Have you ever seen a movie and thought about how a movie is made? Well I’ve been to a film school, plus I have been on a few movie sets before. I’m here to tell you all the things that go into movies that you haven’t even noticed.
One of the most underrated aspects of movies is sound. You may think that the camera is the best part about a movie but actually, if you have bad audio in a movie, it will immediately ruin the movie.
Sound also isn’t just on set there’s also Foley. A Foley artist is someone who makes the sounds of things that the sound person did not record. Oftentimes props in movies will be quiet so you can hear the actors talk. After filming,the clip will be sent to the Foley artist where they will make the sounds of the quiet props.
An example of Foley in movies is: say your actor is at an old house on set. The house won’t make noise because the house is sturdy so no one gets hurt, but the Foley artist will make old floorboard creaking sounds. Another example let’s say your characters are in the rain with an umbrella. A Foley artist will make water droplets on a rain boot at make the sound of the rain dropping on the umbrella.
Another thing that can make your movie look professional is lighting. You can use the lights that the set has, like lamps and things, but if you add your own lighting you can change the whole mood. Warmer colors are typically happy and calm, but a color like blue can be sad and depressing. Lighting is also something that if you can do it right, people shouldn’t even think about it while watching the film.
An example of good lighting technique is: say you have one scene where your characters are happy then it will typically be more warm and have more light but, for example, say the actor gets bad news that will leave him distort , then you can make the scene darker and have cooler colored lighting.
One last thing in movies that you see all the time but probably don’t consider are costumes. Costumes can tell you a lot more about a character than you would think. If there is a character coming on screen, the things they’re wearing give you a impression of the character and what role they play in the movie.
A great example of this is in the movie “Baby Driver” (released in 2017 and directed by Edgar Wright). The main character has a white shirt on in the beginning but as he gets further involved with the crime, his shirt goes from white to black. In the same movie we have two characters who are dressed in black and red. When we first see them the viewer can tell that they’re going to be the antagonist”s, but the love interest wears yellow so that the viewer feels safe with them and does not recognize that there is a threat and that nothing bad is going to happen.
So those are three things that you now do know are in movies that other people didn’t even notice.
