Category Archives: EleganceStudios.com

Websites are not trying to rip you off (in my experience)

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Hi All,

I try not to post anything which smacks of self-pity or whining, but I’ve had a few emails in the last few months which have been really rudely worded and I’d like to ask people to please have a little consideration.

There is a perception that websites are out to rip you off, steal your money, not give you what you paid for. I have never met a webmaster who has that attitude to their customers. We’re all very grateful and appreciative that you like our work enough to be willing to pay for it. That’s sounds corny but it is absolutely true.

The last thing on any of our minds is getting you to pay money and then not deliver what was promised.

There’s also a perception that we are all fat cats, raking in millions and sitting in our mansion houses cackling away spending your money on champagne and caviar. The truth is that apart from one or two big players, niche websites barely make enough to get by.

Most started out as we did- run by enthusiasts who open a website to try to help fund more shoots and allow them to buy a bit more photo or bondage gear to make the next shoot a little bigger, a little better. And most still are run that way. We’re unusual in being big enough that Restrained Elegance has one person full time (Hywel) and one person half time (Ariel); many websites are still run by their creators in their spare time. We have a couple of other people to call on for specific tasks from time to time, like my friend Ian who helps with the web programming and our web hosts who make sure the site hardware runs.

But even we are spread pretty thin. We have to:
1) Be photographers.
2) Be a video camera person.
3) Be script writers.
4) Be cinematographers and photographic lighting technicians.
5) Be photoshoppers.
6) Be video editors.
7) Write website code.
8) Do technical support for the website if something isn’t working.
9) Answer all customer emails.
10) Arrange shoots.
11) Book models.
12) Organise locations.
13) Produce shoots- source the props, costumes, etc.
14) Be safe bondage riggers.
15) Manage terabytes of data generated by shoots, as our own sys admins.
16) Try to figure out what’s the problem if your computer settings aren’t letting you do something.
17) Make sure the site is updated without fail (we have never missed an update).
18) Schedule the archives.
19) Publicise the sites.
20) Compile user requests for shoot plans.
21) Keep abreast of technical developments for the future.
22) Post on the forum and try to stimulate a community.
23) Do the accounts to keep the accountant and tax man happy.
24) Run everything as a responsible business, with good business practices.
25) Be responsible for the health and safety of all on set, risk assessments etc.
26) Do the data entry to add updates to the site.
27) Do the data entry to add old sets to the shopping cart.
28) Do the data entry to add sets to Clips4Sale.
29) Make sure all insurance and other legal requirements are up to date.
30) Improve our skills to keep improving the quality of the website.
31) Make sure the website works in as many browser/phone/operating system/computer combos as possible.
32) Write all the stories for the updates, 5 a week.
33) Maintain the FAQ
34) Keep improving security and scripts so we don’t get shut down by password swappers.
35) Try to get theft from torrents/site rip sites taken down to prevent people stealing our stuff.
36) Answer all emails (this is worth saying twice- we get a LOT of emails).
37) Maintain stuff like blogs, forum software, apply patches and updates etc.
38) Blog.
39) Tweet.
40) Make the occasional spectacular Elegance Studios film.
41) Make sure new versions of browsers haven’t broken anything with HTML/PHP/CSS since last time we looked.
42) Do link exchanges.
43) Organise banner swaps and guest galleries.
44) Figure out new features and implement them.
45) Fix anything that breaks.
46) Go food shopping and cook so people at shoots can eat. Wash up and tidy up afterwards.
47) Redecorate the house so rooms don’t get too visually stale for shooting.
48) Figure out the budget so we can pay for everything out of the money you kindly pay us.
49) Try to make the site interesting and compelling.
50) Monitor the site uptime, and do something if it goes down (auto monitoring and tech support help, of course, but the bottom line is that it is our business and we need to fix it).

And that’s just a sampling of the jobs. It requires a fair bit of work, and I think most people understand that it is just us who are around to do it.

