10 FILMMAKER APPS YOU NEED TO HAVE

App Creators have Tapped into the Production Industry to Provide Must Have Filmmaker Apps for your Everyday Set Needs:

Smart Phones have become an every day necessity on set these days.  Let’s be honest, in this field we are obsessed with amazing cameras, new lighting technologies and sound equipment that would blow your mind.  Why would we settle for less with our cell phones or tablets?  App Creators and Industry professionals have teamed up to create an entire line of phone apps for filmmakers today.  Everyone wants to be the one to pull out the newest app on set and really impress the crew.  Whether you are a PA that needs to organize their releases, an AC that wants to make sure their GoPro was rigged up properly, or a Director that wants to get their shot list together, you’re going to want to get in on these apps stat!

1. Digital PA (Apple)

How many times has a release inexplicably disappeared between the time you got the signature and when you walked through the PO door?  That was only 12 steps, how could it have disappeared?!  Those days are over my friends.  Get this app and you can organize releases in a way that will make your Coordinators head explode.

2. Sun Seeker/Sun Droid

Sun Seeker (Apple) is an app that will help you locate the sun and show you the solar path hour by hour.  With over 40,000 locations to choose from on this app, you will be able to pinpoint your perfect shot in any set location in the world.

Sun Droid (Google) is very similar to the Sun Seeker app, but is exclusive for Droid phones.  It will help you pinpoint sunrise and sunset times, length of day, and show you the path of the sun, moon or any planet through the sky.

3. Kodak Cinema Tools (Apple/Google)

This app has something for everyone.  With it’s Sunrise/Sunset calculator, you can get that perfect aesthetic shot.  Take the guesswork out of the equation with the Depth of Field Calculator.  What’s the TRT?  Just enter in the specifics and the app calculates for you.  What’s a vectorscope?  Learn your filmmaker lingo with the apps glossary of terms.

4. GoPro App (Apple/Google)

Filming some B-Roll around town?  Want to make sure your shot looks good?  Well, unless you’re on the roof with the GoPro, you should probably get this app.  This app gives you remote control of all the camera functions.  You can take a photo, start/stop recording, adjust settings, see what the camera sees with live preview, playback photos and videos, and share your favorites via email or social media… all from your phone!

5. Cinema Forms (Apple)

An Assistant Director and Production Coordinators dream.  This app comes with 13 essential forms, with 90 more to choose from in the library.  In your hand you have the ability to create and organize call sheets, shot logs, various release forms, location forms, contact sheets and more!  You can also save these forms as PDF and share them via Dropbox.  With the AirPrint feature, you can even print these forms from your iPad!

6. Shot Designer (Apple/Google)

With this app you can create a full blown camera diagram in seconds.  You can see how a scene will play out, and show the crew with the animation feature.  While you are creating these diagrams, the shot list is auto-creating!  The Directors Viewfinder integration allows you to bring in lens-accurate camera angles.  The app comes with a MAC/PC version so you can see your work on your computer when you get home from set.  This app brings Shot Lists, Camera Diagrams and Storyboards together so you have a comprehensive view of what your production is going to look like, not just in your minds eye but on your phone for everyone to view.

7. Wrap Time (Apple)

How many times have you started filling out your time card and not only do you not remember what your call time was two days ago, you’re having a hard time remembering what today is?  That’s what happens when you work 14 hour shifts for 13 days straight!  This app allows you the ability to input your call time, meal time and wrap time as you go, making filling out your time card that much faster and easier.  The program will calculate your pay, meal penalties or overtime depending on the work information you input.  There are even capabilities to input Grace Periods, Kit Rentals and Second Meals!

8. TeraView (Apple)

In some instances (Reality/Docu-Follow), Video Village is not an option.  This app allows Producers the ability to sit in the production van while viewing the camera feed directly on their phone!  All you need is a Wi-Fi connection and you are good to go.

9. Movie Slate (Apple)

Lost your dry erase marker or clapper board?  You know what, throw the whole slate out altogether, because with this app you will no longer need it!  Movie Slate is an AC’s best friend.  You can log footage, take notes as you shoot, set timecode and even sync timecode wirelessly to compatible cameras, sound recorders and LTC generators!

Movie Slate also has optional in-app plugins:

MultiCamera Plugin – With this optional in-app purchase, you can log data and shot notes for up to 26 cameras!

