My step-by-step process for making a cinematic video

today I'm going to be breaking down my entire creative process for making a cinematic short film so I'm going to walk you through each key step from the initial idea all the way to the final cut so that you can understand what happens behind the scenes by the end of the video you'll gain a fresh perspective on the creative process and pick up a few practical tips that you can apply to your own project so whether you're looking to refine your workflow or you just need a bit of inspiration I've got you covered plus I've

recently started using a new tool that has significantly improved the quality of my work and I'm excited to share how it can help you too but for now let's start with where it all began the idea where do ideas come from and how do you know ones are worth pursuing now there's no single answer that's one size fits all but here's how this particular idea was formed this project was one of those very rare times where instead of you know doing a client project or strategizing what makes a great video the initial spark turned into

this all-consuming wildfire in my head I felt like I needed to make it and it all started by reading a chapter called the vessel in the filter from Rick rubin's book called the creative act a way of being and I made this immediate connection between the creative process that was being described and making a cup of coffee visuals started forming in my head and I was really excited with how naturally all the ideas started flowing but then a few minutes later I just shut it down I don't want to be another YouTuber who shot Epic

Coffee b-roll because YouTube isn't a platform for me to follow the crowd and just be drowned out by millions of creators the problem solving side of my brain told me don't do it here's the thing 1 month later I was still thinking about it 6 months later I was still thinking about it and here we are after one whole year realizing that if an idea is haunting me for this long it's probably a sign to just bring it to life honestly I don't even know if this is a passion project it just feels like I'm

relieving suffering by finally making it but I knew it was an incredible opportunity to refine my style experiment with new tools and techniques and just create something that wasn't for the YouTube algorithm and that's when I knew it was time to move into pre-production now the first phase I always start with is a good old brain dump onto a scratch pad every idea no matter how big or how small gets written on there shot idea goes on the list lighting setup noted a potentially powerful line for a script it's on there baby nothing is too

random or too rough for the scratch Pad you see the purpose is to capture all those initial Sparks of creativity before they flicker out it's where all the raw messy ingredients for the project come together before I start refining them in most of my projects finding the right music during pre-production is key because it's a core factor in setting the tone even if it's a temporary song music can Inspire new shot ideas or just help me Envision how the shots should be sequenced in the edit so for this project I wanted something that captured the

light and playful nature of creativity so I imagine strings playing high notes like little ideas fluttering in my head and admittedly it took me a lot of time to to find the right music because I had a very specific tone in mind and with how crucial music plays a part in setting the mood I knew that this was the one thing I couldn't compromise on after hours and hours of sifting through music I eventually landed on a track that balanced that light fluttery Vibe with powerful hits for a sense of drama I truly believe that

the song became the backbone for the film's emotional Journey usually for me all the visual ideas come to my head first so I take the initial thoughts from my scratchpad and start organizing them into a rough shot list now this is where I begin to piece together the visual narrative and I'm not looking to complete the shot list at this stage because I want the narrative to be driven by the script but this is where I start to bring some clarity to those loose thoughts next upep is a script or at least my best attempt

at one writing the script is another step in organizing those scattered thoughts and creating a foundation for my video my process usually involves taking the lines from my scratch Pad connecting them with new lines to make the narrative coherent and then trimming or adding portions to make it flow better I guess it's kind of like sculpting like I'm chipping away at certain parts that don't work and then adding what's needed for it to start taking shape for this particular script it was a lot of finding the right balance between saying the things that need to

be said and avoiding anything that felt redundant it's so easy to get caught up in wanting to explain everything but I had to remind myself that less is often more now a tool that I've been finding incredibly useful for refining my scripts is jbt now I never use it to write a script from scratch because then it doesn't really feel like it's being written by me anymore but it's amazing for spitballing ideas tweaking lines or coming up with variations of something I've already written just like with any other tool I only use it to enhance

the creative process and not to entirely replace it once I'm fairly happy with my script I usually Circle back to my shot list uh knowing what needs to be said gives me a better idea of what shots I'll need to bring those words to life now this phase is usually a mix of three key things first is coming up with shots to match the script and then filling in the gaps from one shot to another so that the sequence flows logically and the third thing is shuffling the shots around until they're in the right order

