I've never really shot anything that required "Action Camera" so I really have no opinion on those things. As per my previous post I tend not to get into recommending hardware or software because a) there's so much of it out there and b) I figure most fanfilm makers are low- or no-budget and are going to use whatever they have at hand or can get their hands on. The gear I've used is all over the place. I did the film Afterglow to see what I could do with a smartphone and a gimbal and a cheap FLIR thermographic camera accessory for the smartphone. I shot one Kinsey Sicks video using three smartphones and a Canon T4i. I've shot a lot of videos with the same Canon, I've had DPs bring their own cameras in on other shoots.
In a thread over in Fan Art I was explaining directional continuity, which is something I often mention but seems little known to self-taught and fan filmmakers and 3D animators...and, sadly, a few too many "pros" these days. So I thought I'd bring the explanation over here. CINEMATOGRAPHY 101: DIRECTIONAL CONTINUITY OR STAY ON TARGET! Directional Continuity is a basic cinematography rule, and it's actually a really easy one: Objects traveling towards a destination horizontally tend and ought to maintain a general directional facing—say screen left or screen right—on the screen. This is related to The Line/180° Rule (discussed here), where once you establish that a character is facing something you maintain that facing throughout because it's intuitively clear to the audience that they have not turned around. Likewise, Directional Continuity makes clear that when something is heading towards or away from something or somewhere, so long as is maintains that general screen direction— be that left or right—it's clear it's still going the same way in the same direction. TERMINOLGY Here's our basic lingo. ^ | Camera Neutral (UP) | <—Camera Left ------ Camera Neutral ---- Camera Right—> | Camera Neutral (DOWN) | v You can also say Screen Left and Screen Right, as they mean the same thing. While filming you might say "camera left" but watching the film you might say "screen left". Camera Neutral means no left or right facing, though it can be upwards or downwards. East of Left One fun and sort of obvious convention is that traveling towards screen left generally means "west" and screen right means "east"; think of a map. When I did the short Stagecoach In the Sky the model photography was delivered with the plane facing screen right...but since there was a story point that the protagonist was "flying west" to be a cowboy, I flopped the shots of the plane so it was always heading screen left...because left=west. I'll explain the Continuity here and then explain how Camera Neutral works in practice at the end. EXAMPLES OF PROPERLY EXECUTED DIRECTIONAL CONTINUITY ST—TMP The starship Enterprise is established in drydock with a facing of camera left...ship's nose points to the left side of the screen. From that establishing shot on the ship resolutely points towards screen left as it lights up, leaves drydock, flies by Jupiter, goes to warp, skids around in the wormhole, warps to and faces V'ger and flies over it. In our cinematographic language V'ger is to the "west", or screen left. Earth is back in the "east" towards screen right. 1977's Star Wars (that's its title, George) The rebel ship enters fleeing towards screen left and... The Star Destroyer pursues in the same direction This continues all through the capture Even better is Star Wars' final battle The fighters leave the rebel base and in all shots are bearing screen left When they "try to draw their fire" the X-Wings now head this way and that because they are zig-zagging over the Death Star to distract the Imperials, so directional continuity doesn't matter as much But once down in the tench, the fighters always point/travel from screen right to screen left throughout the sequence. Y-Wings, X-Wings, TIEs...all the same way, cuz the end of the trench with the target is to screen left. The climax of "The Doomsday Machine": The Enterprise is bearing screen right as is the pursuing Planet Killer. If one was shown heading camera left instead, they'd appear to either be heading towards or away from one another. Thus both maintain that screen right direction to show they are going the same direction, one after the other. Decker's shuttlecraft, on the other hand, heads screen left, the opposite direction from the fleeing Enterprise and towards (and then into) the oncoming and screen right headed Planet Killer. The suicide run of the Constellation likewise has that ship facing screen left, cuz it too is heading into the same oncoming danger (nom nom nom). In all of these examples, if they suddenly cut to a shot where a ship previously established heading one direction was now facing the other, it would appear the ship had turned around (or was a new ship going the opposite way). CHANGING DIRECTION Star Trek II gives a comprehensive example of how to both maintain directional continuity and when to switch it around to show the ship has changed course or destination (and it messes it up once): The Enterprise resolutely points screen left from the stock footage through its encounter with the Reliant. But, whups, when the ship arrives at Regula I it's inexplicably heading screen right. Since it never changed course, that's a boo-boo. When the ship heads for the nebula it heads screen right. As the Reliant pursues, it too follows towards screen right. Within the nebula we see the Enterprise from above, angled down and right (still screen right), then it curves around from a screen right facing to screen left, which it maintains until... The ship turns around to try to escape the nebula, heading screen right again all the way through its "Go Sulu" warp drive climax. The final shot has the ship leaving the Genesis planet heading screen left again, suggesting it has again set a new