With all that to keep track of, mistakes do happen. A new version of a browser can mess up the downloads, or there might be a typo in a filename which the auto systems didn’t catch because the filename is for a different set- the system is clever enough to spot a typo, but not a brain fade of exchanging two things in a list of a hundred.

A polite email saying you have experienced a problem would be appreciated. Give us chance to rectify the mistake. I will do so as soon as the job allows; if I’m at a shoot in Spain with no internet access, it might take me a while. (I’ll still try to get at least a “sorry, I’ll get to it as soon as I can” email out if possible). Accusing me of being a cheat, a liar, a thief, a fraudster, threatening to call the cops or the FBI or customs or interpol (I’ve actually had that) because there’s a mistake in the data entry for one of over three thousand photo sets is frankly hurtful and unnecessarily upsetting.

I hope you wouldn’t do that if someone in a very busy cafe accidentally brought you the wrong sort of coffee. I hope you’d probably politely complain and ask for it to be changed. There wouldn’t be any screaming abuse. It should be just the same if a website has made a mistake, because the chances are it’s a simple mistake made by people doing too many jobs at once with not enough people to do it.

It isn’t OK to be rude and abusive to people on the internet just because they aren’t standing in front of you. Thank you very much to everyone who appreciates that and sends us a nice email to let us know there’s a problem.

By all means, get angry if I fail to rectify the problem in a prompt and responsible manner. Out of respect for the person on the other end of that abusive email, please consider a polite request first and give me the chance to make good.

We do our best. We have thousands of customers, and only a few problems crop up each month. Most of them I can fix fairly quickly, or investigate with the customer and tech support at the webhosts and anyone else who I think might be able to help (e.g. their ISP). If I don’t think I can remedy the problem promptly I’ll always offer a full refund, same as any company with a decent customer service ethos would do. Each time I try to improve the systems to reduce the chance of it happening again, but some things (e.g. data entry) are inherently prone to the occasional slip which no auto checking system can always catch.

We’ve been online for over 12 years, and we’re still here because we do our best. Please give us the benefit of the doubt and at least allow us to attempt to fix problems before emailing abuse. Thank you.

Cheers, Hywel.

Stories and scripts

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So, it’s the last evening of my “Creative Retreat”, two weeks spent away from the usual run of processing photos, editing videos and answering emails that are the day-to-to running of a website.

I set myself the challenge to come up with ten log lines – I did, see previous post.

Then I set myself the challenge to come up with a screenplay, either one feature or several shorts. I did. I wrote three short scripts, half a draft “hour-long” hybrid that might have the kernel of a feature in it, one fully worked out idea with dialogue to be improvised at the shoot (like we shoot now) and a whole stack of index cards which might one day turn into a dense 90-minute feature.

As I thought, the shorts proved more fertile. I want to get more experience working with stories framed as screenplays, with their pared-down style, stripped dialogue, three act structure, etc.. So I’m going to make some of the shorts into films and release them before embarking on a feature.

So now I have…

Bondage Intern – Ditzy blonde intern must run business when boss breaks his leg. Only trouble: business is running a bondage website. This one I decided needed the improv. touch to deliver humour, I’m not at all confident that I can write funny dialogue! That’s now a full story outline, in usual RE style.

The Face Of Metal Bondage – Too old & too tall, lifestyle BDSMer Audrey must defeat the horrid fashion models to be crowned million-pound face of metal bondage fashion. 8 page short screenplay.

Good Time Girl – Good time girl provides service: perfect embodiment of any fantasy. Kidnapped by mob pimps, she must escape; her only client is her husband! 13 page short screenplay.

Friendly Fire – a military intelligence officer kidnaps his cynical civilian superior to prove to her than the interrogation techniques at which she sneers are no walk in the park. But can he defend his honour and integrity when she attempt to seduce her way out of the situation? 20 page short screenplay.

