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Opportunities to Start Incorporating Film & Video

Lesson 26 from: From Photo to Film

Andrew Scrivani

Opportunities to Start Incorporating Film & Video

Lesson 26 from: From Photo to Film

Andrew Scrivani

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Lesson Info

26. Opportunities to Start Incorporating Film & Video

How do you get video clients when making the move from still photography? In this lesson, Andrew discusses options for finding opportunities in filmmaking, from developing a portfolio and reel to working with current still photography clients for video.

Lesson Info

Opportunities to Start Incorporating Film & Video

the opportunities to use your skills here are really now really deep in places faras Why we want to do the things we dio um, on this on a scale of doing it for social promotion, for your own brand, for your website, for your social media. I think it's these air sort of. This is the baseline for all of us at this point that we want to be doing our own social promotion because it's free. And if you're skilled at it, it's really worth the effort. So from at the baseline, start there. I can do my own soul, my own PR work. Then you want to create a real because if you are seriously interested in being in film on any level, you need to have not just the portfolio, like a or a website. Like a photographer. You also need to have a real you need to show the things you've worked on or the things you are you're actually producing. So, like, if you're a director or DP, or you would actually show the things that you've shot. But if you're an editor, you would have a real but your colorist, You woul...

d have a real, you know, you would have to just basically put together a collection off the things that you've done Set it to music, whatever you're gonna do. But the reality is that now you're talking about incorporating a lot of the skills that you're learning into building your own real. So when I first started, that's exactly what I did. I got to get a cobbled together, whether equipment I could cobble together. I got together a couple of people I thought could help me. I identified a story that I thought was interesting. And I shot a speck commercial for a restaurant in Manhattan with the chef that I knew, and she was sort of a minor celebrity at that point. So it was a pretty good it was a win win for everybody. And I did that a couple of times at the early part of my career to kind of build my team, get continuity with different different aspects of what I wanted to learn how to do. Ah, and it was great. And it was a really great learning experience. I probably did three four spec commercials that out of some of them are still on my real. It's a great one of them. We did as suspect commercial, and we ended up selling it, so that was kind of cool. You also able, at this point to market yourself as a double threat. And these are This is a very valuable commodity to have at this point, because if you're ah, you're a photographer who actually can do video, understands video. I'm not talking about being a full fledged filmmaker, but somebody who can actually execute video in the space that you're working so in the food space. Clearly, if you're comfortable and you know how to light it and you know how to do it, you can. You've actually done this already. So this is being able to market yourself. That way. To clients is really great, because if they can get the two for one, you still in the business of that is a whole different element that you will need toe investigate as well, because you don't want to give it away for free. But the reality is that you can give people a better price than if they had to go out and hire another video OG refer to do that same work. You can work on things like branded content, and I think that, you know, your clients in photography are doing a lot of these things online. And being that double threat will open those opportunities to do branded content work four brands for websites Whatever the people who are hiring you now are probably using some kind of video components somewhere. So if you can position yourself in a way that says I can do both of these things for you, then you're in a much better position as a business person. And then, of course, you can shoot or direct commercials because if you show that you can do branded content that really will open the door to doing bigger projects. So what? That looks like a This point in the industry, which is very different and changing rapidly from away from the agency model and MAWR toward the client direct model for doing this type of work, there's there's a synergy happening between the entertainment industry and the advertising agency and the industry. There's the synergy happening where because of things like influencers and celebrity branding, these things are all kind of bun jumbled up together. So you want to throw yourself in the middle of that mix and show I could be part of this, too? I can I can actually do this for you. And that may open the door to doing things like bigger projects. Even if they're not union projects or agency sanctioned projects, you still might have the opportunity to do it by starting at some of this other stuff. And, of course, if you're really interested in film, that is a different path. But essentially, if you build out your skill set by doing these other things, you're much better prepared to do these things to so and then you can actually take that route off getting yourself on a crew being a p a. All of the things that we've talked about Ah, and then I will encourage you right from the start here is that if you're interested in narrative storytelling to create your own films and use the equipment that is available to you and use some of the techniques that we've talked about, it become more aware. Read some books go on websites go on on more product platforms like this come to creativelive, learn the things that you need to learn and keep reinforcing it because we never stop learning right were constantly learning, were constantly growing, and you always add more to your arsenal. So I would say that creating your own film is a great exercise in doing that, even if it's three minutes, five minutes, whatever you want to do, there are films of all shapes and sizes. My commercials air 15 seconds long, so this all of it, all of the skills. You can bundle it all into 15 seconds if you want to. Ah, and then I've talked about This is Well, I think my production skills in film have made me a better photographer. They've made me more aware of lighting. They've made me want more aware of production problems that I can solve. It's made me much more comfortable in terms of knowing when there's an opportunity to shoot video on a photo set and when it's not appropriate s so I think, in terms of being completely aware of what it would take to do. Video on a photo set is the first key to communicating that to your clients to say, I don't think this is gonna work. But I'll tell you how we could make it work and being a problem solver. So using all of those skills that you gather in this world in this world to translate back to the world you came from is super helpful. So this leads me to homework. We're gonna talk about this in a minute, but I want to give you your homework assignment first. So, uh, member, yesterday I asked you to do something where you built out something from a single photograph. So your homework is? Tell Mitt if you've done your homework, then you already have the building blocks to start creating that narrative. So if that narrative needs to be built out a little further Great. But I want you to film it. I want you to think about it. You started it from that because it captured your interest. And I want you to definitely go back and do that. And we also talked. I think I talked to you earlier, but I'm going to say it again. I want you to go back and watch movies for continuity issues because the more you familiarize yourself with the idea of continuity the more it becomes baked into your workflow, and you will be able to stand at the monitor and speak to a script supervisor or speak to your GP or speak to your team and let them know what you need to see. And if you see something that's out of whack, it's because you've trained yourself to look at it and look for it the detail. So when we're watching Monitor, for example, I was watching the monitor for frame and continuity those my to those the two things I was looking for. I wasn't looking at performance. I was looking at lighting. I wasn't looking at camera angles. I was looking specifically a frame, making sure that my frame is clean. There's nothing in my frame that doesn't belong there. And I was looking for continuity issues. So those things were view, you know, when you have different people looking at the monitor for different things. That's one of those things. You know. The director's got concentrate on performance. The DP has to concentrate on pulling focus and lighting, you know, like so everybody who's looking at a monitor at that point has to be looking for something else. So okay, we've talked a lot over the last. Let me talk. Hold on questions. Great. So somebody asked a question. They're shooting on a DSLR. What can they do while shooting? That's gonna help in post with color grading other specific settings because people shoot him. If DSL ours don't have, can't shoot in log. Well, you could strip it out. Yeah, you could strip out the color profile you can. You can create a custom profile in most DSL ours, and just drop all the settings to zero. That's you know, that's what you can do now if you're shooting the SLR and it's it's not the kind of project that where you feel like you're gonna have a lot of opportunity to color it professionally on the back end. You might want to keep your camera settings that you're comfortable with for shooting stills and then tweak it in the end. But I would say if you do want to go with, you know, call a full color package at the end, I would strip out and just get it down, get it down to zero, get into the custom profiles, drop your saturation down, drop, drop everything to zero and then start. Start there

Ratings and Reviews

Nev Steer
 

A very well explained class on starting in film production from the viewpoint of a person with a successful photography background. Thanks Andrew.

Nutmeg
 

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