for the edit every shot needs to serve a purpose you see instead of having shots just for the sake of moving the story along it's also an opportunity to build tension improve pacing or even add layers of visual metaphor I am very lazy when it comes to setting up equipment and shooting it's probably like my least favorite part of the process which is both a blessing and a curse you see the opp side is that it forces me to be extra careful with my shot list if there is any unnecessary shots in there I have

to pay the price by having to shoot it so I make sure that every shot counts although I have these key steps to follow I always find myself bouncing back and forth between the script the shot list the music and whatever other crazy ideas that pop in my head it's a really messy and chaotic process but through it I still make progress the more that I refine the script or the shot list and the more that I narrow down the music the more confident I feel heading into production embracing the messiness while trying to stick

to the structure I've laid out is what helps me bring everything together it's kind of like that sculpting analogy that I brought up earlier where I'm constantly reshaping things until it feels just right part of feeling prepared for a shoot is doing as much of the work as possible before I even hit the record button I knew that the script for this project was going to be voiceover driving the narrative so I kind of wanted to get a sense of how I would sound with the music now originally I planed to use my own voice

but let's be honest I don't have the most cinematic voice see this is my cinematic voice impression like it's just it sucks and as if the stars had aligned while I was scripting artless reached out to me to introduce their new AI voiceover feature this powerful text to speech tool generates the most realistic narrations I've ever heard once upon a time in a realm of Wonders I've used AI voice generators before but there were always a few problems using other people's voices without their permission felt wrong and and the credit system was expensive and super

impractical to use but with art list their catalog of voices are professionally recorded by voice actors exclusive to their platform all I had to do was type in my script hit generate download the voiceover and drop it on top of my [Music] music you are a vessel holding the seeds of ideas you can probably tell that it doesn't just take a good script to make an impactful video it also takes the right delivery so artless offers a separate plan just for voiceovers but it's also included in their artless Max plan which covers everything on their

platform and for those of you who follow my channel you'll know that I have been using everything on their platform from their music sound effects and footage for the past 4 years in all of my projects so if you're ready to take your videos to the next level you can get 2 months free off any of their annual Plans by using my link so a big thank you to Art list for sponsoring this video now with everything planned out the actual shooting process was pretty straightforward all I had to do was stick to the plan

I started by throwing up a black backdrop to block out any sunlight or any light from bouncing on the White Walls that way I can keep the lighting as controlled as possible so for this production section of the video let me just break down a few of the more interesting setups so that you can get a better idea of how I was able to bring my vision to life the first shot was a slow frontal pushing of the coffee vessel sitting on a table now luckily my cat was around and he suggested that I used

two nanlite pavot tubes in the frame to create a sterile but Moody look I also added two more underneath to light up the Frosted acrylic sheet to make the lighting feel A Little More Alive I used the pixel effects feature on the pav tubes it added this subtle scanning movement that I was a really big fan of now fog is my not so secret weapon for softening up the scene and creating beautiful volumetric light I've been using the smoke Ninja for almost a year now and it's become one of my go-to tools for every shoot

finally with my camera mounted on a motorize slider in this case the top rig S60 all I had to do was sit back and let it do all the work do you ever get those crazy ideas that you're not sure if it's going to work but you just try it out anyways high risk High reward right this was one of those shots one hand on the bean the other hand on the slider and push imagine nailing the distance and focus on that definitely not on the first take even though I was mentally prepared to do

this at least 50 times sometimes the universe Cuts you some slack it only took me five tries to get this I figured that since my coffee table was made of glass why not take advantage of it by trying a worm's eye shot by placing my camera directly underneath this leted me build a blanket fort that I never had as a kid I mean sure it got a little toasty under there but it's all for the shot now you probably notice a lot of close-ups in the short and the pro lens that I bought a few

years ago is perfect for emphasizing the size and detail of small objects one of the setups involved a bird's eye view which let me capture shots like this one you can probably tell it never made the final cut because I forgot that steam Rises and if we can't see anything clearly what's the point of including it on the bright side I did capture the blooming process really well and that's the kind of detail that makes the setup totally worth the effort now the last setup that I want to share is this vertical slider setup that

