Hey Fellow Clotties,
Today I’m going to talk to you about one of the most important things that anyone behind the camera should be well-versed in—shutter speed. While it’s certainly not the sexiest part of the process, fully understanding and mastering shutter speed is key to taking your shots from student-level to professional quality instantly. (Remember, before you can master the art of film, it’s key to nail a single shot, or frame if you will—after all, what is film-making but the pain-staking process of seamlessly stitching a series of perfect frames and interweaving them with sound)
First off, let’s talk about composition and focus. Once your aperture is fully dilated, it’s best practice to crank up your F stop to the max and——
Pst.
Pst. Over here. He’s gone now. It’s just us. We can talk now.
Sorry about all that camera junk up there (^). Mike’s been hounding me to post on The Daily Clot for the past couple of days. I was pretty resistant at first, but that stinky ginge (not a typo– I find “ginge” to be more insulting than “ginger”) threatened to sell off my shares of Bloodclot Films, and I wasn’t about to let that happen. We founded the company together (check out my email signature), and we’re going to continue to run it together. Plus, I figure Mike is only going to open the page to make sure I posted something. He never fully reads my posts anyway, so I can pretty much open up and have a real talk.
Honestly, I’m not even in the mood to dish about Mike, I really need to vent a little bit. Bloodclot has been tough. T. O. Ugh. Mike has only officially been my superior for maybe a month, yet he’s already issued several ultimatums and vague threats about my job security. To be clear, when we started the company we swore to one another the two of us would call all the shots. Our company—our rules. No one to say otherwise.
But Mike thinks that just because he registered us as an official corporation, he’s the top dog or something. The BCOC (Big Clot on Campus). Our old roles are but a foggy, shade of a memory to him, like a painting viewed from behind a screen. I used to be the ideas man, and he would package our content for a modern audience. The 1 – 2 punch. It was yin-yang—we each brought our best strengths forward and supplemented the other in the areas that may have been lacking. So you can imagine my dismay when Mike “forgot” (at least he seemed to forget) that I, Steve Erickson, supplied the mockups for the first-ever Bloodclot Films logo (see Instagram profile picture).
Umm, ex-squeeze me? I spent the better part of a train ride sketching out the acronym “BCF” into shapes that vaguely resembled or paid tribute to clumps of blood cells. “No, I came up with that,” he said in total seriousness when I questioned him about the logo’s origin. To be totally candid, I didn’t go into Microsoft Paint and create the file, but from Penn Station to the Dirty H I drew original designs that served as the logo inspiration. Nope, no memory of that at all. Mike was the champion on that project and single-handedly gave birth to the finest film company logo since the MGM lion roar.
What scares me most is the fact that there wasn’t a shred of doubt behind those unblinking eyes of his. He stared at me with pity! Oh, my poor, forgetful brother. Poor old Steve—can’t write a post on time, can’t design for jack squat either. Sad.
My theory is that the “stress of running a major company” has tired Mike out so much so that his short term recollection is shot. His memories are about as precise as the letters that bounce around in a bowl of Alphabet soup on a winter day. Or there’s the other, scarier, possibility—Mike’s lied to himself so often that this is his reality now. Remember that old adage that you tell yourself a lie often enough you start to believe it? Well, if you want results, you simply tell people how much success you’ve already accumulated, and there’s nothing to stop that from being the case. Aside from objective reality, but who cares about that?
Hmm, I guess this did sort of devolve into me dishing about Mike. All that said, he’s one of the most determined people I’ve ever known, which inevitably means Bloodclot Films will quickly grow into one of the most influential powerhouses of the film industry, or _____. All I know for sure is that there are major changes coming to BCF soon, so keep an eye out.
Anyways, I’m nervous a certain someone might flick straight to the bottom of this post and find out about our little secret, so let me put my writer hat back on a moment.
And with these simple tricks, you can capture fast-paced action shots at the racetrack or rich, textured landscape photographs in as simple as 1, 2, ¾ seconds (little shutter-speed joke for those of us with insider knowledge). Happy shooting out there, Clots!
Later,
Stephen G. Erickson, Co-Founder & Part-Time Intern
