This is How You Practice Cinematography (All By Yourself)

[Music] cinematography is the art of creating Motion Pictures and Visually bringing stories to life today I want to show you how you can practice your cinematography skills to enhance and hone your visual storytelling abilities bringing to life emotions ideas and stories for an audience to enjoy can leave a lasting impact on them you can recognize what the power of Cinema feels like when you watch your favorite movies for the first time and to me film making is one of the most complicated and highest forms of art there is there is nothing else like it you

want to learn how to practice cinematography and here I will share with you what you should focus on improving what is important for a cinematographer or a deep to be mindful of where you can look for inspiration and ideas to practice from and putting all of that together to show you how to practice cinematography all by yourself if they're not out already I plan to dive deeper into different elements of cinematography including the topics mentioned in this video this is a starting point for you to see how I go about refining my skills and building

up experience to becoming a pro cinematographer as my end goal if you want to stay tuned for these next videos why not subscribe if you're new to the channel comment down below or leave a like to show support so I know you're enjoying them and I'll make this into a series now let's get into it cinematography is composed of many details that work together to help tell a story visually if there are other aspects of cinematography that I don't mention in this video that you think are important why not comment down below what they are

for your fellow cinematographers let's first go over what skills you should focus on if you want to reach that Cinema level composition lighting and color lens Choice camera settings and camera movement are all important elements cinematographers focus on now if you're practicing alone movement might be one that's hard to practice without certain tools like a slider or gimbal for example but you are capable of improving the other skills on your own and of course you can still create beautiful images with a static shot compositions are what you most likely think of first what connects your

shots together in scenes and are important to keep your audience engaged with what they're watching this is also one of my favorite parts of cinematography this does not only go for what is in frame and the visible elements but also what is not visible and kept hidden from the audience compositions are also how you can create your own style different from others like very popular DPS such as Wes Anderson his very symmetric style flatlight look and tracking shots are just some of what makes Wes Anderson Wes Anderson the same could be said for Roger deacons

with his naturalistic simple worlds and a personal favorite of mine Greg Frasier going with what is most important for expressing the story being told in a future video I hope to dive deeper in how you can elevate your Framing and different compositions you should try on your next project what goes hand inand with framing is how lighting your scenes can give the shots a certain mood or feel and using color can exaggerate what's being expressed even more even though the gaffer is responsible for lighting on set the cinematographer Works hand inand with them so the

gaffer can help the DP bring their Vision to life for their scenes color can also come from the gaffer or even the set design and it's another key part to help bring the visual ideas to life understanding lighting and color helps you create more impactful moments than might not be enough through composition alone and these examples help Express that another aspect you might forget is very important for the DP is camera settings we learned the rules of camera settings so we can break them one example is the 180° shutter rule or having your shutter speed

double your frame rate for the right motion blur when filming it's important to know so in certain cases you decide not to follow the rules to create scenes that feel more special in a more Artful way other camera settings to consider include white balance where you FOC focus and obviously just normal exposure settings and on top of all of that your choice of lens or focal length can really change everything we just talked about if you want a very wide or distorted look maybe just a standard more true to life feel or something more compressed

pushing things together that's where choosing the right focal length comes into play all of these elements are what every cinematographer needs to be intentional with when filming so you can be mindful of the most important aspect you need to serve and that is the story it doesn't matter how beautiful your shots are how unique your style is or highly skilled you are if it doesn't serve the story being told do the choices in your composition keep the audience engaged with the story does your lighting and color play a role in what's happening when the antagonist

figures out a key detail about the hero can you use camera settings to your advantage to separate characters from the rest of the world and do you make the right lens choices that fit with every moment the story is what matters most in film making and if all of these decisions don't support the story you the director or writers are trying to tell then you're not doing your job as a DP there are other things as a cinematographer that you can care about for example color grading and if you want to better your skills at

