After waiting a long (albeit great) summer, South Park Studio is out with a new show tonight to kick off the 2nd part of Season 13!
It on Comedy Central TONIGHT at 10pm, my time (that’s the only important time because the world revolves around me…)
haha…
Just kidding…
(not really)
10pm Pacific / 9pm Central
PS: Episodes are posted HERE after they air, but the aliens won’t be on the posted episodes… So don’t forget to look for the alien during the broadcast… See website for details.
When you are directing movies, you should have your shot list planned out ahead of time.
This is especially important if you are on a tight budget and don’t really have a lot of leeway in terms of schedule.
You need to be able to get your shots as economically as possible in terms of time and financial expense.
Meanwhile, you also have to keep you mind on the final cut of the film and how you will put it together so that it looks good.
Last time, I wrote about three shots that you MUST get, especially when you are starting out as a director.
In this post, I am going to write about an additional set of shots that would be wise for you to get, too.
I had one mentor who didn’t like the term “insert” because he said that the entire movie is one insert after another, referring to the clips with the actors talking as also being inserts.
But for our purposes, we will call them “inserts” (sometimes also referred to as “cut aways” or “cut away shots”) and we will define them in the following manner: shots that you put in the movie that you “insert” between the shots of the actors conversing.
If you don’t get them, its not a big deal… but it helps the final look of your film and can make editing easier.
Here are two reasons to get inserts:
1. Esthetically pleasing and interesting to the audience… tells the story visually rather than verbally (helps you avoid talking heads in your movies)
2. It is easier to editing if you have the option of using inserts and if there were mistakes or lack of continuity between shots while shooting, you can hide them with inserts
The first use of inserts is to tell the story visually.
When James Stewart takes a step up on the stepladder, Hitchcock shows a shot of the stepladder (22 seconds into the YouTube video). Not a necessary shot, but it makes it much more interesting to the audience.
Additionally, the shot at 36 seconds shows what he sees when he looks down from the top step of the ladder. We see his reaction first, but the story is told well visually because we get to see the height to which he is he is reacting.
The second reason is for editing purposes…
I’m going to use another Jimmy Stewart film:
Let’s say at the shot at 1 minute 40 seconds, Jimmy Stewart did that line a few times when he was by the sign of Bedford Falls (1 minute 35 seconds) but the director Frank Capra decided he didn’t like Stewart’s expression in any of the takes or the sound was bad on all the takes.
He could have gotten him frolicking in the snow (the shot at 1 minute 40 seconds) “for safety” and then ADR’d (recording the audio of Stewart to put over the visuals) the audio of Stewart later on.
But he still got the shot of him frolicking in the snow (with the tree in the foreground).
(As a side note, when getting these shots where you just need some action or a close up on something, don’t be afraid as a director to coach from off camera. As long as the actor isn’t saying lines, you can pull your coaching out of the final cut. This is also helpful when you are trying to get a reaction shot from an actor when the actor does not have dialogue. You can say things like, “can you blink a few times and look up and to the right?” and then get rid of your own voice when editing.)
Please give feedback on this post. I feel like I’ve explained it simply enough, but I might need more visuals to make my point.
