video?
Let's go back to our boxing example.
And so we're watching all 24 frames per second video here, played back at 24
frames per second.
And this is going to be just kind of a study of motion blur.
So I said before, what happens if we just
take the shutter out of the equation?
So a 360 degree shutter is literally no shutter at all.
So it's just constantly light hitting the sensor per frame.
We're on a tripod, so not everything in the frame is going to blur for us.
But let's take a look at what happens with our motion.
How fast is Conor punching here?
AUDIENCE: It looks really fast.
DAN COFFEY: So fast, right?
So here is a freeze frame of that motion blur, so an incredible amount of motion
blur because we're looking at 1/24 of a second
here in time, because there's no shutter closing.
It's just 1/24 of a second because our frame rate is 24 frames per second.
IAN SEXTON: And when we did our still photography,
it was really easy to capture human motion blur at 1/24 of a second.
Our suggestion was shoot at 1/68 or 1/50 or something
like that to sort of stop that normal human motion blur.
DAN COFFEY: Exactly.
All right, so we're going to halve this.
And I guess this is the other factor too.
As we think about exposure, as we change shutter speed--
so the same frame for the same amount of time is being exposed.
But if we halve the amount of time that the shutter is open for that frame,
how much light is being taken away?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
IAN SEXTON: No, no, you're good.
AUDIENCE: 1?
DAN COFFEY: Exactly.
So we need to compensate--
this is exactly the same thing as when we shot still photography.
When we changed the shutter speed, we had to compensate with ISO or aperture.
The same thing applies to video.
It's just confusing because there are more frames involved.
But the same principles apply.
If we cut the shutter speed in half, that's one stop of light
that we need to compensate for on the other end somewhere else.
All right.
So here's a 180 degree shutter.
So half as much motion blur--
can we qualify it that way?
I mean, it's half as much time, half as much light.
So does that equate visually?
Maybe not.
Here's what that motion blur looks like.
It looks pretty similar to me, to the 360 degree.
But let's keep going down this rabbit hole.
So this is a 90 degree shutter, or translated 1/96 of a second.
IAN SEXTON: So that's one more stop closed down, right?
DAN COFFEY: Yes.
We keep doing halves here.
So this is feeling a little bit different now, huh?
Just a little bit.
Does it feel faster or slower?
A little bit subjective, I'd say, using words like that.
Here's a freeze.
But we're starting to get more detail.
AUDIENCE: And choppy.
DAN COFFEY: It's feeling choppier.
AUDIENCE: It's less smooth for sure.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah, so less smooth because as the frames
kind of go by very quickly and our human eyes only
see kind of the combination of all of them
put together, we're losing this motion blur that we're used to seeing.
And we're starting to see more detail in every frame.
AUDIENCE: And the [INAUDIBLE] motion gets shorter and more realistic,
because before-- his glove was really long,
because the shutter speed was at 24, the same as the frames per second.
So it was definitely getting sharper, which makes it choppy, which
I'm starting to get more clearly.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah, exactly, because you literally are seeing it more clearly.
That's exactly why it's becoming more choppy,
is because you're actually seeing, his arm
is not extending anymore and bending with the light that
is hitting your sensor.
It's actually staying the same size as it moves because we're not
getting that motion blur.
AUDIENCE: Which is a little uncomfortable.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah, OK.
In this case it's a little uncomfortable maybe.
All right, Ralph.
Taking it to the next level here.
All right.
So let's look at a 45 degree shutter.
This makes our shutter speed 1 over 192, so a very small fraction of a second
now.
Looks cool.
Whereas before when he was punching really fast,
we saw just kind of a blur.
Now we're just kind of seeing fists flying,
the actual outline of the fists.
We actually went a couple more stops here, so let's keep looking.
So here's a freeze of the motion blur, just to compare apples to apples.
All right.
So let's go down to--
again, we're halving and halving and halving and halving.
So a 22.5 degree shutter, or 1/384 of a second.
It's kind of weird to watch.
We're just not used to seeing a whole lot of footage that
looks like this as humans.
AUDIENCE: I guess he was in a boxing movie, because it looks good still.
Like, the last one before we went here was usable for a fast fight scene.
DAN COFFEY: That's interesting.
So you're kind of saying that in your mind,
a fight scene might have some of this kind of fast, crisp motion.
But it doesn't have to.
You could certainly shoot a fight scene with no shutter at all,
or with 1/24 of a second.
But that's not what we're used to seeing,
because convention tells us that you have this kind of high--
this fast shutter.
And even if we think back to Mr. Robot, at the end of the scene
that we watched when--
we'll come back to that clip in a second.
I want to go back and look at that, though.
All right.
Let's just finish our iteration here.
So this is a freeze frame of the motion blur.
There's still a little bit of motion blur because he's moving very fast.
But any average thing that's happening, a person walking,
a car driving by slowly, would probably be fairly frozen in the freeze frame.
All right.
So our last stop here is an 11 degree shutter, which is 1/768 of a second.
We know our DSLRs can probably do 1/2000 of a second or 1/4000 or 1/8000
of a second.
It would just be pretty wild to see that with video.
But here we go.
So give me some adjectives that describes
this frame maybe versus the first frame that we looked at.
It's a stark difference.
OK.
Is it more comfortable to watch, less comfortable?
AUDIENCE: It's more unnatural.
DAN COFFEY: It's more natural?
AUDIENCE: More unnatural.
DAN COFFEY: Oh, more unnatural.
OK.
AUDIENCE: Kind of hard to read what's written on the video.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
Here's the freeze frame, right?
And so I try to grab all the freeze frames
in the middle of the punching action.
So in the first frame-- let's look at the comparison.
So in the first frame, it was just no clear delineation of his arm.
As we kind of get down there, we're starting
to get a bit more clear as we get to 1/96 of a second.
But once we get down to 1/768 or--
did I put these out of order?
92-- where's the highest one.
Yeah, it is.
So I'll rearrange these and repost it.
But this is our faster shutter speed, which just clearly has
the least amount of motion blur.
But again, we're talking about multiple frames per second as we watch this.
It's just a very different effect than what we see.
So if you're going out to shoot a video of somebody
just casually walking down the street and your subject is walking,
which would you choose?
Which are we kind of conditioned to seeing?
And I've already given the answer away, but--
this one, right?
The 1/48 of a second shutter speed, if we're shooting at 24 frames per second.
So this is the kind of natural motion blur we're used to seeing.
Of course, Conor is punching very fast, so we just get a whole lot of blur.
All right.
If you want to watch these examples on your own, click the link at the bottom.
AUDIENCE: That him punching?
DAN COFFEY: That's Conor, yep.
Give a wave, Conor.
AUDIENCE: Do not get into a fight with this guy.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: That's cool, man.
DAN COFFEY: If you're trying to do this conversion in your head,
we've made a chart here for you.
So at 24 frames per second, if you want achieve one of the effects
that we've looked at, like let's say you want to have that frozen motion, if you
want the 45 degree shutter angle look, you'd
set your camera to 192 frames per second.
And then we also do the higher frame rates for you as well.
All right.
So this is about a two minute clip.
It's shortened from the beginning of Saving Private Ryan.
I cut out some of the violence, and there's no sound,
just so we can watch visually what happens.
But let's watch this clip, and then let's talk about it.
But there are some interesting things that happen here
with both shutter speed and frame rate.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: Did you want to go back to Mr. Robot?
You did mention it before.
DAN COFFEY: I did.
OK, let's do that first, Ralph.
You're right.
So before we go to this, let me back up to Mr. Robot.
AUDIENCE: Because I would have forgotten if I were you,
so I wanted to say something--
DAN COFFEY: Yes, thank you.
You are so right.
All right.
So let's watch this again.
Maybe we can lose the audio on this one.
So what does the shutter speed feel like here to you?
And I don't mean tell me what the shutter speed is,
but is it fast or slow?
AUDIENCE: It seems like it's 192, so fast.
DAN COFFEY: It feels sharp, right?
There's not much motion blur in watching him walk.
So then it's almost like-- it's kind of hard to--
unless you're talking about it, it's kind of
hard to put your finger on it almost.
Because it's not so much that as the average viewer
sitting on your couch watching, it's going to jump out at you,
but it's going to subconsciously impact you.
And then we slow down here.
So how do you think that they actually capture this scene?
AUDIENCE: Actually, this is what I was thinking about the whole time.
Hm.
Is this one shot?
