You hit your marks while pulling focus, but when you see the footage, you’re devastated to see it’s out of focus anyway. What happened? There’s a chance it was the backfocus. And with one simple check, you could’ve caught the problem early.
Camera Assisting
How to Get Better at Pulling Focus, Slating, and Being a Badass AC
Most Recent Articles in "Camera Assisting"
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Who’s Your General in the War of Filmmaking?
Filmmaking is chaos. Plans get disrupted or intel is mistaken and the way commanders handle these unexpected occurrences isn’t always the same. When the director, the director of photography (DP), and the producer all want different things, who do you take commands from?
The Measurements You’ll Want for Visual FX Shots
As a camera assistant (AC), you don’t have to worry about how the shots are rendered, but you do have to do everything you can to help the visual effects artists get it right. And that starts by providing them with a little bit of information.
7 Last-Minute Checks Before You Roll Camera
It’s easy to let something slip or for changes to be made without you noticing. While not always malicious, these small changes can have a big effect on a quality take and force everyone else to reset and go again. So before you get ready to punch that little button on the side of the camera, do these 7 last-minute checks.
Where to Place Your Video Village Monitor
Video village is a necessary part of any film set and as a camera assistant you will most likely be put in charge of it. You’re the town planner, so to speak, and the director is the mayor. Try your best to keep the traffic unclogged, the streets clean, and you will good to go.
It’s Alive! Keeping Your Batteries from Dying
You don’t always get as many batteries as you would like, or possibly even need, but you have to work with what is handed to you. If all goes well, there should never be a delay in shooting because of a lack of battery power.
How a Basketball Defense Helps You Pull Focus
Pulling focus in handheld situations is tough. You have to make quick calculations in your head about distance and be ready to anticipate unpredictable moments. Today I want to share with you one of the ways I help make pulling focus while handheld a little bit easier.
Interview with 2nd AC Sterling Wiggins from MakingOf
It’s easy to find interviews with big players on film sets, but it’s harder to point the camera on those behind the camera in the first place – the camera assistant (AC). With some luck, however, you can find the odd interview with an AC, like this one with 2nd AC Sterling Wiggins.
What to Do After Your Focus Goes Soft
Despite your best efforts to rehearse a shot, get focus marks, and hit those marks in rhythm, you don’t always get it right. Sometimes you pull too fast. Or your mark was off. Or an actor was off their mark. Or the follow focus dislodged from the gears. Or…well, you get the point.
How (Not) to Become a Camera Assistant
If you Google the words “camera assistant,” only a few results from the top is an article from eHow.com titled How to Become a Camera Assistant (AC). You don’t have to be a pro to find this article horribly misinformed. So let’s break down what eHow says and why their method is not the direction you want to go.