Impulse

Let’s take a look at the ways that the tem­po­ral nature of film changed the ways I work.

When I’m shoot­ing stills, I spend a lot of time sim­ply watch­ing. When I see an inter­est­ing moment, I lift my cam­era, wait for it, snap a few shots, then put my cam­era down and return to watch­ing. I see another moment best shot from another spot, I move and snap a few more.
When shoot­ing video, I can’t stand around so much. Remember that view­ers expect me to show them all the key moments within a scene, leav­ing no gaps. I never get to put the cam­era down: I start rolling and con­tinue watch­ing — through the cam­era — to see what hap­pens. I move and adapt from moment to moment, always rolling so as to not miss some­thing. It can be exhaust­ing because I’m shoot­ing con­tin­u­ously. I’m watch­ing, while keep­ing the cam­era inter­est­ingly framed, while lis­ten­ing intently to dia­log for any cues for what’s com­ing next. I only put down the cam­era when it looks like there is no pos­si­bil­ity of any­thing inter­est­ing hap­pen­ing.
The tricky part is fig­ur­ing out what’s going to be inter­est­ing. A scene that took place while film­ing RAAM showed me how inter­est­ing scenes often begin with the most mun­dane moments.
The day before the start of the race, the RAAM bicy­clists were required to reg­is­ter in per­son, and as usual, I came along to film it. The reg­is­tra­tion room was ter­ri­ble for audio: con­crete walls & floor, lots of peo­ple. It was hard to pick out one voice amongst the din, so I stopped shoot­ing. The scene was mun­dane any­way — they were just shuf­fling papers, fill­ing out forms. Everything was in order except the rid­ers couldn’t find the insur­ance papers for the vehi­cles. Again, it seemed minor so I didn’t shoot it. But the minor prob­lem became major as prob­lems do. The rac­ers couldn’t ride with­out the papers. A mas­sive search of the reg­is­tra­tion area ensued as I finally started rolling. Tensions began to rise. One rider ran back to the motor home to get his wife who had orga­nized the paper­work. She arrived, baby on her hip, out of breath, eyes wild in worry. She scanned the table, spot­ting a stack of papers. “Here they are!”, she declared. “Vehicle one, two, and three!” She dropped a bun­dle of paper before the offi­cial with each count. Later, another rider calmed the hus­band, still tense that any­thing was amiss: “Look, we’ve got three thou­sand miles to get mad at each other, let’s just stay calm and enjoy this.“
It’s an inter­est­ing scene that shows how ner­vous these guys were before the race. But, I didn’t get the first moment of the scene. “Where are your insur­ance papers?” “umm, I don’t know…” If you look at my footage, you’ll never know what they were argu­ing about or why it was a big deal. The scene is incom­plete, and I’m not sure if I can use it. If I were shoot­ing with a still cam­era, you wouldn’t have noticed the miss­ing moment.
So, I started film­ing all the time. Often, I’d leave the cam­era rolling even when I put it down. Tape is cheap. Missing a moment is expen­sive. Driven by that tem­po­ral com­po­nent I described in my last post, I knew I had to catch every salient moment of each scene. I had to be ready to shoot, always. In time, luck­ily, I started to develop my sense of when a tri­fle would become a catastrophe.

Camera move­ment is another tem­po­ral com­po­nent that chal­lenged me. Camera moves direct the viewer’s atten­tion. I become very aware of this while film­ing. When I’m film­ing and see some­thing com­ing that I want to shoot from some­where else, I need to make a snap deci­sion: Do I go ahead and move the cam­era, know­ing that it will draw the viewer’s atten­tion away from what’s going on? (but, if I’m lucky, it’ll draw their atten­tion to some­thing new). Or, cut film­ing and restart from a new posi­tion? Or, go ahead and move, plan­ning to edit out the move­ment? Or, wait and hope some­thing visu­ally hap­pens that makes my cam­era move nat­ural (like the sub­ject say­ing, “look — up in the sky!”)? Or, finally, I might decide that sub­ject of the scene will return quickly to where I am, thus I’ll stay put, rolling. I have to make a deci­sion like this every few sec­onds. With my still cam­era, I can just drop the cam­era and move. If it doesn’t work, I can jump back — nobody will ever see my waf­fling. It’s eas­ier to exper­i­ment in stills.
Also, I’m film­ing peo­ple. I’d have a beau­ti­ful shot and some­one in it would move, spoil­ing the com­po­si­tion. I can’t just move and re-frame sim­ply because I think it’ll look bet­ter. The viewer will feel the cam­era move and expect the atten­tion to shift. Unmotivated cam­era move­ment is what gives video that ama­teur­ish, home-movie feel. (Watch and you’ll see: Home movies are shot from the point of view of who­ever holds the cam­era. Professional movies are shot from the point of view of the viewer. This is true even in a “Point-Of-View” shot: the cam­era may be the shark’s POV, but it’s really the audience’s POV of the shark’s POV).
At first, with all this weigh­ing on my mind, I shot really wimpy com­po­si­tions of peo­ple in con­ver­sa­tion. Sometimes I’d frame on one per­son and lis­ten for lull in the con­ver­sa­tion to switch to the other per­son. The prob­lem is that peo­ple don’t take turns when talk­ing to each other. Conversation is over­lapped and flow­ing. Meanwhile, I’m still wait­ing for a break to cut on, so I’d end up watch­ing one per­son for a whole con­ver­sa­tion. Other times, I’d chicken out and shoot the pair from the side so I wouldn’t have to move as much. This is a really, really bor­ing shot. Had I been using my still cam­era, I’d flit about, snap­ping shots and ignor­ing the con­ver­sa­tion.
As with pre­dict­ing inter­est­ing moments, I grad­u­ally got more com­fort­able with the flow of dia­log and began let­ting my cam­era flow with the dis­cus­sion. I real­ized that this is how I’d per­ceive the dia­log had I been par­tic­i­pat­ing in it: I’d be stand­ing there, look­ing back and forth, lis­ten­ing to each per­son. I com­posed more aggres­sively, re-framing in quick moves when it felt natural.

Related posts:

1. Video vs still pho­tog­ra­phy, pt 3
2. Video vs still pho­tog­ra­phy, pt 1
3. When in doubt, shoot B-roll
4. Video vs still pho­tog­ra­phy, pt 2
5. First day of shooting!