“The attempt to control your image in-camera is one of the most important tools in removing the video look and beginning to achieve a cinematic look.” (Kurt Lancaster, DSLR Cinema, 2010).

Everyone should have a preferred set of Picture Styles that they use on jobs other than the stock standard in camera ones supplied by Canon.
If you never venture away from the presets are you really getting the most out of the camera and yourself?

Due to the hard work of many, in particular @VisionWrangler, here are 123 different Canon Picture Styles including the Technicolor CineStyle, Marvel Cine, Fuji FP-100C, Kodachrome 25 and many others collected from different people and places on the interweb. If you do normally Shoot Flat then experiment with a few of the styles next time your out and about shooting you might just find that give you that little extra that you have been looking for.

I did not create or make any of these picture styles if you find that you really like a certain picture style seek out the creator and thank them, they are talented individuals who’s work should be supported and celebrated.

Download Canon Picture Styles.

How to add Picture Styles to your Canon camera.

In 1962 two of the greatest directors of our time sat down for an interview, Francois Truffaut carried out extensive interviews with Alfred Hitchcock where they went into great detail about all aspects of Hitchcock’s films. This interview is now available in mp3 format. Click here to download.

A free Adobe CS5 ebook full to the brim with tips and tricks for Premiere Pro, After Effects and Photoshop. Well worth a read. Get your copy by clicking here.

“CoreMelt makes post-production plugins for Final Cut Pro, Final Cut Express, After Effects and Motion. They’ve  made 33 plugins absolutely free. Click here for more information and or to download.

“The Technicolor CineStyle™ is a Picture Style (profile) for Canon EOS DSLR cameras that optimizes the dynamic range in the image be leveraging the capabilities of the Canon imaging chipset.” –  technicolor.com

Click here to download the FREE CineStyle™ Picture Profile . 

Here is a brief demo of it in action, graded with Technicolor’s LUT for Apple’s Color:

This film far from ground breaking unique or have much depth in content at all, it was made as part of a learning curve to get used to using DSLR’s for filmmaking. The easiest way for me to get to grips with the camera and see what it could was to get out there and film something instead of waiting for my next project to roll around and then end up out of my depth, so i ended up embracing the ‘Vimeo’ culture of films that seem to be very popular at the moment, films that are just a collage of shots that vaguely adhere to one another,

The film was made with a Canon 550d, Nikon 50mm f1.8, Sigma 28mm f2.8, audio was recorded onto a Zoom H4n with the Rode Videomic.

Secondly, i really really love this film.

The First base plate is poorly filmed with different colour back drops from time to time which take the audience out of the film, this however worked much better in the last base plate. The actual camera pans are very sticky and jerky this was unfortunately the payoff that i got from the low depth of field i was after and the fact that i had to be zoomed in 100% to get as close as possible because of this every little know or judder was heightened ten fold.

The pace of the film still doesn’t seem to be correct although it is better than it was originally, there are a lot of shots as well that don’t line up, the first one the bottom right corner, of the frame is a log which changes direction due to the fact that i had to ‘flop’ one of the clips in order not to disorientate the audience by panning in every direction possible. the last cut as well the soldiers foot sticking up is in two different locations which jars as the film plays.

As for the sound design it is possibly one of the parts which i am most proud of, especially the last section with the layers. however i do believe that the first bit of the sound design is a bit clunky and doesn’t sit to well, i think this might be because the heart beat is slightly to quiet but if the levels got raised then the heartbeat just sounded too sinister for intended meaning.

All in all i believe that the ending of the film is far more superior to the beginning for all the production values are sub standard. however the i am happy and i do believe that the message of the film is clear and because of this. this is probably the film i am happiest with because of how similar it is to the film that i imagined and storyboarded at the beginning of the unit.

A Monologue piece from Larry Kramer’s 1985 play of the same name. It focuses upon a man coming to terms with the death of his lover through a, then, unknown disease.

Although the film is essentially one character in half a conversation, i tried to show how the character would be feeling through the shots. For example the straight on shot of him with the wide empty space either side is to show how empty and lonely he is feeling having just lost the love of his life. The two shots from either side of him where you can clearly see the door or cupboard are juxtaposed with the straight on shot to show that although he is all alone he is trapped without knowing if he has caused the death of his lover or not, with homosexuality still being taboo there is nowhere for him to run to to anybody for him to confide in other than ‘Ned’ rendering him alone yet trapped within the situation.

Everything in the film from the footage to the editing to the sound design was created on a phone in one journey. The idea for this is to show how the phone can be a more realistic device for documenting video on than anything else due to the fact it is always with you.
A Filmmakers best tool is the one he has with him.

In my mind its strengths of this piece lie in the story it tells about the technology used to capture it and the ever changing formats that can be used to create and distribute moving image instead of the actual content that it has in. Although the images themselves are nicely composed and there is a nice pace to the piece i’m not 100% happy with the final outcome, there are places in it that the sounds feel to raw like it has just been plucked from the air and stuck in, another thing i’m not pleased with is the images that go along with the footsteps, abstract though they are i feel that compared to the other images they are too abstract or the other images aren’t abstract enough, there seems to be a divide between them. The images not being as abstract as i would of first liked also distracts from the story the sound is trying to tell instead relies of the images to tell the story.