There are certain “party tricks” in movies that directors use to thrill audiences and impress filmmakers. A one-take, or “oner” is among those techniques commonly used. But it’s also one of the most challenging. In this article we will describe how to pull off a perfect one-take. A oner is a scene that is covered using a single, continuous shot rather than a series of different angles edited together in post. A great oner creates a special moment on screen by allowing time for the audience to connect with the story without the interruption of cuts. Our latest short film, “The Get Together”, (co-written, directed, and produced by Michael B. Allen and I) is an 8 ½ minute one-take that tells the story of an introvert stuck at a house party. Check out the film below. The short film was a technical challenge that taught us plenty of lessons on visual storytelling, but none more valuable than what it takes to prepare for a shot of this length. Looking back on the experience, we can see that there were three important steps in the rehearsal process that all but assured our success in pulling off this difficult technique and create a perfect one-take. Step 1 to the Perfect One-Take: Build the Foundation Because our story took place at a house party, it was written to play out across multiple rooms, with dozens of extras, and a handful of secondary characters that all needed to work together. The amount of direction needed was intimidating, so we decided to rehearse in layers starting with the foundation: our principal cast. Before the first rehearsal, we filmed a rough “walkthrough” of the scene in order to show the principal cast what the finished film would look like. This “video storyboard” was crucial to their understanding the blocking so quickly. Afterward, we spent the entire night walking through the moves until we got a complete run-through without any mistakes (though to be honest, it was still pretty rough). It’s cool to see how alike the final film was compared to the rehearsal video. Check it out below. Step 2 to the Perfect One-Take: Get Your Crew On Board Once our principal actors learned the blocking, we added our cinematographer and camera operator into the mix. It took some time to orchestrate the timing of our actors and the movements of our camera operator because of how small of a window our actors had to hit their marks. Once they were working in sync, we were able to see unique framing opportunities that we hadn’t noticed before. We made changes on the fly, which helped propel the story forward and kept the frame interesting. We ended up implementing a lot of unique shots into the scene like filming through windows or mirrors.   When you’re not able to rely on coverage or cuts to convey the emotion of a character, it’s vital to frame up the most important elements of the story at all times. It’s funny how fast secondary characters and reactions get left out of the scene when you know you can only fit one character in a close up. Step 3 to the Perfect One-Take: Fill The Frame With Action The final step was to add in extras. We added extras into the mix in order to get some much-needed energy between scenes. The hardest thing to solve when attempting a oner is how to keep the frame interesting during transitions. You won’t believe how fast your story can lose momentum when the pace is not maintained between scenes. Because our story centered on a guy following around a girl at a party, we knew we risked boring our audience if there wasn’t a lot of activity going on in the background from partygoers and tertiary characters. So, we decided to make a blueprint of the house and evenly divide the extras into “zones” when they arrived. Then, we gave them specific blocking in different areas of the house to cross camera and bring life to the foreground and background of each scene. Their disruption in the frame helped keep our viewer’s eyes active and engaged with the story while adding movement to the setting. Filming a oner is hard enough when you consider all of the moving pieces. But if you rehearse your scene in layers and follow the steps above, you’ll be able to efficiently build a killer one-take from the foundation up. For more help in executing a oner, go to RiotStudios.com/oner to download the complete eBook on the making of our short film. For more tips on filmmaking visit RiotStudios.com.

