Videography

Never underestimate the smartphone as a tool for video. That’s the lesson we learn from “Flying Into Dusk,” an impressive aerial short film completely shot using the iPhone 6s. With the use of a stabilizer and the Filmic Pro app, filmmakers Toby Harriman and Jaron Schneider have created a 4K high-quality video that rivals those filmed with far more expensive gear.

Suicide Squad opened in theaters this month and pulled in a staggering $133 million while managing to barely break a 25% critical score on the much-lauded review site Rotten Tomatoes. What this seems to mean is that when it comes to the comic-book-born heroes and villains of our youth, we'll show up in droves even if we've been warned.

Lofoten, Norway has been getting a lot of attention in the last few years, and rightfully so. Known for its incredible mountains, open waters, and unspoiled lands, it has quickly become a favorite for photographers looking to capture dramatic landscape images. Australian filmmaker Michael Fletcher took two trips here recently and came away with a fantastic aerial film, captured during the season of the midnight sun.

It’s videos like this that inspire me to fly more and capture the beauty in this world. I myself haven’t done much traveling, but there are a lot of awesome places out there to see. Karim Iliya captured a lot of amazing content out in Pachamama and put together this video in a very fun and entertaining way.

Something Thomas Heaton does a lot of us taking incredible and breathtaking landscape photos. Something he doesn't do a lot is show the full creation of a photo from conceptualization to presentation, including post processing. The real story here, though, is the desire to stay close to home and try to create art out of the "normal" and "familiar." What do you do when presented with nothing truly remarkable at first glance?

Drive Like Maria just released a music video for their song "Deep Blue." What makes this unique is that every frame has been rendered with the "Dreams" effect using the Prisma App. This app uses AI to create effects that make your images look like paintings of famous artists. It has many effect options, and it really looks as though a lot of time, knowledge, and effort has been put together to create it. It looks like Waking Life, but instead of drawing each frame by hand, Drive Like Maria has taken every frame of their music video and run it through the app.

Photographer Greg Florent has made images that capture Budapest in a new light. The images are made by taking them at the transition of daylight into sunset and then nighttime until the lights come on and the city's evening starts. He spends around four hours at a location taking one shot, making sure he gets the whole transition and changes of light to produce the images in post.

The filmmakers of “The Muir Project,” known for their first documentary, “Mile… Mile and a Half,” have just released their latest film, “Noatak: Return to the Arctic.” I interviewed Director Ric Serena who told me about the production challenges his team faced when working on a remote river deep in Alaska and why they chose to go with the Canon 1DC as their camera of choice.

The Nikon Coolpix P900 has one monster zoom lens. With a 24-2000mm 35mm equivalence, this hybrid point-and-shoot camera really opens up the possibilities of what we are capable of capturing. In a new video from Sci-Tech Universe, we are able to see just how astonishing the results can be when they record video of the moon at full zoom.

Last week, the team over at RocketJump Film School released this awesome video about sound production in film. Sound production is probably the most overlooked aspect of filmmaking, mainly because you don't notice great sound design; it seamlessly helps you submit to the willing suspension of disbelief. Check out RJFS's experiment to see how much sound actually does affect the audience.

Video Producer Chase Kubasiak shares how to achieve exciting and impactful video through the use of slow motion scenes. In this humorous B&H tutorial, Kubasiak highlights three key variables to consider when setting up your slow motion shots.

As photographers we often get our visual references from film, and our ideas can originate from a single scene in a movie that blew you away. It's the combination of sounds, the anticipation and fear, and all the emotions that the director gets to capture and convey for the viewer to experience. But, it's also worth noting that most movies and series have visual cues that originate from older, classic movies too.

This Cinemagraph time-lapse was made using only 12 JPEG images. The software allows photographers to create motion within a static photograph. You need to upload each image to the website, and then you design the movement within each image. Once you get a moving image "flowing" you can render it out and import it into Adobe Premiere Pro to create the final time-lapse.

I’m a huge fan of gimbal stabilizers, and absolutely love how easy it is to get dreamy, floating footage with these relatively inexpensive accessories. A lot of attention has been on products like the MoVi and Ronin, but other manufacturers have stepped up their game and are making products that are just as competitive in terms of features and price. One such item is the Moza Lite II, which I’ve been reviewing for the last few weeks.

Macro photography make the unseen visible. It gives our eyes that extra zoom to get in close and see the detail we usually just take for granted. From the eyes of a fly to the droplet on a leaf, you most likely have seen some great macro photography. These macro lenses are generally of superb glass which gives sharp images that contain a lot of detail. There is a range of lenses for Canon and Nikon camera systems.

