EVERYTHING ELSE
TALKING DOGS, ETC.
Yes, we’ve got talking dogs, documentaries, Bloopers, music videos, advertisements, camera reviews (which is how I got sort of famous), tutorials and weddings.
TUTORIALS AND REVIEWS
I accidentally got sort of famous after doing a camera review. The reason I did the review in the first place was that I needed to upgrade to a new card-based camera from my old Canon tape-drive camera (back in the day) and did what anyone would do–I researched it on Google and YouTube. I had a couple in mind at a certain price point and of the dozen or so reviews (so-called ‘box opening review’) I learned absolutely NOTHING that I didn’t already know by reading on a website. I was expecting some sort of footage to show what the camera could do. I’ve been a cameraman all my life. “Show me!”, I screamed. No one did. Well, one guy zoomed into his cat at the end of the couch at the end. Whoopy.
So I bought one of the cameras anyway and was so impressed that I decided I would do a review myself (even though the camera was already 2 years old and there were dozens of existing reviews).
Within 3 months, my review was seen by more people than all of the other reviews combined for the previous two years. And, bizarrely, years after the release of these cameras, it still gets viewed and I still get comments and emails. Further, no other camera review has EVER had so many views and comments to this day. 205,000 views 8 years on. There’s something to be learned here and, if you want to know, I can teach you.
WEDDINGS
A short word on weddings.
Here’s the truth. Top wedding videographers charge a fortune. And if you can afford it, they’re worth it. I mean $20,000+. But worth it.
The next tier are Wedding Video Factories. Companies with ‘Gold, Silver and Platinum’ packages that hire out videographers to shoot the footage which then gets put through the wedding cookie cutter editing machine. They’re not much better than the next tier.
Then comes solo operators that might hire a friend to help. These are the ‘cheap rates’, and mostly they don’t really know what they’re doing. They copycat YouTube and come up with the weirdest stuff that’s supposed to be ‘trendy’. And they like to show off their ‘fancy camerawork’.
Then there are people like me who know what they’re doing and know what’s important and what’s not, but not really in the wedding market.
Of the hundreds of videos I’ve done without contract and on a hand-shake, the only time I didn’t get paid was for a wedding. But no hard feelings. In the pre-wedding footage it became evident that they had 7 kids between them and really couldn’t afford an extravegent wedding.
Then there was the time I was busy doing something else on the Belvior Castle Estate where I lived and was called up urgently to the castle. There was a huge wedding up there and the videographer didn’t show up. Could I do it please? So, without enough time to hire on a second cameraman, I did that solo with no notice for the pittance. the missing videographer was asking for. That’s the first video below.
The thing about weddings is that one necessarily shoots TONS of footage during the course of the day. It takes me a week to edit one of those. And I give them the ‘long version’ and a ‘highlights video’. Yet, with the ‘going rates’ I get less than half of what I would get for a corporate video that takes me 4 days to shoot, edit and turn over.
Anyway, as for me, when I’m shooting that ‘tons of footage’, it’s to capture precious moments that no one had any idea were being filmed. That’s what’s important. That’s what makes someone want to watch it over and over and over again. A videographer is not a glorified photographer shooting all the usual posed standard off-the-shelf boring wedding photos. A videographer is there to capture a story and capture moments that will be treasured forever.