How To CREATE The HOLLYWOOD Look

What role normally gets overlooked, but is extremely important to creating a world for the viewers to get lost in, whether they're watching a film, a television show, or a commercial? I'll wait. Okay, so of course we know how you light and movement, camera movement, and all these things are gonna help you get this Hollywood look, you know, using black pro mist and all of these things, but honestly, the real way to get a Hollywood look is to learn about the crucial roles of film production that all play a part in getting the look that you want. And the role that I wanna talk about today that I think is equally as important as cinematography is production design. So production designing is actually more of like an umbrella. So at the top, you have production designing, and from there, you have these different components such as set design, costume, props, visual effects, special effects, and the list goes on and gets a little bit more detailed. But I wanna talk specifically about these components and just the definition of what a production designer is. A production designer is head of the art department on a film, television show, or commercial. Basically, they're responsible for the overall aesthetics of the story based on the script. They give the viewers a sense of time period, plot location, character actions, and so much more. So why is production designing important to a cinematographer? So the production designer works closely with the director and a cinematographer to translate the script into a visual world. Film is a language of visual storytelling, and so the visuals captured by the cinematographer matters immensely, which is why props, costume, hair and makeup, and set, all of these play a part in crafting that story. You don't want the viewers to look at a film and the script is amazing and the actors are amazing, but there's not a cohesive story visually. When we watch our favorite films, naturally as filmmakers, we talk about the technical aspect of it. The cameras, we talk about pretty much the lighting, like everything, just subconsciously, we kind of look at those things. But I honestly don't think that production design gets the accolades and the flowers that they should, because honestly, without the world that they create, nothing would be possible. And there are gonna be times where you don't have a production designer, and the reason why I think it's important to talk about as me being a cinematographer is because there are times where you kind of have to learn the language of production designing. There's gonna be times where you may not have a set designer or a production designer, and you have to learn how to create this image and bring this whole aesthetic together, not just through the camera, not just through the lighting, but through texture of your background, figuring out how to create the background, a cohesive background. All of that is cinematography, not just lighting, not just camera, but how do we make a house feel like a home? So being able to work with a production designer, you learn kind of like how you want camera movements, what do you visually want to see in your frame? Like they literally work hand in hand. And so as much as we talk about framing and composition and lighting, what exactly are we lighting, and how are these different elements and props within our frame being affected? I learned the importance of this when I shot behind the scenes for the Women King. I had not been on a feature film before that, so most of my production designing and what I was learning as a DP came from smaller projects, and that is okay. No project is too small to learn about the role of a production designer and how important it is to a cinematographer. The same way we learn about the importance of a gaffer to a DP, or a key grip to a DP, or a director to a DP, this is also another role that is just as crucial as any of the other roles, but gets overlooked a lot of times. So when I got to shoot behind the scenes of the Women King in South Africa, they were creating a lot of these locations from scratch. So what you actually saw in the final product, it felt real. They put us in this world that felt like we were there during that time, and I just thought it was so amazing. All the props that they were bringing with the chariots and the horses, and the practice facility or the practice area of where the Goji warriors were practicing and the swords, and just all of these different things added and heightened the cinematography. I was looking at the cam ops, and they had the dollies, and they had the technocranes and all these things, but it was really the production designing element that really made the film, that really put us into this world so we can relate and understand what was really going on. It really changed me in the way that I viewed cinematography and the way that I viewed how I wanted to create images. One of my favorite movies is Hunger Games, and I really, really love just the overall aesthetic of that film, from costumes, to set, to the visual effects and the special effects, all of it was so amazing. Now, without all of that, we wouldn't have really looked at that film as the film that it is, which is a great, great film, but even with their costumes, there was an element of putting us in this time period, and the costumes were freaking amazing. I actually think they won a couple awards on costumes alone. And think about Inception. Think about Inception and the world of visual effects that it placed us in. Like, that movie was mind-blowing, and that, again, falls under the umbrella of production designing. So when I was thinking about creating this video, I started thinking about the creator and how the whole conversation when that film came out was they shot it with a Sony FX3 and the budget and all of the technical aspects of, you know, filming from our brains subconsciously by just always being interested in cameras, but nobody kinda really talked about the production design, the set, the props, the characters, you know, all of that, just the whole ensemble of it. And that's why I wanted to just create this video because I feel like we need to highlight other roles because cinematography and the camera is the least important. I'm not saying that to say gear doesn't matter, but I'm saying that to say that you can't know your movement, you can't know certain things without having a production element around that. So in short, the cinematographer captures the image, but the production designer creates this visual design for the cinematographer to capture. So I don't wanna ramble, but I hope y'all are getting what I'm putting out. Like production design is so important and I just wanted to highlight and give them their flowers because I don't want us to get into this world where our conversation is always just about lighting and cinematography. Now we're cinematographers and we're DP, so of course we're gonna talk about that a lot more, but I wouldn't be doing my just do without highlighting how other roles play a huge factor in this overall game that we're all trying to grow and learn and love and get into. And I honestly feel like as you learn these new roles, you kind of continue to grow in your love for cinematography because it's always something to learn, it's always something to just be aware of. And the more you start to add that to your list and how you conduct yourself and what you wanna put out into the world and the art that you wanna put out into the world, I think it kind of just helps you continue to find that newfound love every single project that you're on. It takes a team to really grow as a cinematographer. You cannot grow as a cinematographer by yourself. You can grow in lighting, you can use a bunch of different cameras and you can learn the components of cinematography, but to truly grow, it takes teamwork. It takes you having a director, it takes you having a gaffer, it takes you having a production designer and learning every aspect and every language to better yourself as a cinematographer. And so hopefully this helped you all. Let me know if it did. If you made it this far, leave any kind of costume emoji down below. So whether it's a dress or a skirt or a shirt or a briefcase or a shoe, leave it down below so that I know that you guys got to check this out and watch it all the way through. I truly thank every single person that watches all of my videos all the way through and supports me. I love y'all and I want to continue to create this world in which I'm teaching as much as I can. If I'm ever wrong, politely let me know, but I'm still learning and I'm just sharing that with y'all. So I know that it's hard to learn these things if you're not on these big sets and I know it's hard to learn these things if you're not surrounded by people talking about all these things. And so that's why for me, I just want to kind of like share what I learned. Even if it's not the full picture, it's a little bit more than what you know. So thank y'all so much for watching. I truly love y'all. Share this with your friends. Like this video and make sure that you all are subscribed to my channel. There is definitely more coming. Thank y'all for y'all patience and thank y'all for y'all love. I'll see you in the next video. All right.