Cinebasics by xSeedDesign

Well I’ve been on set the last few days on an Indie but large budget feature with some big names and all that. I’m not allowed to give any descriptions on this. I’m the BTS person, or Behind the Scenes, so I see and hear pretty much everything. I’ll be posting things along the way I find interesting.

So what have I learned so far as this is my very first time on a major motion picture set?
1. DO NOT post pictures of famous actors on Facebook of famous people you might have had a photo shoot with. If you want to become noticed by all the top dogs, by all means go for it, but I don’t recommend it.
2. The AD is either mad at everyone or just people who shoot BTS. And everyone else is usually stressed out.
3. The best people to hang with and get away from the “drama” are the Transpo guys. It’s like a vacation to normalcy.
4. Grips do ALL the work. And they are awesome. And they are usually nice but you’ll never know because they never stop moving.
5. The Director deep down, just wants people to like him or at least think he knows what he’s doing.
6. AC is a much harder and stressful job than I imagined. I know ALOT about cameras and I don’t think I could do that job.
7. I and most of these people make more money doing short videos, commercials, events etc. than I would ever make working for a month of 12 hour days on set. Don’t do it for the money.
8. The very, and I mean very, first thing you should do is make friends with whomever is serving the food.
9. Don’t take it personally when people are mean to you. It’s 50/50 in people who are nice and people who like to be mean. Be prepared and learn to shake it off.
10. No matter how many books you read or things you hear, you will NOT be prepared to work on a real and large production set. You will be lost, you will be afraid, you WILL have to learn more in order to work well. Once you do it’s all gravy but like learning how to skate or snowboard etc., you will fall down alot and it’ll hurt. Getting back up is what separates the people who do this for a living and everyone else who thinks it’d be “fun”.

I have a coupon for 100$ off the new GoPro 3 that has to be used in two weeks. I can’t use it so I’m giving it away! Just leave a comment that you’re interested and I’ll pick a random person in 48 hours!

Well, getting all packed up for Vegas. I’m taking a T4I with the 24-105mm 2.8 and some clothes, lol. Maybe some sunscreen if I can fit it in.

Of all the hundreds of booths and pretty much every kind of technology you could dream of, the single most impressive bit that I’m looking forward to playing with is the new Movi stabilizer.

http://nofilmschool.com/2013/04/movi-gyro-stabilized-handheld-camera-gimbal/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nofilmschool+%28NoFilmSchool%29

God that looks amazing. This is going to put a lot of folks out of work. Every few months it just gets harder and harder to be a specialist. In this day in age you really really have to know a little or a lot about every part of production. You never know when the next big thing will wipe out all the knowledge you’ve gained over the years in one particular subject. It’s getting pretty scary AND exciting at teh same time. Tools jsut get better and better, cameras get cheaper and cheaper. It’s great for me and people who don’t have thousands in budgets, almost anyone with a good eye can create cinema quality anything now. The competition is getting intense.

So hopefully I’ll have some nice pics to post on www.xseeddesignphotography.com and an interesting blog post or two. Although the web gets pretty saturated with NAB crap for like two weeks after so I won’t add to the clutter.