[Richard Herd]

1. Take a drama class and learn story, words like denouement and catharsis. All these fancy gadgets are nothing without writing & acting

2. Get your reel together

3. Intern a lot–more than once, more than production. See if you can get into development, advertising, news, post housing, producing. There are lots of areas. If you’re in college for 8 semesters, and if you have 8 internships, you’ll be a very desirable candidate when you graduate…if not before!

4. Subscribe to the American Cinematographer Magazine; there’s so much information there, you can hardly believe it.

5. Subscribe to the Creative Cow magazine–lots of info there too.

6. Learn photoshop, illustrator, In Design also.

7. An introductory accounting class will be very helpful

[Richard Herd]

What are you shooting on?

I find that I cannot let anything actually be black when shooting video (0 IRE) because there is no data to manipulate in post, so I light to a room luminance of 10 fcs, which is pretty bright to the human eye, then add light from there. In post, I crush the low end to black and or add color into the shadows.

I personally do not like showing the unfinished photography to deciders because they don’t quite get it.

I use Apple Color.

[Richard Herd]

Here’s another one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhHdRUs2Jn4

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[Richard Herd]

I use a smoke filter. It goes like this: Run through a bunch of menus really fast–too fast to follow–and then say “Time to render.” I’d get a cup of coffee–offering of course one to the client, while the video rendered. Do you want cream and sugar with that? I’ll be right back. Coffee was in another room. Upon returning: Here’s the coffee. Is it strong enough? Then hit play back. How’s that look?

“Oh man that’s perfect.”

[Richard Herd]

That’s a great post, Kai!

[Richard Herd]

[Ron Lindeboom] “try watching with both the sound and the picture turned off.” That’s called writing!

[Richard Herd]

Here’s a fine cow article that mentions a lot of important topics. https://magazine.creativecow.net/article/the-truth-about-2k-4k-the-future-of-pixels

Here’s a quote: “But we have to remember that 24 frames was never designed from an imaging standpoint. It was designed for sound.”

[Richard Herd]

Check out this article: https://www.ascmag.com/magazine_dynamic/June2009/StarTrek/page1.php

Here’s a quote from page two: “Much of the lighting built into the interior was designed to cause lens flares, which serve as a visual motif throughout the picture. “The Enterprise has lights set in frame that basically point down the lens of the camera in every direction,” says Mindel. “Wherever you look, you get a flare.”

I added the underline.

[Richard Herd]

Your chances of finding a space that big painted all black are 100%. These spaces are called studios! 🙂

Somewhere below Mr. Size has recommended some floor coverings.

To properly light the set? Depends what you mean by “properly.” I would say at least 3-point lighting for each member of the band. Doesn’t mean you have to set it up that way, but it is a flattering kind of lighting design and for a music video that’s the goal…flattering the band!

Not sure about the kino’s, depends how much head room you have to work with and what kind of shot design you’re looking for. I’m a big believer in Chinese Lanterns.

[Richard Herd]

Much easier than you think. Easy question: what is black? The absence of light. This is REALLY easy to do. Here’s an experiment: open all your curtains in your house and expose for them, then notice how the room goes black. Basically, that’s all you’re going to do on a larger scale.

I like to use big space for black, because you want the throw of the lights to light nothing. I like a warehouse or an empty stage, like at a theatre.

Contrast ratio is another important concept, here. Let’s suppose you really light this set up, to an f/11, really bright exposure, and you expose at an f/11 (640 fcs). The following stops would be perceivable on a decent camera: 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22.

In other words, everything below 5.6 (160 fcs) is black. Which is very bright to the naked eye. Hard to believe it’ll register as black on camera, so, as a client service, you might want to have something prepared in advance, so the band and producers gain confidence in your work because what they see with their eye isn’t what the camera sees. The reason you can’t light to the naked eye is many cameras won’t even register persistence of vision until the luminance reaches 10 fcs, which also is relatively bright.

I love this kind of chiaroscuro lighting because it presents an excellent opportunity to shoot some interesting and beautiful figure studies: say, a single light on a dancing figure (a James Bond type thing), only her side is lit, might look very compelling for a guitar player too, a guitar having a nice shape to it.

The art here, as I see it, will be getting nice rich blacks and also maintaining the highlights from the chrome on the drums, guitar tuner knobs and polish.