Digital Film-Making
Mike Figgis
Language: English
Pages: 97
ISBN: 0571305032
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The essential easy guide to using digital film cameras and editing, from one of the world's most successful film directors.
'Now there is no reason to prevent anybody from making a film. The technology exists, the equipment is much cheaper than it was, the post-production facilities are on a laptop computer, the entire equipment to make a film can go in a couple of cases and be carried as hand luggage on a plane.' Mike Figgis
In this indispensable guide, leading director Mike Figgis offers the reader a step-by-step tutorial in how to use digital filmmaking technology so as to get the very best from it. He outlines the equipment and its uses, and provides an authoritative guide to the shooting process - from working with actors to lighting, framing, and camera movement. He further dispenses wisdom on the editing process and the use of sound and music, all the while establishing a sound aesthetic basis for the digital format.
Offering everything that you could wish to know on the subject, this is a handbook that will become an essential back-pocket reference for the digital film enthusiast - whether your goal is to make no-budget movies, or simply to put your video camera to more use than just holidays and weddings.
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not too heavy but heavy enough to give stability. We ended up with a rig which was basically a steering wheel with the camera right in the middle, using the circle of the steering wheel, which is tubular metal or carbon-fibre. The design works primarily in forcing the operator to take their hands off the camera. The hands are forced as wide as possible, with the camera put in the centre of a wheel so that the brain has more of a chance of judging what the horizontal stability line is. Then, on to
in, not them. My advice to all film-makers is, at whatever cost, to try to avoid putting even one foot into that bath. Here are some examples of how one can do that. If the film will be shot over a sufficiently short period, then you’re not asking actors to jump out of the work pool for a significant amount of time, and you can work around their schedule. That way, you can get appropriate actors for the characters that have been written, some of whom may be unknown, and some – let us say – of
in a huge studio. I want to use a painted backdrop because I want complete control of the sound. We can afford it, so let’s build it.’ So you then start to see the development of interior artistic control by directors, in which lighting is, of course, still very important. That functioned very well and it also created a certain look, especially in black-and-white photography, where if you were using a very powerful light source to light your subject, it may have proved very uncomfortable and hot
then the real work now begins. If the scene doesn’t work and you’re also dealing with a hundred different things, such as the lights or the weather, often the director will behave badly to the actors by saying ‘Come on, let’s do it again’ – and if the actors say, ‘Well, what do you want differently?’ the classic response will be, ‘I’d like you to do it better.’ Which is a pretty stupid thing to say to an actor, or to anybody. Of course the actor wants it to be better, but specifically how? The
unless this scene works – that being the nature of film.’ Usually at that point, if you have engaged the actors in that process of creativity – which they’re very good at – they will have suggestions, some of which won’t work but some that will. And the job of the director is not to let it get out of hand, and basically say to the actors, ‘Okay, let’s just improvise it. Over to you …’ Allow them to participate but at the same time maintain some kind of overview – because you know the whole film.