DAN COFFEY: I pose that to you.
Is it one shot?
AUDIENCE: It seems so.
DAN COFFEY: Because they do cut, right?
They do cut.
There are cuts in this scene.
We're next to him.
So let's see if we can find the point where it actually slows down.
And there it is right there, right?
You can almost see it in his step.
So it does ramp.
So it is one shot.
So what did they record this at?
AUDIENCE: 60 FPS.
DAN COFFEY: Well, we don't know the actual number.
We're not going to know that.
But we can say that they probably-- this is an overcranked shot.
They shot at a high frame rate, which meant that the most open
their shutter could be was still pretty fast.
It meant that the shutter speed was still fast,
which meant that there was very little motion blur.
And so then in post-production when they got back there,
the beginning of the clip is probably conformed to 24 frames per second
so that you're watching it and it feels like the normal time playback.
But then they ramp it.
They have all these extra frames.
Like, they're just kind of throwing away all these in between frames.
And then they stretch out.
They do that ramp when they get to this part here, and everything slows down.
And it's very beautiful and slow, and we no longer
notice the shutter speed as much, because everything
is moving more slowly.
But when we speed back up at the end, the motion blur--
sorry, not the motion blur.
When we speed back up at the end, the motion blur is gone.
It's back to being choppy.
So my guess is that they did this in one shot, the actual motion blur part.
AUDIENCE: It's impressive.
DAN COFFEY: All right.
So anyway, let's come back to Saving Private Ryan
and kind of put all these ideas together.
And this is, again, about a two minute clip.
And I'm sorry if I'm butchering this film for you,
because it is a wonderful film.
But I did trim it to reduce the violence and to kind of speed things along
for discussion's sake.
So if we can dim the lights, please.
[NO AUDIO]
All right.
So did you catch some of the changes that we saw in the film?
Let's walk back through it together.
So let's set up--
how do we feel at the beginning, as far as frame rate and shutter speed go?
How does this part feel?
We can pause it for a second.
Is there motion blur?
I'm sorry, what did you say?
AUDIENCE: Is that a zoom?
DAN COFFEY: No.
Anybody else?
Does it feel natural, unnatural?
IAN SEXTON: How does the time it takes for the action to unfold onscreen feel?
Does that part feel natural?
AUDIENCE: It felt the normal speed for me until--
DAN COFFEY: Yeah, OK.
So this part we'll say roughly normal speed.
But I heard the word "until," which means there's a change, right?
So even in here, if we look at the actual water here, there's motion blur.
This is not frozen.
So OK.
Let's go ahead and move forward again.
Let's move forward to this part here.
There's a change that happens here.
This is interesting.
So Ralph, what did you say?
AUDIENCE: The shot of Tom Hanks was slowed down in post.
But this next shot could have shot at a completely different shutter
speed, because it just looks way more motion blurry.
DAN COFFEY: Sure.
So you were saying it was slowed down in post.
So unpack that for me a little bit.
Let's just hypothesize what frame rate they were shooting at.
AUDIENCE: If I were them, I would have been shooting at,
let's say, 24 frames per second at this quality, because it seems regular.
And then they slowed it down after the fact to give it more of a drama.
DAN COFFEY: So you're playing back, let's say, at 12 frames per second,
15 frames per second, something like that.
AUDIENCE: Some lesser number.
It's a bit more--
DAN COFFEY: And visually-- visually for us
to create this drama as you describe, it's
slowing it down so we're watching it in slower than real time.
But there's bigger chunks of time between each frame that we're seeing.
AUDIENCE: Yes, exactly.
So you can see him just sitting there looks really blurry.
So you're seeing him think a lot and observe what's happening.
So you're starting to feel what he feels.
Even though there's no audio, I was like, man, that sucks.
That's what I was thinking.
DAN COFFEY: So you're saying we're starting to identify with him
and feel how he feels, OK.
So all this chaos revolves around him.
But it changes back again.
Is there a trigger that changes it back?
Well, I made an edit there.
AUDIENCE: Well, that would be cut.
DAN COFFEY: OK.
So now we're back to the same kind of effect, the helmet goes back on.
And then there's this shot that comes up here, here.
AUDIENCE: So it cuts between him being--
I don't want to keep talking.
Does anyone else want to talk?
DAN COFFEY: Anybody else?
Yeah, Ralph's been saying a lot.
Anything from the internet, Ian?
IAN SEXTON: Yeah.
A lot of people are sort of mentioning that the early part is
reminiscent of war photography and that kind of aesthetic and things
like that, which you can imagine that there's some higher shutter speeds used
in that capture action.
DAN COFFEY: Absolutely.
So then there's this moment where he's kind
of shell shocked by this whole kind of hitting the beach.
And we've got these other soldiers yelling in his face for a second.
And totally, what feels much more normal and natural, especially juxtaposed
to the slow frame rate playback.
And then there's another shift.
So he gets back with it.
He runs up on the beach.
And there's another shift.
Where is it?
I think it's right after this.
So right here, watch all the explosions that happen now.
Let's see if I can pause on one.
Did I miss it?
There we go.
OK.
So if we look over here on the right side of the frame at the dirt that's
falling here, everything's very clear.
So what do we--
crisp.
Crisp, thank you.
So what do we hypothesize is happening now?
Was it faster or slower motion at all, or was it normal speed?
AUDIENCE: Probably a slightly higher speed.
DAN COFFEY: All right, possibly slightly higher speed.
How about motion blur?
Is there any motion blur going on?
Ignore the compression artifacts in the out of focus areas.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAN COFFEY: But for this whole-- from the moment that I kind of said here,
right here, this is where my eye starts to really notice it.
But just all the detail, you can see all of the bits of dirt,
and all the action is really happening.
So this is not traditional of your cinematic look.
But what is it that has changed most likely?
So it's possibly a slightly different frame rate.
But I would say the action happens similar to what
we see-- like, the time it takes them to run across the beach
is similar to what we expect a human to take to run across the beach.
But what is the visual artifact?
And again, we're looking at a bunch of compression here as I pause this.
But as you watch it in rapid succession--
AUDIENCE: Faster shutter speed.
DAN COFFEY: Faster shutter speed, right?
It's like you see all the detail and all the crispness.
And I think it adds to what Benjamin is saying here,
with you just get all the detail, all this detail that you're not
used to seeing.
You're used to seeing all this stuff hidden in the motion blur as you watch.
So this feels very sharp.
And even this kind of chaotic camera movement
is exaggerated because of the shutter speed.
And I think that is actually what could lead
to what feels like a slightly slower shutter speed, or a slightly
slower frame rate, is because the shutter speed is higher
and just you feel like there's bigger chunks of time cut out
because everything is sharper.
There's no blur, if that makes sense.
AUDIENCE: I would love to see the behind the scenes of that cameraman's
movement.
Because I want to see what he was doing.
DAN COFFEY: I think it was just like this.
You know, he dipped down at one point and then he came back up.
But the thing is--
no, I think it is, though.
The magic is that the exposure settings were changed.
That's really what it comes down to, is that shutter speed is what makes
this so impactful.
IAN SEXTON: We say simple, but operating a 40 pound camera on a beach as you run
is not--
DAN COFFEY: In a bunch of explosions.
IAN SEXTON: --simple, in any way, shape, or form.
DAN COFFEY: All right.
So in a nutshell, shutter speed matters a lot.
But if you want a typical cinematic look what is the number you want to target?
Somebody besides Ralph.
AUDIENCE: 24 FPS.
DAN COFFEY: 24 frames per second.
AUDIENCE: And 1/48.
DAN COFFEY: And 1/48 of a second shutter speed
is a good baseline for where you should start from.
All right, the Jell-O effect--
does anybody know what this is?
AUDIENCE: A delicious snack.
DAN COFFEY: I mean besides a delicious snack.
Thank you, Ralph.
Have you seen what I'm referring to?
You might not have.
AUDIENCE: I'll hop in on that one.
DAN COFFEY: OK, Alec.
Let's hear it.
AUDIENCE: It's from CCDs not having a specific shutter speed, the bucket
brigade, the lines, so you get a sliding effect instead of an even shutter look.
DAN COFFEY: OK, yeah.
I'm going to unpack that a little bit here.
So actually, you said CCD.
You're getting very technical in a sensor type.
It's actually a product of CMOS sensors, which
I wasn't even going to talk about.
But the idea is this.
So it's called rolling shutter.
But I want to be clear that this has nothing to do with the actual shutter
speed of the camera.
