Practice does not make perfect

[Paul Owens]

I'd like some advice on how to learn to shoot and edit professional video. I'm beginning to get to the point where I feel practice really won't really teach me what I need to know. An Olympic fencing coach once told me "practice doesn't make perfect it makes permanent. Always be sure you are practicing correctly." I thought that was real good advice.

I'm not in a position where I can go back to school for Cinematography so what other resources are there to learn the correct way to set up a scene, properly light a shoot, set up the camera settings and sculpting the image, learn how and where to mic and how to monitor that all...

Really, I want to learn everything at least to a point where I am competent and can execute a shoot for a client and turn around a professional product.

Any advice?

[Stelios Christofides]

Paul

The best "university" is right here, in these columns. Read as many topics as you can and also see the various clips in the "Wedding / Event Videography Techniques" section. It's amazing how much I have learned by spending hours and hours here.

stelios

[Bill Davis]

Your coach was correct in that practice ALONE does not "make perfect."

What perfects performance is practice which is followed by an honest analysis of that performance, and then correcting deficiencies and refining your performance for the next time.

It's the feedback loop that's important.

You're smart to ask the questions. The next step is being brave enough to do what you've publically done here. Ask for advice. The next step after that is even harder - subjecting your actual work to criticism.

The hardest part for any creative person is exposing their work to the critical view of others - but it's exactly that - and understanding that the criticism that will inevitably follow has to be filtered so that you can gain insight from the valuable critiques while shrugging off the ones based on faulty reasoning, emotion, or spite.

It's a long journey. But it's the path to professionalism that everyone has to walk.

You've started. Keep going. You WILL get where you want to be - one step at a time.

[Jim Michael]

Can you spend a week at a workshop?

[Paul Owens]

#Bill, thanks man. I just shot a wedding, I'll post a few clips of unedited footage and leave it open. I'm not shy so feel free to rip me apart :-)

#Jim, I may be able to do a workshop in the future, not this year though. A long weekend I may able to swing.

[Garrett Low]

Hi Paul,

You are on the right track in looking to improve your skills in these areas. Learning how to improve your shooting and editing skills will follow any other learning process. The first thing is to understand the basics. Learn the language so that you can communicate with others in the industry. Build up a good foundation of fundamental principles. This can be done in number of ways. Be an assistant to an established cinematographer, read books on theory, watch tons of movies and videos, then go out and practice. When you're watching a movie see if you can break down the scene. Figure out what lighting setup they used, see if you can identify the camera moves, angles, tell when it's a dolly shot or a zoom, understand how the editor assembled each shot. One thing I still do every now and then is to see if I could create a shot list for a given scene and detail what lighting I would use to recreate it. I've even gone so far as to see if I could recreate it. Experiment with various changes to lighting, camera angles, composition, and review the footage. Have others review and give you their impressions. One of the greatest things about digital video is there's little to no cost involved in running test shots.

Everyone learns differently but I'm a firm believer that there's no better way to learn than to do. If you can find a group to join, the members could be a great resource. Out here in the San Francisco Bay Area there are number of very good local organizations. One that I belong to is an independent film cooperative. Our members range from the hobbiest to some very accomplished people in the industry. The best thing is that there is a sharing of knowledge and it's a great place to learn various skills in a production crew. Here's the link to the website so you can get a sense of it.

Home Page | Scary Cow - the indie film co-op

If there are any organizations like that you could join, it could be a great way increase your skill level.

-Garrett

[Paul Owens]

# Garrett,

I've been looking around online and can't find a film co-op in Rochester NY. Do you know, are there nation wide organizations that might have local branches or anything like that?

[Garrett Low]

Hi Paul,

Unfortunately it appears that Scary Cow is a fairly unique organization. We've been looking at the possibility of have other similar organizations start up as some of our members have had to move to other parts of the county. Nothing has cropped up yet. It has been a great resource for learning and developing my passion. I've taken classes with and had my work critiqued by directors, DP's and producers who worked on major Hollywood releases.

