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How to practice videography?
  • How about carrying a camera, a light meter, and a recorder everywhere?

    Mr.Kwon is a famous photographer in Korea, and he loves m43 for photo. G3 + 14-42mm and GF1 + 25mm 0.95. There's something special about his street photos. Just stare at the photos. Feel like standing right in front of the scenes? He's using standard focal length around 25mm. Eye-level framing. Mundane scenes. Really nothing special about the subjects. But the photos look great. Strikingly all JPEGs. Nothing but sharpening and resizing. I think that's a darn good way to practice videography. Forget about RAW photo. Start taking JPEG photo.

    Light meter like this one http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/1005/sekonic-l-308dc/p Measure lights before taking the JPEG photos.

    Just record my own voice in different places.
  • 4 Replies sorted by
  • I had the privilege of doing a photography unit at uni before I had even picked up a video camera about 8 years ago. It was good fun, I chose it for an easy pass unit and didnt really have any natural ability for it.
    Once the love with moving images started, a lot of the same principles apply. Namely using shutter and aperture to get the right exposure but mainly the principles of composition came to light and I found myself a better cameraman than a still photographer. These days, I find my photography skills have improved immensely mainly due to my video camera experience.
  • I've done some youtube vids, blog and other stuff and I taught myself the basics doing that. My problem now is I don't want to put any more effort into "practice" vids and I just want to do some real projects. It will be youtube based so it can be lower quality at first and I can get better as I go along and the progression can be built into the vids, but I just don't have the effort in me to do stuff that's not aimed directly at building an audience.

    The other thing that taught me about videomaking is Robert Rodriquez movies. He's one of the first directors to fully embrace Digital and all his DVD commentaries are like mini film schools. Not so much about technical details, but his process of shooting and lighting and on the bare minimum you can get away with. Remember, 99% of your audience won't see your errors, they'll just think it's supposed to look like that.
  • Well it's all about just going out and shoot, right? I think we can overwatch tutorials and stuff. Trust your instincts. We learn more from mistakes ( both ours AND others). When I first shoot with the GH2 I was so overwhelmed, looking back it's funny to see all the mistakes I made - a lot has improved and some things I still have issues with but it allows me to analyze and strategize how to cover my weaknesses and inexperience.

    Since I have no formal training I tend to study people with eclectic backgrounds - check out Chris Doyle's interviews and his approach to storytelling. You'll learn more from that than watching someone's Vimeo overuse of the Phillip Bloom Slider :-)
  • I see. Enough just-in-case training. Get used to just-in-time challenge. Thanks.