Watch the kind of warping that happens as the camera whips back and forth very
quickly.
This all has to do with sensor technology and nothing
to do with shutter speed, even though it's called rolling shutter.
So it's really pronounced as you wiggle a camera like this.
So this is a Canon 5D Mark IV.
Let's look at the same thing again on a Red Epic Dragon.
AUDIENCE: Is there any rolling shutter in this shot?
DAN COFFEY: Hold on.
Wait for the wiggle.
You tell me.
What do you think, Ralph?
AUDIENCE: Minimal.
DAN COFFEY: Minimal.
AUDIENCE: That's excellent rolling shutter.
DAN COFFEY: OK.
So we see a little bit of its effect.
But hopefully it's clear--
I'm not sure what the internet is doing to the video.
But if we look at the 5D Mark IV again, and let's
pause it in the middle of a wiggle here.
Let me pause it, yeah.
Oh my goodness.
AUDIENCE: You got it to stand.
DAN COFFEY: Thanks, Ralph.
OK.
So look how everything just kind of warps.
And it's more than just motion blur.
It's kind of bending the whole image.
And when you see this rapidly put together,
it gives us this Jell-O effect, for the whole frame kind of looks like jelly.
And you really notice it very much with vertical straight lines in particular.
Not all sensors are created equal.
I find that the 5D Mark IV is not very good.
The early versions of the Sony a7S camera, also not very good.
But the more money you kind of spend on a sensor, typically the more
reduced this effect is.
But why do we care?
This is an interesting thing.
It could be used for something.
AUDIENCE: Or it could ruin your shot.
DAN COFFEY: Or it could ruin your shot.
Thank you.
That's exactly it.
Like, if you are trying to follow somebody across the screen
and they start to bend on you, that's not something
that you might necessarily want.
Maybe it is, but it's a limitation that we need to be aware of.
IAN SEXTON: Or if something's moving even faster too,
you'll end up with more pronounced warpage based off the rolling shutter
effect.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
And so there are software tools to reduce this.
We're not going to talk about those too much in this class.
But really it's kind of a warning that you
should be aware of what the limitations of your camera are
and whatever camera you're using.
I encourage you to actually do this.
Set the camera up to 24 frames per second, 1 over 48 shutter speed,
and just wiggle it back and forth and see how much rolling shutter you have,
shutter roll.
Because on some cameras, they're kind of just egregious at this.
Like, the a7S Mark I was just horrendous if you were doing any kind of pan.
So it's just something to be aware of, and again, nothing to do with shutter.
Yes, Ralph?
AUDIENCE: What would happen if this was shot at 24 frames per second,
but at 192?
DAN COFFEY: Shutter speed?
AUDIENCE: Yeah, would there still be a Jell-O effect?
DAN COFFEY: Yes.
AUDIENCE: Really?
DAN COFFEY: Yes.
Because let me explain why.
AUDIENCE: I'm so curious.
DAN COFFEY: So what's actually happening here
is that a rolling shutter does this.
It kind of has this activation phase--
let's pretend this is your whole image.
And so it gets activated.
And then once the exposure is complete, we have this kind of deactivate
and save to disk that happens.
IAN SEXTON: So there's a pixel array on your sensor.
And it activates line by line.
And so it starts as the screen bar moves down, activating each line,
and then reads off as the red bar moves down.
AUDIENCE: And that's why the vertical lines show.
IAN SEXTON: Yeah, because during that time,
something can move, change position.
DAN COFFEY: You're literally watching time bend.
IAN SEXTON: Whereas this reads off--
lets everything fill in and then reads off.
AUDIENCE: Does the Red Epic Dragon, or the Red cameras, have global shutters?
DAN COFFEY: No, they have rolling shutters.
And you saw it a little bit.
You said, when we saw the camera wiggle, there's a little bit there
but it's much less pronounced.
So most cameras have this technology in them.
AUDIENCE: Is that just software that makes it more--
DAN COFFEY: It has to do with the actual physical sensor in the electronics
in the sensor itself.
But--
IAN SEXTON: Well, so it is hardware, but it also
is the circuitry in the software of the hardware components interacting
with each other.
So to answer your question.
AUDIENCE: So more expensive--
IAN SEXTON: Yeah, that's exactly.
AUDIENCE: --better quality.
DAN COFFEY: But let's go back to--
let's see.
Let's go back to this slide for a second.
This is an old--
what is the shutter called, the round one?
I'm just trying to remember what the circle shutter is called.
But did this have a rolling shutter effect too?
I mean, think about it, this disk spins around.
Let me go back to the graphic where it's actually spinning.
So as this spins, part of the frame--
notice the point here.
So part of the frame is exposed, and then part of it is covered up.
Would it have the same effect?
AUDIENCE: Yes?
IAN SEXTON: Well, so is the top right corner
and the bottom left corner exposed at the same time or at different times?
AUDIENCE: Well, it would depend where the shutter is.
So if the shutter is covering some of it, then no.
IAN SEXTON: Well, so which corner is exposed first?
AUDIENCE: The top.
IAN SEXTON: Yeah.
So what that means, it basically is exposing this part, and then
some amount of time later, it's exposing this part.
So it's just like the way the rolling shutter is rolling down.
It's sort of reading the data from the top of the frame
and then sometime later reading the data from the bottom.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] top to bottom.
IAN SEXTON: Yeah.
Well, yeah, exactly.
The shape is different, but it's the same sort of effect
where one part of the frame is read before another part of the frame,
or exposed before another part of the frame.
DAN COFFEY: Still exposed for the same amount of time.
IAN SEXTON: Right, just at different times,
which is sort of the part where you get that--
you can introduce the Jell-O and sort of the motion blur
that comes from a rolling shutter.
DAN COFFEY: So you don't even avoid it with this.
So actually, the Red is probably a really good match to what old style
rolling shutter would look like.
AUDIENCE: So I saw--
OK, there's two sides or different shutters.
There was the old shutters and the global.
DAN COFFEY: Yep.
And so again, we're talking about different sets of technology.
And I don't want to spend too much time on this
because we're already into the weeds.
But it's kind of good to understand why this happens with your camera.
And so this is an explanation of why.
There is a technology called global shutters,
which are typically CCD based.
And Alec, if I did get that backwards I apologize,
because I think I chastised you on that one.
But with the global shutter, all the pixels activate at the same time.
And then it kind of takes longer to save.
But the exposures between these two are equivalent.
It's just that with the rolling shutter on the left,
as these pixels activate, you can see each row kind of gets brighter
over time, whereas it all happens at the same exact time on the global shutter.
But these are meant to be running in parallel so that this one is just
saving data during part of the time, where
this one is exposing different portions of the sensor, if that makes sense.
If this is confusing you, don't worry about it.
The key thing to know is that if you wiggle your camera back and forth
or you pan too quickly, you might get this bend effect.
That is really the heart of what this is all about.
And just to paint one more picture of what's happening here,
this is a nice image from Wikipedia.
So on the left is the action that's happening,
and on the right is the equivalent of the rolling shutter
actually writing the image out.
So as this kind of goes across, the car goes across, it just kind of bends.
So a helpful explanation.
And this is a graphic that animates if you click on this in the slides.
All right.
We are an hour in here.
I think this is a good place to take a little five minute break.
And we'll come back and we'll talk about the more practical things
about video production.
All right, guys.
Welcome back.
So we just finished our conversation about frame rates and shutter
speeds and rolling shutter and all that kind of stuff.
Hopefully you have some good takeaways.
What frame rate should you start with for a cinematic look?
24 frames per second.
Shutter speed of 1/48 of a second.
Great.
Let's move on to moving the camera.
We have this interesting thing that's happening
where we're now dealing with time.
It's no longer just one frame at a time.
We have to consider the movement of our camera.
Is it going to stay static?
Are we going to move it from place to place?
What does our starting frame look like?
And what does our ending frame look like?
And the in-between frames as well--
I didn't put up a graphic for that.
But in the same way that we kind of name our shot sizes,
we also name our camera movements so that we can all be on the same page
as we work with different crews and whatnot.
So we have some images here to kind of describe
the way that we move the camera.
So the first up, what is this one called?
One of the simplest camera movements, side to side.
Anybody?
We got any answers on the internet?
IAN SEXTON: No, but I'm sure someone out there knows.
Panning from Lindsay, yeah.
DAN COFFEY: Panning, yes.
So this is a camera pan, exactly.
