How do I achieve a professional-quality filimg style/look?

[Brian Farvour]

Hey everyone! So, I'm going to be renting a Red Epic camera for a weekend, and am interested in seeing if I can achieve some specific styles of filming. Specifically, I'm looking to get a Spielberg-esque feel in a short film I want to make, which J. J. Abrams nailed in 2011's Super 8. I'm also a big fan of The Rocketeer, which also has a classic Spielberg feel to it, and was curious what it would take to achieve that style. Finally, in terms of more modern styles, I love the clean looks of movies like Captain America and even The Amazing Spider-Man, which I know what shot on a Red Epic. And before I forget, even though I know both Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder use film, is there any way to pull off what they did on The Dark Knight trilogy or Man of Steel? Man of Steel especially had some cool Terrence Malick Tree of Life-esque shots I liked as well.
I'm really just looking for what I can do to film it like them, and then what I'd need to utilize in post-production to further solidify these styles. Thanks!

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Brian, the best way to achieve the looks you mentioned are through lighting, art direction, costuming, professional actors, and color timing. In other words, unless you are phenomenal at all of those things, you'll need to rely on talented crews to help you achieve amazing images.

 

[Saumene Mehrdady]

Oh, and make sure you have a good sound guy. That makes or breaks a film.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

A good exercise is to take a simple scene you like in a movie and recreate it in terms of focal length, shot size, composition, lighting, etc. Or at least, take some frame grabs from the sequence and study them, look at where the light is coming from, the contrast, etc.

I realized that Brian cross-posted this on three subforums, so I'm closing this thread and leaving the one in Cinematography open.