A partial draft of Dating Epic Fail. Ditzy girl installs Bad Idea Bear app to make all date decisions for her. Ensuing adventures lead her to sub identity BDSM. 22 pages, but needs either sharpening up and condensing to a snappier 15 minute short, or expanding to an hour allowing more time for character development. I have extensive notes but the main thing I am missing is the hot BDSM scenes (which curiously are usually the bits which fall into place most easily). If I can think of lots, it’ll become a longer film. If I can’t, I’ll try to make it a super-pacey 15 minute short.

A LOT of index cards and notes for Journalist mistakenly invited to BDSM scene. She goes, intending exposé, finds own fulfillment. Now she must battle tabloid exposé herself. This one I really see as a feature, and one which might be able to appeal to a more general audience… if I can make the characters and the storyline compelling enough. So this is one I’m going to work on steadily and see how far I can develop it, and maybe even look for mainstream involvement down the line.

What of the two most popular ideas from the log lines?

Wile E. Coyote bondage. Incompetent kidnapper keeps trying to grab her victim with bondage traps but keeps trapping herself in bondage instead. This is a great comedy idea, but I decided the first thing that needed doing was trying to figure out some practical ways of actually making the bondage traps. I decided to wait until I had bondage gear (and Ariel!) to hand so we could experiment. Might need to recruit some bondage engineers to get very far with this! I still love the idea but the feasibility/safety on our budgets needs testing to establish.

Nymphomaniac Zombies. Contagion turns young women into sex fiends. Capture and bondage the only option until a cure is found! I wrote a detailed outline, but the more I wrote, the more frustrated I became with the scale on which we’d have to shoot it. My original idea had LOTS of sexy women on screen, and that’s likely to be a budget buster.

I explored a few of the standard horror film ways of making the budget smaller- isolation is the big one. So… a hotel, on an island, with a small group of characters and (say) a convention of makeup sales-girls to bring up the babe quotient. The more I wrote, the more it felt like a less-good remake of The Evil Dead… and there have been enough less-good remakes of The Evil Dead already.

So this one will have to wait until a lightbulb moment which makes the original sexy vision fit in a “zero budget” filming story.

One good thing though is that I’m now confident that will happen, I just need to mull it over long enough. The reason I know that is that I’ve had the Friendly Fire film idea running around in my head for a couple of years. I had some very strong images, a basic story arc, and the main character sitting there… I just couldn’t write down the framing story in a way that a) made sense or b) was possible for us to shoot.

The way I’d originally thought of it, she would be a business bitch character, and the central idea is hatred as a powerful aphrodisiac between her and the dom in the story, who I had down as a policeman investigating her committing a massive fraud in the city. No matter how I sliced it, though, the story didn’t hang together. The things I thought a policeman would do, the things the two characters would have access to, any sense of urgency as the plot unfolded.

When the idea came to me of making them intelligence officers, rivals at a similar level, used to dirty tricks and with a lot more resources to call on, I knew I had it. (Note to self- going for a walk is definitely the best way to solve story issues. Subconscious delivers).

It remains to be seen if these screenplays are any good. Next step is a read-through and re-edit with Ariel, to see if they really do hang together. The dialogue certainly needs tweaking- I’m sure most of the characters talk too much like me, for example. And it remains to be seen whether we can film these more ambitious story lines (and if anyone can/will learn the lines I’ve just sweated over writing!)

The main thing is that I’m very happy at having come up with several stories which have actual third acts, endings, not just fade to black while she’s in bondage. The bondage scenes have somewhere to go, and hopefully it’ll give them more impact as a result because the characters have an emotional arc through the hotness, as well as just the hotness.

It’ll also allow me to do more detailed visual planning before we shoot them, which should help produce beautiful images as well.

Right. Must pack my bags. Hopefully the next you’ll hear of my ramblings is that we’re about to make one of these into a movie you can actually watch!

Which of them sounds most intriguing to you?

