- What's up everybody?
Peter McKinnon here and today it's a beautiful day outside,
but we're talking about setting the tone.
It's the second video in our ongoing series
of stepping up your filmmaking and, ooh,
I am excited, happy that you're here, happy that I'm here,
and happy that it's a beautiful day outside.
Roll intro.
(heavy guitar music)
Pete, you might be asking,
what do you mean by "set the tone?"
Well, I mean this, essentially setting the tone
is your first impression.
(upbeat hip-hop music)
When someone goes to a theater,
when they watch something on the internet, on Netflix,
on TV, the first couple scenes, the first couple minutes,
even seconds of that piece are going to set the
groundwork and set the tone for how your viewer
is going to feel emotionally, connection they have to it,
the mood, all of those things are portrayed
in the very first moments of watching anything online,
or in the theater or on TV.
So we want to make sure that we set the tone
to accurately depict what it is that we want
portrayed through the screen.
Frame rates, sound, music, color, light,
all of these things are what we need to take
into consideration, to keep in mind, to plan beforehand
so that we know exactly what we wanna get,
how to capture it and how to convey that.
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Okay, let's talk frame rates.
How does a frame rate set the tone?
How does it create a tone?
How does it make someone feel something different
just by changing the frame rate?
I'm gonna show you a sequence of clips that was shot
at 120 frames a second, and then I'm gonna show you
that same sequence at 24 frames a second.
I want you to visually see, without audio,
without any music, what the difference is,
how it makes you feel.
Think about those things, okay.
Here is the 24 frames a second clip.
Okay, say nothing, keep those thoughts.
Here's 120 frames per second.
Okay so you've seen both frame rates now.
How do they make you feel?
24 frames a second and the 120 frames a second.
The 120 frames a second feels a little more cinematic,
as we've talked about before,
it's a little more slow, methodical.
The 24 frames a second feels a little more like okay,
something's gonna happen and
something's gonna happen quickly.
Like this is going somewhere faster.
Whereas the 120 one you're like "eh this is slow"
might be a bit boring, there's no audio,
there's no music, what are we trying to say?
So just already by you watching the same thing
in a different frame rate, it's already
communicated to you a different feeling.
So when you're shooting something,
you're thinking "I want something to be really intense
"and I wanna catch people's attention right away."
Well, chances are you're gonna want to shoot
at 24 frames a second to do that,
now that you've experienced both clips.
If you really want to convey stress or speed or intensity,
you're gonna shoot at something like 24 frames a second
because you want it to be fast,
you want those cuts to be quick,
you want those clips to come in and come out,
and not give people time to really
understand what's going on.
You want to use that shaky cam technique
and you want to run with the camera.
You don't need it to be as stabilized because
you want it to feel raw and gritty.
All of these things come in to play.
Here's an example of my friend running from one end
of the bridge to the other and grabbing his backpack.
And we just shot this at 24 frames a second,
I just ran holding my camera, no stabilizer,
but you'll see how that shaky camera
conveys a very stressful, intense situation.
Okay, so let's talk about sound.
How does sound affect the tone?
Now sound is very interesting.
Your brain actually processes the audio before the visuals.
I think I've told you guys that before,
so that's why you hear a lot of people say sometimes
"oh audio's more important" because even though you're
seeing something, if you're not hearing what you're seeing,
there's a disconnect, there's a miscommunication
between your eyes and your ears, hearing and seeing.
They need to work in tandem.
So if we just hear the footsteps and then
we hear the wind blowing and cars honking
and just the overall atmosphere,
that just helps inherently, subconsciously,
fill in the gaps and tell a better story,
which also helps set the tone.
Music is a huge contributor to the tone.
We can take that slow-mo clip, play it with some sad music.
We can play it with some epic music,
we could play it with some hip-hop and you're gonna feel
three different things and
we're gonna set three different tones straight off.
Here's an example of that.
(somber hip-hop music)
Pretty sad, kinda lonely,
the sad music goes with the slow-mo.
It's kinda sleepy and you're like "oh, all right."
Let's change it up a bit.
(triumphant music)
Ugh, totally different.
It's like epic and way more substantial.
Those clips, each clip means something different
when that music is building.
We've set a completely different tone
and made a completely different mood change.
People are gonna feel totally different things
when they watch that versus that.
Okay, remember that clip of my friend running through
the bridge with that shaky camera?
Now let's try that with some intense music
to pair that shaky, intense camera shot
with some intense music.
