Cinematic storytelling through camera and light

Published on March 22, 2016

Cinematography & Filmmaking

Camera Movement, Cinematic, Story Telling

Some time ago we made a promotional video for the company SBGW. They build social homes and maintains them. The idea was to showcase the different houses and districts. But a good promotional video tells a bigger story than just that. It was important that there was a good-feel emotion throughout the film. So we went to look for different elements that could help us with that.

The first thing was the story line, we had three children riding on their bike through the different districts. What makes us human is that we are attracted to faces and other people people. When someone is happy, we feel happy too. So there was our first element.

The next element was a more cinematic storytelling by playing with light. Luckily we had a bright sun light during the recording which we used to emphasis the warm and positive feeling. The sun casts his light on the buildings and worked as a binder to stitch the different shots together.

And then the third element was the camera movement that helped us with the cinematic storytelling. How the camera moves and the kind of lens you use tells a specific story or has a psychological reaction to it. It’s therefore important to visualize the movement first. A specific movement should be chosen on that fact instead of “how cool it looks”.