The ultimate filmmaking resource on how to do more with less.
Learn highly effective and time-saving techniques to produce compelling lighting for corporate videos, documentaries, short films, educational content and anything that requires harvesting available light and the use of practicals.
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/corporate-and-documentary-video-lighting/welcome
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Composition is one of the least understood yet most important aspects of cinema. Using a wide variety of examples, Emmy Award-winning Director of Photography Eduardo Angel breaks down effective cinematic composition, shares his favorite compositional effects and techniques and even covers how and when to successfully break well established rules.
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/cinematic-composition-for-video-productions/welcome
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Learn wow to use the subjective power of movement and composition to guide the viewer’s attention and emotions.
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It doesn’t take a Hollywood budget to make to make the most of available light, and to learn simple tricks to reveal or obscure objects and subjects in your scene. Here’s your chance to learn field tested techniques to manipulate moods, add depth, and enhance your overall production with a few lighting tweaks.
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/lighting-design-for-video-productions/welcome
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When it comes to video length, a challenge is the tendency to equate “shorter with worse” simply because viewers aren’t used to ultra-short content (like 6-second videos) just yet. But that’s about to change, as lot of big brands with deep pockets have been exploring “six-second ads” including YouTube’s own marketing team.
According to YouTube’s marketing team “the key to success is to view the six-second time frame as a blank canvas rather than a limitation.” I like the sound of that.
All of the examples shown below have been produced for large corporations, with large budgets and most likely big crews. But the reason I believe this is relevant to small-crew and 1 -Person crew productions is because the applications are the same. Short-form videos may be a condensed version of longer stories, or they might be customized to reach specific audiences, for example YouTube vs. Instagram vs, LinkedIn.
Cool? Let’s move on. Other great examples are the Duracell bumper ad, the sequential story for Xbox, or the product lineup for La Mer.
I believe the most interesting examples happen when brands approach the six-second ads as part of a larger campaign—when storytelling expands beyond the boundaries of one ad unit and spans multiple ads served to the same viewer over time. For instance, KFC used a six-second add to tease an UPCOMING 30-second commercial.
Conversely, Danone used the six-second video as a way to echo something a viewer had already seen in a PREVIOUS video.
Similar campaigns by Estée Lauder, and SurveyMonkey are also meaty and memorable. According to SurveyMonkey “the 6-second time constraint was a great driver for creating a sense of energy while communicating the power of the tool simply. This was accomplished by effectively messaging the main components of our platform: creating surveys, collecting answers, and analyzing results.”
As I mentioned earlier, short-form ads an d videos may be a condensed version of a longer story, or they might customized to reach specific audiences through contextual targeting. Campbell’s Soup Company took the latter approach for its “SoupTube” campaign in Australia.
Here’s what Campbell’s did: To amplify a 15-second ad they created hundreds of variations of 6-second ads and ran them as additional media. Using some fancy audience targeting, Campbell’s delivered the contextually relevant 6-second ads to users by matching its product message with trending YouTube videos.
For example, users who searched for Pokémon Go were shown one ad/video where they were asked, “Legs hurt from walking around?”, while users searching the outcome of a specific soccer match saw a different version of the ad asking “Had your money on England?”
By building multiple 6-second stories that offered different facets of its message, Campbell’s proved that short-form ads can provide powerful touches to boost a longer story.
Campbell’s original hypothesis was that the six-second version would “help drive upper funnel metrics like ad recall” and the thirty-second version would “build on that initial impact by telling a longer story to shift perception.” That’s pretty technical, but I get the concept.
What happened with that hypothesis? Glad you asked. The 6-second clips alone were LESS effective than the 30-sec videos to shift brand perception. But, and this is important, when the 6-second clip and 30-sec clip were paired through remarketing (essentially exposing people who had seen the long-form ad to a bumper as a follow-up) the 6-second clips were a great way to reinforce the 30-sec clips.
According to YouTube “the optimal media journey for a viewer is a 30-sec spot followed by another 30-sec spot, followed by a 6-second ad.”
Let’s say you just finished a travel video you would like to promote. It doesn’t hurt (and it doesn’t take that MUCH extra work either) to cut different 30-sec teasers and a few 6-second clips, and try to target specific audiences based on each platform. You could target groups that talk about that specific destination on Facebook, and travel companies on LinkedIn and travel enthusiasts on Instagram. Same travel video, slightly different marketing approaches targeting different people.