course. Examples of this abound in all over movies and TV shows (autos driving in cities not so much because cities are mazes and we assume cars make turns to follow the streets). NEUTRAL ON CAMERA NEUTRAL In the preceding examples I left off mention of shots where the ships face in a Camera Neutral direction, because—like a true MacGuffin—they don't really matter to the topic of Directional Continuity. They are "neutral" because they don't cross the line and take on any horizontal direction. Because of this all this, something will feel "off" if Spock strides off to screen right and then we cut to the next room and see him entering facing screen left. It's like he turned around somewhere. On the other hand, if in one shot we see him walk directly towards the camera, without any left or right bias, we can then cut to a reverse shot where he's walking away angling screen left or screen right or camera neutral. We can intercut Camera Neutral with Camera Left or Camera Right and it feels fine. But go from Camera Right to Camera Neutral and then to Camera Left and it'll feel like a U-Turn. UPS AND DOWNS As creatures who mostly operate on a 2-dimensional plane, with eyes positioned on a horizontal plane, and who generally look left and right to see other people, we have biases towards seeing things in terms of left and right facings. So, when you flatten that view onto a 2D screen we tend to notice reversals on the horizontal way more than the vertical. As such, unless we turn an actor or vehicle or even the camera upside down, it's difficult to break any sort of vertical Directional Continuity. CHANGING DIRECTION There are times when your Spock or your starship needs to change course, and while you can just break Directional Continuity to do it, the best way to make sure it reads is to show the subject turning or going around a corner or what have you. In summary, this rule—like so many cinematography rules—is about visual language that connects with how we see the world. It's not arbitrary; it's common sense.
I'd like to add to the topic of screen movement: While this is not a hard and fast rule, screen movement tends to follow the direction of your writing system, with progress in cultures with Left-To-Right writing systems tending to occur in movement from the left side of the screen to the right. Heroes tend to face and move towards the right, while villains move towards left. This is clearly shown in the opening of the X-Men cartoon, where at the end the X-Men, facing right, charge towards the Brotherhood of Mutants, facing left. For cultures that read and write in the opposite, the directions can be reversed. In the opening to Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba, the heroes almost exclusively face left, while the villains face right. In the movie Snowpiercer, towards the right is the front of the train and towards the protagonist's goal and greater opulence, while left is towards the back, which also represents the past and poverty, but also greater humanity. Here's a related video:
I appreciate you sharing that, and there's probably absolutely nothing wrong with following what it suggests. Even if it turns out not to be accurate or true, it seems harmless. However... I do not find the video convincing. Furthermore, some of its contents and conclusions set off alarm bells. For one thing, the video begins with this example of flopping video to test this supposed perception effect (recreating a film described in the paper the video shamelessly rips off). But that sample itself contains unintended biases. In the first example, the cars across the street are parked facing screen left. But when they flop "all" the shots they miss flopping the first one, so when we first see the woman the cars are pointing screen left and she sits at screen left. but in the subsequent shot of her she's suddenly screen right and the whole room is reversed, and from here forward the cars face screen right, so immediately something feels "wrong" because there's a continuity error (heck even without that, the facing of the parked cars could inherently feel "wrong" in either facing to audiences based on if they live in left or right drive countries). One hopes the original study film was not so sloppy. The video then cherry picks shots from feature films to illustrate its conclusion, ignoring any practical filming considerations that might account for the directional choices. Consider the Hitchcock scene: when a left drive American car pulls to a sidewalk on a two way street in front of a building and the filmmaker wants to show the feet of someone stepping out, they're almost invariably going to put the camera towards the back of the car, which, means to the right of the car, which means the persons exiting are going to walk screen right to where the building is. In the UK or Japan that would be the opposite. Further, the video sometimes conflates screen direction standards with this supposed left v. right difference. One could just as easily argue the Hobbits travel towards screen right because Mordor is east of the Shire and one western cinematic convention is that screen right=east (like on a map). So what is this video based on? Its description cites a whopping two academic papers as its sources, so I found them. The video basically cribs from the one titled "Which Way Did He Go? Directionality of Film Character and Camera Movement and Subsequent Spectator Interpretation". (The citation was a broken link, but I found it through the magic of the Wayback Machine plugin (link)). Basically, the video treats the paper as factual, whereas the paper itself says: This study, then, is a step along the path to providing quantitative, empirical support to phenomena that have heretofore been examined via other modes such as semiotics (Eco, 1976; Metz, 1974). This convergence of critical cultural and empirical quantitative perspectives is