From side to side.
All right, here's a clip from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
We are panning across with his car, cut into the garage, we have another pan.
So along the horizontal axis, side to side.
And so with this clip, for example, why is
panning more interesting than just cutting from one
fixed shot to another shot?
Why pan?
AUDIENCE: To see the environment.
DAN COFFEY: We get more environment.
And it's also not given to us all at once necessarily.
We kind of follow the subject along in this case.
So one reason.
All right.
So if side to side is panning, what is up and down?
AUDIENCE: Tilt.
DAN COFFEY: Tilting.
Thank you, Max.
You're cheating.
All right, so this is tilting the camera.
And sometimes you'll hear somebody say pan up with your camera.
That's technically incorrect.
It's actually tilt up.
And again, if we're working with a crew and we say,
hey, your shot is a little bit low, I want you to tilt up a little bit,
everybody should know exactly what you mean by that.
All right, so up and down is tilt. So here's
an example from The Return of the Jedi.
All right.
And a short little clip.
But why did they tilt there, do you think?
What did it do for us as a viewer?
Yeah, let me play it back.
So we've got this kind of shot that establishes this carbonite being here.
Why make that choice versus something else?
AUDIENCE: Keeps you engaged, to see what's happening.
DAN COFFEY: It's more engaging.
In the same way a pan kind of brought us across our landscape,
this kind of unfolds how complicated this device is.
It's a bit more mysterious.
AUDIENCE: It would have been terrible if his hands went out of frame.
DAN COFFEY: It would've been terrible--
AUDIENCE: Because it's just what happened.
DAN COFFEY: In a wide shot, you wouldn't have all the detail of all this, right?
IAN SEXTON: So Olivia is saying that it sort of follows the motion,
but then it also gives you a perspective of the size of this object.
There's some revealing too.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah, absolutely.
All right, we'll get into some of the more fun camera
moves that are harder to do.
What is this one called, the camera literally moving in and moving out?
What is this called?
AUDIENCE: Oh, man.
DAN COFFEY: Ralph is shaking his head.
AUDIENCE: I got nothing.
DAN COFFEY: Anybody?
AUDIENCE: Dolly?
DAN COFFEY: Dolly, yes.
This is a camera dolly.
You either dolly in towards your subject or dolly out and widen out.
We looked at the dolly zoom last week, where you do this in combination
with zooming the lens of your camera out, which has a wild effect.
I don't have that in this week's slides, but go back
to Ian's lecture two weeks ago now, and you can see the dolly zoom.
All right, shall we look at an example?
This is from Alien.
AUDIENCE: 1979.
DAN COFFEY: A nice slow dolly in here.
AUDIENCE: It's very smooth, very nice.
DAN COFFEY: Very smooth.
Cool, so I'm seeing some oohs and ahs in the room here.
But why?
Why not just pan over and show us the room?
What is it that actually happens here?
What happens to our shot size?
What is this shot size?
AUDIENCE: Wide.
DAN COFFEY: Wide, right?
It give us a sense of--
AUDIENCE: Scale?
DAN COFFEY: Scale, but the environment.
We see the whole facade of this door.
We're seeing it out of context of the rest of the movie,
so I'm sure there's more information to see.
But in this case, then what happens?
What is our shot size here?
AUDIENCE: That's sneaky.
I didn't notice any of this.
This is a close up.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
I mean, it's closer.
It's kind of hard to say.
It's close up, a close shot.
And then we actually change again.
What are we back to here?
AUDIENCE: A wide--
DAN COFFEY: A wide frame, right?
AUDIENCE: Do they zoom at all?
Or is it set like that perfectly?
DAN COFFEY: Oh, my guess is there's no zoom here.
This is probably just a fixed lens.
But it's much more dramatic a reveal, right?
We're kind of creeping in as a viewer into this space, this bizarre space.
And actually physically moving in, we're now thinking about, instead of one
still image, it's our place over time, our position over time,
and our understanding of the space changes as we get closer to it.
And it's a very different feeling than if we were just to cut from a wide shot
to cut to a close up.
We've got this unpacking along the way.
So you have to think about over the course of your shot
what does your camera see?
You don't want to start on a strong frame and then end with whatever.
You want to go from strong frame to strong frame.
But that's not the only way to use a dolly shot, of course.
How about this example?
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- Pucker up, Buttercup.
- What?
- Ferris Bueller's on line two.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
DAN COFFEY: All right.
So this is a comedic moment here from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
And we don't need to unpack the rest of the movie to kind of understand
visually what happens here.
But we go from what shot size is this?
AUDIENCE: Medium close up.
DAN COFFEY: Medium close up right, we're from the chest up to the head.
I would say that's a medium close up.
We come to more of a close up shot as he sits up.
But then we get some news that changes something for our character,
and we go from close up to almost extreme close up.
We're now cropping the top of the head and the bottom of the chin.
And, I mean, we've talked about this before when we've
talked about different shot sizes.
But what does this do for us as a viewer?
AUDIENCE: Connect.
DAN COFFEY: It connects us with him, right?
His eyes are much larger, so we kind of get a better read on his emotion.
So in this case, dollying in has really brought us right up
to feel what he feels with this awkwardness,
and there's this silly element of sound design, the horn kind of going, wow!
But much more effective than just staying on--
sorry.
By the end of this lecture, I will be really good at using my keyboard.
AUDIENCE: No pressure.
DAN COFFEY: Much more effective than just staying on this shot
and having the same sound design trick.
Actually moving the camera in and being closer to our subject
has done something different for us.
So moving the camera in this case I think really helps this moment.
All right.
So instead of in and out, how about side to side?
It's called a truck.
AUDIENCE: No way.
DAN COFFEY: Yep, side to side.
AUDIENCE: I was thinking dolly left to dolly right.
That's so funny.
DAN COFFEY: So yeah.
But again, same thing, if you said dolly left,
we'd probably all know what you meant with that.
But for the sake of clarity, truck left means my left.
I'm going to move this way.
Or truck right means move this way.
So just terms--
Ian, do you have any history on this one?
I don't know where the term actually comes from.
AUDIENCE: I wasn't even going to ask.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
So that's trucking left, trucking right.
All right, so we'll get some more Ferris Bueller examples here.
AUDIENCE: This is common in movies.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
IAN SEXTON: Good tracking shot.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah, kind of following along.
But again, what is more interesting about this movement than, say, a pan?
AUDIENCE: You're part of it.
You're with it.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah, we stay with him.
That's a really good point.
So always consider the effect.
All right, this one, like this.
AUDIENCE: It's a ped.
DAN COFFEY: Yep, a ped or a pedestal.
AUDIENCE: Are you serious?
DAN COFFEY: Yep.
So that's physically moving the camera up and down like this.
Here's a shot, another Ferris Bueller's Day Off reference.
AUDIENCE: Oh, that's perfect.
DAN COFFEY: But, I mean, this one camera movement
has done so much for us in this moment.
The end is they just cut to the reverse shot of the car.
So talk me through this.
Why is this the right choice here?
Or is it the right choice here?
Why not do something else?
To that point, this is all subjective.
We're watching what somebody has done.
But you absolutely could have chosen something else.
You could have dollied into this shot and then pedded up.
You could have cut from a low shot to their faces.
Any thoughts on why this is more effective?
AUDIENCE: The timing of everything.
DAN COFFEY: Timing is a big part of it.
AUDIENCE: And then the doors opening--
come on, it was excellently executed.
DAN COFFEY: I think Ian hit it on the head.
You kind of anticipate this.
You're like, what's going on here, as you see this frame.
IAN SEXTON: That's Olivia.
DAN COFFEY: Olivia?
Yeah.
I think it's a really good insight there, Olivia.
All right, we have one more camera movement.
What is this direction?
And so this is a combination of both trucking left and right
and then dollying in and out.
So you kind of move in this shape here.
AUDIENCE: I'm sure it has a silly name.
DAN COFFEY: It doesn't.
It's kind of self-descriptive, actually.
IAN SEXTON: Yeah, it's the one that doesn't.
DAN COFFEY: It's called an arc.
This is arc left, arc right.
And you typically kind of see these go in a more full circle,
or at least 180 degrees, typically slightly longer shots.
So let's look at an example.
This is from Interstellar.
Here's another arcing shot, which comes right after that.
And yet another arc.
So I think it's interesting.
Because I think that those two arcing shots we just saw do different things.