Bondage Scripts

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For the last week I’ve been on creative retreat, taking time out from the day-to-day running of the websites. It sounds pompous but it is hard to concentrate on writing whilst editing films, processing photos and answering emails. Some dedicated time was in order.

I want to figure out how to make our films better. For the bondage and fetish work specifically, I want to make the films more intense, more compelling, better stories (and hotter, too).

I also want to make some movies with fetish elements that will appeal to a wider audience.

Firstly, to send to the British Fetish Film Festival. It was clear from the producers’ screening that the stronger the story progression, the more compelling the film.

Secondly, I’d like to make a film showing BDSM as we think it is: positive and fun, one part of a fulfilling sex life if it happens to be your kink, not something to be scared of. The portrayal in mainstream media is lamentable- even laudable ones like Secretary have to have a self-harming, slightly broken sub and a dom with so many personal issues he can hardly function.

I’d like to make films with stronger story lines for Elegance Studios and sometimes RE and SS, too.
(Only sometimes. Not every film needs a big old wodge of story. There’s nothing wrong with short, sharp, sexy BDSM videos with lots of hot action and we’ll still be making plenty of those, and improving the quality and the impact of those too.)

I think the element that’s most lacking in our longer storytelling efforts to date has been the ending. We do OK at beginnings- we’re quite practiced at sketching characters and situations quickly without a ton of exposition. We do good middle sections- that’s where all the sexy stuff and the fun stuff happens. We just usually tail off with a fade to black or a “girl gets too tired to struggle” instead of a proper ending.

The obvious ending for bondage is either the tied up person gets untied (which is not very hot to see) or the characters have sex (which would turn into hardcore porn, which we don’t want to make). So we need to figure out how to make impactful endings which bring the film to an emotional, satisfying conclusion without seeming lame or a let down.

The tool I most need to do that is a script, a proper screenplay.

We’ve been getting closer and closer to that with the shoot plans for our longer and more complex films anyway, but so far we’ve stopped short. We’ve worked from shot lists, shot lists plus a few storyboards, and written essays which are plans for screenplays but with the dialogue to be improvised on set. And again, that’s a great way to work for some things.

I’ve concluded already this week that I can’t write comedy screenplays, but comedy comes about naturally with improvisation. So my bondage comedy ideas are going to be done in the “story plus improv” mode.

What I’m really settling down to do now is to flesh out some ideas into proper, fully-scripted format so we can shoot them that way. I think the advantage will be that with tighter control, you can plot more tightly. And you need the end written, so you have to think about it before you start shooting. That lets you feed the set-up more tightly so that the beginning leads inexorably towards the emotionally satisfying ending.

I set myself several challenges.

Stage one was to come up with ten log lines. A log line is a one or two sentence summary of what the film is about, to try to explain why it is a good idea and why I would want to make it (and hopefully why you will want to watch it!) I decided to tweet mine, so they have a 140 character limit, which is STRICT.

Tick: here are the ones I came up with

  1. Too old & too tall, lifestyle BDSMer Audrey must defeat the horrid fashion models to be crowned million-pound face of metal bondage fashion
  2. Wylie Coyoye Bondage. Incompetent kidnapper keeps trying to grab her victim with bondage traps but keeps trapping herself in bondage instead
  3. Autocratic ruler tries to be good man. Only indulgence- sadistic fantasies with captive slavegirls. Until he meets true love among slaves…
  4. Good time girl provides service: perfect embodiment of any fantasy. Kidnapped by mob pimps, she must escape; her only client is her husband!
  5. Some day my prince will come. But when he does, he’s an arse- I think I’ll stay with kinky evil captor.
  6. Journalist mistakenly invited to BDSM scene. She goes, intending exposé, finds own fulfillment. Now she must battle tabloid exposé herself
  7. Nymphomaniac Zombies. Contagion turns young women into sex fiends. Capture and bondage the only option until a cure is found!
  8. Dating Epic Fail. Ditzy girl installs Bad Idea Bear app to make all date decisions for her. Ensuing adventures lead her to sub identity BDSM
  9. Ditzy blonde intern must run business when boss breaks his leg. Only trouble: business is running bondage website!
  10. Service orientated sub girl must learn the difference between affection and abuse to escape the prison of “I don’t deserve anything better”

Some of these feel like short films for RE, some longer ones for ES, some mainstream-ish, some not, one or two may even be worth considering at feature length.