rarely found in film studies, and is a much needed confluence in the scholarly literature. I went through the paper and I find it...sketchy. There are clumsy logical inferences and some dubious conclusions. Example: referencing that so many single player 2D videogames have "forward" to the right...which probably has its roots in 2 player games. When you number two players' scores on a screen in the west, you write 1 first then 2, not 2 then 1. So, when you make a game that can be played either with 1 or 2 players, where does a single player (1) start? Screen left facing right. So one can argue that's an equally valid—and more likely—origin for the initial facing of Player 1 characters than what this paper speculates. Blame Pong. I do (damn you Al Alcorn!). The paper also makes a ludicrous leap to Pitfall! as supporting evidence...and cites the book Racing the Beam to buttress that. Mind you, I know the programmer of the former and a map I did was cited and reproduced in the latter. The meat of the paper concerns an experiment conducted and which the video badly reproduced (with the aforementioned biases). Alarmingly, the paper gives no indication of the number of participants in that survey (unless i missed it), which provides little confidence that the test was broad enough to account for common statistical error. Furthermore, the paper notes the subjects were recruited from "Communication courses" and not a general cross-section of people, which in itself could skew the results. There's also zip mention of control groups. The paper also contains this troublingly unbiased statement: "Some filmmakers also realize the importance of action moving from the left to the right versus from the right to the left." Emphasis mine, which implies there is importance to it, not that there may be. The second paper (link) is solely about The Kuleshov Effect (link) which is referenced in the first paper, but not in a context that supports the argument, but about how Kuleshov believed lateral movement to be the easiest for audiences to follow (whereas the Kuleshov Effect suggests the way shots are cut together and interact has more impact than the content of either shot individually.) BTW, skimming the Kuleshov paper cited I see no mention of screen direction. So, is what the video postulating possible? Yes. Is there convincing evidence for it? Meh.
Wow, you took that video way more seriously than I had intended. However, you do bring up a lot of good points related to lateral movement, such as the observation that many movies treat towards the screen as north. Like I said, I'm not trying to represent these things as hard and fast rules. I'm simply trying to make film makers aware of another potential tool in their tool chest. For example, a fan film maker could make the left side of the screen towards the Federation in space shots while making right towards the Delta Quadrant and the unknown, with the viewer facing the galactic core. Similarly, if you have crew running from the bridge to the shuttlebay as the ship is about to explode, you would want the direction of the shuttlebay to always be on one side of the screen to avoid confusion.
Respectfully, aside from screen left being “home” that’s just directional continuity and not what the video was about. My goal here is always to help beginner filmmakers improve their work with simple, grounded and proven filmmaking techniques. I took the video at face value. I found its conclusions dubious and the research it cites questionable. I said it’s probably harmless to follow what it suggests. I simply find the conclusions it reached unconvincing.
Dusting off ye olde topic because I made a short playlist of behind the scenes stuff from various Polaris shoots. Thought some of you might find it fun. Here are the separate clips, since you can't embed a playlist as a video:
I guess the only thing I can add to this discussion is. Be prepared for things to go wrong. Because they will. Actors and crew simply won't show up, or will drop out day of. Props will break. You name it. Yes, pre production and planning is the most important phase of the project. But like Mike Tyson says "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."
Welcome aboard. Planning means planning contingencies for when things go wrong. For instance, any time a film has outdoor shooting scheduled they almost invariably have "cover set" where the production can move to in inclement weather, etc. An actor has to go home sick, you send them home, stick someone in their costume and use them as a double for over the shoulder shots while you shoot the closeups of other actors in the scene (this happened in "The Devil In the Dark" when Shatner had to be away when his father died, where Shatner's stand-in took his place in a lot of shots until Shatner returned and they the necessary shots of him). You also have to be proactive. David Mamet wrote "always shoot an entrance and an exit" for every character even if the scenes don't require it, because if you have to change something you can always use those shots to bring a character into a scene late or get them out of the scene. When we shot Polaris on a day when I had the entire bridge crew cast on hand I shot everyone entering an exiting, and got B-roll of reaction shots and them all working at the consoles as safety for fixes that might be necessary later. EDIT: Section removed because Mod deleted the post it was in reply to. [...]The whole point of this thread has been to be of practical use to fan filmmakers. These read like research papers.
Don't forget to have a first aid kit, in case something happens to a member of your cast or crew: https://makezine.com/article/craft/photography-video/ultimate-film-set-first-aid-kit/
That's very practical advise. Also, always give a safety talk to the crew and warn them of anything on set that can cause injury (tripping on cables, what have you).
