LOW BUDGET LENSES : 3 PRIME LENSES FOR UNDER £50

When choosing Lenses a lot of it comes down to personal taste. For me, I'm shooting narrative film or music videos, mostly in dark/enclosed environments and so for me these things are important factors when looking for glass to put on my camera. 

The biggest problem I faced when I first started buying lenses for my Canon t2i 6 years ago was that after I picked up the very affordable Canon 50mm f1.8 for £100 (You can now get clones for around £50 on ebay) the list of affordable lenses ended. As a low budget filmmaker, finding cheap glass for the camera was tough going. Luckily the kit lens and the 50mm are more than enough to cover most narrative situations with the 'Nifty Fifty' acting as my work horse lens. I also picked up a zoom lens eventually, but in all honesty I must have used it about 4 times over the course of 5 features. The main problem I had always came when I needed wide angles at low light.

When I moved to Panasonic, after 5 years of shooting on a Canon, I was spoilt by the LX100's low light lens that was f1.7 wide open. Thats at its widest angle too, which solved a lot of those problems for me. The issues with it came with the form factor, main that it was a compact, fixed lens camera (although you wouldn't think it from the images it can produce) and as a result had a digital focus ring rather than manual. After working with manual focus for the last half decade, I found it a pain. The upside was the camera shoots 4K and so I was reluctant to move back to Canon.

Then Panasonic released the G7. The price was equivalent to upgrading to Canon's newest 'Rebel series' camera, but with the added bonus of shooting 4K and a better FHD Codec. It was a no brainer, except for the fact the camera had a Micro 4/3 mount. A mount that I hadn't used before and of course I thought back to how unaffordable Canon's lenses were for me when I started shooting on DSLR's. I didn't want to have to drop a bunch of money on getting a whole new set of glass for a new mount on top of dropping a chunk of cash on the new camera. So I started looking for a low budget solution. 

What I found was an extremely cheap and absolutely incredible set of Prime lens made by a company called Fujian (although search C-mount on Ebay for 'off brand' results) that covered almost everything I needed in terms of image and focal range and the amazing thing is I picked them ALL up for just over £50 (although they are available a lot cheaper).  I've broken them down for you all below. The prices are based on what is available this morning on Ebay.

25mm f1.4 CCTV (£12/$17) 

A solid wide angle lens, although the focal length is obviously not as extreme as Panasonic's native 14mm prime, it's wide enough for most situations. The wonderful thing about it is that it creates the most beautiful images of the 3 (which is pretty impressive as its the cheapest) and although it has soft edges at low aperture that only adds to the vintage film look that this lens puts out. 

The 25mm is my go to lens for most situations it's wide enough that it can achieve tracking, dolly and even steady-cam shots whilst giving enough depth of field to maintain that film look. The best part though is the price. I paid just £17 for mine and only because I needed it in a hurry, i've seen these tiny bad boys for as little as £10. If I had to pick just one of these lenses for a shoot, it would be this one.

Take a look HERE

35mm f1.8 CCTV (£14/$20)

This was the first lens I picked up, originally to fit it to a Canon Eos-M. When I moved to Panasonic I tried this out with a 99p adapter on my G7 and was instantly amazed at just how much better than the LUMIX kit lens it looked. It was what instantly inspired me to try the other C-mount lenses. 

It's not quite as durable under low light with it landing at only 1.8 (or 1.7 as is it says on the lens) when fully open, which you wouldn't really notice until you start using the 1.4 lenses more often, but a slight ISO shift should solve most problems in that regard. This is a great medium lens and fantastic for mid shots. I use this mainly for long conversation shots and action stuff where I want a tight image without losing the detail of what is happening in terms of movement. 

Take a look HERE

50mm f1.4 CCTV (£20/$29)

This is very similar to the Canon version in terms of the image it produces. I loved this focal length in my Canon t2i and only really bought the C-mount version to make lens changes faster on set, this is because the lens cost me £27 (once again, only because I needed it in a hurry), I have seen them for £15 at times. This is the most expensive lens out of the set and at £15/£20 that's not a lot.

The upside of trading the Canon 'nifty fifty' for this on was that I found I wasn't switching out adapters when I'm on set, I can just screw the 'Fujian' lens onto my adapter and its ready to go. There is also the fact that this 50mm is 1.4 wide open, making it just that little bit better under darker conditions. Its an incredible close up lens. 