Sound Plugin – Sound Mixers can log all sound department meta data and quickly generate Sound Reports with this optional in-app purchase.

10. AJA DataCalc (Apple)

Whether you are a Media Manager, AC, Assistant Editor or Editor, this app will definitely come in handy.  If you are in the field or the edit bay, you can easily compute your data capturing requirements or storage consumption.  With the scroll of your finger, you can browse file format configurations.  You can input durations in days, minutes, seconds or precise time code frame counts.  You can even specify the frame rates, compression type, frame sizes or even sample rates and bits per sample for audio purposes.

The days of putting your phone away on set are long gone.  These apps are amazing investments that will not only make your day easier, but will totally impress your supervisor.

If you like this list, stay tuned for Round 2!  Know of any amazing apps that we missed?  Feel free to comment below with your personal favorite filmmaker apps.

Film School: Crowdfunding

From: http://www.pinterest.com/tedhope/film-school-crowdfunding/

The Top 5 Female Character Stereotypes & 1 Tip To Avoid Them

From: http://www.londonscreenwritersfestival.com/the-top-5-female-character-stereotypes-1-tip-to-avoid-them/

By Lucy V Hay

Strong female characters. Everyone wants one, it seems. Until you write one of these:

1. A Kickass Hottie
2. A [Negative Adjective*] female
3. A depressed and/or absent mother
4. A “tart with a heart”
5. A facilitator of the lead male’s emotions

NEWSFLASH: All of these female characters are BORING. Why? Because that’s all we ever seem to get as script readers, filmmakers or consumers, that’s why!

I’ve said it before at my site Bang2write multiple times, but I’ll say it again here: human beings prize novelty.  That’s just the way it is. As a writer and/or filmmaker you can fight that – and lose – or you can start thinking about how your characters are DIFFERENT to “all the rest”.

But stop right there!

Don’t kneejerk and go to the OPPOSITE end of the scale, either. That’s how we ended up in this mess in the first place, with “strong female characters” ending up invariably just “men, with boobs” or as a plot device for a male character’s justifications – or worse, gratification – as he does all the cool stuff going for **that goal** … of his.

But this is just it. To stand out?  You don’t want a “great female character” … You want a great character, who happens to be female.

But how to do this? Answer: Stop seeing your character as FEMALE FIRST. The best female characterisation comes down to this:

Personality first; gender second.

Gender is (usually) an important part of a person. But it’s not everything about that person. Yet it’s personality, not gender, that should act as the catalyst for that characters’ desires/goals, as well as their actions in driving the story forward. Writers seem to get this when they write their male characters, but very often end up writing “the girl character” in their screenplays. You know, the one that’s defined by her “femaleness”. Ack.

But guess what – it’s not even just the male writers who do this, either. Female writers do it too. In ten years of script editing, I have seen NO correlation between gender of the writer and “good” or “bad” female characters in their work. Writers make the same mistakes, whether they are male or female themselves … But by that same token, ANY writer has every chance of writing a well-drawn, authentic character regardless of their own gender. Well, d

uh.

Truly great female characterisation is rarely about role reversals for the sake of it, or going all out to be supposedly “ground breaking”. The best female characterisation I have read in screenplays or seen on screen is left of the middle: those great female characters are whole & rounded, no matter what their ambitions are; what they do for a job; who they spend their time with; what level of education they have; where they’ve traveled or whatever else you want to write into their character bios.

But equally, don’t strive to make all female characters ACTUALLY “good”, either. This is patronizing and ultimately foolhardy, since drama is conflict. There’s a strong chance you won’t want your female characters to behave logically or well all the time, else there will be no movie. That’s not to say every female character needs to be ditsy or a seductress with an Evil Plan, but she does need to feel authentic and “real”. Do you or the women in your life behave perfectly, 24/7? I know I don’t.

And forget “female empowerment”. Personally, I think resting the whole cause on the shoulders of one screenplay or a single movie is unrealistic. I think it’s better to think of female empowerment as a cumulative build up: a “drip, drip” effect, if you like. Movie making is a business first, art second. So let’s support the movement by getting behind female filmmakers and consuming movies with those great characters **who happen to be female** in them.

