Green Tunnel made me think of The Longest Way 1.0 (above) by Christoph Rehage, an epic journey brilliantly compressed in time, wonderfully presenting the spirit of Rehage, making me smiling, making me ask questions, leaving me pleased, satisfied and inspired — to journey, to create.
If you haven’t already seen this amazing piece, please watch it now. You’ll be glad you did.
In his latest post on his The Longest Way site Rehage casually refers to his movie as the “weird beard video,” and notes that it’s won yet another award. And so it should!
“You need to tell them who you are,” Lauren M. Rabaino suggests in her post yesterday at 10,000 Words, in which she is highlighting the importance of applying multimedia skills in non-multimedia jobs. Here, she is specifically talking about the importance of entrepreneurs (read: all photographers) selling themselves to clients with multimedia storytelling.
Photographers are doing an amazing job at harnessing multimedia to highlight their work, but how many (and how creatively?) are photographers using multimedia to sell themselves — entrepreneurial style?
Here are four example of photographers using multimedia to help sell themselves to potential clients. What’s cool is that this self-promotion was either an after thought (#1) or not a thought at all (#2, #3 and #4), but all do the trick — meeting the 2.0 reality of potential clients wanting to identify a cool, like-minded image maker to work with, not just someone who makes cool images.
Amazing multimedia, wonderfully highlights his work, but also really shows you want this guy is about. Not surprisingly, he’s told me that he’s gotten amazing attention (and business) from this series.
Amazing multimedia journalism, this is just a rough that Mooney quickly slapped together after her travels for “Opening Our Eyes.” Yes, it wonderfully teases us with the quality of her work (we want to see more!), but it also shows Mooney up close and personal — something you’d never see in a portfolio-only piece. Mooney has told me that every time she has shown this teaser she gets amazing interest in her project, and that her viewers are most interested in what she has to say on camera.
OK, this is not amazing multimedia, nor does it seem to be a super sales device, but I actually think it is. In this world of 2.0 sharing, we get to see super photo nerdy Krogh in a less photo-nerdy moment, sharing a bit of his life, showing us who he is, helping us imagine him out camping in his van, letting us know that Zippy Lives!
If you can make a fun, excellent, educational multimedia piece that features you, and starts off you with you mostly naked, well. . . I think you’re doing a great self promotion sales job, even if wasn’t your intention.
“I love it when process does not call attention to product,” I wrote in my last post, commenting on The PEN Story. So it’s interesting to see that this is exactly what seems to have gone wrong with PEN Giant, the follow up to The PEN Story. Don’t get me wrong, I’m impressed as hell by what the creators accomplished (check out the “making of” video below), but then again that’s the problem. I’m distracted with the techniques to the point of not simply diving into the joy of the story — as I did with The PEN Story.
What’s Your Take?
Which PEN story do you like better and why? Do you agree/disagree with me about technique overpowering the storytelling experience?
Here’s a wonderful stop-motion piece that will put a smile on your face and inspire you, even if you have no interest in the Olympus PEN camera.
Pretty sweet, right?
I mean, obviously this was really tricky to produce (apparently the final was shot all in-camera, no postproduction) but it doesn’t feel tricky. It feels fresh and cute and honest and. . .simple. I love it when process does not call attention to product.
Christopher Cairns says his sculpture transmits an impeding sense of disaster that is born out of his attitudes about modern life. Cairns, who relies heavily on music for inspiration, also notes, “The detachment of the contemporary culture from classical music and serious jazz is a disaster.” Regarding the value of friendship, Cairns says, “Part of being an artist is to try to find other people that you can share feelings and ideas with.”
Cairns’ sculpture is powerfully evocative and his sentiments about music and friendship in relationship to the visual artist’s life will be of interest to photographers. Although I can share all this about Cairns, I only know the artist through this five-minute video created by Richard Anderson. This speaks to the incredible storytelling power of documentary shorts. It is also reason to applaud Anderson for taking a great leap forward in his video-making pursuits.
Check it out this video for inspiration from both Cairns and Anderson. Take particular note of how Anderson puts his photographer’s eye to excellent use. His framing of Cairns among his sculptures is fantastic and not typical of standard documentary interviews. And Anderson’s still images make wonderful b-roll that clearly reveal Cairns’ vision of impending disaster.
Richard Anderson has joined the wave. The wave of still photographers embracing video, that is. We had a long, great conversation today. We discussed nerdy photo stuff and more important ideas about family, friendship and creative satisfaction. Our talk started by touching on all themes at once when Anderson shared his new excitement for video. He’s getting off to a nerdy and creative start by focusing on projects featuring family and friends.
