I recently watched a clip by Geoff Boyle, talking about cinematography on Cooke Optics TV. I figured that it could be useful to share. 
This topic hit home for me because my upbringing was in art. Painting and drawing were my home for most of my life. 
Coming into cinematography I see the same thing.  You can forget the numbers at a point and just focus on painting the image. Make it look right. Forget the numbers and paint.  Does it look right? Are the colours right? Does it feel right? Can you understand what's happening in the context of the story? Are your eyes guided in the right place? Good. You're done. 

This is the exact method that I've used to study everything that I know for the past few years. 
The major issue with pursuit of anything is keeping the objective and efforts organized. 

I developed the idea of using a game format skill tree to chart this. 
When it hit me I was in college. I generally knew what I wanted to make but it had tons and tons of moving parts. 
Fortunately the solution was simple. I took each section in larger chunks. 

At that point it was Art , Film and Tech. 

I went to college for animation and was heavy into the art stage, but it also doubled as a little bit of a film education. 
Everything was done manually but we learned everything from pre-production to post. I knew that this would take years and years to complete but this was the method. 

THE 1ST WAVE IS FOUNDATION.

You'll need to understand what it means to do the thing. 
In art it's drafting, tone, rendering, colour, perspective ETC. Just the essentials to effectively make anything work visually. After that application of the first wave lead into specifics. Everything in the world. Organic and inorganic. Costume, clothing, was next. Last, Flair or design sense came in. After a base is established you can flip it any way you'd like. This process was then repeated for tech. I got to a certain point and understood enough to get what I needed in relation to the projected final result.  

Currently I'm on the film part of the chart. 
This is a deep avenue of study but it's getting there. 

BONUS: THE SKELETON PORTFOLIO

Along the way my ideas had been cooking and I started to make a skeleton portfolio. 

The idea of drafting the final before your skills are there to meet it is quite useful. This often includes, writing stories, premises, treatments, scripts etc. Also due to my prior experience in the art skill tree, I've been able to develop accurate concept art and storyboards for the ideas that I create. 

When you have a shell version say 5 key pieces, you have pencil sketch versions of them.
You can keep them on a closed page of your site or as a mock up somewhere. 
Over time you'll slot one of the roughs out with an updated version. 
You keep doing this until they're all done. 

After the tree is completed, you batch that tree under 1 "node" and you can either scale that idea up as an expert, 
or you can repeat the steps with other branches to develop a more complicated final skill. 

Think like an rpg, or Naruto lol. You can stack elements on top of each other to form new techniques. 


ACTIONS ! 

Go out now and make your own skill tree. 
Think of your final longer term goal. 
Break down the areas of study. 
Tackle them piece by piece starting with the raw foundation. 
Have fun! 

-MANIKK- 

Something about street photography always calls me back. 
The idea that fashion can be blended with architecture and a bit of spontaneity always carries with it a certain energy. 
For this shoot I spent some time with my friend and model Yusra Bijou. 
She styled her own look and I picked locations that would compliment it. 

The core of what I wanted to express was the air of a dancer. Although she's not one herself, the museum like elegance of the hard architectural lines matched with her pastel clothing and posture seemed fitting. 

Here are several select pieces from our outing. 

Recently I picked up a Steadicam Scout system. 
It's SDI so I've had to figure out another way to patch through an hdmi signal. 
Also this is a 2nd hand kit, and the internal sdi cable has to be replaced. 
I tested the blackmagic hdmi to sdi adapter which works well but lead me to finding out about the sled's inner workings weren't working lol. 

In the meantime I found a simple solution of running an hdmi cable around the sled itself into my atomos ninja v. 


Currently I'm running monitor power at the bottom of the stage from a v lock battery, and at the top using an anker pd26800 patched into the camera and the follow focus motor. I've added on a second smallrig clamp to slot in another anker battery just in case i'd like to power the other parts or swap quickly. 

As an additional little thing, I've mounted the wheel of my tilta nucleus n to the handle so that I can get something of a thumb wheel going. 

I've got quite a bit more to test but I'll see how it goes and post again here in the devlog. 

It's all about people. 
The people you travel with, and the ones you learn from. 
No matter what we do, it's all about people.