I love photography, been doing it for about ten years and although I have my moments when I get sick and tired of it, I always return to it because I like doing it and because for the last 5 or so years is my main source of income.
A couple of years ago, I had to make a video teaser for a reenactment festival and that marked the moment when I found out that I could express myself better through video then photos.
Time went by, I kept doing my photo stuff and from time to time I made a video just for fun and to learn a few things.
About a month ago, one of my clients for whom I do mostly product photography needed a product video for one of his messenger leather bags.
He needed the video in a day and when I say a day, I mean the same day. That meant concept, shooting, processing and delivery in a single day.
I've never done this kind of thing before so I agreed because, who doesn't love a good challenge?
It was mid January, everything was plain and dull so what to do?
That bag gave a "Go explore" kinda vibe so I went with it.
I asked one of my friends to model for me, took my Canon 6 D (which we all know is crap for video), explained to him what is the concept and went to a forest nearby.
The main idea was that this is an everyday bag that you can also use it if you want to go and explore your surroundings.
I started taking some shots while he was driving, then from the inside of the car I took a shot of the scenary that was going by. I needed those shots to establish the location.
After that it was pretty straightforward. Take a shot when he gets off the car, as he gets his bag from the car, as he walks, doing an activity, in our case taking a photo with his phone, a few shots of the bag and then to wrap it up a shot of him as he goes deeper into the woods, exploring.
What I found the most frustrating thing was finding a concept. After I was set on the idea, everything went smoothly. Another problem I encountered was gear or the lack of it. Doing mostly photography I'm missing some important pieces of gear that are required for video like a gimbal, a camera that doesn't shoot 720p in 60fps, a field recorder, a camera that does autofocus while recording.
I needed a way to go around those obstacles so for a gimbal I used my tripod with the camera strap around my neck to create a tension point so it will be steady, for the focus I went all manual, set a focus distance and tried to maintain it (that was tricky and required a few tries to get it), and I tried to move as smoothly as I could. Any imperfections mostly got sorted in premiere pro using warp stabilizer.
For a video that was made in a few hours, I'm pretty happy with the outcome and most importantly, so did my client.
Hi Raoul,
This is pretty impressive for a one day video shot with a DSLR.
By the way, for your future filmmaking posts try using #filmmaking You made this yourself and eventhough it's shot on video it's considered filmmaking.
You might also want to post from the filmmaking community that can be found here. There's some cool people hanging out there.