The first piece Anderson published to his Vimeo channel highlights his son, Nicholas, showing off his Lego gun, a real monster of creative engineering. (Man are Legos cool! If you haven’t seen Mike Stimpson’s decisive Legos, definitely check them out.) Anderson’s next two videos are both music videos of Daniel Hill, a family friend whom Anderson captured at Chincoteague, Virgina, during a family vacation.
Anderson’s “Nothn’” music video is pretty basic, but required greater video making skills than “Nicholas & the Lego Gun.” He had to deal with recording sound with tricky ambient wind, and now we do not hear his off-camera voice. More polished, more professional.
• Family matters more than anything. So keep on building, loving and appreciating your “family,” even if these people are not related by blood.
As Mooney says of a young homeless man helped by the Oasis project: “His wants are simple – to love and be loved. How very basic and yet so tragic that being part of a family seems so out of reach for so many.”
• HD-DSLR cameras are not the best tools for recording video for making movies. HD-DSLRs are a major pain for capturing video, so (at least for now) for the best, most hassle free video-only shooting we’re better of with HD video cameras.
As Mooney says: “Yes, the visual [of HD-DSLRs] is stunning but I can’t help but think how many moments I may have missed that I probably would have gotten if I had been shooting with a video camera.”
Let’s go to the video. . .
To honor both family and not capturing video on HD-DSLRs — I used my measly Canon G9 — I share a home movie I made a year-and-a-half ago. Back then these wackos were just the wacky family of my girlfriend. But now, with the wedding set for January, these wackos are my family, too. Yes!
“After 11 years of shooting motion and over 30 years of shooting still images, my mind seamlessly makes the switch a hundred times a day between thinking and seeing in ‘moments in time’ or ‘time in motion’”, Gail Mooney shared yesterday in “True Convergence with the DSLR Cameras,” a great blog post from her “Journeys of a Hybrid.” Mooney speaks of how photographers new to video tend to get consumed by the technical challenges and “forget that they need to think and shoot differently when shooting video.”
This is something that I have been struggling with in my very initial steps into video and multimedia. I notice that I either shoot all stills or all motion. My mind is not only not switch seamlessly, it’s hardly switching at all. And when I am in video mode, I hardly know what I’m doing. And why should I? While I’ve been making still images for 20 years, I’ve only played around with multimedia a tiny bit over the past year. How would I know how to make a movie?
To make a movie. That’s the real challenge of photographers “moving into motion”: embracing video capture, as well as audio capture, as well as the editing these element together, or even “just” editing still images and sound into multimedia pieces. This “move making” factor might seem incredibly obvious, but I think few of us really realize this.
Maybe you realize this. But if you do, do you really realize this?
I ask because I recently finished up a 4,000-word article sharing photographers’ insights on embracing video and multimedia and, as good as the article is — I’ll share it with you when I have the PDF — I think I fail to communicate this obvious-subtle idea: Moving into motion is all about making movies, and making movies is hard.
Because of all the TV programs and movies we consume, we have a sense of how movies work, which is great. But, just as casual photographers Continue reading “It’s Making Movies, Stupid!”
“When capturing motion and stills for use in multimedia it is essential to record all subjects in wide, medium and close-up shots,” Mary Lynn Price told me recently. As a video journalist focusing on “one-man-band” reporting, Price uses all three perspectives to carefully construct rich reporting experiences. One great example is her “Conserving Shackleton’s Historic Hut in Antarctica,” which she produced in 2008 for “Women Working in Antarctica.”
“The wide shot is the establishing shot, the medium shot clearly shows the subject, and the close-ups give us the ‘wow’ factor,” Price explains. She uses all of these to her storytelling advantage throughout “Shackleton’s Historic Hut.”
Even though it’s only five minutes, “Shackleton’s Historic Hut” asks a lot from Web viewers with short, fickle attention spans. Price holds our interest by presenting as much information as many, slower-paced TV documentaries would in a half hour.
Sure, you know about Paul the Psychic Octopus, who got ‘em all right — “predicting” ever World Cup match winner just by. . .um. . .eating his dinner. But have you seen this wonderful, upbeat Pulpo Paul video?
Amazing how such a languid creature can produce such intense energy!
Here in Argentina we know “Paul the Octopus” as “Pulpo Paul” because, um, we speak Spanish. For a couple of days there he seemed to be Enemy #1, having predicted that the Germans would beat Argentina in the quarter-finals. Damn! The country was in a major depression for days — no joke — and so it was hard to find anyone who didn’t want to turn Mr. Pulpo Paul into calamari.
My girlfriend is an exception, saying, “¡Pulpo Paul es el mejor parte del Mundial! — He’s the best part of the World Cup! (Don’t get me wrong: she was as depressed as the rest of us by Argentina’s loss. But for her safety, after publishing a quote like that, I will keep her identity anonymous.)