allowed me to Arc the camera smoothly around the coffee cup it's a bit of a monstrosity with all the stands and arms securing it in place but I really needed to make sure it was absolutely rigid cuz I really wanted to create a moment where the camera focuses on the storm that's brewing in the cup which required me to shoot two plates first I captured the coffee just sitting there calm and still then I shot the second plate with two LED lights set to strobe creating that sense of Chaos in the cup one video co-pilot

tutorial later and we end up with this so with all my shots done I'll usually throw all my clips into a timeline and start picking out all the best takes this is where I look for all those magical moments where the smoke swirls perfectly when the coffee drips just right and of course when the camera movement matches the motion of my finger now something that I've been doing recently is creating two versions of my shot list so one is in shooting order which prioritizes efficiency on set and the other is in edit order which sequences

the shots so that they flow naturally in the edit once all the clips are laid out in edit order I usually end up in two scenarios either 80% of my work is done because I had solid pre-production or I am yanking hair out of my skull wondering why I don't have enough shots for my edit oh the pain but thankfully for this shoot I only yanked out a few strands because there were some moments that felt a little draggy or it didn't quite match with the vision once I watched it through but here's where the

fun part Begins for me because I get to solve the puzzle of turning this unwatchable garbage of a rough cut turn into something that people will actually enjoy watching so over here I ended up trimming some lines from the script because they felt a little bit redundant after watching it through and I also adjusted the music so that the more powerful hits would come a bit sooner so that way it adds more punch to those key visual moments a pretty common question question that I get is whether I trim the music to fit the length

of the shot or if I trim the shot to match the music and the answer is that it's usually a bit of both if the music is tricky to manipulate then I'll usually tweak the shot length so that it hits a certain beat but most of the time I prefer editing the music to fit the shot but really it all comes down to whatever keeps the pacing and overall Vibe on point now let's talk VFX I do everything in After Effects and for this project most of my visual effects work involved cleaning up the mess

that I missed during the shoot so you know things like erasing the light standand or straightening out a crooked table remember lazy on set one of my favorite shots was turning a coffee bean into grounds with the flick of my finger it was as simple as shooting a plate of the spinning bean and then removing it just as I flicked simple but super satisfying while we're on the topic of visuals let's get into the color grading process right off the bat I knew I wasn't aiming for a warm and closy Vibe like most of the

coffee b-roll stuff that I see on YouTube so I started looking for more moodier reference Stills to guide my color grade I knew that I wanted my Shadows to lean more towards the green so I ended up using a still from the movie sakario as my main reference I have this tendency to grade things a little too Punchy so having other reference stills from other movies and commercials really helped me dial in the levels for a more cinematic tone hate saying the word cinematic feels cheap in this day and age so my process is usually

just trying to get the skin tones right uh trying to match it as close to the reference still as possible and then making some tweaks here and there to kind of blend it with other reference dos and make it more unique to myself now I usually tackle sound design before color grading but I Sav The Best For Last in this breakdown because it was such a crucial pillar in what I believe made the short film stand out when Instagram started muting videos that would autoplay on my feet I noticed something quite interesting the commercials that

I saw from production companies I followed felt a little bit weak after I watched it and at first I thought well you know of course I'm just watching it on this small screen but as soon as I hit unmute I was immediately more immersed in what I was watching that experience taught me how critical sound is in building a world and drawing viewers in so for this video I challenged myself to focus even more on sound design and limiting myself to mostly nature sounds to make every moment feel grander than just these coffee beans bouncing

around swishing the coffee became the sound of massive ocean waves crashing and pouring water over the grounds turned into huge icebergs breaking apart this exercise forced me to think outside of the box and avoid the more obvious sound effects of course this was really tough at first because I had never limited myself to just one genre of sound effects before but this limitation actually created a sense of consistency throughout the video If you haven't seen the full video yet you can check it out right over here but before we wrap up I want to leave

you with a snippet that features only the sound effects this will give you a taste of just how much it played a part in the overall experience take a listen