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.