THIS TUTORIAL IS FOR THOSE THAT ARE USING CANON EOS DSLR’s

Essential to a perfect ring shot:

1. MACRO LENS (EF 180mm f/3.5L Macro, EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro, EF 50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro)
2. LIGHTING (any small, off-camera light will do)
3. MOTION (whether it be camera motion or light motion)

Creating the perfect ring shot:

• Plan out the setting, lighting & ring position
• Gather the rings from the bride & groom
  • Shooting the ring shot towards the end of the reception usually allows for more time to unleash your creativity.
  • Avoid possession of rings for extended periods of time. Some couples get antsy when you don’t hurry back with them, not to mention the longer you have the rings the more time you have to misplace them :(
• Set them up
  • There isn’t a right or wrong way to do this.
  • Using some sticky tack sometimes helps support a ring in an awkward position.
• Light the rings
  • Add enough light to shoot at a low ISO/gain. This is one part of the day where YOU are in total control of the lighting conditions so take advantage.
  • Backlight the rings to highlight the jewels,
  • Candles can be used for some out-of-focus flicker and they add motion.
• Use tripod or slider
  • Don’t try to shoot a ring shot handheld, you’ll wish you didn’t when you get back and review your shaky footage.
• Reverse clip in post if you use camera motion.
  • Start your ring shot where you want the shot to end later and then add your motion (tripod pan/tilt or a slide). Simply reverse the clip’s speed in post and your ring shot will have a nice, even flow to the perfectly framed ending shot.

Thanks for watching/reading. I’ll be on the look out for your perfect ring shots!
Jet Kaiser
Jet Kaiser Films

If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed for me over the past year, it’s my admiration and love of ShootQ! If you have heard me speak you know how much of an evangelist I am for this amazing and indispensable piece of online software.

The reason I love it so much is because as a creative professional and small business owner, my customer service and my time are the most important things to me. ShootQ gives me both! Sometimes, words are cheap, so I just wanted to show everyone out there first hand, whether you already use ShootQ or not, how ShootQ can help your business organize your leads and clients, your packages and your contracts, financials and forecasts, and how it creates “workflows” for you so you are always on top of the tasks that need attention now.

I’ve even heard from some of you, saying you have ShootQ, you can see the potential, you just don’t know where to start. This video shows you the “backend” of Life Stage Films. I hope it helps you understand the power of this amazing software. Let me know if it helps you!

“Head Coach”
Matt Davis

What an interesting year 2009 was been, huh?! Some of us had a great year, and some of us are ready to forget already. Either way, 2010 is almost here, so what are you going to do about it?

For the past 3 years at Life Stage Films, we have put strict emphasis on knowing exactly what works and what doesn’t work in our business every year before the next year begins. I think it’s so incredibly cleansing to take a retrospective look at your business as the year is about to end. If you don’t, you get stale. You might become irrelevant. Or even worse, you might get “comfortable”. Being comfortable is no place to be for not only a business owner, but a creative artist. But let’s say you do take some time ( just one day) before the busy-ness of the January-March time period of getting as many 2009 edits out the door as you can. If you really care about your business, you’ll enjoy looking back and not only praising yourself for a job well done, but you’ll ask those tough questions that get you moving in the right direction if you weren’t before.

It’s kind of like journaling. It’s fun and incredibly addicting. We enjoy looking back at our success list from a few years ago to see how far we have come. It inspires us to create a plan for the next year that will influence our decisions even more. But it starts with a plan. At the beginning of 2009, and every business quarter there after, our entire staff takes an entire day to come up with our next 90-Day plan. We come up with goals that are hard, but attainable. It keeps our larger goals that we made at the beginning of the year easier to get to. So, back to the bigger picture, I want to help you start 2010 with a bang and inspire you to improve your business and take it to another level. Let’s get started.

*** Before you do this, make yourself a promise to isolate yourself from distractions. Go to a coffee shop, a bookstore, just get away from the office, and from family. The follow exercise shouldn’t take longer than a few hours, but its so important to do it with a clear head, and BEFORE your work gets hectic again for 2010. I always do it the day after New Years.

1. Get a piece of paper, or create a Word document.

2. Answer the following questions.

• What Were My Biggest Challenges/Problems for 2009?
  
• What Were My Top 5 Lessons Learned This Year?
  
• What Were My Top 5 Success Stories This Year? (Brag on yourself, what things were you proud to accomplish in ‘09?)
• What was my favorite project I shot/edited this year, and why?
• What was the biggest thing that moved my business forward in 2009?
  

For 2010

• How much (%) do I want to increase my revenue for 2010?
• What are 10 ways I will be able to attain that goal. Be specific.
  
