It’s funny how far we have come in regards to technology. Just a few years ago our daily lives consisted of pay phones and dial up internet. Now majority of us walk around with a super computer in our pockets. The smartphone is our personal assistant throughout the day. We as filmmakers are always looking to make our task much easier. This post is about my favorite filmmaking apps. Hopefully you find them as useful as I do.
1) GroupMe
This app is our (Flopitworks Productions) holy grail. I’m sure I’m not the only one who hated texting one person then conveying his message to another. Communication is lost with that system. We all played the phone game in school right? GroupMe solves this issue by allowing you to set up groups where messages, pictures, links, etc reaches everyone. It may sound simple but once you use it you’ll wish you used it earlier. We use GroupMe to communicate, schedule, and share location photos. We also have separate groups for actors. GroupMe is essential to anyone managing crews.
2) Shot Designer
Shot designer comes from the people who made the greatest training course ever; Hollywood CameraWorks. Shot Designer is another app that I can’t do without. The app allows you to set up and animate your blocking. Amazing right? It gets even better. Shot Designer also automatically generates a shot list for you. Once finished you can easily create a PDF and send it to your crew. Shot diagrams are my bread and butter because for me story boards aren’t as good when it comes to camera movement. Shot Designer will change your life I guarantee it!
3) SLR
SLR is a lighting rendering app. Perfect for testing out and coming up with new lighting set ups. I find myself going into SLR like it’s a video game. It’s highly addicting.
4) SL Director’s Viewfinder
A director’s viewfinder is great when you’re scouting locations. SL Director’s Viewfinder is a free app that allows you to test out how lenses will look on a given camera in a given location.
5) Comic Strip it
As I said above I use shot diagrams most of the time. However, some things such as action sequences and commercials require storyboards. Comic Strip it is an app that allows you to create storyboards from taking pictures from your phone. I sometimes google image pictures similar to the shot I’m looking for and compile a shot with it. Comic Strip it makes this easy.
There you have it. My five favorite apps for filmmaking. I hope you check out some of these and let me know what you think of them. What are your favorite filmmaking apps?
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