The intern one I had a go at, and discovered I couldn’t script funny dialogue, didn’t know where to start. But I can see that as soon as I get the right people on set, comedy will ensue. So that one has become a “standard” shoot plan.

The fashion world one I’ve turned into a short script. Two drafts so far. It’ll need tuning, but I quite like it. It feels satisfying.

The Good Time Girl one had the strongest number of hot mental images associated with it, so despite the fact that no-one on twitter liked it, and that I thought the logline was poor, I’ve written a short script for that one too. It’ll need revisions.

I’ve made quite a few notes on several of the others.

Which ones sound most interesting to you?

“More cinematic” is not “better”. But it is difficult.

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I should say that there’s nothing inherently superior about “more cinematic”. It is one of the standard styles in which moving pictures are presented, and it suits some stories very well.

Other styles suit other stories.

Hand-held crash zooms looks like a newsreel live broadcast: ideal for disaster movies and alien invasions.

I love music videos and the the “MTV” style – lots of jump cuts, extensive slowmo. It works for a story that can be crammed into a three minute music track. That’s not “better” than the “Hollywood blockbuster” style, it is just different.

There is a recognisable “website video” style that has come about through practical considerations of how we shoot. As did all the other styles, incidentally.

For example, smooth camera movies came about because movie cameras used to weigh a ton, and you couldn’t shoot shaky-cam with them if you tried. The mass of the camera would have defeated you. And you couldn’t shoot your home movies on them, because they wouldn’t fit in your house. When light cameras came along, they were also cheap- people used them for home movies and newsreels. Which is why we associate shaky-cam with home movies or news footage, and large crane and dolly movies with big budget films.

The website video style is usually two cameras, one wide angle, one getting detail shots, cutting between the cameras like a live mixer on a live TV broadcast. Long rolling takes, exposition largely done through dialogue, fairly brightly lit, continuity edit.

It conveys some stories very well: as people have commented on my previous post, it has a feeling of reality and that the action is all happening in real time as we watch. So if you are capturing a BDSM scene bring played out “as live”, it’s just the ticket. Scenes shot this way aren’t actually any more “real” than scene shot in a different style. There’s a real girl, tied up with real rope, whatever style we happen to be shooting.

Sorry to disillusion anyone, but the actress’ “model character” is almost always a role, just as much as if she’s playing a captured spy. Most models use a stage name, and that stage name is also the character they play by default on screen.

She might be more practiced at the role, and the style has associations which we take to mean “this is really happening to someone”, so it might be easier to suspend disbelief. But I assure you that nipple clamps hurt whether you shoot with two cameras one rolling take, or one camera and cinematic angles and camera moves and storyline development. So in the same way that the cinematic style isn’t “better”, the website style isn’t “more real”.

They just have different connotations and suit different stories.

The website style isn’t an especially glamorous style, for the same reason that super-8 handheld film footage isn’t an especially glamorous style.

If you want your captured spy to look like a Bond girl, rather than a girl in a house in suburbia, you might want to pinch style elements from the Bond films. If you want your maidens carried off by Vikings, you’d do well to look at historical epics.

We have particular associations of grandeur, drama and style associated with the Hollywood big-movie style. Many reasons for that, not least of which is that it is a damned expensive way to make films!

