From the course: Learning Cinematography: 2 Working on Set

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Block, light, rehearse, and shoot

Block, light, rehearse, and shoot

From the course: Learning Cinematography: 2 Working on Set

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Block, light, rehearse, and shoot

- The basic shooting sequence goes like this, you block it, then you light, then you rehearse it, and then you shoot it. And I don't really care what you call these things, but you got to do each one of those things one way or the other. You block it, which is to say that the director articulates the reality of the scene, and you go through the physical movement of the scene. Then you light it, once, and that's self-explanatory. Then you rehearse it, which is to say you're basically getting the timing of things right. And you're not trying to make it perfect, but you're trying to make sure that everybody knows who does what when. And then you shoot it. And then you make sure that you make decisions as you go along for whatever adjustments that are needed to make the shoot really work. And then that's the basic sequence. And then you repeat that all day. So there are lots of people with differing philosophies about how you do this, but the bottom line is you have to do those four…

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