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    The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video
    The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video
    The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video
    Ebook189 pages1 hour

    The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video

    By Tom Schroeppel and Chuck DeLaney

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    About this ebook

    A timeless classic with more than 165,000 copies sold, The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video has been chosen by over 700 colleges to teach basic film and video techniques. Written by a working professional, The Bare Bones Camera Course is the most user-friendly book available on the subject of film and video production; it reduces the shooting experience to its essence, making complicated concepts easy to grasp. Using simple clear language and more than 150 illustrations, the book explains:

    Exposure
    Lenses
    Composition
    Basic sequence
    Crossing the line
    Lighting
    And much more!

    When you finish this book, you will know and understand how to shoot good pictures that will edit together seamlessly in post-production. With added chapters on sound and editing, this new edition of The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video rounds out the education of any filmmaker.

    Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don't aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAllworth
    Release dateAug 4, 2015
    ISBN9781621535270
    The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video

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      Book preview

      The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video - Tom Schroeppel

      Cover Page of Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and VideoHalf Title of Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and VideoTitle Page of Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video

      Copyright © 1982-2015 by Tom Schroeppel

      All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Allworth Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

      Allworth Press books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Allworth Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or info@skyhorsepublishing.com.

      19 18 17 16 15     5 4 3 2 1

      Published by Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

      307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

      Allworth Press® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

      www.allworth.com

      Cover and design by Mary Belibasakis

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

      Print ISBN: 978-1-62153-526-3

      Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62153-527-0

      Printed in the United States of America

      Table Of Contents

      Author's Note: How We Got to Here

      Preface

      1. BASICS

      The Camera—How it Works

      Exposure

      Color Temperature

      Setting Exposure on a Video Camera

      Setting Exposure on a Film Camera

      Lenses

      Depth of Field

      2. COMPOSITION

      The Camera—A Tool for Selective Vision

      Use a Tripod

      Rule of Thirds

      Balance—Leading Looks

      Balance—Masses

      Balance—Colors

      Angles

      Frames within the Frame

      Leading Lines

      Backgrounds

      In Search of a Good Composition

      3. BASIC SEQUENCE

      How a Basic Sequence Works

      Shooting a Basic Sequence

      Cutting on the Action

      Clean Entrance/Clean Exit

      Some Final Words on Basic Sequences

      4. SCREEN DIRECTION

      Screen Direction and Crossing the Line

      Using Screen Direction to Solve Shooting Problems

      5. CAMERA MOVES

      Making Camera Moves

      6. MONTAGES

      7. LIGHTING

      Exterior Lighting

      Interior Lighting

      Basic Lighting Setup

      8. SOUND

      Vibrating Bodies Create Spherical Sound Waves

      Microphones

      Sound Waves Bounce

      Record Clean Sound

      Wild Effects

      Recording Voices and Presence

      Voice-Slate and Keep a Sound Log

      Remember Your Viewers

      The Best Sound Recording Advice I Can Give You

      9. DOING IT

      Planning and Shooting a Sequence

      Shooting Scripts and Storyboards

      Shooting Out of Sequence

      Communicating

      Working in Uncontrolled Situations

      10. AFTER THE SHOOT—EDITING

      The Human Eye as Editor

      Read the Script. Divorce the Director.

      Good Log = Good Edit

      Paper Edits

      Establish Your Program’s World, Then Re-Establish It

      Look for Basic Sequences, Then Use Them

      The Great Underlying Rule of Editing: Make Sure Each New Shot Is Different

      Pacing—How Fast Things Change

      Use an Appropriate Editing Style

      Sound in Editing

      Background Music

      Selecting and Cutting Library Music

      Sound Mixing—Separate Your Tracks

      Your Last Step: Divorce the Editor

      Some Final Words

      Exercises

      About the Author

      Index

      AUTHOR'S NOTE

      How We Got to Here

      In the late 1970s, I was shooting TV commercials and industrial sales films in Miami. I was also traveling to Ecuador a couple times a year to train camera crews at a TV network there. One day as I was drawing on a Little Havana restaurant napkin to explain a setup to a client, I realized that this was the same thing I had explained in Spanish the previous week in Quito. I decided to translate my training notes back into English and print them in a book version I could give to clients. I hoped to also sell a few copies to cover my costs. I decided to call the book The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video.

      I based the content of The Bare Bones Camera Course on what I was teaching in Ecuador. This is turn was based on what I had learned at the Army Motion Picture Photography School at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. (I was an Army cameraman and later a Signal Corps officer.) Both combat photography and TV news coverage require quick but thorough knowledge of basic camerawork.

      I hoped to sell enough copies of the book to break even; to my surprise, it did better than that. Students found it easy to understand, teachers found it helpful, and over the years more than 700 colleges chose it as a basic text. Major publishers made me offers, but I continued to self-publish because I enjoyed the personal contact with my customers and I wanted to keep the book available to them at a reasonable cost.

      Now, when the time has come to pass the torch, I am pleased to have an organization of the stature of Allworth Press publish this latest edition of The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video, guaranteeing that it will be around and affordable for many years to come. I hope it continues to serve you, my readers, well.

      PREFACE

      This book explains, as simply as possible, how to shoot usable images on film, tape, and other media.

      If you are, or plan to be, a cameraperson, I suggest you read your camera’s operator’s manual in addition to this book. When you understand both, you should be able to go out and shoot footage that works.

      If you’re not interested in becoming a cameraperson, but simply want to better understand how the camera is used, no additional reading is required. Just relax and enjoy the book.

      This edition of The Bare Bones Camera Course includes information on sound and editing which was originally published in my book Video Goals: Getting Results with Pictures and Sound.

      1

      BASICS

      THE CAMERA—HOW IT WORKS

      The camera is an imperfect imitation of the human eye. Like the eye, it sees by means of a lens which gathers light reflected off objects. The lens directs this light onto a surface which senses the pattern formed by the differences in brightness and color of the different parts of the scene. In the case of the eye, this surface at the back of the eye sends the pattern of light to the brain where it is translated into an image which we see.

      In the case of the camera, the lens directs the patterns of light onto a variety of sensitive surfaces. Still film cameras record light patterns on film coated with light-sensitive chemicals. The chemicals react differently to different amounts and colors of light, forming a record, or image, of the light pattern. After the film is processed in other chemicals, the image becomes visible.

      You’ll notice that both the lens of the eye and the lens of the camera turn the light pattern upside down as it passes through. This is because they’re both convex lenses, or lenses which curve outward. Because of their physical properties, convex lenses always invert images. In the brain, and in the camera viewfinder, the images are turned right side up again.

      Movie cameras record images in the same way as still film cameras, except they do it more often. Eight mm movie cameras normally take eighteen different pictures, or frames, every second. Sixteen mm and 35mm movie cameras take twenty-four frames per second. When these pictures are projected on a screen at the same fast rate, they give the illusion of continuous movement. The viewer’s mind fills in the gaps between the individual frames, due to a physiological phenomenon known as persistence of vision.

      In digital cameras—both still and video—the lens focuses light patterns onto an image sensor, either a CCD (charge coupled device) or a CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor). The surface of the sensor contains from thousands to millions of tiny light-sensitive areas called picture elements, or pixels, which change according to

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