Why the Best Filmmakers Fake It

Making movies is a wondrous thing. You write something that may feel simple, like a character in a certain type of car pulls up to a stop sign in Beverly Hills, then pulls away. It might not seem like much, but now someone has to source that picture car, secure the location, lock down the street, hire a driver if necessary, and get a whole crew set up for this moment.

It's hard, and it's a miracle, and it happens with every single line of a script.

But now imagine you've written something a little more difficult. Maybe it's someone nearly drowning and needing to be shot underwater. Maybe it's a complex night shot. Maybe it's wild weather like snow or rain or a twister. Now you have a dozen other variables and safety issues. Not to mention location and timing roadblocks.

The answer, as StudioBinder's newest video discusses, is to fake it with movie magic. Let's dive in.

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Sometimes Fake Looks Better

You might be precious about authenticity because it feels like the only way you can put your actors in it, or make it look the best it possibly can. Maybe you think faking it will cheapen your production. But that's simply not true.

Night shoots suck. They just do. They aren't fun, and they're exhausting. StudioBinder uses the night exteriors in Jordan Peele's Nope, many of which were shot in daylight, as an example of another option.

We covered the technique when the film came out. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema paired a Panavision System 65 film camera with an ARRI Alexa 65 shooting in infrared. The infrared camera rendered the sky black while keeping detail in the landscape, and the team combined the two images in post.

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