Author: Yuriy

It’s true, lighting can make or break a shot. Simple lighting differences are able to elicit incredibly diverse audience emotions. For example, the soft light for a couple sitting together holding hands at sunset has a far different look than the dark lighting of someone standing at a cemetery in the rain. Lighting for action shots requires the same nuanced attention to detail.

When producing an action shot, you want the audience to feel excited for the subjects and maybe even a little nervous about whether they will succeed. But how are these emotions drawn from the audience? Here’s some tips to help you achieve the look and feel you want during your next action video with lighting.

Contrast

For action shots that are more akin to a superhero movie than to a sporting event, contrast is key. Think about your favorite underdog stories — right before the protagonist meets the villain, scenes involving a long dark hallway with shafts of light breaking through come to mind, don’t they?

High contrast lighting techniques such as this allow you to add a dynamic edge to your shots as well as provide a visual metaphor for good (light) versus evil (dark). You can maximize these contrasts in post-production editing. However, make sure not to compromise aesthetic balance for excessive brightness or shadows.

Brightness

While contrast is a good omen for conflict, complete darkness without any light breaking through during a true action sequence is not ideal. When a set is dark, motion blurs are more likely to be a problem. Shooting in good light will minimize potential blur and allow viewers to see the subject matter in the image much more clearly, making it easier to tell the story through facial expressions.

Shutter Speed

When cameras are left on automatic mode, they automatically try to adjust to the light that is in the shot. If the light is low – such as at night or in a dark setting like in a basement – this automatic setting tries to adjust to the changing lighting as people move.

This constant changing does something that no producer wants in a fast shot: it lowers the shutter speed. Most learn to set their shutter angle at 180 degrees, a 1/48 shutter speed, but for an action shot it’s better to set it at a shutter speed that is double the frame rate being used. However, if you want a blurred background to show movement, a lower shutter can help accomplish this. Instead of setting your shutter to 1/48, try setting it to 1/125 to see the changes that this produces. You’ll find that this makes each movement within the image significantly more pronounced, enhancing the crispness of the motions.

Closeups

Another way to improve the quality of your action shots is found in the width of the shot. It may seem like you should go for wide shots in order to capture all of the action happening in the scene, but this simply isn’t true. For the most part, tighter shots actually intensify the visuals, capturing more of the action. Watch any action movie and you’ll see this method is frequently used particularly during fight scenes.

Framing for closeups makes the subject’s actions seem larger, and therefore, more important. Keep the lighting dramatic by using directional light that will create shadows to emphasize your subjects’ most intense features. This can be achieved with strong light from above or below; just play around with your actors and equipment first to find the best setup.

Glow

Finally, give your action shots the shimmering, steely shine they deserve with well appointed reflectors, good timing, and maybe even some makeup.

To give an ethereal glow to a hero or heroine, bounce light directly onto their skin with a gold or silver metallic reflector disc. If you’re filming outdoors, capture the magic of the golden hour by shooting right near dawn or dusk. Remember, water also reflects and intensifies light. If your actors really break a sweat, it can translate into a dazzling effect on camera. Imitation tears and sweat made from glycerin can be used as well to create this steamy, powerful look.

Looking for even more lighting tips? Check out our blog to read about the best budget lights, multi-camera lighting strategy, and more! Need a new mobile studio solution for your shoots? Download Cinamaker for iOS now from the App Store and read more about our products here.

Happy Cinamaking!

A live stream can be useful in myriad situations — yet when most people think of live streaming, events are often the first use-case that comes to mind. However, this is only one way to use a live stream video to your advantage.

For brands, whether they be personal or commercial, live streaming can be a powerful tool for growth and awareness. Live streaming as a marketing technique can serve its purpose with various tactics, and has even helped such well-known brands as Tough Mudder and Dunkin’ Donuts to further extend their presence and impact.

Announcements And Messages

Whether you’re filming the opening of a new location or showing off your company’s latest product, live streaming is a great way to spread the word of any news involving your brand. This method also allows your consumers to feel included and engaged on a personal level, rather than a scripted commercial or advert. Simply put, a live stream is more personal. It gives your audience the feeling that you are almost personally talking to them instead of talking at them. A single camera shoot might be most effective in accomplishing this sense of intimacy.