So, think again about those “usual” characters I mention at the beginning of this post … Maybe your female character *is* able to kick ass; maybe she has a tragic backstory; maybe she ignores or disappoints her children; maybe she’s a stripper or sex worker; maybe she is able to tap into the lead male’s psyche … whatever. Just make sure that’s not ALL she does.

Put your female characters under the micro

scope and think left of the middle. Take an element of your character and twist it; give us details of WHO she is and WHY – don’t reduce her to a single role function. In short:

Don’t be the “usual”. Don’t be boring.

UPDATE - Rhainna Pratchet, tasked with rebooting Lara Croft added “With the reimagining of Lara Croft we were attempting to bring more texture and depth to her character by exploring a period of her life that players hadn’t experienced before. We know that Lara Croft is brave, resourceful and resilient, but we wanted to show where that came from and how it evolved, and let players be part of that journey. It wasn’t a story about being female, it was a story about being human and the enduring nature of the human spirit in the face of adversity.”

BIO: Lucy V Hay is a script editor, novelist and blogger who helps writers via herBang2write consultancy. Lucy is one of the organisers of London Screenwriters’ Festival and also the Associate Producer of Brit Thriller DEVIATION that features a female protagonist.

*Usually depressed and responsible for the death of someone else (usually a sister), the negative adjective used most often to describe female character archetype number 2) is “guilt ridden”.

Spielberg, Godard, Herzog, & More Offer Cinematic Wisdom in Wim Wender's 1982 'Room 666'

From: http://nofilmschool.com/2014/05/wim-wenders-room-666-spielberg-herzog-documentary-future-cinema

0Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on google_plusone_share

If you could get a large group of some of cinema's greatest directors in one room, what would you ask them? Well, director Wim Wenders got that opportunity while at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, and subsequently made a documentary about it. 16 iconic directors, including Jean-Luc Godard, Steven Spielberg, Werner Herzog, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, were asked a series of questions about the future of the film industry, as well as the art form itself, and their answers became an incredible 44-minute video compendium of cinematic knowledge. Check it Wenders' Room 666 after the break.

This video was shared by The Film Stage last year as a roundabout way to commemorate the 31st anniversary of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's death, which occurred less than a month after the filming of this documentary. However, each director that appears in Room 666, which was in fact filmed at Cannes in room 666 at the Hotel Martinez, were given one 16 mm reel (about 11 minutes) to give their insight into filmmaking as art, the state of cinema at the time, and where they believed it was headed -- the main question being, "Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?" 

It's especially interesting, because we are now living in and experiencing the future they were talking about. In fact, French director Romain Goupil talks about how film always seemed "prehistoric" to him, and how video was going to make the then (and now) cumbersome process of telling a story much easier. Spielberg's interview is interesting, too, in that it seems as though the Hollywood system of film investment hasn't changed since 1982. He laments how studios really only want to invest in "home run" pictures -- maybe "third base" pictures, but very rarely anything less. They want films that appeal to mass audiences -- not "films about your grandfather."

And, as a quick side note, Herzog, after he takes off his shoes and socks (because you can't give an interview with them on), imagines a day when you'll be able to do some crazy stuff with technology -- like order a meal using the buttons on your phone or your computer.

In case you want to follow along as each director speaks, here's a list of them in the order in which they appear:

• Jean-Luc Godard
• Paul Morrissey
• Mike De Leon
• Monte Hellman
• Romain Goupil
• Susan Seidelman
• Noël Simsolo
• Rainer Werner Fassbinder
• Werner Herzog
• Robert Kramer
• Ana Carolina
• Maroun Bagdadi
• Steven Spielberg
• Michelangelo Antonioni
• Wim Wenders
• Yilmaz Güney

Feel free to share your thoughts about any of the topics brought up in Room 666 below!

[via The Film Stage]

Martin Scorsese Breaks Down the Difference Between Story & Plot

From: http://nofilmschool.com/2014/07/martin-scorsese-difference-between-story-plot

0Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on google_plusone_share

What is story? What is plot? What is the sound of one hand clapping? Who knows? While story and plot might seem, at first, to be synonymous, in fact they are two different things entirely, and if you're a beginning screenwriter or filmmaker, it can be tough to sift through all of the contradictory information that's out there in the ten billion screenwriting books to figure out which is which and why. It's a tricky question, but never fear, because that cinephile unrivaled, Martin Scorsese, is here to straighten matters out. In this video, he breaks down the difference, and we give some helpful (hopefully) background info to help you create your next masterpiece.

