Washington, D.C. Cinematography Workshop Recap

I had the opportunity to teach a cinematography workshop at my friend Derell Todd’s Bakery Studio.  The class was fast paced, but I shared my gear and some essential information for people who want to get involved in the wedding cinematography business.

Key Points from my Cinematography Workshop

1. Control—Always take control of the situation, never accept bad areas to film. You are the expert, so therefore you need to act like one.  Even if you are new to video, you know more than your clients and they hired you for that reason.
2. Gear—Use what you have now and upgrade as you get better clients.  Everyone will show you their fancy drone videos (including me), but start with the basics, a monopod (I recommend this Manfrotto Monopod) and a Rode Mic.
3. Shot Selection—I try to vary shots by shooting the same thing different ways; wide, medium close-up and then by making sure there is some movement within the frame. Movement always makes cinematography interesting and helps in the post-production process.
4. Lighting—This is very important to the cinematography process. I use LED Lights for weddings, but I also use the Switchtronix Torch LED light.   I explained a 3 point lighting set up, but you can see how I set up lights in the photo below.
5. Social media—Instagram is huge for video, you must format your videos for the site and get people to like and repost.  Post behind the scenes videos and photos and content that your audience will like. Don’t forget to optimize your Instagram biography, you can read my instagram bio and see how I incorporated the word cinematography.

I also spoke about post production, and did a live edit of a real client project.

[clickToTweet tweet=”You never finish a video edit, you just have to stop. via @chipdizard” quote=”You never finish a video edit, you just have to stop. via @chipdizard”]

I’ll be conducting more live cinematography workshops in the Washington, DC, Baltimore and Philadelphia area  so if you are interested in more information please sign-up for my email list.