One for all you aspiring DoP’s out there! What if I told you that you could practice lighting techniques in a scene without having to rent expensive equipment or test it out under the pressure of a real-life shoot? Well in this weekly instalment of Dan’s Friday Film-Making Creative Tips & Wonders, we take a look at a brand-new cinematography simulator called ‘Cinetracer’, we shed light on a powerful tool called Adobe Podcast Enhance and look at the brand new blockbuster film ‘The Creator’ and how it may be changing the world of big-budget film-making!

Cinetracer. Cinematography Simulator

Something that I came across this week and I think is a really interesting concept that could be highly useful for training purposes and also getting creative with lighting before going on expensive shoots to save time and money. Cinetracer is a cinematography simulator which is available on Steam and allows you to set up scenes with actors and play about with different types of lighting scenarios. It looks very realistic and detailed which is reflected in the price of it which is £75!! Check it out below… I think I may end up purchasing it at some point as it’s a great way to learn lighting and gives you a good idea on how it looks on camera.

Adobe Podcast Enhance. Useful Free Online Tool

This is a really useful tool and bookmark to have in your locker – https://podcast.adobe.com/enhance It’s a free tool by Adobe which will be coming to Premiere Pro soon. It can take bad/broken audio files, in particular dialogue, and fix it up using the magic of AI to sound so much better. This is particularly useful in challenging filming situations where capturing good/clean audio is hard to come by!

The Creator. Shot on a Budget Camera?

Something else I found absolutely mind-blowing this week… the new blockbuster film ‘The Creator’ directed by Gareth Edwards was all shot on a Sony FX3 camera which costs less than £4,000!! To put that in perspective, the budget was $80 million!!! That’s absolutely insane!! He used an old cinema lens, the 75mm Kowa anamorphic, and everyone has said how visually stunning it looks and it looks a lot better than other blockbuster movies that have been shot on far more expensive cameras. Just goes to show you don’t need to have the most expensive gear to be a great filmmaker.