Remembering to Shoot Some Video

The demographics for photographers working their craft may not surprise anyone, because it definitely skews to those with more planetary tenure. Those same folks who make such a commitment to stills are also the least likely to incorporate video in their work.

Video as filmmaking is statistically the province of younger folks, although all demographics appear comfortable with smartphone video. Except committed photographic craftspeople.

Why this is, I don’t know but I believe that those who are committed to photography as craft, think predominantly in terms of telling their story in a single frame. Movies take a different approach, and if you have seen some of the exhausting length films recently, apparently editing for content is also falling away.

Video as a methodology for telling a story over time makes great sense, just like a great film. Even something as simple as a classic or even a modern serial uses the timeline to engage the viewer, work to keep their attention and use additional media such as audio and sound to maintain attention.

Attention spans continue to diminish. That is a reality of our world today. Whether right or wrong isn’t a question, short attention span is a what’s so. When we look at a lot of modern films, they use massive amounts of CGI to create otherwise impossible scenes, bombastic action, and very loud soundtracks to keep the audience engaged. Some even incorporate movements into theatre chairs as a necessity to keep the people in their seats.

The only similarity between a photo and a video is that it is a visual thing. Photographs still require some action on the part of the viewer, but video (I use this generally now) has to assume no actual engagement from the majority of the audience and must constantly work to maintain interest, hence the volume, the bombast and the unreal imagery.

Funny enough, that doesn’t really work, as so many movies have discovered. There must be story with characters that are likeable facing a challenge or opportunity and unless you want to do only art films or foster dystopia, the primary characters need to win in the end.

I recently gave a stills assignment to my photography club. It required those who chose to participate to storyboard their final image in advance, removing some elements of the random from their outcome. Some started with a goal in mind, some took a “let’s see what happens if” approach. Both worked very well.

However as I had the opportunity to review the submissions, there were a couple that could have been as effective, perhaps more so, if they were simple videos.

One of the frustrations that I encounter when teaching videography is how quickly things get bogged down in gear and questionable process. This is also true in still photography, but fear of the unknown, and a legitimate manner of not thinking in a timeline makes it much worse.

One example is our long time member Dennis. His storyboard wanted to end up with a photograph of his granddaughter, arms raised in joy after her very first ski run. For those of us who are or were skiers, if we think about it, we can remember our first run, with the excitement, the nervousness, a bit of fear and no idea how things would turn out. As part of his storyboard, Dennis started with the girl, back to him, in her rental kit, looking up the hill that she would be skiing down. This was to me, a brilliant establishing shot in the context of making a video. Of course his outcome was exactly what he wanted, his granddaughter with her arms raised in triumph. That first ski run will never happen again, and fortunately the family now has a lovely image of the end of that little journey. But what would have been different if he had used exactly what he had at hand and shot a video instead?

We have a number of club members who are very skilled bird photographers. Members Bob and Gordon as examples work hard to get that “defining moment” shot, and when successful, it’s typically fabulous. However they both leverage technology to have multiple still images to choose from, either experience and burst mode or experience and some Olympus feature that precaptures still prior to shutter release. What if instead of that, they used the same equipment that they have with them to shoot a video? Gordon, my co-host on the podcast here, is a very stalwart proponent and user of tripods and that works for him consistently. So why not a video of the bird coming in to land on water, or taking off, or swallowing that fish?

My friend Judy is pretty much fearless when it comes to photography, but video was a slow adoption for her. Until she got a drone. Now she is using the drone to make really interesting videos, that can be their own clips, but also moving backgrounds for other videos and other purposes that she will undoubtably discover.

I’m proposing that we all examine how to remove barriers to video making. Forget the technology and the equipment, just do what you would do for a still but instead of a burst or a single still, what instead would happen if we all took a 5-6 second video using our “good” cameras instead of only a smartphone with a micro sensor?

My former dentist Ron, made a number of books of wildlife photography with wonderful images, but we talked before he retired about his growth into video. Now that is pretty much all he does. He can pull stills from the videos of sufficient quality that can make great prints, but the wildlife in action has as much impact for the viewers as the Walt Disney program did for kids back in the sixties. The difference is that back then, filmmaking was both very expensive and very difficult. Today, it’s incredibly simple. If we all took the time to record interesting footage, it might allow us to expand our horizons and may even help us become better still photographers.

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