In this clip from an episode of the show Dinner for Five, Scorsese holds forth on why he's more a fan of story than plot, and what he thinks the differences are:  "The films that I constantly revisited or saw repeatedly held up longer for me over the years not because of plot but because of character, and a very different approach to story."

So, Scorsese's definition is very much cinematic, but this is hardly surprising, given that he is a director and also one of the preeminent visual stylists in modern American cinema. Therefore, he is more impressed by the mood, style, camera moves, and general "feelings of threat," as he puts it, in Hitchcock's film. And, though these might be difficult elements to capture on the page, it's not an impossible task, as this post from The Script Lab, about writing visually, explains. Hitchcock, it should be noted, was a man who remarked to Francois Truffaut, in their famous series of conversations, that:

I don't care about the subject matter; I don't care about the acting; but I do care about the pieces of film and the photography and the soundtrack and all of the technical ingredients that made the audience scream. I feel it's tremendously satisfying for us to be able to use the cinematic art to achieve something of a mass emotion.

Now, a young tyro at his or her typewriter might be in despair at all this reverence for every element of cinema except screenwriting. Don't go to law school yet, though; screenwriters have always had it relatively rough in the great chain of cinematic being, from the days when Jack Warner called his writers "Schmucks with Underwoods," Underwood being a brand of typewriter, and schmuck being a rather dirty Yiddish word that you probably shouldn't repeat in mixed company.

In that linked article, Paul Schrader, the sometimes dour ex-Calvinist who wrote the screenplay for Scorsese's Taxi Driver and co-wrote Raging Bull, opines, “A screenwriter is not really a writer; his words do not appear on the screen. What he does is to draft out blueprints that are executed by a team.” That's a little extreme, but the truth is, a screenwriter is creating a work that will be turned into something else.

But we still haven't arrived at a workable definition of story v. plot. And while it might seem antithetical to our purposes to look to fiction, or, more specifically, a guide to fiction, in Remains of the Day author E.M. Forster's book on narrative craft, Aspects of the Novel, he famously delineated the difference between story and plot as follows: a plot, according to Forster, is a, "narrative of events, with the emphasis on causality." He illustrated the difference famously: "The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot."

Forster's definition of story doesn't hold up for film, of course, though it helps us approach a definition, if only by point of comparison. Perhaps, in film, a plot could be said to be the sequence of (causally related) events that make up the narrative. The plot it what happens. The story in a movie, on the other hand, is why it happens, and how. If you look to any film, you can see this principle at work. For instance, to cite a Scorsese work, while the plot of Taxi Driver might be summed up as, "Travis, an unstable and paranoid Vietnam vet, takes a job as a taxi driver, unsuccessfully tries to meet women, attempts to assassinate a presidential candidate, and finally fixates on saving a teenaged prostitute, killing her pimp and ironically becoming a kind of hero in the process,"  the story might be, "Travis, an alienated young man, looks for and fails to find human connection in the urban jungle, where he finally explodes in a burst of violence."

In one, we have the events of the film, laid out, one by one: Travis becomes a taxi driver, which leads to his meeting Cybill Shepherd's character; when she rebuffs him, he becomes more unhinged, thinks of assassinating a candidate for president who was a passenger in his cab; he then becomes fixated on saving Iris, the young prostitute, killing her pimp and becoming a hero. In the other, we have what is closer to a so-called logline, which is defined quite aptly in this post at Gideon's Screenwriting Tips as:

The dramatic story of a screenplay in the most abbreviated manner possible. It presents the major throughline of the dramatic narrative without character intricacies and sub-plots.  It is the story boiled down to its base. A good logline is one sentence. More complicated screenplays may need a two sentence logline.

Okay, so, you are saying to yourself, what does this have to with me? Well, I'd say the takeaway is that, while a (narrative) film's plot is composed of events that happen, one after the other after the other, leading to a climax, its story is the essence, the lighthouse, if you will, that a writer and filmmaker can use to guide their ship safely through the choppy waters (I'm going to run with this nautical metaphor) of cause and effect.

