Architectural Design to Architectural Cinematography: Part 1

My journey into architectural cinematography began during the lockdown period. I was inspired to learn Unreal Engine, and although I initially felt limited by the rendering capabilities of UE4, I revisited and relearned everything in UE5, which gave me satisfactory results.

Recognizing that design and animation skills would be incomplete without the ability to portray my work properly, I decided to delve into videography. I sought advice from filmmakers and directors, and invested in a well-balanced camera setup, a Sony A6400, to build my basics and be able to produce good content. I spent two months practicing at home with my new gear in lockdown, taking creative shots, editing and grading, handling gimbal etc.

A friend, an acclaimed architectural photographer, graciously agreed to take me to a shoot. I assured him that my interest lay in translating his skills into video, not in intruding into photography. My intention was to build a video portfolio, adding a new dimension to my existing skills in animation.

The first shoot day was a revelation. It was a 5-star hotel, and I had to manage my shoot time in the small windows I got between his shoots. On the first day, 90% of my shots were out of focus, shaky, badly exposed, and with a dusty lens. But I took this as a learning experience. I came back, thoroughly checked all the wrong videos I took, and remembered the mistakes I made.

On the second day, I tried my best not to repeat those mistakes, and I was able to capture 50% of shots decent enough that I could use them in the video.

On the third day of my first big shoot, I took some artistic videos, trying to imitate the style of my mentor’s photography. The results were decent enough that he liked them too, which gave me the confidence to work more dedicatedly. I worked tirelessly on the three shoot days, as quickly as possible, even climbing a crane to take a video at 40 feet height, which was a new and challenging experience for me.

The next challenge was to edit those videos to my mentor’s satisfaction. He was a constructive critic, able to spot even the smallest mistakes. This pushed me to learn how to edit videos using my skills of animation and remove or add stuff or lighting. This opened up a new world of film and VFX compositing for me.

I experimented with the video for a month, editing each video multiple times. I started with tampering with the lighting in the videos first. Then I started rotoscoping furniture and highlight elements in shots to bring out the colors and presence of highlighting elements. This gave me a good command of the DaVinci color grading interface. I was able to use 40 nodes and more, and play with shot exposures, lighting different parts of shot separately. This gave me insight on how to correctly expose shots in HLG and S-LOG for maximum flexibility later in post, and recognized their pros and cons. Shooting with a relatively limiting but well proclaimed camera also taught me to make best use of available lighting and I got good at capturing low light scenarios.

I worked with the video for a month, correcting the fringing, overexposed lights, removing dust. Besides enhancing good shots too, I tried to correct even bad shot which seemed correctable, testing my limits. I also corrected skin tones and removed some people from the shots. All in all, I learned DaVinci Resolve in a very peculiar situation where I was determined to solve the mistakes I made on the first shoot day.

In two of the shots, I went to the extreme and converted the night shots to day with the techniques I learned. By this time, I was able to remove even myself from mirrors in some good shots (I later learned to place camera creatively to avoid this). I was able to match the color grading style of my mentor and after an effort of 2 months of hyper-learning enhancing 300 video shots and color grading, he was getting convinced that I would be able to manage another shoot. That’s when he offered me to come along to ‘CARBONADO RESIDENCE’. My second shoot, which I consider the foundational shoot in my learning as an architectural cinematographer (Covered in Part II).

This experience was pivotal in my journey. It taught me the importance of resilience, continuous learning, and the art of storytelling through visuals. Today, I am in Canada, free to explore a new world. I am deeply thankful to my friend for his help. I am proud of the progress I have made, and I am excited about the endless possibilities that lie ahead. I look forward to sharing more of my journey with you all. Stay tuned for Part II!