Hola amigos!
Last weekend my brother and I landed our first paid video gig; our client was a recently founded startup by university students. Their mission was an admirable one, to reduce social isolation among seniors by hosting monthly skill sharing events.
As this was our first gig, we learnt a lot and realised just how challenging this line of work can be. One of our challenges started before the actual shoot, who knew transporting video gear could be so difficult? Fortunately for us, we do have a family car that was large enough to move the 3 tons worth of gear!
Another small hiccup we encountered was being mindful of our presence in the environment we were filming at. Because all the attendees were elderly, two guys head to toe in all black shoving giant cameras in their faces did not go down too well. For a fun easy-going event, we could have been more careful with our approach in terms of our attire and the way we interact with attendees.
After realising our mistake, we quickly made makeshift name tags to make ourselves less creepy. We also sat down in some of the skill share activities and introduced ourselves to make the guests more at ease. This worked wonders and we were able to capture candid footage of them sharing, laughing and chatting about their awesome skills!
We learnt a lot from our first paid shoot. Our biggest lesson would be, being mindful of our presence and our interactions with the attendees. A big misconception about videography and photography is that you just point and click; this is not true and this experience has taught us that we have a lot to learn. Can’t wait for the next one… Stay tuned!
24FPS with Michael Santos 