I guess I left the whole clip in here, so we'll back up.
What does this one do?
AUDIENCE: It makes you want to-- it makes you see or feel
that there's so much more around.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah, it kind of reveals the expanse of the environment,
makes you feel it's kind of endless, in a way that just a wide shot wouldn't
have done for us, right?
AUDIENCE: It would be pretty bland.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
And then once we've kind of come into this conversation that's happening
inside the room here, what is it--
how does this kind of keep the shot, keep the conversation moving for us?
We can't even hear them, but--
AUDIENCE: It kind of makes you feel involved.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah, so it kind of makes you feel involved.
IAN SEXTON: What does it do to the space?
It's the same exact camera movement, but it's done--
AUDIENCE: Tight.
IAN SEXTON: Yeah, it sort of collapses the space
and makes it much more intimate, this sort
of conversation and claustrophobic.
And we're in between people as we arc around.
Whereas the first one, it showed how big everything was.
And then the same camera movement just collapses everything.
So context matters a little bit.
DAN COFFEY: Absolutely.
AUDIENCE: I hope our final projects don't have to look at this.
DAN COFFEY: And you'll notice too, oftentimes you'll see--
if they're going to cut together arcing shots like this,
you're working in the same direction.
So you very rarely will reverse the direction.
And the same thing goes for pans.
I don't have any slides about this, but you don't typically
pan in one direction and then pan back.
Because what's the point of that?
You've already shown us this information.
Why are we seeing it again?
So when you pan, start at your starting point, end at your ending
point, and there's no reason to then double back.
Like, my mom does this for example.
If she watches this video, I'm sorry, Mom.
But she'll want to show this beautiful landscape,
so she'll show it to you once and then show it to you again.
And you're not really getting anything new.
IAN SEXTON: You're in trouble.
DAN COFFEY: Probably.
All right, quiz time.
What's the first one here?
Not Ralph.
Say it louder.
I just can't here.
AUDIENCE: Pan.
DAN COFFEY: Pan.
AUDIENCE: Tilt.
DAN COFFEY: Tilt.
AUDIENCE: Dolly.
DAN COFFEY: Dolly.
AUDIENCE: Ped.
DAN COFFEY: Ped, pedestal.
No, I didn't actually--
I don't think we did this one.
I skipped one.
AUDIENCE: Roll.
DAN COFFEY: Roll, yeah.
So I'll update the slides and put this in.
But it literally is when you tilt the camera like this.
It's just called a roll.
I don't have a clip.
I missed it.
I'm sorry, Ralph.
All right, moving physically side to side.
AUDIENCE: Truck.
DAN COFFEY: Truck.
And then the last one that we just saw at the end
where we kind of made this fun motion.
AUDIENCE: Arc.
DAN COFFEY: Arc, all right.
So let's talk about camera support now.
We've seen all these kind of fun moves that you can do.
You've seen some very expensive technology actually
move the camera around.
But do you need to have that expensive technology to do these camera moves?
That's a question for the ages.
So one of the most basic camera supports that you're going to use is a tripod.
And you may or may not have access to these.
But we see a tripod in a couple of different configurations.
But it comes down to the actual legs of the tripod.
This is called the tripod head.
If you're shooting video, there are different heads
than what you might use for photos.
And actually, give me one second.
Let me just grab an example of this.
So this is a nice lightweight portable tripod.
And it's got a quick release head so that you can easily
change your angle very quickly.
But if I wanted to pan on this, would this be a good tripod for this?
No, not really.
This is a still photo tripod head, and it's meant for one frame at a time.
IAN SEXTON: Setting your frame and then changing your frame
and setting your frame for single shots.
DAN COFFEY: This is a fluid head tripod head which is really
what you want if you're doing video.
They get very expensive, but on the low end side of things,
it will still make a world of difference compared to trying to do it handheld
or without a head that doesn't have any kind of fluid motion to it.
So on the top of this, we have a quick release plate.
This comes off very quickly so that you can change your camera out.
This attaches to the bottom of your camera.
Slide it in.
I'm gonna check this one out later.
I probably put it in backwards, but I'm going
to pretend I didn't for the sake of the class.
So this would swap out.
I take this head off of this tripod, these tripod legs,
and then put this on.
And then we have a tripod head that is made for video.
And I don't have the pan bar, but usually you often have a bar hanging
off the side of it-- it's called a pan bar, pan arm--
so that you can turn the tripod head as well
without having to touch your camera.
Those are your basic tripods.
All right.
When you want to travel more lightweight--
let me back up for a second.
When you're shooting on a camera that's very small,
like a DSLR or a mirrorless camera, they're just so typically lightweight,
which is really nice if you're carrying them around.
But when your hands shake from holding it, you see it in the footage often.
And there is certainly a camera stabilization
that exists in sensors and lenses and whatnot
that will produce this vibration.
But oftentimes with a small light camera,
it just becomes harder to actually hold it and shoot video
because everything shakes so much.
So that's why we're talking about camera support.
IAN SEXTON: So it's different from the concept of motion blur.
It's just that because you have frame after frame
you can see the actual movement of the camera,
and it just sort of bounces around there.
AUDIENCE: Like the first shot in Saving Private Ryan.
IAN SEXTON: Yeah, that was very--
and on purpose, right, to make it handheld
and feel really frenetic and crazy.
So you can use it to your advantage if you want to.
DAN COFFEY: But I would say what I'm describing is kind of hard to pinpoint.
And I should have put a clip of it in.
I'm sorry I didn't.
But it's simply just holding a very lightweight camera in your hands
and trying to move with it, everything shakes
in a way that is not the same as what you saw from Saving Private Ryan.
Because that camera was probably a giant camera that was on someone's shoulder
and is stable because it's got a body actually stabilizing it.
But there's something different about holding it
in your hands and just the shake of your hands as you hold it,
and something that's so lightweight.
So as you go shoot, you might see this if you're
shooting handheld, which is fine but just something to be aware of.
So easy ways to kind of prevent the camera shake, use a tripod,
use a monopod.
This is one leg of a tripod that you can kind of pivot around on too,
so it's kind of nice because you can get a little bit more of a handheld feeling
with it, but not as much as just holding the camera on its own.
But what's the downside to a tripod and a monopod, though,
if we think back to our list of camera moves?
It keeps us pretty static.
It's hard to take this tripod and do a trucking shot.
Like, if I try to pull this along the stage,
you can see how much this tripod head vibrates.
That's not the right tool for the job.
AUDIENCE: That's a fail.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah, exactly.
All right, handheld-- this is if you actually
hold your camera as we describe.
But this is the kind of shake I'm describing.
So I will say, if you're going to hand-hold your camera,
use yourself as a tripod as much as possible.
Take your elbows, suck them right into your body,
and try to have as much contact as you can
so that your camera moves as little as possible.
Don't try to hold it out.
Like, you can't really see with their elbows are doing,
but don't try to hold it out like this, because then
the entire extension of your arms is going to shake your frame.
So bring your elbows in, and hold the camera as close to your body
as possible.
A shoulder rig-- if you've got a little bit more money to spend,
you might get something like this.
You might rent something like this.
But at its most basic, there's a platform for a camera
to sit on, some rods to kind of put it along and have
a shoulder pad for your shoulder, and some handles to hold onto it.
It's most basic.
And then you kind of get the stability of a much larger camera
rig but with your much smaller camera.
These tend to be low hundreds of dollars,
so not achievable for everybody.
But the next step up in stability from just holding it in your hands.
A dolly, what shot do we probably get with a dolly?
AUDIENCE: Truck?
DAN COFFEY: That's not the first one.
Dolly, right?
That's the first one you would think.
And so dollies take different forms, but their anatomy at its most basic
is some kind of track and some kind of wheel system
that rides along the track.
This is a very fancy advanced dolly with a very big camera on it
that has another arm that kind of booms up and down,
or gives us the head movement up and down.
But it doesn't have to be this fancy.
There are tabletop sliders like this which are also fairly inexpensive,
or things that you can rent.
And the idea is the same, right?
So you've got your video tripod head on it, and it slides side to side,
or you can have it go in and out so you can get a dolly or a truck shot
from something like this as well.
And much more stable than trying to hold it in your hand
and move along like this.
So related but unrelated, action cameras and drones are kind of all the rage
these days.
What's nice about drones in particular is that they tend to be stabilized.
They have this electronic gimbal on them that adds stability and gives you
a beautiful, smooth shot.