What do you think? Leave your comments below.
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I have been studying Ira Glass and Anthony Bourdain for a very long time.
Ira Glass is very well known in the U.S. because he is the producer and host of a very well-known radio show called “This American Life.” Bourdain was a celebrity chef, writer, host and producer of travel programs for The Travel Channel and CNN, exploring cultures and foods around the world.
The way the show works is as follows: a team of 12 people go out and find simple stories about everyday topics with normal subjects and characters, and produce fascinating stories about them.
For example, every highway has something called roadkill, which are the dead animals like deer, cats or dogs on the side of the road. Well, someone needs to go and pick them up. So many years ago, Ira Glass produced a story about the person who does that job, and it’s very appropriately called “Dead animal man.”
“I’d have given half my life for that squirrel at one time. I was a prisoner during the Korean War and I’d set up off at Han River and watch seagulls fly over, I’ll be laying there thinking I fry one. That’s how hungry I was.”
Clarence Hicks
The way Ira Glass asks and sequences the questions, and the kind of sounds he includes are all masterfully executed.
Ira Glass and his team approach pre-production in a similar way. Every Monday morning a group of 12 people meet, and each person pitches at least one story idea. As a group they pick and choose the best six ideas, and spend the rest of the week producing them. The following Monday they go over the six stories, pick the best one or two, and only those are the ones that get broadcasted. The other stories either die or get a second chance in the future.
The stories we hear on “This American Life” are incredibly good, not only because all the team members are super talented and work extremely hard, but also because they start with 12 stories, narrow them down to six and then hand-picked the best two.
Bourdain stories, on the other hand, were all about traveling to different locations and exploring local food.
“A prego is a steak sandwich slash booze mop that puts you right over the edge in a protein overdose, which is to say, happiness.”
The setup for all Bourdain’s shows was fairly simple. It was always Bourdain with a guest, talking about politics, culture and current events over food.
The way the shows were shot was very efficient. Two cinematographers recording sound on camera, and one director/producer/C Cam operator. Most of the time they used available light.
When one watches the show it’s hard to believe they only had a 2 or 3-person crew. And I believe a reason to achieve this high level of production is possible because they started researching each location a month before production, and spent a lot of time in pre-production.
Before each shoot the crew had pre-pro meetings to discuss core concepts, looks, shooting approaches. They found inspiration in movies, songs, books and researched about the history and the place in its current state. Yet, they didn’t use scripts, and Bourdain never wrote anything for a show beforehand.
“If you think you’ve already figured out what the show’s going to be about or what you expect out of the scene, that’s a lethal impulse.”
On location Bourdain and his crew spent on average a week of frantic work, and they shoot a LOT, between sixty and eighty hours of footage (on average) to produce a single one hour-long episode.
Most of us don’t approach our projects the way Glass and Bourdain did. We might have one or two projects or stories, we work on them, and then we might decide to publish them or not, but we don’t produce a high volume of content, and pick only the absolute best of the best to be shared with the world. That constant search for perfection is what makes them so great.
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This article is not paid or sponsored by anyone. It reflects my own independent opinion. I only recommend companies and products that I trust. Some links might be affiliates, which means I may get a few pennies if you decide to purchase something.
Thanks in advance for your support!
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Tennis? What? Did I come to the right website?
Yes. Chill and hear me out.
About two months ago I shot an interview with a highly successful businessman. The interviewer asked this gentleman “is there a book that you’d recommend to anyone starting or running a business?”
And he answered “Absolutely! I’ve read, re-read, and gifted “The Inner Game of Tennis” many many times in the past 20 years.”
Twenty years? I thought. How come I’ve never heard of this book? And tennis? Nonsense.
Until this past weekend, that is, when I found the audiobook version, and could not do anything else, but listen carefully and take LOTS of notes. The book is truly fantastic.
Here’s the first minute of “The Inner Game of Tennis” audiobook’s introduction and the transcript.