Take a look HERE

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I was blown away by the quality of these lenses, like really, really blown away. They can feel a little cheap sometimes, as some parts are made of plastic and they sometime feel a little fragile, although they are more than durable. They are also Manual Iris which means setting the aperture by hand, I found this tricky at first (mainly just knowing if I was getting the right exposure), but in 3 short months its become second nature and I actually prefer it to an electronic one. On top of that any kind of auto focus is also off the table, but thats something I didn't use on my Canon so its not an issue for me here.

I've been shooting a feature using these 3 lenses since December and I love them, they look so filmic and make shooting in low light conditions an absolute breeze. The 25mm is wide enough for most long shots although I do have a 14mm Lumix prime (With wide angle adapter) in case I need and extreme wide, but I use it very rarely. I can say with great ease though that moving to Micro 4/3 has been a great decision for me as a no budget filmmaker.

Obviously this is bad news for anyone not shooting Micro 4/3 as the lens aren't compatible with Canon's standard FD mount, for me this was another reason that justified my move to Panasonic's brand of cameras. Although the Canon Eos-m (On Ebay for just over £100) has a smaller mount and takes them no problem, so if you're intent on sticking with Canon then it is an option and they really are just a mirrorless version of the the 'Rebel series'. 

In the end though, the kind of image you want comes down to several factors and its all about personal taste. This is what works for me and it may not be what your looking for, but at under £50 for 3 great prime lenses it certainly worth a look for anyone shooting on a budget who just wants more options.

MJ

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ALSO IF YOU'RE BASED IN UK, MICROBUDGET MASSACRE AND THE MILTON KEYNES FILM NETWORK ARE HOSTING THE FIRST OF THIS YEARS SPECIAL 'MYCHO MICROBUDGET MASSACRE MASTERCLASS' LIVE SHOWS ON TUESDAY 8TH MARCH.  

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COLOUR GRADING IN CAMERA

Last week I talked about the advantages of getting your image how you want it 'in camera', this saves me a lot of post production work, especially when it comes to grading. A lot of projects I work on have to have a fast turn around and I know that a good deal of that will be grading the footage right at the end to give it its final look and bring out the colours and depth that the production needs.

Raw Camera Image (Ungraded/Corrected) Slasher House 2

As a general rule, I try to get my image as close to the final product and the truth is, these days, I do very little colour correction after the fact as well. There are a lot of reasons for this, but mainly because its the that I personally like to work. As usual, Its not the right way or the wrong way, just my way.

As chance would have it a friend of ours, Georgie Smibert (Who played Deputy Howells in our latest feature film 'Cleaver : Killer Clown' and our Short 'Slaypril Fools Day 5' ) needed to shoot an audition for a film role she was applying for. As recompense to our actors giving up their time to work on our stuff we're always happy to help with showreel and audition stuff  (A good habit for No budget filmmakers to get into) and she wanted to shoot the audition as a 'scene'.

We made the choice to shoot the scene as if we would shoot it on a set, but just from her angle, as if it were just that take from the overall coverage, this was mainly so the other actors didn't distract from her performance.

Now Georgie was going to cut it herself on a basic windows editor (Movie Maker I think) and so therefore I knew she wouldn't have access to correction tools or anything like that. So we decided that we would get the footage that she needed ready to go straight from camera, but it also gave me a chance to take some reference pictures in terms of how I approach colour grading.

I do my colour grading and correction 'in camera', before I even start shooting, I hate to rely on post for 'anything' and as such I approach shooting in a very practical way, so that, for the most part, I'm just making cuts and not spending weeks on trying to get colours, tones, grades right. I think about it at the time (or usually months before hand) and then make sure I get the desired image there and then.

Original 'Flat' set up for room to Grade/Colour Correct

The camera I use currently is the Panasonic G7, which give me unbelievable control over everything from Curves, to Contrast to Saturation to Colour Temperature and beyond. All things that I would tweak in post otherwise I can now just do in the camera itself. I used to a lot of this on the Canon 600d too, although that gave me a little less control overall, its still had an unbelievable amount of control via its picture profiles and my last 3 features were shot on it, I had to do very little in way of correction or grading in post even on Canon's Rebel series. I'm fairly new to the G7, but so far it makes controlling my image input a breeze.

'In Camera' Colour Correction

To me the change is very noticeable and a much nicer image. I added a 'hair light' at the rear just to bring out Georgie a little more. But that was a cool LED with no gels or filters or anything, all the colour came and depth came from just working with the cameras Profile settings to get the desired level of Contrast and Saturation and of course Colour temperature and White Balance. I also enhanced the sharpness a little too, but thats really just lends a hand with focus and as we weren't doing any post at all this would really be my only chance to fix that.