We also have, for getting more interesting shots
like this, the camera that can actually attach to your forehead,
an action camera called GoPro.
What might be the downside of a little tiny camera like this?
AUDIENCE: Tiny sensor.
DAN COFFEY: Tiny sensor, exactly.
That's one thing.
GoPros have 4K resolution, but what good is 4K resolution
if your sensor is that small?
You need to have what to make it look good?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAN COFFEY: A lot of light.
Exactly, Ralph.
So if you don't have daylight, it's going
to be hard to get good low light performance.
One of the newer things that's come out is the electronic gimbal.
The one on the left here is called the Movi.
It was one of the first to market.
But there are all kinds now like this that can hold your camera.
And they're usually-- this kind is usually sub $1,000.
But really, it's very interesting to see what it does.
And I think this is really some of the breakthrough technology
that we're seeing in our time for actually moving a camera around,
because you can get so much versatility out of it.
This is my fun analogy to a movie.
All right.
So let's take a look at a side-by-side comparison
of a shot that is stabilized with a gimbal and a shot that is handheld,
just to get a sense of how much smoother it can be.
It's kind of crazy.
The right feels more like The West Wing.
The left kind of feels like your cousin picked up a camera
and followed somebody down the stairs.
All right.
Let's look at this shot and see if we can guess how this was done.
All right.
So we'll call this the end of the shot.
Any guesses as to how this was pulled off?
What piece of hardware or pieces of hardware might have been involved?
AUDIENCE: Maybe a drone.
DAN COFFEY: Maybe a drone.
IAN SEXTON: Drone.
DAN COFFEY: OK, hearing a drone from the internet.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAN COFFEY: OK, we'll ignore that one for a moment.
Somebody knows the answer.
All right, let's watch a behind the scenes
of how this was actually captured.
AUDIENCE: No way.
One guy?
DAN COFFEY: I mean, it's kind of amazing how this technology has just changed
the game, for lack of a better word.
This has kind of revolutionized how easy it is to stay--
I mean, not everybody could ride a bike and hold a Movi at the same time.
Let's be honest.
But just the fact that you can change terrain like this.
Like, what would have taken--
like, how would you have even done this before?
You would have rented a helicopter and done it
that way, before drones existed.
You would have had a crazy dolly track setup.
And even then, the differential of terrain that you're going down,
I don't even know that you could have done it.
IAN SEXTON: Well, they've done lots of stuff
before with steady cams where they run onto lifts and get lifted up
so you can change floors and things like that.
But yeah, I don't really think--
not on this terrain, you couldn't do it.
AUDIENCE: And it's so uneven.
That's impressive.
It's simple.
DAN COFFEY: All this to say, there are cameras
you can buy now that are fairly inexpensive, too,
that are gimbals with a lens on them and a sensor.
So you don't even need something that you can put your camera into.
You can buy one of these that already exists in this format.
All right.
So for time's sake, let's move on.
Practically speaking, you're not going to go buy all this hardware right away.
Renting it might be out of reach too, potentially.
So what do we do?
AUDIENCE: Cry.
DAN COFFEY: No, I mean, I think that you do the best you can.
We talked about how to take a camera and hold it stably.
You know, tripods are pretty easy to come across.
But if you don't have a tripod, you can certainly set your camera down
on a table or something at the right height.
It just then becomes difficult to maybe pan or tilt.
But I think the thing is, you do the best you can.
You'll get an opportunity to use a nicer piece of equipment.
You take it, and you experience it.
And then you decide you can never go back.
Practically speaking, I think that you do the best you can.
IAN SEXTON: So I owned a wheelchair for a long time
that I got from a nursing home that was selling them off
that I would use on smooth floors like the stage or something like that.
And I would just sort of put the camera in my lap,
and we can dolly in and out really nicely.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
If you work in an office, even an office chair.
IAN SEXTON: So there are creative solutions.
There's been lots of shopping cart dollies over the years,
I'm sure, in a lot of student films and stuff like that.
It's hard to get rid of the bounce, though.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, and the noise.
How do you get rid of the noise?
IAN SEXTON: Yeah, so with shopping carts it's not easy.
You need a really smooth floor.
You could do it in--
you can't do it on concrete.
And then there's other dollies too, skateboard
dollies, that run on PVC pipe and things like that,
that are very low tech solutions to give you some movement.
AUDIENCE: So DIY, basically.
IAN SEXTON: Yeah.
There are some definite DIY solutions.
And then it gets as sophisticated as some of the stuff
that we saw there, with hydraulic booming arms and things like that.
DAN COFFEY: All right.
So we have two more pivots tonight before the class ends,
so we're going to keep moving on.
So let's talk about continuity, which is really the representation of time
through space.
The goal, typically, is smooth flow of time,
from moving a person across the screen, transitioning from one scene
to another.
We want to start to think about what direction people are entering
our frames from and maybe where they're going, the direction that they're
looking, and how do they exit as well.
Let's see.
Let me make sure I'm not going to lose anything here.
All right, so a few tips.
Just always be aware of that kind of thing as you're shooting.
If somebody comes in to your scene entering left to right,
you want to preserve that probably as they continue walking.
You don't want to cut to a shot where they're then immediately walking
the other direction.
We'll look at some examples of this.
Yeah, think about the transitions.
If you're going to have somebody come into your scene,
do they walk through a door?
Do they just walk in from out of frame?
What is their actual transition?
And then how do you transition from that scene to the next scene?
Does a person walk out of frame?
Does the person just stay standing there and you cut to the next scene?
Things to just start to consider as you put your scene together.
And I think one of the best ways to actually determine
what feels good for you is to just watch films, watch TV, and see what is done
and see what you like.
And if you break continuity, do so intentionally.
So we talked a little bit about preserving screen direction.
So one handy rule that is kind of the baseline for preserving continuity
is called the 180 degree rule.
Does anybody have a quick definition of what this is offhand?
All right.
Well, let's unpack it.
Let's first watch this scene with no sound
of a conversation between two people from Good Will Hunting.
So we have two people sitting in a room and talking.
We've got this kind of shot, reverse shot,
where we're seeing one half of the conversation,
and then we flip over the other person's shoulder
and see the other half of the conversation.
We're kind of going in closer, we're punching out wider,
depending on what's happening.
But this feels very natural, right?
Everybody's looking in the right direction.
So where would we put the cameras to actually capture this?
Think of this as a bird's eye plot.
Where would we put the camera?
AUDIENCE: Behind Matt Damon's right shoulder?
DAN COFFEY: All right.
So Ralph, you're saying here.
So where would you put the camera on the other side behind Robin Williams?
AUDIENCE: The same thing [INAUDIBLE].
DAN COFFEY: So over his right shoulder?
So this is his right shoulder?
AUDIENCE: Well, left shoulder.
DAN COFFEY: Left shoulder.
And why would you choose one versus the other?
AUDIENCE: No, I would shoot it through the same shelving.
DAN COFFEY: I'm kind of being vague and asking confusing questions to kind
of tease this out.
But this is what the 180 degree rule defines for us.
So what it is is this line between two characters looking.
Sometimes it's called the line of action.
But it's established by this kind of direction of the character's gaze.
And we need to kind of pick a side of the line to be on.
So we can pick this side, and we can pick this side.
They will both feel different, but we need
to stay on the same side of this line.
AUDIENCE: So don't break the line ever.
DAN COFFEY: There is intention to break the line,
but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
So you might put your camera on this side of Robin Williams.
And if we're staying on this side of the line, that means our camera behind Matt
Damon needs to go over here.
So there are two cameras.
And if we want to have a wide shot, where would we put that?
Tonya is pointing this way, this side of the line, right?
Yes.
So we put our wide shot back here if we're going to get both characters.
What would happen if we put a camera over here?
Let's visualize it, OK?
So if our camera is over here, this is the image we get.
We get Matt Damon in our foreground looking screen right, Robin Williams
frame right looking screen left, as far as their gaze goes,
which is appropriate with this picture that we're looking at.
If we look at the reverse shot, we've got the camera
over Robin Williams' shoulder.
So his camera is in the foreground frame right with Matt Damon frame left,
or frame center, but looking opposite directions.
If we put it over the other shoulder, what happens
is that his gaze direction flips, and they are now
both looking in the same direction.
So if you were to cut back-to-back to these,
it no longer feels like they're looking at each other.
They're both looking in the same direction
like they're talking to somebody else, and it's just very unnatural.