(tense rock music)
Okay, I'm gonna stop it right there.
Let's add some sound into this clip,
maybe some sirens and a police scanner.
(tense rock music) (sirens wail)
Can you see now how the layers are adding
and it's become more and more and more, right?
So we shot at this intentional 24 frames a second.
We intentionally ran to make that camera
shaky and add that stress.
To match that stress, we put in some stressful,
intense music that has a very high beats per minute.
Now we put in some sound effects,
some sirens to go with that stress
like someone's being chased.
We put in the police scanner sound effects.
All of these things have now created this clip
that really does set the tone so much better
than it did before we had any of those things,
and that's because we thought about the different aspects.
We thought about those things before we shot them
and we went out and got exactly what we needed to get.
Point number three, how does light affect the tone?
Well, take a look at the scene we're in right now.
I'm in the living room, it's nice and bright,
white and clean and happy, but if I do this,
now I'm in a cold room.
How different does this look?
How different does this feel?
Now we're surrounded by concrete,
it's way more lifeless, it's way colder.
It's a completely different vibe,
it's a completely different tone.
If this whole episode started like this.
What's up guys, Peter McKinnon here and today
we're talking about how to set the tone.
Different things in your videos that you can do
to pull up different emotions from your viewers.
Hope you guys enjoy it.
Ugh, horrible!
It's so boring and uninterested and depressing.
Look where I am, such a stark difference,
just in my inflections,
just in where I'm standing, how I'm lit,
you go back at watch the intro from the beginning.
What's up everybody, Peter McKinnon here
and today, it's a beautiful day outside,
but we're talking about setting the tones.
It's the second video in our ongoing series
of stepping up your filmmaking and ooh, I am excited.
We've set the tone completely different.
This is gonna be a fun video, I might learn something here.
Opposed to what that was.
You're gonna be like "how long is this video?
"nope, not sticking around."
Okay, point number four, we're gonna talk about color.
How does color affect the tone?
Well that kinda comes in the color gradient.
It's very cold outside when we shot that B roll,
so in turn, I kind of dropped those cool temperatures
a little bit more towards the blue side
to really get through that it feels and it looks
like it's cold outside.
Look at this footage I shot the other day
at the beginning of my Q&A.
I was out in the middle of a frozen lake,
it was windy, super snowy and frozen.
It looks super cold in this footage.
It's also a little bit blue.
Now, let's just crank that temperature to the right,
make it way warmer and just see what that does.
It does not look as cold at all.
If you're watching this footage you're like
"yeah, it's snowing, cool it's slow-mo."
You don't feel cold while you're watching it.
Now if we drop that temperature back down,
this looks more like winter, this looks colder.
You physically feel like ooh, that looks cold.
You don't have that thought when
you're watching it with a warmer tone.
Same thing with the shots over Toronto.
The warm tone adds more life to the city,
the cold tone takes more life away from the city.
If you're looking at me right now I snap my fingers,
now I'm a little more warm.
The scene feels different, opposed to me
being a little more cold.
Maybe I wanna up that contrast a little bit.
All of these little color adjustments are gonna
change how you feel while you're watching me speak.
So point number five is that you need to think about
all of these things before you shoot something.
What is my goal in telling this story?
Am I trying to drive home a point
that I'm really passionate about?
That I think needs to be addressed in a very intense matter,
then that is how you need to set the tone.
You need to take the proper steps to set that tone.
Maybe your video is just a thank you video,
you want it to be loose and fun,
so you're gonna say "I'm gonna shoot it nice and wide"
a big wide-open space with nice light,
it's gonna be happy music,
it's not gonna be colored too warm or too cold.
I just want it to be neutral and relaxed,
and that's exactly the mood that's gonna be conveyed
while people are watching that.
So you need to know what you want
before you start shooting.
You're gonna get the best results if you know what you want
and you set out to do it by setting that tone.
When someone watches something and there's
intentionality behind it, it makes you feel good,
like you know thought was put into something.
You know they shot that for a reason.
You feel something for a reason.
All of these things are subconsciously communicated
to your audience and they feel better for it.
It's gonna make people feel,
and that's what we're trying to do, that's the goal.
And that's where I'm gonna end it today, guys.
Thank you so much for watching this video.
I hope you learned something,
and I hope you're inspired to go out there
and think a little bit differently about
all those different layers and how they can help you
make better videos.
Okay, so hit that like button,
don't forget to subscribe if you aren't already,
and, and I'll see you guys in the next video.
(calm music)