4 4.4 Red Flags

foreign [Music] just a quick note at this point a little quick tip or something to remember while you're going through this process is you need to remember what to look out for like some red flags that's the main thing are you over promising too much if you're in conversation with the director or the producer and you're thinking about scheduling or times or are you being realistic there because you don't want to back yourself into a corner where you're not going to be able to produce so red flags would be time would be the size and

setup of a shot like if there's a really large moving shot whether it's a drone shot or something and people just aren't anticipating how difficult that's going to be you probably have more experience than everyone else on set as someone that can actually impact the project you probably won't have more experience than the gaffer or the grip or the other people that spend every single day on set but as a cinematographer amongst the people that are there early on in the project you probably have the most experience dealing with situations whether it is you know

if there's a Chase sequence or if it's a night sequence you know more about how long that's actually going to take and how that's going to back to schedule so be looking for red flags as you're setting things up like for example if we were looking at some of that day exterior stuff and we were going to turn that into night exterior but they were going to keep the same schedule or they only had the talent for a certain amount of time I would be bringing up red flags if okay this is about to get

very expensive because that size shot there's so many different elements that have to go into it so much lighting so much pre-rigging um you know maybe we're shooting that day earlier somewhere else and the team isn't able to get there and land and start building so I would be thinking about what are the red flags at this stage that's the uh you know outside of the creative the creativity that is probably the most important thing just like red flags always be looking for red flags or things that the production has not anticipated next would be

real shots and I don't mean real as in the sense that this is not happening in the virtual world I mean real as what you can put on your reel are there things that you are as you're going over little elements of hey this could be a good little real sequence if we're talking about careers and managing your career and trying to get ahead every single project probably has opportunities to create a little sequence that you can then get on your reel so I would be thinking out of this sequence of shots what's probably going

to be the three that I can throw together and have a little story inside of a story right it doesn't really have anything to do with the commercial itself but from a selfish point of view it's like okay how can I what angles are probably going to make it work for something that I can put together in the real what are they going to be the best angles the best times of day for those angles how can I um how can I maximize that time or how can I maybe offer something up that would be

slightly better right do we need options of a certain shot rather than having it just on sticks do we try one handheld version do we try something there and just keeping those things in the back your mind right so that you're not cornering yourself into a very boring Bland ad because oftentimes if you think about well what was going to make it on the reel it just takes you out of the boards that you've seen it takes you out of all of the pre-production that you've seen previously it's like how would I make this as

cool in my mind what could I add or what could I throw into the mix that is going to make this thing better and it just sometimes helps to recalibrate where your mind is at and what you're thinking about whether if you're you know if you're really focused on the lighting when in fact just a little camera move would make a big difference it's like incorporating the idea of how I would manage to fit some of these pieces inside of the Reel sometimes helps me to just get a different perspective on it so be on

the lookout for red flags and keep that in the back your mind of where where could this where could any of these shots fit into my reel and what would they look like and how would they feel and if you lean into that create creativity if you lean into that side of what how can we make this as great as we can oftentimes you'll find uh hidden gems in there that can help Elevate whatever project you're working on