But when you're going to do your first set up,
if you've got multiple people in the room,
it's really easy to kind of confuse this and not
know exactly where to place the camera.
So it's important to think about what you
want is them to obviously look towards each other in the same direction.
And so it's important to kind of think about what that would look like as far
as look direction and whatnot.
So let's actually draw a little bit and come up with a couple of scenarios
here.
So let's say we have two people--
I'm drawing from overhead.
So that's someone's shoulders, that's their head, that's their nose.
Another person they're talking to, that's their head, that's their nose.
Where is our line of action, or 180 degree line?
Right through them, nose to nose?
Let's use a different color here.
We'll use red.
All right, great.
Where would we place our cameras?
AUDIENCE: The first one is our choice, right?
DAN COFFEY: Yeah one side or the other we should choose.
All right so we'll just say we'll put one here, we'll put one here,
and our wide shot would be over here.
Anything in this-- not hemisphere, this half of our area would be fine.
If we cross to the other side, it means that someone's going
to be looking in the wrong direction.
That is essentially what the 180 degree rule defines for us.
What happens if the setup gets a little bit more complicated?
Let's say here's our person.
And there's our person.
They're looking opposite of each other.
Go back to red.
AUDIENCE: The same line, I would assume.
DAN COFFEY: OK.
So I think that there are a couple of ways to cover it,
but yeah, I'd draw the same line as you.
AUDIENCE: Are they talking to each other?
DAN COFFEY: It depends.
Like, if they turn-- so this is what can affect our line.
If somebody looks in a different direction, that can change everything.
Or a glance-- like, if somebody else enters the scene,
and now you have three people talking.
IAN SEXTON: It's almost like if you and I were talking,
the line is between Dan and I. And then all of a sudden we turn to talk to you,
now there's another line here.
And so we basically have all of our cameras on this side of the line,
and now there's a line here, and we actually
have a bunch of cameras that are still over there.
So we're sort of maintaining our 180 degree,
but it would be really weird if we were talking, and all of a sudden
there was a camera flipped to the back here or something like that,
or this camera picked us up.
So it's really about the line of action, what's happening in the scene
and how are you covering it.
And the goal is to make coherent space.
Like, look direction and the direction people watch needs to be consistent,
or it's hard for us to understand actual volume
as represented as a sequence of shots, of two dimensional images
back to back to back to back.
DAN COFFEY: So I was going to draw three people,
but does that cover it enough for everybody?
Maybe we'll just draw it real quick.
So if we have three people, let's say these two
people start talking to each other--
forgive my poor drawing--
our line is like this.
And then person number three walks in like this.
Where does the line go?
Part of this depends on where we put the cameras to begin.
So let's say we have a camera here, a camera here, and then we pivot.
This is our wide shot as the other person walks in.
It can depend on who we follow too, something like that.
It really kind of depends on the setup and which shot you're following.
But it will feel--
you'll know it when you see it.
When you make your first cut that breaks this rule,
you will see it, because everybody will just be looking in the wrong direction.
All right.
Let's look at an example of this now.
Another clip from the same episode of Mr. Robot.
And they break this rule in here.
So see if you can spot it.
All right, maybe we can dim the lights for this one.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- But I can't.
Really, this was you.
You are seriously the best person I know.
You know that.
I love you so much.
Oh, my god, Elliot.
What the fuck?
- I'm sorry.
- What the hell is wrong with you?
- I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I thought-- I just--
I'm sorry.
- Oh, my god, Elliot.
Did you forget again?
Did you forget who I am?
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
DAN COFFEY: All right, so--
so let's draw what we're seeing here.
So we got two people talking to each other, person one, person two,
sitting like this.
Where are the cameras placed?
Let me do this, keep this in my hand.
AUDIENCE: Kind of on the right shoulder.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
And how far over are we, like if we think about--
we could get a shot from here, or we could get a shot from here.
Let's draw the line.
Where's the line between them?
Right there, yeah.
So when they turn to look all the way at each other, it's like this.
Let me draw this in red.
So at their most extreme when they're looking, that's our line.
And so we can go--
what we're saying with the 180 degree rule
is that we can place our cameras anywhere in this part,
because if we look at what they did, we're on this side of them.
We're on this side.
So the first camera is probably here, because we
have a lot in our foreground of Elliot, our character, with the background.
And so how extreme is the other angle on the reverse side?
Let me skip forward a little bit.
AUDIENCE: Almost the same.
DAN COFFEY: Almost the same.
Yeah, exactly.
So we're probably something like that.
And so there's balance there.
It'll be interesting to maybe put the camera here.
Would this be OK to do?
Or would we lose this person entirely?
Yeah, right, there's no rule around that,
but that would be a clean shot instead of having this person in the foreground
kind of dirtying our frame.
It just feels very different.
So it's very natural to kind of match our coverage here.
All right.
Do we have any other shots happening here?
So back and forth, back and forth, shot, reverse shot.
Here's another angle.
Where's this camera?
AUDIENCE: Bottom left.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah, just down here somewhere, right?
So those are the setups we've seen so far.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
DAN COFFEY: So where do the cameras go here?
AUDIENCE: I didn't notice at all.
DAN COFFEY: You didn't notice it?
AUDIENCE: No, I was looking for it, and I missed it.
DAN COFFEY: So this camera is kind of--
our subject here is her.
We're kind of over Elliot's shoulder slightly.
So let's just say this is Elliot.
That camera is like here, because they are flipped orientation wise.
And look at the background of what's going on.
That's the other tell for you.
We've been looking behind them as being kind of lights and city.
But as we flip here, there's this, and then bang.
There's the beach.
All of a sudden, totally different.
They're looking in opposite directions, the background is different,
everything about this was very jarring for us
as a viewer, which is kind of what's happening to him.
That might be the reason that they did this,
because this is a very kind of confusing moment.
And it's just this one shot.
After this, we go right back to where we were.
Now we're back to--
she's no longer in the frame.
Now we have this shot here.
Does that make sense?
IAN SEXTON: So like all things, it's most effective
when used very judiciously.
DAN COFFEY: Yep, exactly.
I point this out more to say try not to break this because, again,
exactly, use it judiciously.
It is hard to execute well.
And just to close it out, the last camera shot was from that angle there.
So for all intents and purposes, preserve screen direction
and look direction.
Keep it on one side of the line or the other.
They could have totally shot in the other direction
and had the beach in the background the whole time.
That would have been totally fine.
What would it have done, actually?
I'm curious.
Let's look at this for a second.
AUDIENCE: You would have lost the kicker lights on the side of the face.
DAN COFFEY: You would have lost the lights on the side of the face, OK.
But if we had put the cameras on the other side of them,
over this shoulder over here, where Ian is,
as far as their bodies' position goes, how would it be different?
AUDIENCE: It wouldn't be on the front.
We'd be seeing it from the back.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
But we'd be kind of behind them, which also feels very different.
And I don't have a clip of it to show you.
But it's more closed off, potentially.
Their bodies are kind of open to the camera here.
Even though they're overlapping in the frame,
think about where you put your camera in position to the conversation as well.
We feel less a part of the conversation and more alienated from it.
AUDIENCE: And so are you saying this is a bad example?
DAN COFFEY: No, no.
They did this intentionally, I think.
So it's more to show you how this can be used to effect.
But as you kind of get started, if it's your first time going out
to shoot a video, I find it's easier to kind of do this unintentionally.
And so it's--
AUDIENCE: So what should I think [INAUDIBLE]??
Like, if there was a time when maybe I realize it's not [INAUDIBLE]??
And it feels very awkward.
DAN COFFEY: It feels very awkward?
Yeah.
But this is subjective.
Like, maybe you think, wow, what are they doing?
They totally messed up.
My guess is it's intentional.
IAN SEXTON: Well, I think we can look at--
the moment is this matches the narrative intent of the scene,
sort of like a big psychological switch with this character.
And in doing so, to sort of see the confusion
and sort of make us sort of jump a little bit,
they broke the visual continuity.
And there's this sort of, something's different, something's wrong,
people flipped direction.
You're a little bit confused.
And then they go back.
And so in this instance, it matches the narrative intent,
which is what we're sort of talking about all through this course.
But when you're setting up a scene where it's just Dan
and I talking about what we had for breakfast, if you jumped the line,
there's no narrative to match that to.
Now it's a mistake.
And so just being aware of how to properly show
a scene that's coherent and then when you can change it to sort of
give your narrative some punch or something like that.
