Convergence
I came to Photography from Music. I’ve been writing music since I was 12 years old, and before then, I was drawing and painting.
So I’m aware that I could be classed as a bit ‘arty’. With that in mind, I’m very interested in making some movies. Photography is inspiring to me because it’s creative, but so too, are many other forms of media. I’ve never really done any movies before, but I see the convergence of HD movie features in some of the new digital cameras quite compelling.
So I’m thinking about some new projects where I record either my own experiences whilst out in the field, or more interestingly (to myself) is the possibility of making movie-photographs. I’d love to make some short movies where they have all the aesthetics of a well shot photograph.
So do you have any experience of what sort of tools I’d need? I’m thinking HD-capable digital camera, Final Cut Studio (I’m an Apple guy) and some plug ins of some kind that enable ‘grading’ – which I believe is to film making, what the digital dark room is to photography. Your thoughts if you have any experience in this field are much appreciated.
Lastly, I feel I should stress that art whether it is photography, music, video, whatever, is a journey and we should always explore new territory when we feel it’s where we should be going. I never really knew where I’d end up after a decade of making images. Photography has been quite a journey for me, and It’s quite inspiring to feel that perhaps, I’ve only really just started :-)
Bruce, interesting you mention this; I’ve been thinking some similar thoughts in recent months. I saw this video shot with Canon 5D MKII and got inspired.
http://vimeo.com/7829648
I can envision these types projects really taking off in the next few years. I think it could be really satisfying.
Comment by Passage — 26 March, 2010 @ 11:28 pm
Hi Passage,
That’s a beautiful video and I can appreciate why you felt inspired.
I love still images – capturing a moment and letting the viewer decide, but watching that video made me feel I was there. It was beautifully shot too.
Quite inspiring and a lot to think about in terms of artistic possibilities. I’m not one for buying gear for gizmo sake, more for ‘what can I do with this?’. Thanks for posting the link on my site :-)
Comment by Bruce Percy — 27 March, 2010 @ 1:27 am
Hi Bruce,
The link below is quite long but basically it shows that just about all the new cams have great video.
It looks extremely well thought out and seriously professional.
http://www.zacuto.com/shootout
The thing that impressed me the most was that even when viewed full screen it looked better than good. At the lower resolution it looks incredible.
For now I just use a Point & Shoot for video and a D300 for stills. I combine them in Adobe Premier Elements.
For output I use the FLV format at 640×480. A 5 minute clip is about 25MB and anyone with 200KB/s download speed can watch in uninterrupted.
The clips can be viewed on both Macs and PCs, with the Flowplayer video player.
I also tried the JW player but it had problems with FLV files coming out of Premier Elements.
Like yourself I am planning to dabble in combining photography with video so I’m interested to see how you will also handle it.
Comment by andy — 27 March, 2010 @ 6:10 am
Hi bruce, if you wish to simply explore moving images, and flex your creative muscles, apart from the wealth of HD DSLR’s, you could get yourself a Super 8mm Cine Cam which uses real film. Film is widely available, and many Labs including the widescreen centre at Baker Street develop and Telecine the rolls into whichever codec or format you wiah, eg. to use with FC pro.
I’ve seen many short films shot using 8mm – both Colour and B&W (you can get 8mm cuts of Fuji Eterna Vivid too ((The cinefilm -ve version of velvia) and the mood, feel and look has that other dimension to it.
Comment by Ibraar Hussain — 20 April, 2010 @ 12:53 am