By knowing the story, the writer will know how to write the film on a granular level, not just the events, but the mood, the tone, and in the macro sense, the theme. They're both equally important, and like peanut butter and jelly, or love and marriage, you can't have one without the other.

Links:

• Visual Storytelling -- The Script Lab
• Writing Effective Loglines -- Gideon's Screenwriting Tips

The Richard Linklater Approach to Filmmaking: Tips from His Searchlab Lecture

From: http://nofilmschool.com/2014/04/the-richard-linklater-approach-to-filmmaking-tips-searchlab-lecture

0Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on google_plusone_share

Richard Linklater is a DIY filmmaker hero for many reasons. He's self-taught, completely obsessed with cinema and making films, and his approach to telling stories is one that I think many can relate to. And if you were just thinking about what an experience it would be to actually be able to sit in a room and pick his brain about all of this, you're in luck. Linklater answers a bunch of questions from a small group of folks for one of Fox Searchlight's Searchlab lectures, which gives us an inside look into how the director goes about writing screenplays, rehearsing with actors, and working on-set.

The lecture is about 40 minutes long, so if you don't have enough time to check out the videos below, scroll down for a few takeaways that I found particularly helpful for my own screenwriting/filmmaking endeavors.

Spend a week in rehearsal, save a day in production

Linklater spends 3 weeks rehearsing scenes with his actors on every project he does. He does this for several reasons:  discovering new things about the project through this creative collaboration and preparing not only the actors, but himself for production. But one benefit to rehearsal he mentions is that every week you spend in rehearsal saves a day in production, and since, as he says, rehearsing is free, that could mean saving a lot of money in the end.

The director in you must fire the writer in you

Ask any screenwriter and they'll tell you that they never actually finish a screenplay, they just kind of -- give up. They relent. I'm sure most of us could spend the rest of our lives rewriting and refining our stories, but if you're planning on directing the script you're writing, Linklater says that the writer in you who fell in love with the words and ideas on the page has to eventually concede to the director in you who needs to find out what works on-screen.

Write your screenplay like you would run the 10,000m -- one lap at a time

Not all writers do things the same way. Some can sit down and bang out a script on the first try -- I don't happen to know any, but I do know they exist. Some Most writers, however, need quite a bit of prep before they ever write a single word of dialog. Though he says that your approach to screenwriting should be "loose," Linklater suggests approaching each story element, the characters, the structure, etc., like you would if it were a long distance run around a track -- in laps. So, for example, determining who your characters are, their backgrounds, their goals, and everything else would be one lap. This helps organize each piece in your mind, which helps with keeping your sanity, but it also helps to keep you focused on the goal without feeling overwhelmed at how far you have left to go. One lap at a time.

What do you think of Linklater's lecture? What stuck out to you? Let us know in the comments below.

Link: Fox Searchlight Searchlab Lecture Series playlist -- YouTube

[via FoxSearchlight]

Some Tips from Canon for Taking Care of Your Cameras & Lenses

From: http://nofilmschool.com/2014/06/taking-care-canon-cameras-lenses

0Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on google_plusone_share

Over a long enough time period, cameras and lenses can take a beating, and the best way to keep them functioning and minimize issues like dust is to clean them on a frequent basis. What's the best way to do that? While you will likely get different answers from different people, Canon has released a video that aims to provide some basic information on maintaining lenses and cameras. This might be a Canon-focused video, but the tips are certainly applicable to any brand out there.

One of the best ways to avoid getting dust on the sensor is to make sure there isn't any dust on the back of your lenses and lens caps. The bulb air blowers are great, especially for non-DSLR cameras that have exposed sensors when you remove the lens. As they show in the above picture, turning the camera or lens upside down is helpful for making sure the particles you're blowing off actually come off, and don't just blow around.

While you should never use canned air on the sensor itself as mentioned in the video above, it will usually be fine for non-sensitive parts of the camera and lens as long as it is used properly. This means keeping the can upright, never shaking it, keeping it more than a few inches away when spraying, and always giving it a few test sprays into the air to ensure that there is no liquid coming out.

I'm a huge fan of using lens pens like these once I've removed any particles on a lens, and if you've got fingerprints or any other marks that are being stubborn, a few drops of Pancro on aKimtech wipe should do the trick.

Everyone has their own specific ways of cleaning gear, so feel free to share what you use and how you use it in the comments below.

[via Canon Watch]