DAN COFFEY: Yeah.
Etienne, right?
The question, is it too much punch?
That is subjective.
And absolutely for you it might be too much.
For me it might not be.
But I think that is kind of where we come at it as viewers.
And at the end of the day, you need to go out and just make something and let
your audience decide if it works or not too.
But at the end of the day, make it for yourself.
And if you're happy with it, that's really the most important thing.
So it can be broken intentionally.
But it is foundational and fundamental to understand
for how you establish relationships between people,
and make sure that your viewer understands who's talking to who.
But know that it can be changed by somebody else walking in
or something else happening and your character
glancing in another direction.
So just be aware and give it some thought.
I'm going to blow through a few more slides here.
The 20% or 30% rule.
This basically says, when you're changing
from one shot to another, change things by more than 20%.
Let's see-- I think I have an example of this.
So you want to change either your focal length or your zoom level
or the access of your camera.
So don't cut to a shot from here to the same shot
size from the same position of something slightly different right.
So if you're covering this flying car taking off,
for example, what you don't want to do, once it starts moving,
is cut to the same size thing.
This feels like a jump cut.
What you want to do is cut from a car taking off
to something that's 20% or 30% different, whether it's
the size of the car, whether it's the angle of view,
the position of the camera.
You want to cut to something that's just very different so that it doesn't
feel like a jump cut and feel awkward.
You can feel in the first version of this just how awkward the cut was.
So I think it's kind of a stretch here with the flying car.
But if you're shooting people, you don't want
to cut from a medium shot to a medium shot of the same person
from a different angle.
You want to change that shot, or you want to change the position,
or cut to the reverse shot first.
All right, let's talk about actually covering a scene.
How do you go about--
let's say you're going to work with an actor and a camera operator,
and you've got a crew at your disposal.
How might you cover the scene?
You know you want to shoot it a few different ways,
get a few different angles.
You might use something called the master shot and coverage approach.
And that is where you know you're going to shoot this several times.
So you shoot a wide shot of the scene, and shooting the wide shot first
is helpful versus shooting the close ups,
because it gives your actors a chance to kind of practice the movement.
You're not going to notice the discrepancies in performance
as they kind of work it out if you're on the wide shot.
And then you want to work your way in on each side of the scene.
So this is your coverage of the scene.
So you've got your master shot or your wide shot.
And then let's say you've got two people talking next to each other.
You want the coverage of person one.
And then you're going to get, let's say, the medium shot of them
doing the same action, repeating the same scene.
And then maybe you go in for the close up of the same thing.
And think back to our super coverage homework that you did,
when you had multiple shot sizes to choose from.
We shot this in the same way.
And then after you get person one, you might flip to the other side
and shoot person two.
So you start with your medium shot of them
and then you move to your close up shot of them.
That is the master shot and coverage approach to covering a scene.
You work your way in from one side, then the other.
This is where you have control, and you can do it multiple times.
What if you're going to get a building blowing up being demolished?
You can't really do that multiple times, right?
So there's another method called the overlapping method.
And this is much more akin to documentary or something
where you just have much less control.
And so the idea is that you start with your establishing shot,
but you don't go through the whole scene.
So maybe this is where you have a wide shot of the building.
You've got your construction vehicles pulling up.
You kind of pause the action.
You say, hold on a second, construction crew.
You go up, you get the guy coming out of the bulldozer and the wrecking ball.
You get a close up shot of him kind of coming out of the truck.
Action progresses a little bit.
And then you back up to your super wide shot for the actual building dropping.
You're kind of shooting this all sequentially, where
you leave padding between where you can actually
overlap the action that you're seeing so that you
have room to actually make an edit.
So two different kind of styles for covering scenes.
Change the position in the next segment, and then repeat.
So two different styles depending on what you're covering.
For further reading on all of this kind of thing,
this is a great resource, the DSLR Cinematography Guide.
It is free.
You just have to sign up for their newsletter.
There's a link at the bottom of this slide.
But it covers everything about getting started in video production.
And it's a really easy read.
They cover everything that we've kind of covered in this course so far as well.
But they specifically are good for video.
All right, we are pretty much out of time.
I have some slides on here for doing some production.
I just want to touch on a couple of them.
And then the rest of them are really just assets for you
to have as you go out and start doing actually shooting.
Budget we're just going to wave our hand at for now, because at this point
your budget can be $0 for this class.
We don't expect that you are spending much on anything.
All right, shot list and visual translations.
A shot list is really important, I think,
because it'll make sure that you don't miss anything when you go out to shoot.
So there's a link to this example here, if you want to use this template.
But you number your shots, you list what the subject is going to be,
what shot size you want it to be.
You know, you can figure out-- put as much detail or as little detail
as you want.
But the idea is that this is a spreadsheet that'll
kind of help you understand what it is you need to get,
so when you get to your location and you're ready to shoot,
you can literally go down and say, OK, did we get this shot,
did we get this shot, did we get this shot?
And in production, when you're planning your shoot,
you can think about what kind of shots it is that you want to get.
I realize this is a really fast overview,
but I want to get to storyboards in particular.
The other thing that I recommend as you're
starting to piece together what it is you're going to do is make storyboards.
And that is literally where you draw the key frame of each shot
as you go through your sequence.
You can add arrows to kind of show, hey, I
want the camera to kind of move in and get closer here.
So you get a sense of the scale and position of the characters.
And if you're working with a crew, this is really handy
to show your camera operator and say, hey,
this is kind of what I'm imagining for the shot.
So really handy.
I think it's pretty straightforward to describe.
But then your shot numbers can match your shot list
so that you can have a very quick translation between your shots.
So some good examples here from our friend, Dean.
A camera plot.
We kind of did this on the big whiteboard
here, as we kind of figured out where we wanted to place cameras.
But it's helpful to figure out where your line of action is going to be.
And so if, again, you're shooting a scene, let's say, for this class
or for your first narrative piece that you want to go do,
helpful to do this for each kind of setup that you're going to do.
Just draw it out.
Locations again-- I'm going to wave my hand at this stuff.
This is more to have some resources.
But there are certain things you want to think about when you go and actually
are trying to get a location, and you're going to bring a crew to it
in particular, like where are the bathrooms, is it close to an airport,
is there air traffic going by overhead for sound, how much power is there,
is there Wi-Fi--
all those kinds of questions you want to ask.
This checklist is just something to take with you so that you can remember
to check off all the boxes as you go.
If you are working with more than one or two other people,
it's helpful to have a call sheet.
This is just one page of information that you
would send out to the crew about the details of your shoot.
So you've got a sound guy, you've got a makeup person, you've got your actors,
you've got a camera crew.
It starts to become helpful to have all this information in one place.
So again, just a template that you can download and look at a little bit
beyond the scope of this class, but just to know
what happens when you get with slightly bigger productions.
This is the bottom half of the same sheet.
And a contact sheet.
Any old spreadsheet will do.
But again, just giving you some template resources for this kind of thing.
We got asked about this early on in the class, a talent release form.
Here's kind of a generic one to use.
Depending on the needs of your production, you may or not need this.
It's basically getting someone's permission
to use them if you're going to publish your media.
For the sake of this class, everything is
going to stay private and just within this class.
But after this, you might want to release your project to the world.
And you should have permission for that.
And so this is kind of a generic release form
that will kind of grant permission.
Again, you can download this-- it's from a website--
and use it as you see fit.
And this, this is really helpful.
So I think that if nothing else for this class,
you should print this out and take it with you.
And you may not need everything on this list,
but it will at least make you think about what you're going to do.
Because the worst thing to do is to get ready for a shoot, get your actor,
whoever you're working with there, and not have something.
Or you forgot your batteries, or you forgot your media card.
And it happens to all of us, but it is totally preventable.
And make a checklist.
This is like Gear List Bingo.
Make sure that you can at least go through
and say, OK, I have all the pieces that I need out of this,
or the related pieces.
So again, another downloadable form that you can take and borrow
with you as you shoot.
So a few summarizing thoughts on the next slide,
but I'm not even going to read them to you.
You can read them off the slides.
And that concludes our intro to video production in this class.
The next assignment has been posted.
So if you want to take a look at that, feel free.
Are there any questions before we wrap things up tonight?
That was a speedy end to this.
I'm sorry to rush through it.
I just don't want to keep everybody late.
And we're happy to stick around and answer questions.
All right, if there's nothing, thanks for joining us tonight.
And we'll see you next week.