21 Daysof making things

Forces you to find compositions instead of walking to them. You will run out of obvious shots around number eight — everything after that is the actual exercise.

Shot size is the first thing on almost every cinematography syllabus, because it is how you control what the viewer knows and feels at each moment.

The rule of thirds says put important things about a third of the way across the frame. Doing the extreme version teaches it faster than reading it.

A low angle tends to make a subject look powerful, a high angle weaker. It is the cheapest storytelling tool you have and costs nothing but bending your knees.

Aperture, shutter speed and ISO are taught as the foundation of photography the way addition and subtraction are the foundation of maths. You will see depth of field and motion blur appear on purpose for the first time.

This is the first assignment in a classic film-school progression, deliberately before video: you learn composition and shot selection without sound or movement to hide behind.

A checklist beats taste when you are starting out, because it catches the specific thing that is wrong instead of leaving you with a vague sense that the photo is bad.

Establish where we are, then who, then how they feel. Almost every scene ever cut is built on this.

Cutting while something is moving hides the join. This is the trick that makes edits feel invisible, and it is a formal film-school assignment for that reason.

Cross the line and the two people suddenly appear to swap sides and stop looking at each other. Accidentally crossing the line is described as one of the most common editing-room nightmares — seeing it break once teaches it permanently.

Less than about 30 degrees and the cut looks like a glitch rather than a new shot. This plus yesterday's line is basically how every dialogue scene is filmed.

Hard light makes sharp shadows and drama; soft light is forgiving. Learning to notice where light already comes from beats buying any lighting kit.

Distance to the microphone matters more than any setting. That 30 seconds of “silence” is room tone: cut a word out later and the background hiss vanishes with it, leaving a hole only room tone can patch.

Fifteen shots in thirty seconds forces you to use shot size, angle and movement to build tension instead of just pointing the camera. This is the week's exam.

Everything so far you could re-stage. Here you can't, so you have to plan coverage in advance. This footage becomes the raw material for the rest of the week.

Most people stall at “open the editor”. Beating that today with a deliberately bad export removes the fear before the real cutting starts.

Almost every first edit is too long. Trimming and cutting on action do most of the work of making an edit feel professional.

Montage is how you compress a long process into a short time without boring anyone. It is also the form most YouTube videos lean on hardest.

One technique, two directions. Sound arriving early creates anticipation; sound lingering creates continuity. It is most of what “smooth” means.

Phone apps put buttons on top of your picture. Text that looks perfect in the editor gets covered by the Like button.

The final film-school assignments are a two-person dialogue scene and a short with real structure. This is both, scaled to a weekend, and publishing is the part that makes the other twenty days real.