Is videography the next step after photography? Are they part of the same thing? Can you be good at one and not the other or are you good at both if you are good at one of them? I only recently took my first steps into videography and the way I see it is that it is very much like writing. Videography and photography are part of the same media (call it visual art or visual ________ ….you fill in the blanks) as much as writing poetry and writing stories/short stories are part of the “literary media”. If this metaphor is anything to go by, then taking a picture is like writing a poem in my mind. A poem doesn’t necessarily need a dimension, a place or a time; it doesn’t need colour, a taste or a scent. A poem can simply be that though, that emotion that doesn’t have a past or a future. It is a grin in the mirror, in a blink of an eye it’s gone, it is the lady in the beautiful red dress, eyes cross and gaze deep enough to spark a shy smile and you won’t meet ever again. Videography is more like writing a story, there is a beginning, a middle and an end. A story has a plot and, almost inevitably, a time and a place; it has a context. Then the evocative power of words and the writer’s craft create sounds, taste, scents and colours. I guess that’s why reading is a such an immersive experience and it captures all senses.
Videography is equally if not more immersive than reading and, “crafting” a video, sure has challenges as I found out during the making of this short video I made as promo material for a friend’s restaurant, Da Noi in beautiful Chester:
Short clip, I know, but I learned the hard way that those 1 minute 32 seconds take a lot of time to be put together. If like me you are dipping your toes in videography for the first time, the first tip I have for you is to plan. Believe me, only by a slim chance you can create a story just by capturing images. Spending hours collecting eventually cool short clips won’t necessarily give you enough material (or inspiration) to put together a video that makes any sense. The story you are trying to tell dictates the images, the mood, the rhythm and flow of the scene you are/will be filming. But as already said a story needs a plot, it needs a beginning, a middle and an end, and you have to plan for it. Write it on paper, draw the story board and most importantly do recon work of the location(s) you will be filming beforehand if you can!!! When I started working on the clip you just saw, I had none of the above… no plan, no story board, no plot and no bleeding idea of how a restaurant kitchen works. It took me two sessions, filming from 5 PM to closure to put together that clip and still it doesn’t necessarily tell a story. The first session was a total fiasco from a video prospective but the experience whilst taking pictures in that environment got me thinking (check Da Noi Chester Instagram page to see some of them)
Firs of all, there on the spot the first evening, I experienced how a team of chefs moves in their kitchen, I got the chance to understand the chain of events set in motion the moment a customer sits at the table. In the dining hall the customer is welcomed and introduced to the menu and the wine list and once the order is placed, back there, in the kitchen, a synchronised dance starts. Every single dish in the order is placed in sequence not just depending on it being a starter, a main or a dessert but also based on cooking time and preparation time. It took me a while whilst I was there shooting before I could really synchronise what I was doing with the rest of the dance. The bell… the ring of the bell is the epitome of it all. When a chef rings the bell it means “Dish ready for serving” and a waiter is there literally in seconds to take the dish away. Fully absorbed from what I was doing I found myself in the way quite a few times and in the small environment I was operating that is not good. Had I scouted the location beforehand, the first evening would have been much more productive and I would have selected better the pieces of gear to bring with me (i.e. I regret not having an extra light with me). The second thing that became apparent that first evening was the lack of a pre-defined plot to follow. The day after the first shooting I watched all the clips and organised them by subject and I was very pleased by the quality and dynamism of some of them but once I was done with that I hit the buffers. Guess what the question I my mind was… yes, that one, the obvious question: “how are they supposed to fit together now?”. Let me tell you, it is not a piece of IKEA furniture we are talking about here. Making a video, composing clips, deciding transitions, sequences and tempo doesn’t come with instructions let alone a set of Allen keys and hex-screws to join everything together. It was a great lesson to be reminded of: don’t do your homework on the bus, plan instead. What I did later that day is to conceive defeat and I re-started from the basics deciding what the plot, the mood and the theme of the video was going to be. I then used the clips captured the day before to muck-up the concept and, hear, hear, I selected the music which helped a lot nailing and defining the mood and the overall rhythm of the final video. I actually recommend, depending on what you want to film, to think also of the music/sound in general right at the beginning, that will go a long way as far as setting the scenes and driving the final result where you want it be.
With these valuable lessons in my bag I went back at Da Noi the following weekend and got it done. My final tip for you is quite basic and easy to follow: do not try to make a video taking 100 different clips; plan in advance the 10 scenes you need for your story and make 10 takes of each of them instead.