In the area we have at least a half dozen other organizations such as the Bay Area Video Coalition that also brings together video and multimedia professionals. It's a different model but the end goal is still to help fellow artists try to improve their skills.

-Garrett

[Paul Owens]

Honestly I can't believe how poor the resources seem to be around me. We have the Headquarters for Kodak, Xerox, and Bausch and Lomb within a 15 minute walk from where I'm sitting. We have the George Eastman Museam, Rochester Institute of Technology, the "Little Theater"... I had thought that we are a very Imaging community yet there is no store ANYWHERE to buy pro-video equipment and aside from enrolling into RIT, there are no programs anywhere i can find to offer workshops, or classes on video production. I know we're not LA, but I guess I'm surprised.

Thus I turn to the internet :-)

[Garrett Low]

Wow Paul, that would be disappointing. When I was first getting into this I was afraid that being so close to LA (only about 6 hours away) that there would be very few resources available near me. but I guess with the Tech industry near (Silicon Valley) and the historical ties to films in the area, there is a very strong artist community. In my home town Disney Studios just closed down and laid off about 400 people in an animation studio they had running up here. One of my daughters classmate's father was an animator for them. It was really nice to talk about story development with him. He's since moved to Canada where he got a job with another animation studio up there.

I was surprised to find how many groups and organizations there were around me. There are a lot of very good books out there too. Some may be available at your library and most are still available through Amazon or some other retailer.

If you find enough people who are interested maybe you could start your own society or coop.

-Garrett

[Paul Owens]

I've been looking for a cheaper copy of this,

Amazon.com: Television Production Handbook (Wadsworth Series in Broadcast and Production) (9780495898849): Herbert Zettl: Books

 

Amazon.com: Television Production Handbook (Wadsworth Series in Broadcast and Production) (9780495898849): Herbert Zettl: Books

Our director of production here in the office says it's by far the best resource out there to learn everything you need. There's a workbook you can get to go with it. I was thinking of buying those and getting a subscription to lynda.com... we'll see. I went to barns and noble and they laughed and said i'd have to look on their website to find anything on final cut or filming.

[Garrett Low]

Wow Paul, that's one expensive book. I haven't read it yet and don't know if I will unless I can find it at my library. A couple of books I've found useful (I probably have at least 20 books on Cinematography, lighting, sound, directing, etc.) are The 5 C's of Cinematography, Shot By Shot, In the Blink of An Eye, and if you haven't already watched Visions of Light it's a movie you must see.

Most of what I've picked up about sound is from practical experience with some very good production and post production sound engineers. I grew up wanting to be a recording engineer so from an early age I tried to position myself to be able to be around sound engineers learning how to pick up and record sound. Doing it for film is a little different than for recording say a CD but a lot of the principals are the same. Just a lot more to watch out for when doing it for a movie.

-Garrett

[Michael Wisniewski]

Paul,

Is Main too far? I've heard good things about the Maine Media Workshops.

[Richard Alvarez]

I'm guessing you have cable TV. I'm also guessing there's a cable access channel. Check with your local cable channel for opportunites to volunteer. They might need an extra hand evening shooting city council meetings - graduations - what have you. Might need help logging footage on weekends. At the very least there is a likelihood that you will run into other folks with similar interests.

EDIT: Ah yes, my google-fu is strong. Looks like they have classes and everything.

http://www.rctv15.org/

[Paul Owens]

Richard,

THANK YOU SOOOO much!!! I would have never thought of that. Honestly i didn't even know Chanel 15 was public access. it's production is SO far below the other ones I couldn't bare to watch it. (I guess that should have been a tip.) $150 for an 8 week final cut class!!! not bad. I'll definitely be doing that in the fall. They are doing a 16 week Documentary class and a field production class as well! Thanks again.

Paul