Shot Designer: The Future of Production Planning
Shot Designer by Hollywood Camerawork is a relatively new app for all platforms (iOS, Android, Mac, & Windows) that is revolutionizing Hollywood productions by putting set design, camera movement, light placement, and much more at your fingertips—literally. The beauty of this application is its ease of designing complete setups, whether simple or complex, in a matter of minutes. Not only can you design your entire shot, but you can animate almost everything in it; anything from cameras, to actors, even cars can be animated. For even more use, the Shot Designer application has built in sharing via Dropbox, allowing easy sharing and group editing of shot setups to your entire cast and crew, no matter what operating platform they use.
The big deal with this app is how much time it can help you save if it is used properly. In the pre-production process, the director, cinematographer, and set designer can meet up and work together to form a vision for every scene of the film, planning where practical lights can be set up or integrated, how actors will move, and if any camera movements are needed. Shot Designer even helps you if you don’t always understand the 180-degree rule, allowing lines to be drawn and linked between actors, ensuring consistent screen direction when shooting scenes with numerous actors. Storyboards, scene numbers, and shot descriptions can be easily implemented into your blocking as well, allowing even easier organization when you get on set.
Once your shots are planned out, they can be neatly organized and saved on your Dropbox account, where they can be synced and shared with your team. The possibilities with team sharing are endless. You can attach the shots you plan on shooting each day to your call sheets for easier preparation, allowing your cameramen, gaffers, grips, sound recordists, set preparers, etc. to come to set knowing exactly what they are to be shooting and how to set it up exactly. This visualization of exactly what the director and cinematographer wants makes setup faster and more accurate than ever.
This application is slowly becoming one of the ‘must-know’ applications in Hollywood, with multiple production companies and cinematographers relying on the immense capabilities of this app. Some companies that use Shot Designer include: DreamWorks Animation, Disney, Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel, ABC, NBC Universal, 20th Century Fox, MTV, Electronic Arts, Sega, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and many more.
Features Not Mentioned:
- Integrated Director’s Viewfinder
- Set designer for building floor plans (with windows, doors)
- Lighting Design with known lighting symbols
- Ability to attach camera specs to virtual cameras (Lens Focal Length, Film Size, Camera Type, etc)
- A growing library of props and furniture.
- Scene Freeze: Allows memory snapshots to be taken for multiple ideas of setups to be saved in one scene.
- PDF/JPEG/Excel Spreadsheet exporting and emailing of Camera Diagrams and Shot Lists
Here are some links if you are interested in learning more about Hollywood Camerawork’s Shot Designer Application:
Hollywood Camerawork Shot Designer Homepage:
http://www.hollywoodcamerawork.us/sd_index.html
iOS:
Android:
Mac & Windows:
http://www.hollywoodcamerawork.us/sd_download.html
This article provided to us by Brian Lovelace, a local filmmaker and currently a student in the Cinema TV Arts Dept at California State University Northridge.