Here's a video on set safety: The 4 Most Dangerous Things on a Film Set The last point about fatigue is a serious issue. If you're running behind on a shoot, there's a temptation to push through and finish, but sometime the best thing to do is to simply schedule an additional shooting day. However, fatigue is the greatest threat to your cast and crew, especially if they have long drives home once they're done filming. Many unions in Hollywood are pushing for workdays of no more than 12 hours with at least 12 hours of downtime afterward for this very reason. Here's a long-but-good video on how to properly use a c-stand: LIVE Proper C-Stand Set Up Here's another safety tip video: 7 Quick Tips That Could SAVE YOUR LIFE One very important thing this video brings up is complying with your fire marshal. There are things you might like to do, like hanging sound blankets, that may actually represent a fire risk or block exits in the event of an evacuation. One thing you rarely hear about is intimacy coordination. If two actors are supposed to have any type of physical contact in the scene, you need to both explain the nature of the contact and make sure you have everyone's consent and that everyone feels safe. This may not be obvious. There may be a combat scene where two people are supposed to struggle with each other, and this may make one or more actors intensely uncomfortable or may even be traumatizing under some circumstances. So make sure you review the script ahead of time and talk to all the actors involved to avoid difficult situations on-set. You may also want to walk through what you plan to do just before filming a scene so that you know everyone's on the same page. Similarly, we need to get into the habit of asking permission to take photos. Publicity photos are useful, but make sure you have everyone's consent to be photographed beforehand, and make sure people are aware of when and where you'll be taking photos. (Small sets crammed into houses don't always have proper changing rooms for everyone.)
If you look at how this topic has been laid out since day one the idea is to deliver single topics per post, not a grab bag of unrelated topics. It's not particularly helpful to jam a bunch of different topics in one post, because it requires someone to read the entire thing to pick out the different items. I typically only discuss one subject per post so those who might scan the thread looking for something can spot it easily enough. Furthermore, you're throwing out things that really belong under umbrella topics. For instance, "intimacy coordination" really belongs in a discussion about set etiquette. On-set photos are a subject closely tied to talent releases, which cover them. It's blithely easy to say "schedule another day" as if it's just that simple... frequently, it's not.
I'm well aware of the fact that rescheduling can be a delay of months and that people come and go from film groups all the time, often necessitating a recast or possibly scrapping a film altogether. That's not an excuse for having amateurs work 12+ hours, then have them be back on the set bright and early the next morning for a similar shift, especially if some of them have a 90-minute drive home, one way. If it's a questionable practice for paid professionals, we shouldn't be doing it for fan films. So yes, sometimes the only responsible move is to stop filming for that day and hope you can reschedule at a later date, even if the film suffers as a result.
As usual your reply ignores the broader point and focuses on a particular. My comment is that dropping a post with a laundry list of unrelated topics sans even headings isn't particularly useful because a) it's not easy to find and b) said advice is presented sans context.
Since the "broader point" was that I had a "grab bag of unrelated topics", I simply quietly accepted your point and picked a single topic to reply to. My apologies for not spelling that out for you explicitly. You do understand that I can't address ALL the comments you made on the multiple topics I brought up AND restrict myself to one topic at the same time? You get that that's a catch-22, right?
To be very clear, the problem I had was the dropping of a bunch of brief bits on multiple topics in a single post sans any larger contexts they belonged in. I used several of the topics you mentioned to illustrate why they aren't necessarily useful sans the larger context. Your reply was about one of those topics and you ignored my point about said context. That's not a Catch-22 by any definition. I want to reiterate something because I think it's important, and why I think this topic is a slightly different animal than most of those on this forum. "Original intent" if you will. I launched this topic to be as user-friendly and practical as possible with an emphasis on tips from people who have "been there done that" hands-on and therefore can post knowledgeably about stuff fan filmmakers and wanna-be filmmakers can learn from. And while I am fine with inexperienced people asking questions and sharing videos and articles in a "does this seem like a good idea?" manner, I do think it's against the spirit of the OT for people who've no actual experience with any of this kind of stuff to chime in as if they're peers. This is about mentoring, and you have to have walked the walk to be able to knowledgeably talk the talk. Working dozens of shoots over the past 15 years taught me how little I knew, despite being a student and devotee. And that's why I sometimes come down hard on videos and links and advice shared by people who haven't walked that walk: because people who've not done the work aren't necessarily equipped to know what's useful and practical and what isn't. That's one man's opinion, of course, and @jespah can chime in if I've crossed any lines here.
No one is confused about this point. You haven't explained how it's not a Catch-22 by ONE definition. Not that it matters, because this isn't a constructive conversation. It can only serve to take us further off topic. Ah, here's the emotional core of the matter. I'm sorry if I came across as dictating from on high rather than sharing ideas about how things could work. That was not my intention, and I'll work on how I present my suggestions in the future. However, I'm concerned about this idea that we or anybody else are not "peers". There is a difference between asking people to acknowledge your years of experience and trying to establish a hierarchy of authority that must be gatekept.