Since that’s a look and feel that appeals to me, I want to pinch elements of the cinematic style for SOME of our website videos- the ones whose story suits the style. In doing so, I don’t think the films are inherent better. One can make boring stories in a cinematic style and they’ll still be terrible. But if one do want to borrow some of Hollywood’s glamour (which with a website calling itself Restrained Elegance, I’d like to), the cinematic style might be a very good match.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to achieve. That’s because the way it is done usually involves big budgets, big sets, big crews, lots of equipment, and even bigger budgets. And did I mention big budgets? Not just big in a “ten times what we spend on a film” sort of way. Big in a MILLION times what we spend on a film sort of way.

It isn’t better.

But objectively, it IS more difficult to achieve.

That gives it a glamour and a cachet and is why it has a mystic fascination for many low budget film-makers.

Hywel

Making Cinematic Videos

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For the last few years we’ve been trying to make our website videos more dramatic, exciting and compelling. More like a proper movie you’d see at the cinema and less like home videos.

The problem is that the “proper” way to do this involves a large cast and crew. What the mainstream film world would consider a low budget may be our whole turnover for the year. So we can’t just adopt Hollywood or BBC practice everywhere, we have to be SMART.

I don’t for a moment pretend that we’ve got all the answers. We are way down the food chain and the learning curve from Hollywood. But I hoped other people would find it useful to hear some of the tips that have worked best for us so far. I’ll be fleshing out some of these ideas in future posts, and posting video clips to illustrate what I mean, too.

We’d love to know your experiences and what tips have worked well for you… and if you try some of our ideas, do let us know how you get on!

1) Story

Hot fetish scenes in mainstream movies are often over in a flash. Think Princess Leia in the slave-girl costume or bondage scenes in horror films. The scenes are often portrayed in a very negative light, too.

If you have the fetish, you want the movie to dwell a lot longer on those scenes. An eternally extended catching of the breath to concentrate on the bondage, the whipping, the bare feet, the domme, the satin blouse, the rubber catsuit. Sometimes the characters are vanilla, but sometimes we want to show people enjoying it as well.

The danger of the website videos we mostly produce is that we go too far away from storytelling to capture enough of the fetish action to satisfy.

Our top tip for films that are for viewing by a more general audience is to put the story back in pride of place. Our experience of viewing films with people who don’t entirely share the fetish is that a good story will carry them along and let them enjoy it almost as much as if it was their kink.

2) Characters

The most important component of storytelling is who, not what. We should care about the people on screen, at least enough to be curious to see what will happen to them.

So it is important to spend a few seconds establishing the personalities on the characters on screen, and know how we want the audience to feel about them.

3) Visual Storytelling

The most natural way to do that is through dialogue. But having each character announce their personality profile like they are on a dating site is very clunky. Similarly, there’s no need to broadcast the whole plot of the film in long swathes of improvised dialogue. A little goes a long way.

It is better to do the storytelling visually. A picture is worth a thousand words, and all that.

Suppose our leading lady is a lovable scatter-brain, nervously on her way to meet her boss. We could start with them meeting in the office and having a few minutes of talking. But we can establish their characters much more elegantly with a few shots:

  • Employee dropping her keys on the floor, says “Oh fiddly fidge!”
  • Boss taps fingers on desk. Clock behind says 9:31 am
  • Employee frantically checks phone as she rushes along. 9:35 am. Snoozed alarm goes off on phone screen “meeting with boss”.
  • Employee gets out of car, clothes dishevelled. Adjusts them using windscreen as makeshift mirror. Rushes off.
  • Door opens. Employee enters. Boss says “Ten minutes late, Miss Anderssen…”

Total running time probably 20 seconds, to tell us lots about the two characters very elegantly.

Sadly, it will take more than 20 seconds to shoot but the filmic effect is well worth it.

4) Sound

Nothing screams cheap video like bad sound.

Get the best microphone you can and put it as close to the mouth of the person speaking as you can.

There’s a lot more to it, but clean audio of dialogue and the action is the main thing.

5) Lighting

Porn, it turns out, is brightly lit. Some movies and TV shows are too (comedies, especially). So it is OK to get some lights and point them at the scene, then shoot. But we want the lighting to tell the story and serve the characters, and we want drama. We don’t want the tacky associations.

