Hywel Phillips
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- Nov 14, 2010
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Hi All,
I've been the cinematographer on two low budget features, but the mainstay of my business is fetish film making. Our budgets are nano-scopic, but we've been playing around for years to achieve a cinematic look and a good storytelling feel to our work. Buying a Scarlet is the single biggest step up we've ever taken, and we're working hard at bringing the rest of our production quality up to match what the camera is capable of.
I was invited to give a talk on making more cinematic films at the largest fetish convention (called, appropriately enough, Fetishcon) a couple of weeks ago. The talk was well received and a lot of people asked me to put the slides and video clips online.
I figured it might potentially be of interest to other film makers working at the nano-scale budget levels- and maybe even to the big guys, if you ever wonder what it is like to attempt to produce a five minute short every week on a budget of a couple of hundred dollars per episode (most of which is spent on the talent) and not have it look like complete crap.
So in case anyone is interested, here is my talk. It contains some nudity and a bit of mild kinkiness (bondage, specifically). I think the tips have plenty of applicability to mainstream film making- they are what has got me the paying gigs on the mainstream features, at least!
http://www.restrainedelegance.com/talks/cinematic/
It started off as "Ten Ways to Make Your Bondage Videos More Cinematic" but ended up more like 40.
The main things I cover are:
1) How we shoot, and the resulting visual styles
2) Characters
3) Story
4) Sound
5) Light
6) Production Design
7) Camera and Settings
and try to provide some tips in each of those areas which can significantly enhance the apparent production value without costing the earth.
I'm sure this is old news to anyone hanging around on the RED forum: it is pretty basic stuff but surprising how much difference they make. If nothing else it was fun to make Scarlet footage look utterly crap (bad lighting and positioning) and show how radically different the shot can look by using the exact same kit in the same place, just moving it around!
Challenge: see if you can spot the RED footage, even with extremely heavy web compression (vs. AF100, 7D, HVX200, older consumer cams)
Nonetheless, I'd love to know what people think! I don't think I've seen the tips assembled in one place this way before, and I'm likely to be giving the talk again so any suggestions for improvement would be much appreciated. Are there any top tips you think I'm missing?
Cheers, Hywel Phillips
I've been the cinematographer on two low budget features, but the mainstay of my business is fetish film making. Our budgets are nano-scopic, but we've been playing around for years to achieve a cinematic look and a good storytelling feel to our work. Buying a Scarlet is the single biggest step up we've ever taken, and we're working hard at bringing the rest of our production quality up to match what the camera is capable of.
I was invited to give a talk on making more cinematic films at the largest fetish convention (called, appropriately enough, Fetishcon) a couple of weeks ago. The talk was well received and a lot of people asked me to put the slides and video clips online.
I figured it might potentially be of interest to other film makers working at the nano-scale budget levels- and maybe even to the big guys, if you ever wonder what it is like to attempt to produce a five minute short every week on a budget of a couple of hundred dollars per episode (most of which is spent on the talent) and not have it look like complete crap.
So in case anyone is interested, here is my talk. It contains some nudity and a bit of mild kinkiness (bondage, specifically). I think the tips have plenty of applicability to mainstream film making- they are what has got me the paying gigs on the mainstream features, at least!
http://www.restrainedelegance.com/talks/cinematic/
It started off as "Ten Ways to Make Your Bondage Videos More Cinematic" but ended up more like 40.
The main things I cover are:
1) How we shoot, and the resulting visual styles
2) Characters
3) Story
4) Sound
5) Light
6) Production Design
7) Camera and Settings
and try to provide some tips in each of those areas which can significantly enhance the apparent production value without costing the earth.
I'm sure this is old news to anyone hanging around on the RED forum: it is pretty basic stuff but surprising how much difference they make. If nothing else it was fun to make Scarlet footage look utterly crap (bad lighting and positioning) and show how radically different the shot can look by using the exact same kit in the same place, just moving it around!
Challenge: see if you can spot the RED footage, even with extremely heavy web compression (vs. AF100, 7D, HVX200, older consumer cams)
Nonetheless, I'd love to know what people think! I don't think I've seen the tips assembled in one place this way before, and I'm likely to be giving the talk again so any suggestions for improvement would be much appreciated. Are there any top tips you think I'm missing?
Cheers, Hywel Phillips
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