The biggest thing I've found is the use of white balance and how it drastically effects the tone of the image, I was always advised to balance to white of existing light in the room, but really experimenting with the colour balance opens up a world of style right in your camera. I may do a colour chart to demonstrate how balancing to different colours effects the image, if you want something like this, let me know in the comments below, I tried finding one online, but so far, no luck.

Anyway back to Georgie's Audition, the scene in question was quite light and fairly comedic, So I went for a brighter, lighter colour to keep the tone light, pushing the cameras colour temperature toward a warmer Orange tone. If I were doing a Horror or a Sci-Fi or a Thriller I would make a drastically different choice in terms of what colours I would balance to. This is how I apply a grade 'in camera'. 

Now, obviously this approach gives you less control in Post, but for me that is the intention. It forces me think about the decisions I make and, of course, it forces me to be a little more prepared. Now balancing to different colours can give your image a completely different feel. I'll make these choices fairly early on in larger productions and do tests with lights/gels etc to get the look that I'm after. 

Adam Dillon (Nathan from Slasher House) dropped in on his way to the Premiere of our other new feature Hollower last weekend and I stole a moment from him to demonstrate the approach and the drastic difference it can make. I had my camera set for a a few different looks I'd been working on.

So this what the original 'Normal' image looks like. Set for the the rooms natural White Balance. A fairly standard shot. To grade it i would probably pull the curves out to make the shot a little more 'Flat', like in the first example (The G7 isn't really the best for shooting flat images, so you work with what you've got) but this is pretty close to how I would shoot, if I were preparing to do colour work in post. As you can see its a fairly bland image in terms of colour. Below I've worked on some quick picture profiles, just to show how much of difference shifting colour can change the tone and style of an image. 

Obviously its a fairly quick example. On set I'd take much more time in lighting my subject and  surroundings first, but for the sake of a quick reference of what I'm talking about, this should demonstrate it fine.

All of these images are raw JPEG frames from the camera (The Panasonic G7 allows you to save stills straight from the footage in camera), uploaded straight from the card. As you can see each Grade changes the mood of the image dramatically, each one of these grades was created 'in camera' by adjusting the cameras visual settings. I used a cool LED to give me a little back light, but that was it. My camera only stores 4 looks, but really the looks you can create using just your camera are almost infinite. This is before I've even started to bring other colours into the mix using gels/filters etc.

I understand some people just won't understand my approach, its extremely counter intuitive to the way most people have become used to working, you just have to look at a modern standard film workflow and how big a part 'grading' and 'colour correction' play in that to know why this approach won't suit everyone. It 'sometimes' doesn't suit what I'm doing either, as I talked about last week. If I can though, this is my preferred way to work, to me I see it like painting on set and its a lot of fun. 

This is just one of the many ways I work, and it suites me, it might not suit you, but for me filmmaking has always been about thinking outside the box and trying things that are new to me.  

MJ

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TO GRADE OR NOT TO GRADE

I was recently asked by a filmmaker friend, if he should shoot flat to give him some room to colour correct and grade in post or if he should use physical lighting to get the look he wanted. I thought it was an interesting question and it had me look at how I approach that aspect of filmmaking and how and why that has changed since I started making movies. 

Ungraded shot from
Code of Silence Music Video

If you've seen any of my work, you'll know how important colour is to me when I'm putting together ANY project. It is one of the first things I consider when I begin pre production. A lot of inspiration for this comes from Italian Director Dario Argento and his use of colour thematically across his work in the 70's and 80's as well as the fact that I grew up reading comic book and 'marvelling' at their use of vibrant colour as a language. As result colour always seemed like an equally important aspect of any visual medium to me. Especially filmmaking. 

Graded shot from Sinnergod/Blaze Bayley video 2012

Its strange to think that, even as short a time ago as the late 90's, colour wasn't given a lot of thought when putting together the look of a film. Go back and look at almost any big budget film shot in the 90's, they all have a the very same, flat, grey cinematic look, that not exclusive, but for the most part. I mean back in the early 2000's David Fincher was still considered a stylised 'out there' director and he was certainly one the directors who paved the way for this line of thought that 'colour' was, in many ways, as important as anything when telling a story. 

As we come closer to the new 20's, every film that appears in theatres is now heavily 'stylised' in its own right, a far cry from their 90's counterparts. Grading is now a permanent part of the workflow and it looks like its here to stay. So today I wanted to talk about my approach to colour and grading and how it has evolved over the last few years since I started making feature length films.