“Every game is composed of two parts an outer game and an inner game. The outer game is played against an external opponent to overcome external obstacles and to reach an external goal. Mastering this game is the subject of many books offering instructions on how to swing a racquet club or bat and how to position arms legs or torso to achieve the best results. But for some reason most of us find these instructions easier to remember than to execute. It is the thesis of this book that neither mastery nor satisfaction can be found in the playing of any game without giving some attention to the relatively neglected skills of the inner game. This is the game that takes place in the mind of the player and it is played against such obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness, self-doubt and self condemnation. In short it is played to overcome all habits of mind which inhibit excellence and performance. We often wonder why we play so well one day and so poorly the next or why we clutch during competition or blow easy shots. And why does it take so long to break a bad habit and learn a new one. Victories in the inner game may provide no additions to the trophy case, but they bring valuable rewards which are more permanent, and which can contribute significantly to one’s success. Off the court as well as on.”
Why post a book review on a website for filmmakers? Because the whole book it’s about something I strongly believe; learning how to use the tools of our craft is important, but we should also learn how to control our mind, our inner game in order to craft better stories.
DISCLAIMER
This article is not paid or sponsored by anyone. It reflects my own independent opinion. I only recommend companies and products that I trust. Some links might be affiliates, which means I may get a few pennies if you decide to purchase something.
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I’m a big fan of Vashi Nedomansky, a brilliant video editor who has worked on 11 feature films and trailers, and over 50 national commercials for major brands like Nike, Volkswagen, Ford, NHL, EA Sports, Adobe, and the US Army. I recently read an interview where he says:
“The trailer game is an ever-changing pursuit that tries to stay ahead of the intelligent public but must also find new ways to tease, cajole and intrigue. Show scenes that aren’t in the film. Manipulate dialog and visuals to make a scene more interesting. Shift the order of shots to make it more interesting or compelling. Add music not in the film to hit an emotional beat. Use every trick in the book to make an effective trailer.”
I don’t agree 100% with that approach, but the article reminded me one of the (many) valuable lesson I’ve learned about marketing. The lesson is: cut a 30-second trailer as soon as you’re done shooting. Here’s why:
I’m not sure how, but Vashi was able to select 46 individual shots that were shared in the promotional material for “Rogue One” but never made the final cut of the film.
Actually, “Rogue One” serves to prove my point about the paramount importance of teasers and trailers as marketing tool; the 2-minute trailer has attracted over almost 38 MILLION views on YouTube alone!
What about you? Do you always use teasers and/or trailers on your projects? Why or why not? Leave your comments below.
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I’ve been a huge fan of Robert Rodriguez for years, and his book “A Rebel Without a Crew” was among the first I’ve recommended to filmmakers, photographers, musicians, and really, anyone working alone or with a very small crew.
I recently listened (again for the nth time) to a fantastic 2-hour interview that Tim Ferriss did with Robert Rodriguez. There are SO many wonderful stories and useful lessons that you should listen to the whole thing. Trust me, every minute is worth your time.
On today’s post I’d like to share the most interesting parts, especially those applicable to the 1 Person Crew approach. Here we go!
“That creative process blows me away and it applies to so much, even if you’re not a director or a filmmaker. The creative process applies to anything you do. How you raise your children, how you cook food, how you run a business. Creativity is so much a part of that.” Robert Rodriguez
“When people say “Oh you do so many things. You’re a musician, you’re a painter, you’re the composer, you’re the cinematographer, you’re the editor”…. I go “No, I only do one thing, I live a creative life.” Robert Rodriguez
“I write my scripts, come up with ideas, while I’m play with my kids, while I’m cooking them a meal, which is a creative exercise, art you can eat.
“When I want to get into a character I might I’ll paint him first, and see visually what he looks like, or musically what he sounds like.”
“Everything can be creative, even a business call. Suddenly you go “this is kind of out of my league” but let me add my creativity to it and maybe I’ll solve something no one else will be able to solve.” Robert Rodriguez
“As a film student coming from a family of 10 kids living in Texas people constantly said “if you want to be a filmmaker you need to move to L.A.” Stay where you are and come up with something that can be sold.” Robert Rodriguez
“When you put creativity in everything, everything becomes available to you. Anything that has a creative aspect is suddenly yours to go and do. And there’s no separation between work and play.” Robert Rodriguez
“People kind of forgot that that’s how movies really started. It was always like couple of guys with a wind up camera and Buster Keaton in front. It wasn’t a business yet. When it became a business suddenly everyone had a job and you needed 200 people, because it was now an industry! But that was not what the art form was originally. It was just the manipulation of moving images and you can do that with two people, one person. That was a breakthrough idea.” Robert Rodriguez