Camera Tricks
Reflections
Glass/Plexi Reflections - Using pieces of glass angled in front of the lens for out of focus reflections. Can also be done with plexiglass or beveled glass. Used in the Interview Portions of this BTS Featurette. Beveled Glass can be found in craft stores in the glass painting/stained glass section.
Surface Mirrors - A similar trick can be done with 1x1 front surface mirrors to show another part of the scene as part of the foreground. This is accomplished by placing the front surface mirror at a 45 degree angle to the lens.
Prisms - Prisms can be used in front of the lens to put in out of focus hight lights and reflections in the image. Prism Lens FX has a number of different products and example photos that accomplish this. They can either be spun in front of the lens or they can be armed out on an ultra-lite arm.
Filtration
These are either 4"x5" rectangular filters or 138mm round filters that can go into the mattebox. The few issues with using filtration is that they can cause reflections in the image, especially when looking at a bright light source. They also can cause small specs in the bokeh of the image.
Soft FX
Stalking over Lens
Clear Filter Vaseline
LED Ribbon on Filter Tray
Lens Tricks
Lens Whacking - Pulling the lens off the mount so it can be handheld in front of the sensor, this gives a lot of flares and will produce a tilt shift type result. A gentle effect of this technique can be found in this video. Romance of the Light. This effect can also be more drastic with sharper quicker movements. Phillip Bloom:Lens Whacking
Creating Custom Bokeh - Basically creating your own iris to be used in place of the iris of the lens. Get one in a custom shape and when you throw the lens out of focus you will see your custom shape instead of the normal bokeh. The most commonly seen example of this is in the SNL intro, where they designed an SNL shaped iris. SNL Intro Also this article from the ASC. The Entrance Pupil of a Lens For the effect to work, the custom irishas to be smaller than the diameter of the iris of the lens. In order to figure this out, you need to use a simple formula:
(F)ocal length / (T)-stop = (D)iameter
So a 50mm lens at T2.0 = 25mm diameter.
One way of doing this is creating a 4x5 stencil with your custom iris on it and putting it inside the mattebox. You would make sure it can fit within a 25mm diameter in this instance.
Probe Lens can be used to get interesting shots into areas you would not normally be able to put the camera. Limitations are that it is very slow, F14.
Lighting
Media Server for Phone Screens and TV gags
Haze to create rays of light
Format
Can shoot on a variety of formats to achieve different results. These could be recording formats, or putting the footage onto a different format in post to create a look.
VHS
Mini DV
16mm - Bolex or other low budget type of film camera for B-Roll
Super 8
Camera Settings
Frame Rates 60i, 22 FPS, 26 FPS
Shutter Speed Using a sharper shutter angle than 180 degrees to create a stucatto effect.