Questions and Concerns

Think about what you see at the end of almost any page selling a product. It’s typically the frequently asked questions, specifications, or purchasing details. Instead of addressing these questions as they accumulate and leaving it up to your customers to do the digging, you can bring answers to your customers or fans more quickly in a live stream format. This can help you talk directly to a large group of your customers and streamline any feedback or troubleshooting process.

Education

It’s entirely possible that your target audience knows little to nothing about your brand. A livestream is the perfect place for you to educate anyone who is watching about your brand story and brand value. In general, there’s one major tip for this: make your livestream succinct and interesting to watch. This can be difficult, if you don’t grab people’s attention immediately, they’ll likely tune you out or turn you off. So be creative and only include what really matters. With the popularity of DIY and other how-to videos today, there’s a lot of opportunity to create engaging, informative content that will encourage people to share your brand’s message with others. Again, being interactive with your audience is going to help.

Call to Action

Think about TV infomercials. At the end of each one, you usually hear something along the lines of “if you call now” or “this is a limited time offer.” While this was once a clever, effective tactic, it’s a bit outdated today. A live stream is an ideal, modernized way to share a limited time offer. Why? You know that your audience is watching you live, so obviously these viewers can’t miss the offer if they’re paying attention. If you can catch the sense of urgency in your live stream correctly, and you have a quality offer, you should be able to convince the majority of your audience to take action. A properly directed multi-camera shoot could be a particularly effective tool to help relay this sense of urgency.

Longer Messages

When you livestream, you don’t have to worry about cramming your message into a 30-second television ad. Instead, you have an unlimited amount of time to define and explain your product without any extra charge. This is perfect for conveying more complex ideas that are too long for a commercial but too dry to want to read about in an article or press release. With that said, use the time wisely. No one wants to feel as though they’ve wasted their time. That sort of feeling will ensure a lower viewer turnout the next time. Remember: live streams give you a lot of freedom, but you can’t take your viewers for granted.

Dramatic Flair

If your live stream is bland, you’ll begin to see diminishing viewer counts in subsequent live streams. At the end of the day, everyone wants to be entertained. One way to do this is by building a feeling of suspense. Don’t just drop something on the viewer. Set the stage. Lots of Television series, YouTubers, and musicians use this technique for special live streams right before a premiere or event. They often take viewers backstage or make them a part of the action by following the performer as he or she walks down the hallway before stepping on stage. While these situations may not perfectly apply here, finding exciting ways to keep viewers on the edge of their seats before making an announcement or reaching the climax of your show will create a sense of anticipation that keeps them watching and excited for more.

At the end of the day, your goal should be to give the impression that you’re continually producing engaging moments, and live streaming is the perfect tool to do just that!

This is one recipe you won’t want to miss.

Home movie making has evolved over the years, but no matter how many Thanksgivings you’ve spent together, there’s one thing you can always count on: the complete and utter insanity that is your family (especially if you’re the Bluths of Arrested Development).

Lucky for us, it’s 2017 and it’s likely that every single member of your extended family keeps a video-capable smartphone in their pockets at all times. This means you have no excuse not to capture each and every antic that Turkey Day will undoubtedly offer. Follow this quick recipe for home movie success and immortalize the horrors and humiliation of this holiday for years to come…

PREPARATION:

Assemble your camera crew

Your crew should be comprised of those members of your family who share your vision for organized chaos and penchant for documentary(ish) filmmaking. Cousins and mischievous uncles work especially well. Kids are also helpful for those tricky crowded kitchen shots. Sync your devices, review the ingredients, and divide and conquer.

INGREDIENTS:

The one who’s always late

The one who talks to the food

The spice master

The food snob

The taster

The family football game

The conversationalist

And just a dash of sassy grandma

ASSEMBLY:

Now that you’ve recorded they key elements for a hilarious home movie, simply review the footage and edit them together on your phone or computer.

PRESENTATION:

Your masterpiece has been cultivated, curated, and cut with perfection and is now suitable for sharing. Gather the whole family ’round the telly after desert for this final piece de resistance or go for a guerilla tactic by sharing on social media first and taking comments (or criticism) later. Just remember that whatever feedback you may receive now, your family will ultimately thank you for preserving this year’s festivities with the cinematic flourish it deserves.

Happy Cinamaking, and Happy Thanksgiving!