• What are 3 major things on my perpetual to-do list that I’d like to see accomplished for my business in 2010? (things you never make time to get to, but are important)
  
• What are 5 things I can do for my business in 2010 that will set me more apart from my competition.
  
• What are 5 goals I’d like to see met in December of 2010.
• What are 5 things that I can implement now that will improve my personal life in 2010. (There is a direct correlation to the success of your business)

In the spirit of community and inspiring each other, if you chose to do this important exercise, leave a comment on this post by telling us all your 5 biggest success stories of 2009. It’s ok to brag when someone gives you permission! Cheers to making it through 2009 alive and well. You also got to work in a job that you love. That’s a great thing. Here’s to a successful 2010!

Matt D., Lifestage

We can agree that it’s necessary to expand and grow in order to truly run a business.  We can also agree that hiring the right people for our businesses can be a real pain in the rear.  So why not do it in the most efficient, effective way possible?

If your current system of posting for jobs is working for you, then great! But if you are tired of wasting your precious time, I have linked to a document below that outlines the process of finding great people for your team, quickly and effectively.

Click Here to Download Interview Process PDF

Cheers!
Matt D., Lifestage

I got my grubby little fingers on a guests Canon 7D and went to town! This is my first time ever to use this little gem, and look what transpired. All video shot using the 70-200 2.8 IS.

All photographs taken using the 50mm 1.2.

IN[FOCUS] 2010 presenter Joe Simon elucidates on his journey from mass producing to offering a more select artistic product in the latest episode of FilmFellas.

A special thanks goes out to Steve Weiss and the Zacuto Team for shedding some light on what we do.  Support Zacuto by checking out and purchasing their gear, in particular, consider the Z-Finder for aiding in focusing with your Canon 5D/7D – it’s a must!

Wedding Filmmakers and IN[FOCUS] 2010 presenters Patrick Moreau and Ron Dawson mix it up with Kevin Shahinian.  Enjoy!

IN[FOCUS] 2010 presenter Joe Simon preaches the good word about the respect wedding filmmakers get these days, and his ability to fill in for absent photographers when he uses the Canon Mark II 5D!

Part II//////Storyboarding for wedding cinema

In Storyboarding Part I I talked a bit about storyboarding in general and its usefulness in breaking down shots for more narrative/ film style work. In part two I would like to talk about how storyboarding can be a hugely important tool in wedding cinema as well. The question is, how do you storyboard for a wedding, where nearly everything is unpredictable and unrepeatable?

We have been storyboarding for weddings since we began shooting cinema a couple years ago. At the time, these storyboards were more or less just basic layout of what kinds of framing and shots we were looking for. But now they have evolved into a crucial tool that we use for nearly everything we shoot.

While storyboarding for traditional narrative films helps illustrate specifics shots, moments and key-frames. Storyboarding for wedding cinema can be used in a different way that is more specific to the nature of the live event aspect. The storyboards are used more for inspiration and ideas as well as reminders of unique and creative angles, compositions, and possible framing and composition options.. The storyboards simply provide a visual guide for your ideas and also help you remember what shots you had in your mind while envisioning how sequences will look and flow. We have been using storyboards on nearly every cinema wedding since we started, and I have found that by spending a few hours sketching out ideas the day or two before a wedding can save a huge amount of time and streamline everything on the wedding day.

The best way for me to illustrate how I use storyboards for wedding cinema is by some examples that I have here with me. I scanned a bunch of notes and drawings from the idea / brainstorming sessions that Danielle and I had from both Sarah & Kurt and Preben and Nicole’s wedding.

We have always wanted to incorporate some After Effects work in our Same Day Edits and always developed some hugely complicated effects sequence that would need to be edited over multiple days.  Could we then call these “Same Day Edits?”. The answer was simply, NO.   So we took another approach of heavily storyboarding out the effects sequences we envisioned…..and then (yes, crazy) doing all the After Effects work on the wedding day in order to call them SDE’s.

Here are the storyboards for Sarah & Kurt’s SDE. We sketched out a basic  rough idea of what framing and order of shots we wanted for their gift-giving sequence.  We also sketched out some ideas for the opening and ending sequences which we wanted to have symmetry – to tell a mini story.

While talking with Kurt before the wedding, we thought of the idea making a mix tape for Sarah, and since their favorite song is the Kings of Leon “Use Somebody,” we decided that this would be a perfect chance to tie it all in.

Here are the storyboards:

Here is Sarah & Kurts SDE:

/////SARAH&KURT * SDE////////////////// from Casey Warren | MIND CASTLE on Vimeo.

/////Some non-technical:

Kurt + Sarah = amazing people

/////Some technical:

Camera: 100% with Canon 5D MK II

Lenses: Canon 24mm 1.4L, Canon 70-200mm f2.8L, Canon 135mm f2.0, Voightlander 58mm f1.4.