*Please remember, as with resolution, lighting, lens choice and compression, Colour and grading is a very small part of what makes an image look 'cinematic'.

TO GRADE OR NOT TO GRADE

Since I started filmmaking I've graded hundreds of projects. Being an early adopter of programs like HITFILM (Back when it was called AlamDV over a decade and a half ago) one of the programs primary functions outside of VFX was colour grading and it was a new an exciting tool for us as backyard filmmakers. Soon everyone was adopting it and grading became a huge part of the no budget workflow in a world where there had been no room for it before and it opened up a world of possibilities for us as visual storytellers.

The problem arose for me when I started to notice a trend, a well documented trend, that you've most likely come across before. All films started to look the same and when Hollywood finally took the tool to its full extension we started to notice that every film came with the same look. 

That 'Orange and Teal' thing that you now see on every big budget movie that hits theatres in this day and age. I hated it. Not the grading itself, I actually really like the look of a lot of these films, but just the fact that all films both low and high budget started to all just look exactly the same and in the medium of visual storytellers that is dangerous ground to walk on. In many ways, 'grading' films has made us lazy, its become the go to tool of the 'fix it in post' generation.

TO GRADE

When I made Slasher House (back in 2010) I didn't have the equipment or the know how to really get the look that I wanted for the film. I had a clear idea of what I wanted and how the final film should appear on screen, but I was left with the option of lighting it flat and colour grading it in post. The film, for better or worse, is known for its 'nuclear' grade' and, for the most part, taking the grading approach and pushing it as far as I did really helped get the film noticed. But for me, I just wasn't happy. It didn't feel natural, it felt artificial. It felt lazy.

Ungraded shot from +Slasher House 2010

Final Grade from +Slasher House 2010

 Grading is an extremely useful tool, when I'm pushed for time on set its sometimes easier for me to shoot with a flat profile and spend my time in post just getting close to the look I want. It is an extremely powerful in terms of setting tone and it can help tremendously if you are relying on your post production time.

Graded shot from the MychoTV web series. 2011.

I directed a web series in 2011, and we had very little on set time. Sometimes about 2 hours to shoot entire sequences and we just didn't have the time or the equipment to light the way I would want to, so shooting flat and taking care of it in post was the best way to go. Its very much the same story on a lot of music shoots, with limited time with bands or performers, I'll make the choice to shoot flat as possible and do the work in post afterwards. For short form stuff, its an approach that works great for me, but in terms of how I want stuff to look, its still a compromise.

The same thing happens when I'm shooting bright, daylight exteriors. Apart from work with colour temperature, there isn't really too much I can do in terms of lighting when I'm working on a low/no budget. So I'll usually make the choice to shoot smart with available light, shoot with a flat or neutral profile and make any adjustments in post if needed.  

For me, this comes with drawbacks, It feels artificial at times and thats not the aesthetic I look for when I'm shooting. After doing this for a couple of years I decided to rethink my approach.

NOT TO GRADE

Ungraded shot used in Legacy of Thorn 2013

For my next feature in 2013, Legacy of Thorn, I was determined to evolve the look of the film and made the choice very early on that I wanted everything to be as physical as possible and I decided that I wouldn't stop with just pour practical effects. I decided that I would shoot everything as I wanted it to appear in the final film 'in camera'. The result was far better, it felt more natural, more real. I'd never been happier with how one of my films looked and I knew, for me, that this was the way I wanted to do things from here on in.

The next too features I worked on had very little in the way of colour correction at all. In fact Cleaver : Killer Clown, had none apart from a couple of slight colour balance shifts and some adjustment to brightness and contrast in the odd shot to match colour, but again, for the most part the film footage you see on screen is the footage I shot in camera with nothing altered. 

Ungraded shot from Cleaver : Killer Clown 2014

After getting through 2 films using almost no colour correction at all, I felt that I had found comfortable space to work in, that really worked for me and the style that I wanted to bring to my films. Using combination of lighting, gels and colour temperature in camera I found it easy to get the look I wanted without ever having to run it through colour software at all. This had some huge benefits for me.

Ungraded shot from Hollower 2015

First off, because I was doing it this way it made me think about the film and its colours in a lot more depth, right down to props, costumes and even hair colour of my actors. The approach 'forced' me to look at how I was using colour to help tell stories and best of all, saved me, literal weeks in post production because the footage was as close as I wanted it to final product meaning that a large part of my post workflow suddenly just disappeared.