Recently, there’s been a boom in nanowire research and development. It seems as though everybody and their granny is looking into nanowire technology for the future of touch-screens—and it’s no wonder. Nanowires made of copper, silver, and even gold look set to bring us more cost-effective, longer-lasting displays for a multitude of devices in the coming years. Clearly, the colossus that is the smartphone industry is the main driving force behind this nanowire revolution. When you’re paying hundreds of dollars for an object which goes absolutely everywhere with you, the last thing you want is for dropping it once to shatter your home screen and your hopes and dreams along with it. With the current popularity of smartphones, tablets, plasma displays, and all things touchscreen, it is no wonder that the current go-to material—indium tin oxide or ITO—is disappearing, fast. Demand for touchscreens, of course, will remain ever present. However, the world’s ITO stockpiles cannot keep up, leading researchers and technology start-ups from across the world on the hunt for the perfect alternative: affordable, conductible nanowires. Nanowires: What are they? Before we can discuss nanowires, and how they may affect the camera industry in the coming years, it is probably a good idea to get to grips with what nanowires actually are. Fortunately, the definition for a nanowire is much simpler than the technology behind them: they are simply a wire with a diameter of no more than a few of nanometers—with one nanometer equaling to 0.000,000,001 of a meter! The companies that seek to revolutionize the touchscreen industry are doing so by suspending these nanowires in inks and then spreading these inks to form a film—a film that is, for the most part, empty space; this allows the films to remain transparent while the nanowires themselves remain conductive—just what industries need to keep their touch screen technology flowing! The Benefits of Nanowire Technology The diminishing levels of ITO available coupled with the ever-growing demand for screens mean that the race is on to get the first mass-producible nanowire screen technology out of the research labs and into our electronic devices. Looks like it is time to find out what benefits we, the consumers, can reap from this surge in nanowire research and production. Replacing Indium Tin Oxide One of the major benefits that producing screens via nanowire will have is the reduced demand for Indium Tin Oxide—something that the world is currently running fairly low on. As stock depletes, the price for the material will obviously increase and this is obviously going to be felt in the pockets of consumers as manufacturers up their prices. A More Efficient Manufacturing Process Screens made from ITO are also problematic due to how they are created. It is a complex and inefficient process, whereby the Indium Tin Oxide is deposited onto glass inside vacuum chambers. Obviously, the issue here is that not all of the expensive ITO lands where it is needed—meaning that the vacuum chambers themselves must be cleaned after each stage so that the rare material that’s left on the interior of the chamber may be reused. Of course, the simpler process behind rare metal nanowires has an awesome advantage for consumers; it means that nanowire screens will cost less! Improved Efficiency Nanowires offer better conductivity and lower sheet resistance than currently available techs—allowing for better optical quality while simultaneously reducing production costs, as we mentioned above. I find it fairly crazy that, before they’ve even properly hit the market, nanowires have already had an enormous impact on nanotube and graphene ITO alternatives. From the depths of research labs, nanowires have already destroyed the majority of the market for two competing technologies. Impressive. Flexibility While it may not be something on your immediate technological wish list, it is certainly an interesting development. By coating nanowires onto plastic sheets—as simple a saran wrap—companies have been able to develop flexible, functioning prototype screens. The video below has a few more details pertaining to the 18” roll-up OLED showcased by LG at CES 2016. Lower Costs I mentioned it earlier but it bears repeating. By utilizing minute amounts of pure, precious metals, researchers have been able to beat the performance offered by ITO at a fraction of the cost of the process involved in manufacturing items with Indium Tin Oxide. For consumers, that’s what I would call a win-win situation! Should Filmmakers be Getting Excited about Nanowire Technology? Personally, I think so. Even outside of filmmaking, we see an increasing number of screens as the technology available to us continues to advance into the realms of Science-Fiction. Whether camera displays begin to adopt nanowire technology in the near future or not, we’re probably all going to be experiencing the apparently improved performance that they can bring to the table in one way or another. Some of the best and brightest minds in the world are researching and developing nanowires, including teams at Stanford, MIT, Harvard, and Duke. That usually means two things: the tech will arrive on the market sooner than we might expect, and the applications will likely be extremely useful—or at the very least, incredibly interesting! We’ll have to wait and see if nanochemistry hits a roadblock with improving and producing nanowires and whether manufacturers take this new technology in their stride. However, with working proof-of-concept models already surfacing and the potential for lower costs, I’d wager that nanowires are going to be a big hit; even if we do have a while to go until these newer, tougher, or flexible screens are in our hands.

Watch previous episodes of ON THE COUCH & ON THE GO by clicking here! Visit our Vimeo and YouTube playlists, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes! We are happy to start a new season of ON THE COUCH! Following feedback from our audience, we have decided to divide the episodes of our talk show series ON THE COUCH in the future into several segments from now on. That means we will release each episode in several more digestible shorter parts, released around once a week on a regular basis. There will also be a podcast link for both audio and video version added later this week, which will also include all past episodes. On episode 19, recorded at IBC 2014, we were happy to welcome my friend Philip Bloom, George Olver, the CEO of Movidiam, a great new platform for filmmakers, and Ryan Burke from Røde Microphones. In this first part of this 4-part episode, we talked about the new Sony PXW-FS7 camera and how Sony is disrupting the market once again with this announcement. Click here to see our exclusive hands on video with the camera in case you missed it. Philip talks about the CNN documentary series he is currently working on, mentioning that he is shooting on up to 5 different cameras – the F55, the A7s and the C300. We also talked to George Olver about his website Movidiam.com, a new web platform made for filmmakers. Here’s a detailed post about what Movidiam actually is, but it is great to hear the thought process behind a tool that will help many filmmakers with their preproduction and production workflow. They are currently accepting pre-signups via their website and will roll out the full feature set soon. In part 2 of this episode, which will be released early next week, George tells us more about the development of Movidiam.com, Ryan Burke talks about the new Røde Stereo VideoMic X (post here) and the importance of using the right microphone for the right purpose – something that is often neglected by filmmakers.

