Use Your Downtime

Use Your Downtime

Younger operators often ask me what they can do when they aren’t working (which is most of the time at that point in their career) so they can continue learning. It's tough to be starting out, to want to get experience but to not have the ability to be going to set every day and learning. Here’s what I tell them:

• Go to museums and look at art! If you can't go to a museum, go to the library and take out books, or go online. Artists have been creating frames since the cavemen in France decided to paint their friends and there is so much to learn from art. My personal favorites are the Dutch Masters - Rembrandt, Vermeer, Steen, Bosch - look at their paintings and ask yourself what they are framing, how does the frame help tell the story, what if it were wider, what if it were more of a closeup, and what ‘coverage’ would you do if you had to shoot the rest of that scene. Look for receding lines and where the light comes from. What strikes you and why? Where is the subject placed and why? What draws your eye there? Everything we do was done 100s of years ago. Don't reinvent, learn.

• Watch great movies that you know with the sound off. It's a fascinating thing to do and only really works with movies you really know (if you are like me you’ve seen The Godfather so many times you don't need the sound). Turn the sound off and watch. Watching any scene that can be told with just the visuals is an incredible way to learn. Why did they choose the frames they have chosen? What is the camera movement telling the viewer? You will see visual cues you completely miss while watching and enjoying the full experience. It's truly an amazing experience.

• One of the things that takes a lot of operators a while to understand is camera movement. As is often the case, great art imitates light, so if you have nothing else to do, find some open public spaces that has a glass elevator or, better yet, an escalator in a big open courtyard or inner sanctum, and spend the day riding it (I like the main library in downtown LA). First off, you’ll end up getting a lot of stares and likely a visit from a security guard or two - always fun. More importantly, the device you are on will move you through space, much like a dolly or crane, and you can replicate that movement over and over. So take the trip multiple times and train your eyes (‘the camera’) - or your phone if that is easier -  on a particular spot and track it. Watch what the movement does. Then reset and take another journey and keep your eyes fixed in one direction without adjusting them. Watch how your vision moves through the space and things move through your vision as you go. This may seem ridiculous but what it will do is ingrain in you how a camera moves through space. The greater understanding you have of this, the better you will be at conceptualizing a shot before you start setting equipment.

• Work on anything and everything you can in any position. Help out with short films. Shoot your own projects on an iPhone. Anything you can do to create stories with a frame will help you train your muscles for when the time is really right and you get that next job. And don't worry if you don't have the lights, the location, the whatever, just get out there and create!

• Grab a still camera, a phone, whatever you have that can shoot an image and go outside and tell stories. Framing street photography - how, why, what, where - will make you think quickly and you’ll learn from your mistakes. When you get home, play with cropping t change the framing and see how it changes the story you’ve told.

• Call up a rental house and ask if you and a friend can come play around with a geared head, a fluid head, even a remote head. This will give you invaluable experience and there will likely be other assistants and operators there who you can strike up conversations with, ask for advice, offer to help and then, when the DP calls in sick, they will call you… yeah, that doesn't happen, but they will know your name and you will now know theirs.

• Use the Youtubes!! There are so many links on the interwebs with operators, DPs, Directors and beyond discussing storytelling. There is more info than ever before at your fingertips and all it takes is a computer and wifi. Here’s a smattering worth looking at.

The bottom line is that you don't need to wait to be hired to improve your skills. There are storytelling opportunities to be had everywhere, and you don't need anything more than your eyes and your mind to continue learning and creating.