Following another shoot with my dancer/filmmaker friend Jacob this weekend, I thought it would be a good idea to use my next reflection to write about my experience with our latest collaboration/our collaborations as a whole.

I’ve found really like having people to work with regularly. I think having trust in your crew mates goes a long way, especially on small productions. Jacob and I would regularly come up with new ways to improve on each others ideas, and I very much feel like I added significant value to the final product. From a strictly business standpoint, I want to be worth the money I charge. But I think it’s very important to think of filmmaking as an art form and not a purely monetary business (we’ll leave that to the producers), this is something we discussed quite extensively over our collaborations. We have a mutual friend who is all about the ‘hustle’, making low effort content as fast as he can in hopes of making money. I personally don’t feel like thats the way I want to go about things, if I did, I’d be better off getting a job in another industry.  There’s nothing wrong with a “quick and easy” approach. If that works for you, good on you, but I feel like I’m in it for different reasons.

Jacob and I work really well together, as he is very good with directing and making conversation (small talk) with the client, while I am stronger in the camera and lighting department. Often he could talk the talent through what needed to be done while I was getting the shot looking good.

One thing that frequently came up on this weekends shoot was film literacy. There were countless times we got exciting ideas from feature and short films we each liked. At the start of the day we were shooting a super wide shot which Jacob thought looked better in 4:3 than it did in 16:9. He asked me if I thought the whole video should be 4:3, and I suggested 1:1. He was hesitant at first, but convinced once I showed him some clips from Xavier Dolan’s Mommy, I also argued that 4:3 is overdone in music videos, and 1:1 might give it more distinction.

Later in the day, we were filming in quite a large room (our location was a beautiful old 2 storey house in Northcote, with incredibly high ceilings). Jacob’s plan was to get shots of the talent performing in different parts of the room, I suggested we do a slow 360 degree pan and composite all the shots together to get some cool VFX happening in the video. This idea worked insanely well, and I will amend this post with a link to the video when it’s released.

We spent all evening talking about our favourite music videos and shots in films, and how important having that knowledge/library of ideas to build off of is for creating your own unique films. I’m not interested in copying anything thats been done before, but oh boy, do I love stealing ideas and working them into my own projects.

I think music videos can often confirm to some of the same coverage principles as the drama film. Really, a great music video can tell just as strong of a story as any other film. There’s probably more to this idea that’s just out of my brain’s grasp. I’ll keep mulling this one over for the next while.