So my closest childhood friend
has a 15 year old stepson who's a huge fan of the show,
and he just took his first filmmaking class,
and he happens to be in LA on an eight-hour layover.
What could I possibly teach this young Padawan learner
about filmmaking in such a short amount of time?
(bell dings)
Yep, Uncle Josh, we're gonna get in some trouble.
(techno dance music)
Yo, yo, Josh Yo.
Whether you're a vlogger, videographer, filmmaker,
whatever you wanna call it, the most important tool
that you can develop is being resourceful.
Ingenious, capable, and full of initiative,
especially in dealing with difficulties.
And all the great filmmakers will tell you,
filmmaking is one difficulty after another.
Crap, I'm already late to pick up Elijah.
What up, dude?
Are you hungry?
Course you are.
(fast techno music)
Whoo, okay, it doesn't look like much, but we are
at a gold mine of unusual footage that you can score.
(fast techno music)
(airplane engines roaring)
It's like lunch and a movie.
All day.
(bell dings)
Today, we learn resourcefulness.
And also, In-N-Out.
So what makes this a great resource
is it's close to my home,
it has a wealth of material that's challenging
for me to shoot, forces me to hone my skills,
and the footage is not only cinematic,
but it's super useful.
Welcome to a fly over.
It's a treasure trove of cinematic material.
I mean, think about it, who doesn't need airplane shots?
Everyone needs an airplane shot.
So what can make this better?
How about an app that gives you
current (mumbles) of flights coming in?
(bell dings)
Because of this app, I know
when all the big boys are coming in.
Airbus 380, 747s, and the 777.
Those are the biggest commercial airliners currently.
(airplane engines roaring)
737, that's a small fry.
Oh, boy, I got a big one coming in right now.
From Seoul, Airbus A-380.
(airplane engines roaring)
(cheering)
So we got planes flying over, so how do we shoot this stuff?
Now, conventional wisdom would say tripod,
but I'm not really a tripod guy.
I got one tripod, and I already took it apart.
Today, we're gonna use a Gimbal.
(bell dings)
So we got the Sony A7III with an 85mm Zeiss Batis,
balanced on a Ronin-S.
We wanna maximize the screen time
of these airplanes coming in, they're coming in fast,
they're coming in at, like, 150 knots.
We're gonna shoot it at 120 frames per second
so that when we slow the planes flying over us,
it ends up being five times as slow
in a 24 frame (mumbles).
Everybody knows this already, right.
But the part about being resourceful
is really knowing your equipment in and out.
There's two forms of 120p on this camera,
and they're not created equal.
(bell dings)
So if you record 120p slo-mo using the S&Q function,
the camera is going to internally slow down
that footage for you and conform it
to whatever you select it to, 24p, 30p,
the problem is that when it does that,
it doesn't record audio.
We actually could use the audio
of the planes coming in to add texture
and ambience to our footage.
(airplane engines roaring)
So instead of doing the S&Q dial,
I'm gonna dive into the menu,
File Format, we're gonna hit XAVC HD,
and record setting 120p at 100 megabits per second.
Now we have 120p
with audio, and we know that
because we can see the little bars.
As a little side bonus, the bit rate recording
of this 120p is a little bit better than the S&Q version.
It's not much, and I have yet to see any real advantage
in playback smoothness or in color-grading,
but it makes me feel better knowing it's there.
I know, I told you guys to use S&Q for slo-mo
in my last Sony A7III video.
I (beep) up.
So there's a real fast way to access
this better version of 120p,
and that's by programming it to your custom button two.
First, let's make sure the dial mode is in movie mode,
we're gonna program all of the settings that we wanna copy.
So 120p at 100 megabits per second,
1/250 shutter speed, a decent F-stop, decent ISO.
Then what we're gonna do is hit menu,
we're gonna go to folder one, page three, memory,
and we're gonna select slot two.
We're selecting slot two because it's
only one click away from movie mode.
Now it's registered.
Boom, let's get to work.
All right, so the cool thing about this spot,
and it makes it even more resourceful...
(airplane engines roaring)
747.
Is we have an abundance of trees,
and we have things that can dirty our frame,
all these things that give us
extra information about what we're filming
that we can use later on in, like, stock footage.
Let's start simple, let's jump behind a tree,
we'll do some standard cinematic wipes,
and we'll see what we get.
(fast techno music)
Now, what if I wanted to sell
this footage on a stock website?
It's definitely searchable, right?
What key words could I use?
LAX, airplanes, airlines, southern California,
what can we use to give our shot some variation?
What other resources around here do you think we could use?
- That palm tree.
- That's not a bad idea, the palm tree!
(bell dings)
("Under the Sea" by Alan Menken)
(music winds to a stop)
Palm tree, done, we got enough of the tropical.
(chain link fence rattles)
Okay.
(chain link fence rattles)
(slow country music)
(music winds to a stop)
That actually kind of worked.
Kind of, I mean, music helps a lot.
Let's see what's next.
I have no idea where Elijah is.
Oh, this spot's amazing!
But I have the wrong lens on,
I have the 85mm, but really, what I need is the 70-200.
(bell dings)
So what I can do is I can toggle on my Super-35 crop mode,
Sony A7III can shoot both 1080p at 120 frames per second,
or 4K in Super-35 crop mode.
We can use Super-35 crop mode to punch in on our subject,
and because it has a 6K sensor,
you're actually not losing
any real resolution or information.
It's like a cheater way to zoom.
Super-35 gives you a 1.44 crop,
so toggling it on will turn this 85mm
to 122mm equivalent.
That totally worked!
So now, let's actually put a subject in the frame
and have the planes be the background.
I think it'll give us a whole different tone entirely,
be even more resourceful.
(bell dings)
If only I had a subject.
I don't think he likes being filmed that much.
You see, the problem is he just doesn't know
how cool of a kid he is.
I don't think anyone has ever really given him
that kind of platform before,
so the dude's just not camera-ready.
Maybe we just, like, splurge a little bit of resources
and get this kid camera-ready.
He just needs to see himself through other people's lenses.
(fast techno music)
(bell dings)
Job well done, and we got two hours
before we gotta get you back to the airport.
You like street art?
(fast techno music)
No, I'm not gonna let it ruin my day.
Nope.
All right, my man, you're good.
(car door slams)
What a great kid.
I'm trying this new stock footage site called BlackBox.
It basically communicates with all the other
stock footage sites so you only have to upload
your clips once, and then it (snaps fingers)
(blows air) uploads to everyone else, so let's try it.
If you guys wanna check it out,
link's in the description below.
Any of the clips that we shot today,
I opened it in Elijah's name,
if you licensed a clip for your travel vlog
or your documentary or whatnot,
you will help send this kid to college.
Anyway, this is Josh Yo saying
thank you very much, stay creative, now go make some art.
(phone ringing)
Yo, yo.
- [Andy] Josh, it's Andy from (mumbles) office,
I got the most expensive home in America
that I need to shoot in the next four days,
it's a billion dollars.
- It's a billion-dollar home?
- [Andy] It's a billion-dollar home.
I need it to hit the market next week,
so I need to shoot a video, like, now.
(music winds to a stop) - Holy sh--