*featured image c/o Arrested Development (Fox, Netflix)

“This one goes to eleven.”

We never actually asked the men of Broken Factory Windows how high their speakers went, but judging by the shelf that crashed halfway through the shoot, we’d say pretty high.

The Space

This local band rocks its post-hardcore jams in a tiny studio above the drummer’s print shop, Odditees. To create an authentic music video, we decided to bring our Cinamaker studio to them. As we climbed the narrow staircase, it became clear that the space could hardly hold the band members and their equipment let alone us. A traditional camera crew might have been hard pressed (literally) to make do, but with just four iPhones and an iPad, Cinamaker’s sleek setup left us just enough room to jump around when the music moved us.

The Setup

Just like our music video for Monte Qarlo and makeup tutorial video with Wyatt, setting up this fixed two to four camera shoot started with mounting the cameras and framing the shots. In this case, each camera was focused on a different piece of the band. One phone was dedicated to drums, another to bass, and two focused on the lead guitarist and vocalist to be sure we captured his face as well his hands during solo riffs. Finally, our lead videographer used a hand-held Lumix to capture the behind the scenes action, so we could capture the production in progress.

The Sound

After meticulously adjusting our angles, we found a safe spot for the Director Pad devices and secured each camera assistant’s connection. Then came the hard part — sound.

Like most music videos, we ended up laying the band’s pre-recorded tracks over the video we shot, but given the difficulty of syncing a live recording to studio audio, we wanted to make sure we captured some real-time audio just in case.

While our original approach was to plug in sound directly from the band’s mixer, we quickly discovered it would only deliver audio from the vocal inputs. However, the solution was simple enough. All we needed was one person to surrender their personal iPhone for the next hour to use as an audio assistant. Although the current consumer versions of Cinamaker accommodate up to four camera assistants, Cinamakers can still add an extra two devices as audio assistants. Once we picked our dedicated audio assistant phone, it was simply a matter keeping an eye out on the sound levels to make sure we didn’t get rocked right into the red.

The Song

We recorded a variety of songs to give ourselves plenty to work with, thanked the band for the private concert, and then headed back to the studio to edit. Our lead videographer uploaded all the footage onto her desktop and quickly got to work creating two versions of the video using Final Cut Pro.

Check out Broken Factory Windows’ “Polar” in this quick behind the scenes look at the makings of a Cinamaker music video.

Download your own music video studio in the Apple App store today with just two free apps, the Director Pad and Cinamaker Capture, and get Cinamaking. Feel free to ask us any questions through our support channel and please share your videos with us on Twitter (@CinaMakerApp) and Facebook — we can’t wait to see them!

It’s just one week away!

Love it or hate it, Black Friday is a national tradition that can get you some real bang for your buck — and for video creators like us, these crazy deals are the perfect way to snag some new additions for our Cinamaker mobile studios.

With Cinamaker, creating professional video on the go is a snap. All you need is a tablet and one or more smartphones and voila! You’ve got a control room and studio cameras that fit easily in your backpack. Plus, Cinamaker is now available for immediate free download for iOS devices on the Apple App store.

Like we said, it’s a snap. But maybe your equipment could use a little upgrade, or maybe you don’t walk around with an extra iPhone at all times.

Black Friday savings are here to help!

Starting on Thanksgiving, Target is offering a $120 discount on the 10.5-inch Apple iPad Pro and Walmart will be giving away $300 gift card for qualifying purchases of iPhones 7, 7 Plus, 8, 8 Plus, and X (AT&T & Verizon).

If you’re still hungry for more, take a look at all of Apple’s Black Friday deals on Forbes.

Once you have Director Pad set up on your snazzy new iPad Pro, you can download Cinamaker Capture to your assistant iPhones and get to work.

Not into Apple products? Wait a few more days for Cyber Monday and Target will be offering $200 gift cards with the purchase of the Google Pixel 2 or Google Pixel XL. You can be one of the first to try Cinamaker’s Android Beta — now available on the Google Play store!

To read more about possible non-Apple tech deals, check out more on CNET’s holiday gift guide.

Apple or Android, all Cinamakers need accessories to keep their studio up and running — literally. Accessories such as chargers, tripods, car mounts and more can all be found on sale as part of Amazon’s Black Friday deals!

Now there’s something we can all be thankful for.

Happy deal hunting and happy Cinamaking!

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