What do you think of these lens zooms?

[Gary Huff]

Yes, you don’t need to do a snap zoom.

[Blaise Douros]

You’ve mentioned having access to a stabilizer. It would be more impactful to do a pull-back reveal to show the room; because it makes the audience pay attention as pieces come into frame, and adds suspense as they try to see what’s in the room.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks, I considered using the stabilizer, but I want to do a reveal in a large room, really fast. I can’t run fast enough to do the reveal.

This is why I considered using the lens to do a snap zoom cause the lens can pull back a lot faster than a stabilizer operator can run.

Basically I want to start out on an actor, and then zoom back really far to reveal a whole large room. If I pull back on the stabilizer instead, it just feels too long to get the whole large room in frame.

[Ryan Elder]

I guess I didn’t want to do the whole have the audience try to put pieces together as the camera moves back. I wanted to pull back really fast, so the audience can see everything in the room at once and be surprised in one quick go, rather than putting pieces together as it pulls back. Hence why I wanted to do the snap zoom cause it pulls back much faster than a stabilizer.

[Blaise Douros]

Just cut to a wider shot, then. No need for a camera move or zoom, just as fast and impactful.

[Ryan Elder]

Okay thanks, I thought about that, but I was worried that the audience would lose it’s sense of direction. Cause here we are on an actor’s face, and then all of a sudden it cuts to a room, and then audience has to reorient where they are, and where that actor is, far in the background now.

So I thought that a fast zoom would still help keep their sense of direction, rather than a straight cut, where of all sudden they may not know where they are now.

[Mark Suszko]

This is a fundamental flaw in your approach to shooting and editing. Read Walter Murch’s “In the Blink Of An Eye.” The way our eyes and brain work, taking in and processing images, the eye and brain are working “cuts-only”. The eye has no zoom ability. But it DOES focus. Every time we blink, the brain is assessing the new frame presented to it and finding what’s changed from the previous moment. “Persistence of Vision”. The eye sees two shots, with the same general scene, in order: a tight and then a wide, and the brain does your “zoom” * for you.*

As part of our craft, we orchestrate the sequencing of these re-framings into a *montage*, and the brain interprets the sequence we’ve given it to synthesize a narrative. Not only that, but the nature of how we sequence the images gives a greater, intentional meaning, than the stand-alone images.

You trying to cover everything in one shot as an economy move, by whip-zooming, goes against all of that classic theory of visual communication, and to no benefit.

The earliest kind of filming of theatrical performance used a wide shot, locked-off camera, stuck in the third row center, with the POV of a patron in the seat. It documented what was going on, but that’s all. It was when the pioneers began changing the location of the camera and focusing our attention on specific details of a scene, and then cutting between these angles, putting all of this into a montage, a planned sequence, that we created modern visual communication, film grammar. It works, because it’s how our eyes and brains work,

Go make a movie.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thanks.

There seems to be an attitude on here, that these questions are keeping me from making movies. But that’s not true. I just finished a movie and am editing it now, and I have made other short films before that. So I feel that it’s okay to discuss what techniques I want to do, and how to do them, and if they will work, but there seems to be an attitude on here, that I should just shoot a movie, without any effort put into the shots, at all, other than just turning on a camera and shooting.

Is there a reason why I should keep on doing that and not advancing at all?

[Mark Suszko]

Nobody here told you to do a careless job. Or to ignore craft.

But most of your posts sound like trolling, just to keep a conversation going, without any end or conclusion. Some people get off on that, seeing how long they can draw out the thread before everyone loses their collective (redacted). I find that incredibly sad.

These people have tried to help you. They’re telling you that you’re navel-gazing instead of executing. The constant re-hashing sounds like you’re stalling instead of making something. Everybody’s trying to encourage you to go and start by using established techniques and to master them first, and then, if you want to, go explore more exotic implementations later.

You’re trying to triathlon before you’ve learned to crawl. From your sample videos, and I’m putting this delicately, you show a need to further develop the basics of shot composition, editing, and writing first. And the acting was… not the best. Everybody starts somewhere, and nobody’s ever done learning. But when we teach a child to write or to do math, we start with mastering ABC’s and counting numbers. We don’t start with Dostoyevski and tensor calculus. Get solid in the basics. I’ve spent over three decades just trying to master the instinct for where exactly to put a cut. And I’m still working at it.

Learn visual grammar and how to employ it effectively and economically. The specific technical means has NEVER been the most important issue in film making. You can make a compelling film with just an iPhone – Tangerine proved that. You don’t need gimbals, you don’t need drones, you don’t need exotic lenses, dollies, sliders, jibs, or hovercrafts. You don’t technically even need a *camera* to be a film-maker, if you’re an animator.

You -DO- need a compelling, logical, story. Written, or found thru recording live people, their words and behavior.

You need -something- to capture it with. Whatever you can afford or otherwise obtain. It need not be the best, it need not be expensive, it just has to work.

You need a means to edit what you captured into a finished form and deliver it to some audience.

Everything beyond that is really peripheral. Really. Things that may be nice to have, that can enhance, but they won’t save a bad script, or a badly lit and shot scene. Or bad acting. And having them to use is not the point of the exercise. Technology is only a vehicle, a means. Not the end.

Let go of the circular logic, the endless debating without conclusions, and dithering about things that are not essential to the craft, and the pretensions. You want to be profound, -simplicity- is the most profound thing there is. Haiku versus Ulysses. You want help in achieving that, many people here will gladly help. But we can’t add water to a full glass. You’ve gotten dozens of versions of the same answer, and you won’t accept any of them. You can’t be helped until you *accept* the help and act on it. You won’t get better, until you put ego aside and open yourself to a different take on things.

There’s just one secret to becoming a good film maker:

Make films. Fail. Make more films.

Repeat, until you don’t fail every time.
(and always use someone else’s money)

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thank you very much. Sorry I don’t mean to troll, I seriously want to learn and some of the advice, I find to be kind of contradictory, and just trying to weed out the exceptions to the rules, that’s all.

I am going to try to look in different places for better actors.

As for my shot composition and framing, what can I do to improve there? I was told it was bad before, but I wasn’t sure what I could do to improve.