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I agree with you that the still photography market does not have the same growth potential that film does, but I don't necessarily agree that photographers should therefore start shooting video.
Video requires different abilities and a different way of thinking
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Then there are other issues. Do you market yourself as a stills or video producer? I would personally be turned off by a 'jack of all trades'. For the clients who don't mind, why would they come to the photographer and add video to the brief rather than asking the film production house to add stills? Convergence is a two way street.
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This is where we differ.
I thought you marketed yourself as a retoucher and a photographer. Is this a jack of all trades or an added skill? Is this a conflict of interest or opens you to a broader market?
Anyway . . .
I'm not looking for a boom industry, or a jack of all trades thought process.
I'm sure I'm like a lot of fortunate photographer's that have built a career, managed their resources and don't have to work as hard as I did when I started.
The thing is I love working hard with purpose, love the image making process and my only real fear was to get stuck doing the same thing day in and day out. I never wanted to be one of those rock guys that play the same song for three decades.
I gave going into motion imagery a lot of thought and like others, I first just fooled around with it as a secondary add on. Then it just hit me that I do like large production, I do not want to work for ever decreasing still numbers at double the output and I wanted to add to my life and keep pushing.
Also as my clients move forward that's the same direction I wanted to go.
Everybody talks about the 5d and in stills it really is a 5d world. That camera and others like it have changed how paying clients perceive the cost of still photography, even on high visibility brands, because everybody and their brother has a 5d and a copy of photoshop.
The professional buy in for motion is much higher, from shoot to post. I mean when was the last time you did a $164,000 still effect in post, though in the motion world that's the going price for an interesting post effect. I know I have one in process as I write this.
As a Creative Director showed me on his I-phone one day he gets 30 e-mails an hour from still photographers, so I assume that he assumes that he has a great deal of leverage.
That's just not where I wanted to be . . . at the commodity level.
I do market myself as someone that gets a desired result and just like stills there are some motion pieces we have shot and produced that I'm proud of and worked well for the client, though wouldn't move my career so they don't get featured on my public site and just like stills, we have motion pieces that have won awards and get nice acclaim but were not designed to be a profit making excersize.
Often that is the nature of commercial work for either stills or motion.
Marketing I won't get into because like most people I get a lot of calls, though getting the call and securing the project are two different processes. I have my way and there is not enough space or time to elaborate on what I do that works for me and I'm not comfortable explaining that in the public domain.
Personally I find the move into motion liberating and daunting. It's liberating because the work can be compared to a long form editorial where you don't tell the story in one frame. Daunting because you have to think ahead about how the session you shot today will fit into the cut you shoot in a week .
As the owner of the production company is exciting because our opinion has more value than still projects because now we work as a conceptual partner from the start to the final delivery.
We produce treatments, storyboards and in depth castings.
It also has required a steep learning curve on all fronts, from cameras, lighting, lenses and look - to the process of casting not just talent that can pose or look pretty, but can deliver a line and do it in a way that is interesting and surprising. .
It has required becoming a signatory to hire union talent and forming new relationships with crew that have different skill sets than stills. It's actually fun, but it's not for the weak of heart as it is a lot of work.
Right now we're into a 5 video multiple market project that we are shooting around the world. We just finished the first stage and it's exhausting like still work never is, but for me more rewarding because so much has to fall in place in a cohesive manner.
We have now moved more into dialog work and it's another evolutionary step that is difficult to explain, but when a take works it's just amazing how good it feels, when it doesn't it's heart breaking, but the one great upside to motion is you develop a rapport with the on camera talent that we rarely did with a model. You learn how they can stretch or what their limits are and usually I am surprised in a positive way, but like still photography you are there to serve the talent.
If you make the talent interesting you've done your job, though you have to be much more adaptable with motion, because you can't fix a line in post.
There is rarely a session where we don't have to deviate from script to make it work and if your the director you don't get a break, ever . . . though for me it's exhilarating. During production I wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning, to rethink the script, or direction or the setting, or how we're going yo manage the edit. I find that exciting beyond explanation.
But to try to keep this in context how the new wave of motion cameras relate to Hasselblad . . . well the RED is like a medium format camera. It's large, not as nimble, requires a lot of thought and when done right produces the cinematic look we all grew up with in movie theaters. The smaller cameras have enormous benefits in price and ease of use, though it takes a lot of post production to NOT make them look "video", so there are a lot of parallels.
We just added a Sony FS 100 which looks like a medium format camera in shape, (though has way too many buttons) but it can do some things I could never do with the RED ONE. Both have their place.
But this thread is about Hasselblad with a new owner and probably that means a new game plan. I would think Hasselblad, Leaf/Phase would have moved to motion cameras a lot faster than the Canon/Nikons of this world just because they were already serving the same high end professional market that RED and Arri will attract. I'm sure the technology is different, but maybe that's the issue, the technology of medium format cameras has moved slower than other less expensive brands.
Look at this link for RED and read the prices, the upgrades and I don't know about others, but to me it seems like the joke of it's deja-vu all over again, though it works because we'll probavly buy an epic very soon.
http://www.red.com/store/epic/product/epic-mJust as most consumers won't see the difference between a well executed 5d image vs. a 60 mpx camera, maybe the same consumer won't see the difference between a 5k RED and a 2k Arri next to a Sony or a 5d, though I think we both know the goal of a professional is not to shoot to what is just acceptable to the client, but what is acceptable to us.
So my real response to anyone is do what you want with whatever equipment you want, but just make sure you have a passion for doing it.
IMO
BC