Digital filmmaking is one exciting thing to practice.

You don’t need top of the line equipment to achieve art. It only takes a little creativity, patience and passion. In the dawn of DSLR filmmaking, many enthusiasts created mini movies and sometimes product commercials using this tool due to its capacity to produce prestine HD quality pictures. Using downloadable non-linear video editing softwares, creating professional videos is no longer a dream.Here’s some tips that you might want to consider when creating your own digital video:

1. Create a storyline – whether it’s a product commercial or a small movie, creating a story that will build its foundation for filming and editing is a must. This way, you will be able to identify the beginning, climax and end.

2.  Background music – many directors use this technique of getting a musical inspiration BEFORE the shooting proper. It works for me and I’ll tell you why; music creates mood and it’s a perfect tool to know your attack points or to emphasize what scene needs artistic attention. I listen to my preferred background music over and over to feel what I want my scene to be like. Trust me, this one works!

3. Storyboard – it doesn’t require expert drawing skills. You can even draw “stick people” just to show what you want your camera to achieve. Don’t forget to include arrows for camera panning directions and artist’s positions. Look around you, get inspirations from people and draw it. Don’t forget the most important tool of framing a subject, the rule of thirds. 🙂 I’ll tackle his on my next blog.

4. Watch movies – I have seen a lot of enthusiasts failing this art because they lack inspiration. I love watching movies. I don’t always look forward to its story but I look at how the crew does the scene. Did they used chroma? Can a stunt be achieved without using harness? Is it necessary to include this scene? How does it compare to other films using the same scene. And a lot more.

5. Listen to opinions – this is a little critical. Directors are often silent about their idea and don’t care about how others see it. Remember that your own crew is also your audience. It is important that you ask them what they feel about a particular shot or scene. Artistic ego sometimes hurt when you realize, in the end, that you messed up.

6. Create a theme – or pattern. It’s an artistic approach on how you want the entire product to feel like. Level of mood, tone of voice overs, music, movements and even film colors are themes that we would want to consider when trying to come up with a digital film. And lastly…

7. Edit with passion – don’t rush your film. Remember that it’s your baby. It’s something that you would treasure and it’s got your name on it! Take things easy. When I do edit, I do the climax to end part first. It’s my way of preparing my mood on how i would approach the beginning. How the story would struggle to achieve such a perfect end and deliver great impression to your audience.

I hope you learned something from my blog. It doesn’t require too much headache, trust me. Everyone has artistic approaches that could be hidden or just ignored. But there are many ways to show it, what we need is already in our minds… Imagination.

DCGWS is now in the pre-production part of upcoming digital film, “Building Realities”, directed by your’s truly. Are you excited to see it? How about watching some of our digital videos.