grading I have a whole video already breaking down my process and another one showing how I use dehancer to enhance my workflow one last thing before I get into how to practice in photography I want to share with you where I look for inspiration and ideas to give me scenarios where I can practice my skills now I would bet most of you watching might say you spend a lot of time on social media maybe more than you'd like and of course there's so much content on there to view but I think you'd be wasting your

time trying to learn from there and not be watching movies I do have some alternatives for you but hear me out if you really want to improve as a cinematographer you should spend more of your time watching the highest form of cinematography there is and and that's in movies don't go look into YouTube travel films or things like that for True cinematography unless that's really the kind of thing you want to do now I'm not knocking those kinds of videos down but there is a difference between those and movies I know it might be hard

to find time to sit and watch a two sometimes 3-hour movie but it's well worth it for increasing your creativity and getting inspiration if you do that more often I'm sure you would understand where I'm coming from TV shows can work too but I'd recommend shows that are less like normal sitcom or so Opera type shows unless that's what you also want to get into movies are always my number one recommendation then good shows but if you want quick inspiration to find ideas a great free alternative is searching on Pinterest and typing in movie cinematography

or terms like that I've made a collection on there with some of my favorite finds and I'm sure you can find some great things on there too another amazing free resource are certain YouTube channels like the beauty of and amazing shots where they show the cinematography of many films your favorite movie might already have a video here or even a favorite DP of yours and if I've already watched a film I might go here to see certain scenes again and another free resource I've recently found is ey candy they have an incredible library of visual

techniques that are used all over not just in movies and sometimes they share how those methods are done to achieve a style one last recommendation that isn't free but I really love right now is shot deck I find it to be well worth it for finding reference shots from movies and this was founded by Lauren Sher aka the cinematographer grapher for Joker and many other movies they have an incredible library of films and they keep adding more and I've been using some Stills found on shot deck throughout this video to help get my points across

it's easy to find exactly what you're looking for with the search tools and if you can afford it I think it's worth it but there's also a two-e trial to try it out and finally taking everything in from this video I'll share with you how to practice [Music] cinematography I tend to not only think about one shot I have in mind whether it's from a movie or ideas I have but sometimes I create scenes or sequences of shots that go together to also practice telling something more than just showing one beautiful shot an idea you

can try is think about how you can make the mundane everyday life look more interesting with cinematography there's always those moments in movies that show the everyday life and you can create sequences about that like I did making my morning bathroom routine cinematic short video it's important to learn how to connect shots together instead of just creating one amazing shot that might not fit within a scene of course you can make one that stands out but how can it be connected for a mini story you can tell the most important thing to take away from

this is to constantly practice if you want to get better at something you have to keep practicing and you also need to have a lot of patience as well none of the worldclass cinematographers made it overnight and many didn't until 5 10 or way more years of working on their craft now of course it's easier to practice when you have other people to stand in for you but the one person you can always rely on is yourself so I just take my tripod and practice alone from earlier in this video when I talk about skills

to improve on you can take those aspects and practice them one at a time and over time add them together to improve for example just focus on improving your compositions use natural light so you can just think about Framing and then when you get better you start playing with lighting and maybe add some color too you then start to be more intentional with your lens choices even decide to experiment with camera settings to see what you can come up with if you want to practice a single shot you can look at movies you watch and

grab Stills to try and replicate and learn how you can shoot them too you can always try something new with your attempt and maybe see how you can add your own spin on it if you're practicing at home try confining yourself to just one room to be creative with where you are and what you got and sometimes these small ideas for scenes or sequences can turn into bigger ideas for short films or larger projects as you keep practicing you'll get better but your creativity will also improve with the more experience you create for yourself and

start to think more outside the box you'll keep pushing yourself but don't get me wrong you'll always have those moments where you lose inspiration or struggle to come up with ideas like myself but you'll get through them and become a better cinematographer in the end no matter how far you want to go with this I think this is a great starting point to practice and get better if you found this video helpful why not leave a like and drop a comment down below if you're new why not subscribe to the channel if you haven't already

and also tag me in some of your works on social media so I can see and check them out as well that's it for this video and I'll see you in the next one [Music]