If you have a great concept for a film, odds are you want to tell it immediately. That's good, but even better is writing with a plan — and that means a great film treatment. Continue reading How to Write a Film Treatment (FREE Film Treatment Template)
Music videos aren’t always easy to plan. It can be a challenge to translate the poetry in the music to screen. But music videos are like mini films, and they all start with a treatment.A producer’s or director’s experience in writing a treatment is invaluable. Treatments can plan and plot the visuals in detail needed to prep more efficiently. Let’s breakdown the treatment for Eminem’s, “River,” to see how that production team did it.Continue reading How to Break Down A Music Video Treatment When Short on Details
Call sheet formats can vary dramatically depending on the type of project (documentary, narrative, still, commercial, live etc.). We talked to two 1st ADs about their process of creating call sheets and getting them approved. Continue reading How Call Sheets are Approved on Short Form, Music Videos, and Commercials
Car chase scenes are fantastic, but they are probably one of the most difficult things to capture. Even if you end up with a relatively successful experience on set, how can you be sure it will work in the edit? Continue reading How to Shoot The Best Car Chase Scene [Mad Max: Fury Road Example]
Storyboarding is an incredibly powerful filmmaking tool that allows you to refine your ideas as well as communicate them to others. But how exactly do your storyboard visual ideas like a shot’s composition? Storyboard composition and storyboard format can be ambiguous. In this article, we’ll take a look at how to define the composition of a shot and how to storyboard this composition effectively. Continue reading Storyboard Composition — A Guide to Layout, Format, Framing
Whether you are a producer, 1st AD, or script supervisor, breaking down a script is an incredibly daunting and tedious task. Overtime, the process of breaking down a script by color has become the only organized and efficient way of tackling the task. In this article, we’ll take a look at how to breakdown a script by script breakdown colors both by hand and using the StudioBinder script breakdown app. Continue reading Script Breakdown Colors — How Colors Work in a Breakdown
On a low-budget independent film with a scaled back crew, there are not too many film crew positions to keep track of. When we start looking at larger productions, however, the amount of distinct movie roles can balloon to massive numbers. Gaining an understanding of the function of each movie crew member’s role can be a confusing and lengthy endeavor without a proper guide, so we put together the ultimate guide to film crew positions to make this task as simple and intuitive as possible.Continue reading Ultimate Guide to Film Crew Positions (Jobs & Duties Explained)
Amovie montage can accomplish many things, from interweaving multiple storylines to delivering jokes. But accounting for a montage in your production schedule is no laughing matter. What can be summed up in two or three lines in a script, translates to many more minutes on screen. So how does the savvy producer or 1st AD go about making heads or tails of scheduling a montage? We'll examine a montage scene, and see how to format it in such a way that the new version lends itself to the shooting schedule nearly perfectly. And we'll do it all in StudioBinder! Let's…
Everyone loves options. Especially when it comes down to money, and as we all in the filmmaking world know, time is money. So, if you’re an AD, having multiple versions of the shooting schedule comes in handy when presenting to the higher ups. So, how do you do that? With StudioBinder’s version history manager, which lets you create multiple versions of the schedule that you can jump back and forth between. Follow along for a step-by-step guide on how to create multiple versions of the shooting schedule.Continue reading How to Create Multiple Shooting Schedules & Why You Should
Movies and television are incredible because they can transport us into a world of wonderment. Today we’re going to go over the Kuleshov Effect and how the greatest director of all time, Steven Spielberg, put his own twist on the editing technique for his personal stamp.Continue reading The Kuleshov Effect Explained (and How Spielberg Subverts it)