Now technically I actually DO do 'some' form of colour grading, the difference being that I do it 'in camera' before I even shoot anything, but I'll talk more about that next week.

SLASHER HOUSE 2

Graded shot from Slasher House 2010

When it came to Slasher House 2 I was faced with an 'interesting' dilemma. The look of the original film had been popular with the vibrant colours of the grade really standing out as a feature, but I had evolved my filmmaking style since then to use as much in camera lighting as possible. The challenge was taking the style of the original film and recreating it, physically, in camera.

The approach I took was using gels to emulated the colours and choosing costumes and locations as wisely as I could in order to keep the unique colour aesthetic, whilst helping it match the 'in camera' style that we had now employed in our filmmaking. This mixed with adjusting the cameras colour temperature and the contrast/saturation on my 'custom picture profile' helped me get the look I wanted, that has way more depth than I could ever add with a computer in post.

Ungraded shot from Slasher House 2015.

The added bonus of this, now that we're shooting our first 4K film, was that I could cut my footage with very little post processing, meaning I risk very little degradation in the image, which is more common when shooting compressed images. It also means that I can work faster and have a finished product in much less time simply by taking a little extra time on set getting it right.

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Overall the most important thing is that this is what works for me personally, everyone has their own style of working and their own way of doing things and above all, you should be finding the approach to the look of your film that makes you the happiest. 

Ultimately my advice to my filmmaker friend was, "do it however YOU want to do it, its your film after all". I understand the importance of both approaches and I've seen some amazingly well graded stuff that puts my stuff to shame, and the same is true when watching people get their look right 'live on set'. It doesn't really matter how you achieve what your looking for, its all about making YOUR films YOUR way. In the end, as always, thats all that really matters.

MJ

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SEEING THE LIGHT : £5 DIY LED lights

MJ Dixon is an Award Winning Filmmaker and Director of Low Budget worldwide releases includingSlasher House and Legacy Of Thorn. He has also seen over 30 music videos and shorts appear on major TV channels around the world as well as running filming workshop The Micro Budget Massacre. He mostly spends his time leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap home.

READ FIRST!! Once again, please understand that this is just my outlook and opinion on aspects of filmmaking, Im not saying its right or wrong, it's just how I do things and how I view things, Filmmaking is about listening to everyone, your peers, professionals and everything in-between. This article is here to be nothing more than helpful to people looking to make movies, hopefully thats you.

The simple fact is, production gear can be expensive. Sometimes really expensive, I lately looked into getting some professional led panels for studio shoot and discovers that to get 2 (in reality I would need at least 3) would cost me well over £1000 . Which as a low budget film producer and video director just doesn't come easy. I also understand that money doesn't grow on trees for those of you just starting out, who want to learn the craft of filmmaking. 

A few years ago I was booked by a band to make a professional music video, It was one of my first as an official company and so I wanted to keep it self sufficient. I didn't have a lot of gear at the time as I was just starting out. The video needed some lights and a black backdrop and through some careful planning I managed to pick that up with the deposit the band gave me. However it left me little money left for the rest of the video.

A lot of the scenes they wanted in thier story element needed to be shot outside on the streets and I couldn't take my newly bought plastering worklights because I couldn't afford a generator at the time to run them. So I knew I needed a portable light of some kind, however anything useable and bright enough was well out of my budget. After wandering around the £1 store one day, I came across the I perfect solution.

I found some ultra bright head torches for £1 each, they ran in AA batteries and were pretty bright, brighter than any other LEDs I go had come across. But not still bright enough. I needed a way to triple the power of them.

 Hollow Demise Video Still. Lit with LEDs in an underpants box. 

At home I had a cardboard window box from some underwear I had had gotten for Christmas. I bought a couple of the lights and realised that they lights slotted in perfectly. I dropped 4 lights in and closed the plastic Perspex of the box top over the lamps and it worked perfectly. Actually, too perfectly, the light was too harsh. A sheet of kitchen roll later and the light was diffused enough to use, Albiet handheld. 

Being made of a cardboard box meant that the light probably didn't have too much shelf life, but it worked in the in the rain for the duration of the shoot. It did however mean that I could reinvent the light to have more longevity. 

So I invented the Tupperlight.

Tupperware tub £1, Bright LED Head Torch £1 x 3, 12 Kodak Batteries £1

Make sure your box fits the lights tight to stop them from moving during use. 

 

Add A thin sheet on Kitchen roll for Diffusion if needed. 