There is a new online platform called Movidiam which aims to be a creative network that allows brands, agencies and filmmakers to connect, collaborate and work together on films and projects. It is designed as an online tool that may help filmmakers streamline production processes and bring film project management into a more visual, flexible and social realm.

For the third time, Sony have launched their PROduction Awards competition, for the first time taking entries from around the world. The competition is aimed at students, professionals and amateurs alike, and films of any genre or topic can be entered, as long as they fit in one of the three categories: “Creative”, “Factual” and the dedicated “Student” category. Films can be entered until March 10, after which public voting opens. It will last until April 7, and after that the five most popular entries in each category will be judged by a panel of industry experts to pick the winners – one from each category. Each winner will get a Sony FS700RH camcorder and a Sony UWP-D microphone package.

The successful online video-sharing platform Vimeo has opened the gates of its new “video-on-demand” service, paving the way for independent filmmakers to market their work easily. The video above is vimeo’s teaser for their new “vimeo on demand” service which has been opened to users who subscribe to vimeo’s PRO service. The pro membership costs $199 (159€). Aside from that there are no additional costs. People who would like to watch your films can preview the work in the form of a trailer and pay an amount you set. The revenue is split 90% in your favour. To watch a film people are asked to register with vimeo in the process.

The cinema5D forum has evolved: I present to you the cinema5Dreviews page that we’ve been working on. This is not a new forum page, this is a whole new section of cinema5D, uniquely programmed and embedded into the cinema5D platform. What is it? cinema5Dreviews is a growing database of reviews for filmmaking equipment. It is in Beta right now. What can it do for me? It has a lot of very valuable information on each filmmaking product all put in one place by fellow filmmakers. You save time surfing the web and you might find information you could have missed somewhere else. No more endless forum searching for reviews and opinions on products. It is all gathered in one place. ➔ Opinions by fellow filmmakers (which you can trace back because they’re forum members) ➔ the best video reviews gathered by you from YouTube and Vimeo, or add your own. ➔ prices ➔ ratings ➔ collection of product highlights ➔ currently sortable by star rating, price or name Who is filling the database? You. And any other cinema5D forum member can add to the database. If you have tried or own the product you can add your opinion and give a rating for the product. You can also add new products and can add details to existing products. Not only HDSLR HDSLRs are great, they’ve upgraded our clips, films, productions, but we’re also embracing all other low budget large sensor cameras and their accessories. More categories to come, please post your preferred categories in the comments to this article. It needs to be filled This database has just been born and it will become more powerful the more you feed it. Since we’ve written this software on our own and with an extremely tight budget we need some time and your feedback to work out all the glitches. It’s beta, so if something doesn’t work please be patient and let us know. That’s it. The more you use it the better and faster we can improve the platform to your benefit. Now go check it out and add a product or two: www.cinema5d.com/reviews/

In a world where filmmakers and filmmaking aren’t always met with welcoming arms, it’s a welcome change to see a unique project such as the One Day On Earth. The second 24-hour global filmmaking venture, One Day On Earth is the name of both the day of filming and the final feature that it will become. The idea behind the film is this: one global day of 24 hour filming in every country in the world that will result in over 3,000 hours of footage. After this one day of global chronicling, the footage will be put together in its final form to be screened as it was created, all around the world on the exact same day in late February 2012. The project will bring together not only filmmakers from literally all over the planet to tell the story of the world, but also collaborates with the United Nations, and many non-profit organizations. “The film contains a message of hope, but also a strong call to action for positive change on issues that face both the global and local communities,” says Founder and Director of the One Day On Earth Kyle Ruddick. How can you get involved? Just go to www.onedayonearth.org to find out more and become one of the 19,000+ filmmakers who will make their mark on the world.