Why is cinematography important?

- Hey, folks! Welcome to course number seven in this training series. Here we're going to be looking at cinematography. But what is that? Well, for our purposes here it refers to using cameras and lights to tell a story. Cinematography is what makes everyday places and things feel larger than life. It makes desert landscapes feel more foreboding. It makes mansions feel more empty and hollow. It makes everyday boring locations like a field of crops feel absolutely terrifying.

So in this course we're going to learn how to pull off these types of magic tricks. And, you know, The Assurance was a great education. We're going to have a blast digging into that. But, since it did have a very specific feel and look, we also held a few other shoots we'll be looking at to show you even more tricks, as well as how to shoot different styles in case fantasy isn't your thing. Now, in some films like Paranormal Activity or The Blair Witch Project, there wasn't really a focus on the standards of cinematography as we know them. The movies looked more like amateur footage or security camera footage.

And that was part of the storytelling. So the absence of some of these standard cinematography principles was a great tool in these cases. Now, the point is, and you're going to hear me say this over and over again throughout this course, the point is to make intentional choices about how to tell your story visually. And this course will give you the tools you need to do just that. You know, looking back on The Assurance, I think I would choose to shoot some shots differently. So we'll analyze those shots critically and see what went wrong. In some cases we'll actually recreate shots from The Assurance to show you the choices I might make if I were filming it again today.

Now, I totally understand that there's all kinds of budgets out there. So we'll show you how we did big shots with a big crew and lots of gear and all that stuff. But we also did a lot of shots with a much smaller crew. The additional cinematography shoots that we held were actually done with just a crew of myself or maybe one other person. And several shots in The Assurance were done all by myself with absolutely no other crew. So no matter how you shoot or who you shoot with or how big your budget is, we've got you covered.

This course is going to start with the absolute basics and fundamentals of cinematography, and then we're going to progress to advanced concepts and tricks. Guys, I am so excited about this course. I wish so badly that I had something like this when I started out. I had to learn from years and years of my own tests and failures, you know, and reading books, and getting advice from other DPs and other crew members on set and all this other stuff. This course is what I wish I would have known from the start. It contains the most important lessons I've learned from all these years, from all the sets that I have worked on, and I'm so, so excited to be able to share this info with you.

Thank you for being here. Let's do this.