This is by no means a 'perfect' solution, it has to be hand held for a start (although i'm sure it would be easy enough to mount of a light stand), but it works and is perfect on a low budget. Everything I needed to build this light featured here, I picked up for £4 (+ £1 for 12 low voltage batteries), This one has three lights, which is fine, my original had four, Although you can make a bigger one with a larger casing with as ,many lights as you want. 

No budget Filmmaking is just about being creative with what you have and even though i have since replaced this cheap solution with more reliable lights I still use the Tupperlight every now and then..

You can check out the video that I used it on below. 

MJ

IF YOU FOUND THIS HELPFUL OR HAVE ANY QUESTIONS THEN PLEASE DROP THEM IN THE COMMENTS BELOW. 

STORYBOARDING : THE ART OF PRE PRODUCTION

One of the first things I do after we lock the script down is start Storyboarding. Now I know there are many schools of thought on this, some people don't like them, some people will only shoot if the entire film is storyboarded and some filmmakers fall into the middle. I would be one of those filmmakers.

See for me how a film is going to look visually is massively important, in regards to shot choice, colour and even placement of actors, I like to think about all that before going into a movie I'm shooting. Weather it be for me or someone else, its important to try and use that visual style to convey tone, size and of course most importantly use it to tell your story better. 

Storyboard from Creepsville 2009

I come from a background in graphic design and so when it comes to storyboards, I get to save on budget by doing them myself, which suits me as a low budget filmmaker, although I know guys who have less budget than us who hire people to draw storyboards because they find them THAT important. It helps filmmakers on various levels, whether it be shooting faster on the day, locking down there ideas or conveying the visual ideas to other crew members. Every filmmaker i've ever met has different reasons for using them.  

However my problem with storyboards lies here, because I have a habit of going into too much detail. On my first feature, Creepsville, I started spending anytime we weren't shooting drawing storyboards out for the upcoming evenings/weeks shoots. Which is a time taking process, but our cinematographer decided half way through the shoot that he wanted them to make sure we got all the coverage we needed and so I was happy to help him as much as could to speed the process along.

Storyboards from Slasher House 2010

When it came to Slasher House, it was requested of me that I storyboard the entire movie for the cinematographer from the offset, who wasn't going to be me at the time, and so I started drafting each shot. After about 2 weeks I had storyboarded the first 5 pages (albeit in great detail) and realised that this simply wouldn't be ready for shooting if I carried on this way. 

After that the cinematographer pulled out and I realised I was going to be stepping in to fill his shoes and so I looked at what I needed to storyboard and decided on only storyboaring the bigger set pieces in the film. Each one still took me weeks, but this made it much more manageable at the time, Because quite honestly, story boarding simple conversation scenes and even very basic action stuff suits became more trouble than it was worth very quickly. 

But an interesting thing happened as I started working out the movie visually, it started to get its own distinctive voice. When I draw I use specific colour pallets, something I carried over from drawing comic books, and it wasn't long before I fell in love with the storyboards visual style and I

The final look of the film based on the Storyboards

realised I was going to have to try and achieve the look of the storyboards in the finished film. We shot some test stuff and graded it and for some reason it worked(This might sound strange but the films storyboards were based on a very intense green and red scheme which I figured would never work in terms of a film), and so pre production became geared toward also making that colour scheme work within the film. 

Less detailed storyboards for Legacy Of Thorn 2012

When it came to Legacy Of Thorn, I had this in mind from the start and so Storyboarding began as a process of quicker sketches to secure the shots we needed for the much more intense action sequences and everything else was planned out verbally in production meetings and then on set when actors were running lines, I would be looking at angles if I hadn't pre planned them already (which wasn't always possible due to the tight schedule) but I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted from the get go. 

What I've learned to do is applying Storyboarding where it's really needed and use pre planning to shoot more conventional stuff is the best approach for me. Storyboarding is useful to me and I enjoy it to a degree, but ultimately it's not always nessassary and really comes down to is how confident you are that you can get what you need in the day in time you have to get it. It does have other important uses within the process though.

So the question is are storyboards important. I would say that,
to me? Yes. They help me find my films voice, and help me to find a better way to tell my story using my visuals. They also help me shoot more intricate scenes a lot quicker, which is helpful on the usual tight schedules that we end up having and on top of that they force me to thick about my film and every shot in much greater depth, So to me they serve a great many purposes. 

However famed action director John Woo doesn't use them, and it might be that you just want to figure out what you're doing when you get there, it really doesn't matter in the end as long as you get what you want out of your film. 

MJ

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