LUTs are one of the essential tools in the video world. What in the world is a LUT anyway? If you're just getting started with video post-production, these two videos will give you a good kick in the right direction.

What makes a photograph or movie memorable? With cinema as widespread as it is, a film needs to stand out in a big way, not only to succeed at the box office, but to be remembered in any capacity. As for photographs, it's the same challenge. We remember the Tiananmen Square protest photo because it captured the issues sweeping the globe in a single frame. Films like "The Shining" and "There Will Be Blood" are relatively simple in terms of visuals, but have stories that will forever make them classics. And that's exactly what makes a film or a photograph great: story.

As you probably know, much of the epic imagery in "Game of Thrones" is computer-generated. It's a monumental task, and this video from Rising Sun Pictures, the visual effects company responsible for that amazing imagery, really puts into perspective the amount of work and imagination required to pull off such a feat.

Beyond any doubt, the effects and compositing techniques used in the first three films of Star Wars trilogy were the game changer in VFX world. Although there has been a rapid improvement in the VFX technology for the last 40 years, we can say that Star Wars was one of the pioneers. So, how was that possible to achieve realistic results in a movie produced in 1980? Mark Vargo explains the mathematics, optics, engineering, and software behind the blue screen photography and compositing in detail.

In this video from Ryan Connolly over at Film Riot, he takes viewers quickly through an action sequence he has edited, and shows a few simple ways that he was able to increase the perceived speed and create a more realistic edit. Even if you're not editing fight scenes, there are a few tricks in here that are absolutely applicable to other genres.

NASA's aptly named EPIC (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera) camera sits about one million miles from our planet, where it uses an array of sensors to monitor and provide observations of cloud heights, aerosols, vegetation growth, and the state of ozone in the atmosphere. It also provides some pretty neat images of Earth, which NASA has assembled into a year-long time-lapse.

Beauty and fashion retouching has been controversial for so long that some of the argument's ground has been conceded. For example, skin retouching is rarely debated anymore and it's merely a "given" that someone in an advert or magazine will have had their skin corrected. However, criticizing body manipulation in Photoshop is very much still in vogue (if you'll excuse that glorious pun).

Los Angeles is a sprawling and forever-evolving metropolis that has tried on many faces over the years. That's never more apparent than in this short film, which pairs modern footage of the city with archival clips and syncs them, showing off just how much LA has grown and changed.

One of the places where photography has grown tremendously is in the manufacturing and industrial industry. People need to show how things are made, and they need to do it without actually being there. There is a vast amount of engineering and skill sets found in a factory, and if your photography is in this line of work, you'll find this video by Benedict Redgrove stimulating and inspiring.

Sometimes being a "creative" really sucks. But it's also the best thing to be in the entire world. But did I mention it can suck? Well if you feel like you're in a rut, then watch this preview, and prepare to be inspired. Today, Musicbed released their feature-length documentary, "Make," which explores why creatives continue, well, creating.

I know that I’m preaching to the choir when I say that personal projects, free from the constraints of commercial clients dictating production details, are an important outlet for creativity and staying sharp on your skills. Photographer Ray Demski just dropped his latest passion project, "Fireball," combining parkour, football (soccer), and beatboxing.

Foster Visuals, known for the nationally-awarded "Legacy Project," recently teamed up with DJI to tell the story of Heraldo Riel, a gaucho in Patagonia, Chile. Like his father before him, Riel became a Gaucho at the age of nine. To be a Gaucho means to be kind and caring for all living things. Using a combination of equipment, including the DJI Osmo, Ronin, and Inspire 1, Brent Foster and his team tell Riel's story and captures the intense beauty and solitude of the remote section of Patagonia in which Riel lives.

There are some things you just never leave home without. If you're a filmmaker, these are those things.

Documentary videos have always been there to grab my attention. These short, yet powerful videos can really pull you in, making you want to know more about what you're watching. I have made a few videos like this myself but none that I have really liked until now. I don’t usually like to share my work or go into depth about it, but here I will go over a few things to do when shooting a documentary like this.

"The idea for 'RAGE' was to show a build-up from a busy city that is packed with people into an outburst of anger, frustration, and violence, depicting a society that is spiraling out of control." Such is Tim Sessler's commentary on the current issues of gun control, race, and violence, a striking achievement with a unique filming style.