Techniques: diegetic to non-diegetic opening and sound transitions. Color to color transitions. After Effects used at the end.

—————-

For Preben and Nicole’s SDE, we had even more detailed storyboards.  A couple of weeks before the wedding we met with Preben to go over the schedule and as he was leaving he mentioned to us that he had a disc with hundreds of vintage photos from Roche Harbor (the wedding venue).  We had been to a couple resorts before where you could literally hold up a photo from the 1920’s, peer around it, and see that same place, nearly untouched  today. We thought that this would be the concept to integrate into their wedding…the passage of time and things past to present. Furthermore, Nicole had restored Preben’s grandfather’s watch and gave it to him as a gift on the wedding day. Along with the letter she wrote him, we tied the past to present idea into their wedding SDE all the more.

Here are the storyboards:

Here is Preben & Nicole’s SDE

/////PREBEN&NICOLE * SDE////////////////// from Casey Warren | MIND CASTLE on Vimeo.

Blog Post: Click here

Camera: 100% Canon 5d MK II

Lenses: 2x Canon 70-200mm f2.8L, Canon 24mm f1.4L, Canon 135mm f2.0L, Voightlander 58mm f1.4

Other gear: Cinevate swing away mattebox, Proteus cage and mounts, Pegasus LTS (slider), Satchler Camera support, Steadicam Flyer LE

Other Software: Adobe After Effects for Rotoscoping and film effects

You can see that these wedding storyboards have a bit less detail and are less intricate than the ones in Part I.   This is because, on the wedding day, the scenes won’t exactly match up due to the live event nature.  It pays to keep things down to the bare bones of the scene to tell the story.

Overall, storyboards can be an incredibly useful time saving tool on wedding day, especially when there is little time to waste.  Also, storyboards used to any degree, help with the pre-planning process overall. They really help refine and focus ideas and concepts. From simple shot ideas to longer complex sequences, they can be an essential tool to practice in the art of wedding cinema.

~Casey Warren

MIND|Castle Studios

Follow me on the T(witter):

///////////////Storyboarding: Part I of II//////

 Storyboarding is an incredibly useful tool within all genres of filmmaking. From documentary work to event filmmaking, storyboards provide a visual reference for the action that propels the movement of the story. Unlike writing out a shot list or just having general ideas of what shots and framing you want, drawing shots out on paper truly illustrates how each frame is juxtaposed with the next.  The purpose of this entry is to introduce you to the usefulness of storyboarding, and my next entry will apply storyboarding to wedding filmmaking.

Sometimes I use storyboarding to quickly transfer an idea I have in my head onto paper.  Sometimes I have an intricate and lengthly sequence in mind and I want to see how each frame will edit with the next. With storyboarding, there can be infinite levels of complexity within each sequence,  so, to streamline the process I think of storyboarding as keyframing. 

Applications like Final Cut Pro, Motion, After Effects, Maya, (the list can go on) all utilize keyframing – the setting of a point at the beginning and the ending of an action and allowing the computer to interpolate the action that will occur between those two points. I visualize storyboards as keyframes – they only show the crucial moments of a scene or sequence. Then, when I actually film the sequence, the actions of the people will fill in the moments between those keyframes. 

This concept is even more relevant in wedding and event filmmaking where things happen unpredictably; however, the storyboard is not so much to create exact shots, but rather for planning out ideas and sequences and how key moments will edit and link together. 

As wedding filmmakers we like to let things happen naturally, capturing true moments, emotions, and stories.  Therefore, it might seem counterintuitive to this approach to attempt to storyboard.  Instead, it actually provides a well of ideas to draw upon throughout the day. 

But before I show you how I have storyboarded an upcoming Same-Day-Edit (Storyboarding part II, coming next month), I’d like to show you how I storyboarded a narrative corporate project for Cinevate,  first aired at NAB. This commercial was part of a complilation of 5 different commercials made by other wedding filmmakers in the industry. (Ray Roman, Matt E, Joe Simon, and Patrick Moreau/Konrad Czystowski/Michael Wong). 

If you look closely, you can see how a few things changed from the storyboards to the actual film; yet, you can also see how the general flow of shots remains strikingly similar. After taking the time to storyboard, I forgot to bring my drawing to the shoot….but the exercise of storyboarding apparently imprinted the shots and the flow onto my brain.

All the better to pre-visualize in whatever work you do.

Enjoy! ~ Casey////MIND|Castle Studios

//////////////dream.create.inspire///////

CINEVATE // THE DURUS UNIT from Casey Warren | MIND CASTLE on Vimeo.