If you want it to look dramatic, you need to shape the light. The best starting point is three point lighting.

The hardest, brightest light source is the key light- that should be the main source of shadows. Try putting it up-stage of the actor for drama, and throw the shadows off-camera rather than against the back wall.

You’ll need a second, softer light to fill in the harsh shadows. That’s the fill light, usually on the opposite side of the camera from the key light.

The third is the backlight, rim light or hairlight, shone from above and behind the actor to separate them from the background and get them to “pop”. Also makes girls look very glamorous.

6) Single Camera. Shorter Takes.

When you are trying new stuff it is hard to get it right on multiple cameras. A lot of us use multiple cameras and shot in long rolling takes, cutting between angles like a live TV broadcast.

For making something more cinematic, shoot in shorter takes.

Make each shot tell you something new, reveal some new information.

Use just one camera – it focusses the mind and saves you thinking “oh the other guy will have got it”.

Look at mainstream films and count every time the shot cuts. Compare with the pace of cuts in a typical website video. Notice that pretty much every shot is there for a reason.

Movies are life with all the dull bits cut out. Fetish videos can be too- make sure enough happens through the scene to be showing new information regularly. Maybe not at the pace of a mainstream film (that’s why mainstream films only have very brief fetish scenes in them) but pick it up a bit and don’t go back to shots which are “dead” too often.

Yes, mainstream films and TV are increasingly using multiple cameras. We find it easier to figure out with just one first, then thinking about adding the second camera back in.

7) Production Design and Framing

I’ve seen films shot in beautiful houses where the characters are shot sat right in front of a plain white wall, throwing really ugly shadows everywhere. You wouldn’t know for a moment it was in a gorgeous location.

Try to show more of the world.

Shoot into corners and across rooms, not against flat walls.

Get your actors away from the walls, put them in the middle of the room. Also makes it easier to get hairlights in.

Shoot through things (open doors are good) to create a feeling of space. Have the characters move around.

Dress the edges of shots with little details that show there’s a wider world out there. For stills, you usually try to remove distractions at the edge of frames. For movies, cultivate that. Anything which helps lend an impression of depth is to be encouraged.

8) The Rodriguez List

Robert Rodriguez made his early films on micro budgets by writing his stories around a list of cool stuff he could get hold of. If you have a guitar case and a fast car, make a film about a guy who drives a fast car and carries a guitar case.

9) Open Framings and Camera movements

An open framing is a shot which only shows part of the scene (leaving “open” what else might be there).

A closed framing shows you everything about the scene- for example, a traditional master wide shot that shows everything.

Open framings build drama by asking questions. There’s a report on the table, a hand reaches in. Whose hand? It is dark, are we in an office?

If you gradually reveal the answers to these questions as the arise in the viewer’s mind, you can build drama and tension.

Showing the whole scene in a master wide kills the tension- there’s nothing more to show.

Try to build sequences of shots as questions-and-answers-and-more-questions.

Once you’ve started doing this, you’ll find you naturally want to move the camera. Start with pan and tilt, and soon you’ll be craving dolly shots and crane shots and steadicam! 🙂 (One day, if we get rich enough… but a simple dolly is inside almost everyone’s reach and is very effective if you plan your shots).

10) The camera, if you must

Given how much of a camera nerd I am, you’re probably surprised that this wasn’t number 1. That’s because it isn’t anything like as important as the first nine on my list.

Ariel shot a captivating documentary on her iPhone.

There’s plenty one can do to help create the film look (progressive scan, 24/25 fps. control your depth of field, shutter speed 1/48th or 1/50th, reduce sharpening, shoot flat with reduced contrast, grade with a film-like curve).

But it won’t do you any good if you don’t have a good story, good sound, good characters, nice lighting, good production design and good cinematography.

So only improve things on your camera as you work on the rest of your production too. They’re only one part of the equation.