Thought I'd throw a little behind the scenes video together for you guys. This kinda shows what all goes on in a "Matty Photography" shoot. Good friend and video director, Andy Lahmann, will often come to assist on my Bellingham shoots. I'll toss him my Canon 7D and ask him to shoot some BTS pics and video. He always captures some good stuff. We had a lot of laughs, got some great shots, and ended with a happy client. Booyah.
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.
The Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), yes, it's a mouthful... put on a video contest focusing on hand hygiene. They teamed up with 3M and created three video categories broken down by specific content matter and time, all dealing with different manners of hand cleaning. Voting starts Jan 25th, and the three finalist will be posted on AORN's site for deciding the winner. The winner takes home $5000 for their hospital's education department. I'm obviously pulling for Tacoma General. Here is the video we put together for the 1-minute, hand washing category. There were specific information and visuals that needed to be integrated in the video, but for that most part, we had a lot of flexibility, and we really differentiated ourselves from the pack by telling a story with video instead of adding another tally to the countless instructional videos out there. Let us know what you think! Public voting will decide the winner out of the 3 finalists next week. I'll post again with a link to the contest voting so that you all can vote once it's available.
A behind the scenes look at the making of the Smokin' Hot Espresso 2010 calendar. Enjoy, and let me know what you think by leaving a comment below.
A couple weeks ago I posted a blog about nurse camp, an event I covered at Tacoma General Hospital, along with a few pictures. As I mentioned in that post (click here to view it), I shot video as well. I mainly shot the video as a little afterthought, thinking it would be nice if the hospital staff would want some rough, stock video of the event. Well, one thing led to another and I ended up editing a video piece unexpectedly after I got the idea in my head. Working close with the nursing staff, I cut together a video in hopes that it will help promote the nurse camp and generate further interest for the hospital.
It's here! I can't thank my good friend, Andy Lahmann of P51 Pictures, enough for capturing the fun, energy, and time that goes into my shoots as well as he did, and cutting it together so well. I know I can't stop watching this video,...
