28 Jan The Vision
It’s so important going into a project to bring some sort of a vision along for the ride. You just don’t show up to a location for a gig, drop your gear bags, look around with your hands on your hips, deeply inhale, and then with a sigh-like exhale go “ok, so how we gonna get this baby done?” Don’t get me wrong, in some cases that is literally the situation you are thrown in, but in all instances when you are lucky enough to get that planning/conceptualization time… USE IT! That’s why I thought I’d write up a little post about “the vision” that goes into projects, where the concepts start, how I work on key visuals, etc. The following are some sketches from the concept phase that we drew up prior to the shoot day side by side with shots from the video we just finished last week.
Yes, you will always get something a little off from your sketches, whether that be restrictions of your location, time, access, etc., but some of the sketches below show how the main idea is retained from the concept and carried through to the final product. This first guy is a perfect example of that. We originally had a cat sitting on the bed to give it a more “homey” feel. But… you can always count on the most predictable animal to act like a D-bag when you really need them to pull through for ya. Our ridiculously lazy cat model, who on any other day wouldn’t move if you stepped on him, decided to emulate a curious cat on a crack high, not sitting for more than half a second. Oh well. For the rest of it, it worked out pretty much to plan.
I was very happy with this second one. Pretty true to the idea, framing, perspective, everything.
Third is a picture of two drawings out of the sketch book. Driving and nail biting shots, but extremely close to the real deal.
You don’t have to be an artist to do stuff like this, as you can see from the demos above. I don’t take any longer than I need to draw these bad boys, just enough to get the idea on paper for notes and sharing with the creative team on the project. It’s a lot easier to capture an shot when everyone involved can visualize the shot before it’s go-time. Stick figures are WAY underrated!
This video project dealt heavily on close up visuals of the hands, so tight framing is required. To keep things from looking so static in sooo many close-up shots, we planned angles, pans, and motion into our shots to keep the viewers eyes entertained. A key factor to making your ideas/sketches come to life a little easier is to have a fairly good understanding of the location(s) you’ll be shooting in. Scout you lazy people. Unless you have a James Cameron-like budget, I don’t think you’ll be constructing too many sets from scratch. Get used to working with what you got, but first you need to know what you have to work with.
Below is the video if you have not seen it yet. Public voting on the final 3 video entries starts on Feb 9th now. I’m sure we’ll be there, and I’ll keep you guys informed! Are you saying “uh… what video?” CLICK HERE to read the post explaining the reason for this video’s existence.
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