u/AardAardvark

First to point out that I don't have this myself. But I wonder if this is a real thing for filmmakers or indeed photographers? And I have considered this as a potential unwanted side effect of becoming a filmmaker.

The idea is that the more you get into filmmaking, the more you look at everyday life in terms of how it would look on film. To the extent that everything you look at then becomes framed in your brain in terms of cinematographic potential. Perhaps then you imagine yourself to be living inside a film of your own making. 😱

Thus, you might not be able to appreciate a beautiful sunrise anymore, because you are just thinking it in terms of which ISO level would best suit it.

Or you might meet an interesting person and be constantly thinking about if they would make a good actor for your new film.

This is closely related to "Everythingitis" (coined by Will Self). The compulsion to put every idea you ever had into your new film/book/play.

I had a friend who used to build mods for games, and (perhaps due to an underlying OCD) could not help seeing the world in terms of e.g. how tall things were in terms of Minecraft blocks.

One might say, that gen-z has also has a related problem of a compulsion to video everything (such as at a concert) instead of enjoying it in the moment. But I think this is not quite the same thing.

So, I just wondered if anyone had found this to be a problem or if you can switch off your cinematographic part of your brain and just enjoy looking at the world.

Here's my observation, I notice a lot of indie movies lack foley sounds. e.g a short film which uses background sounds picked up from the lapel microphone. My biggest one is when I see people walking without any footsteps sounds. Yes, they may be wearing trainers/sneakers in the house , but still you want to hear the footsteps (or a creaking floorboard if it is a horror). Or a rustling jacket picked up by a lapel mic is another annoyance.

If you watch the first scene of Birdemic you see what I mean by the mics picking up the background sounds with hilarious consequences as it cuts between the characters.

Now, my perspective is if I see people doing a high five in a video or someone running on sand or splashing about in water, I would like to hear this.

I can understand this, as like most people, I assumed all the sound in a movie or nature documentary was picked up live, then when I found out most of it is faked using Foley sounds it was quite a shock.

As an example the sound of key in a lock if you record that for real is not that exciting but there are alternative fake sounds that it can be replaced with which might be hyper-real.

What's your opinion? Do you separate out voice track, and ambience track and add Foley sounds? Or do you try to capture all the sounds live for speed? How long would you generally spend adding all the foyley sounds, and do you make your own or get them from a sample pack?

I bought myself a new 25mm f1.7 Panasonic lens for my GH2 camera and was trying it out this morning at 3:30am. 1 hour before sunrise to test it in low light. And I have to say I'm pretty pleased with the results. (Although one downside to the lens is the focus-by-wire 😡)

This is just raw footage edited together. [Please watch it in YouTube as it only plays in SD in reddit]

Obviously I need to use a tripod or steady the camera on something next time - it's all a bit wibbly.

So if anyone has a four thirds camera I would definitely recommend this as an upgrade to the kit lens for low light. Added bonus is you get the blurry background effect. My understanding is that it lets in about 4x as much light as the kit lens (or maybe about 3x at 25mm setting).

Also I am using a CN-160 LED light box on some shots like the tree, but mostly I didn't even need it.

But these two things: f1.7 lens and lightbox I would say are a great investment if you are on a budget.

I want to get really good at using the camera before involving human actors. So I am trying to think of some narrative film I can make without humans - perhaps using robots. IDK.

I think think using the 25mm for close ups and mid-shots will be OK but I'm not sure. (I'm thinking for instance, two people sat outside a pub in the evening time). Which is why I needed a fast lens.

BTW - can you guess the country from the footage?

It's hard to put into words, but if you have a guy walking through the forest. In an amateur movie it just looks like a guy whose gone into his local forest to make a movie. But in a hollywood movie it looks like a guy whose been walking for days in the wilderness.

Is it because your local forest has different trees than the wilderness? Or can you shoot your local forest to look like the wilderness?

For anyone whose been in a forest they may be surprised that it is actually less "romantic and mystical" than it appears in hollywood movies. In real life forests are mostly kind of boring.

Is it just a case of just fill the forest with a smoke machine?

Does anyone have any good stories about the first time they hired actors for their indie-movie or short film? i.e. not just using yourself or friends or film-society but maybe hiring an actor off one of the acting websites or employing drama students etc.

I feel like that is one if the big hurdles for first time directors, just the overall awkwardness of it all. Some people I imagine are just very comfortable with ordering strangers about.

Even if you plan everything, from when the actor turns up you're basically on the clock because if you don't get all the shots then that's $100 or whatever down the drain. [Or free sandwiches].

But I can imagine a nightmare situation where all the batteries run out of your camera, your lighting all fails, and the pub where you are filming a scene suddenly decides to kick everyone out. Then it's just embarassing for everyone all round.

Plus, there's also the problem of how friendly should you be to the actors? Like, you want to be professional but at the same time, if you break for lunch, should they join you for lunch to look over the footage or do you give them an hour to themself.

All these things are probably different for everyone, but I'd be interested to hear anyone's stories.

I shot some raw footage with my GH2 camera with hack at 3am. Some of it doesn't look too bad but some of it does. Can anyone give me any tips? I had to set it to shutter 1/30 instead of 1/50 because my camera has a banding problem at 1/50. BTW this is just test footage.

Anyone got any tips how to get better footage? Or if this is fixable in post (e.g. with DaVinci?) Or both? When I see footage on Youtube from GH2 it looks really clean even at night.

The sky especially looks kind of muddy and noisy, though that is less clear in the YouTube video.

Here are my settings:

3.30am Night time Test Footage
Lumix GH2 (EOSHD GH2 Unified Patch hack)

Bitrate 90Mbs
24fps
Shutter 1/30
ISO Automatic
Film mode: Smooth -2 on everything
Raw footage
White Balance daylight
Light (white LED from phone)
Lens: Kit lens at 14 (f/3.5-f/22 apature) set on shutter-priority