Are Photography and Video converging? Video is certainly a great tool to show how things were done. My friend and excellent photographer Chloe "Flaremaster" Scheffe did a shoot for Moth House, a jewelry designer and borrowed my studio and lights for the occasion. I filmed the whole event with a Canon 7D and 24-70 Canon lens and edited in Final Cut Pro. Tiffany Parente Connors was the hairstylist/make up artist and Chelsey Scheffe modelled. You can see Moth House jelwely and the images from the shoot at mothhouse.etsy.com. My photography web site is fabiogovernato.com and Chloe's is chloescheffe.com. And yes we both muse on photo and design stuff... Chloe at thewanderwonder.blogspot.com. Chloe made a short backstage video too..which one is the Director's cut?
What kind of videos should a photographer make? I feel that where I can have a distinct voice is in product and beauty shots were controlled slow motion allows the viewer a more immersive experience of the product or the look that is being showcased. This is the kind of motion equivalent to holding something in your hand or to the small movements that we have during a normal conversation with another person. These videos should be able to convey a mood, without having to tell a whole story. I envision them to be short, maybe one minute or so...like umm, commercials...but prettier.
So this week I finally finished the test project of what I hope will be the first of a series. I had recently finished a shoot that involved a set of blue glass bottles and I wanted to add a bit of motion to it, so I reproduced the set up. The camera is set on a motorized dolly and it is shooting at 8 frames per second. I am using Alien Bees strobes and some software to control the small amount of flicker in post (Profoto Pro8 next time? Einstein Alien Bees?) . The images are cropped and graded in Lightroom and the video was composed together with Final Cut Pro at 24fps. There is some trickery here and there that I will detail more in future posts. I am interested in this approach instead of shooting directly in video as I can have more control (and light output) with the strobes instead of using tungsten or HMI continous ones and better quality for the individual frames. The motion came out really smooth, so run it a couple of times if it plays jerky at first..
And.. I went to see Jonsi (of icelandic band Sigur Ros). It was a great concert and inspired me with the soundtrack.
