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How Photography Skills Translate to Film & Video

how your skills translate to film and video. You know, my niche that I was in as as a photographer was kind of unique in that I got involved in food photography very early in the process. I got involved in the production of food photography very early in the process. So where I am right now in my career is a really unusual jump. Um, but what why bring it up is that no matter where you are in photography doesn't matter if it was food or portraiture or landscapes or whatever, Um, the film world Will York skills will translate on some level to it. So, like me as a table top photographer, what do I know about narrative storytelling with, you know, a movie camera? You know what, But honestly, my instincts took me to point where I was working with people who understood the things that I didn't, and they trusted that the instincts I brought as an artist as a producer, those things actually translated really well. And then, as I learned the language and all of the different things that I neede...

d to learn, all of those things kind of melted together. So now I feel very confident when I sit there and talk about these things with my colleagues who have film, school, you know, years of doing features, years of doing, documentary work, all of this stuff. But guess what? I come in. I was willing to listen. Keep my mouth shut and learn. And, as you know, that you get to a certain point in your career and that sometimes becomes harder right. It becomes much harder when you've established yourself in an industry, and then you I want to start over and I did that and it it's humbling. It is definitely humbling because to be at the point in my career as a photographer, as an instructor, all of the things that I've known I'm known for and now all of a sudden I'm stepping into a role where people who do not care what I did before young people right out of film school who know a ton more about what they're doing that I do and I'm getting in the way. So you take a step back and you pay attention and you watch and you learn and you understand that no matter who you are when you start something new at the end, you'll be better for it. But but be humble. Alright, Kendrick says. Sit down, Uh, and you have to become more than just a photographer at that point. Right then, you have to really call on all of your storytelling skills, the things that we've talked about on so many in so many different levels in classrooms like this and in workshops. Ah, you have to be able to bring mawr to the table than just your I. You're I'll go a long way. But then you have to understand the motivations behind why you take pictures. You need to be able to deconstruct the images that you create. You need to understand how to use your frame. You have to understand how to use light. You have to you understand how to use color. And all of those instincts, if you took them very seriously as a photographer, will translate very, very well into the film world. So being a very good storyteller in a plea and then knowing how to translate that on to a frame and then knowing how to start to put that into motion and connect the dots and then structure of filmmaking, which is something we will talk about improved, and it will get kind of confusing. And I want you to be patient and understand. There may be some concepts in here that might be a little bit Whoa. I can't absorb all of that. I don't want you to absorb all of that. I just want you understand the concept of why I'm telling it to you. So this is not there will not be a test. Well, maybe for you there will be. But so, um so one of the things that I'm thinking about doing right now, even though I have a bunch of other projects that are in the way. But this is something that has been brought to me and and said, This is a very good transitional opportunity for you. My representation have told me this. My colleagues and film have told me this. They said, Write a short film about food, not about food, but has food as the backdrop, meaning I can showcase what I've learned as a photographer and as a zoo person in the food world. But then bring with it the idea of a narrative story that has food in its bones. I was like, Well, that's a really good idea, but it's also why I share it with you is because the idea is that take what you know and then deliver a story around the bones of what you know, really? Really well, now, clearly 17 years in food photography and telling food stories has taught me a lot. The last four or five years in film and directing has also taught me a lot and how to figure out how to put all those things together. And we have a special guest that will be joining us. Um, who will help us talk about those things? My partner in borrow five pictures. Giulio Vincent gam Budo. He's going to join us via Skype in the next segment, and we're gonna talk about those things. So, um, the last part I want to share about this is how the skills translate was the people around you and the people that you trust in your creative partners and the people in your life that understand and appreciate the things that you do as an artist. Sometimes they know you better than you know yourself. So when I was thinking about what I wanted to do next, and I wanted to do video. Ah, good friend of mine, who is a DP that I work with and also a very good close friend said to me, Don't become a cinematographer. I was like, What do you mean? And he said, You're not a cinematographer. He's like your director and I said, Well, what makes you say that? And he said, Because you tell stories, your you, you communicate well with people. You're a good teacher. These are the things that a director needs to do on Set. Being a cinematographer, clearly you have to do a lot of the same things. But he thought that personality wise, I was better suited to do that job and there were other people who felt that way and have helped me along the way. But the idea is that recognizing that the skills that you have translated maybe different park parts and pieces off the film industry or video creation might very well be the thing that you hadn't even thought of yet. There a lot of opportunities for you and this is basically the three distinct aspects off going into video production where you may very well have opportunities in a lot of different areas. Like I just said, my friend told me, You're not a cinematographer even though you were photographer, you probably more of a director. But then there's film. This commercials is editorial, documentary and content creation. Like all of these different things, you can bring a skill set that you will learn as a photographer transitioning into video to any of those things. And all of those things are different. It doesn't mean you have to do just one. Clearly, I'm operating in almost all of those right now on different levels, whether it be as a photographer or as a director or as a producer, right? So the reality is that understanding as much as you can about each of the places where your work could land, opens many doors for you, and then you may end up focusing on just one of them, rather than trying to focus on all of them. Now, obviously, whatever opportunities present themselves in front of you, you take them. But the ideas, sometimes you might get funneled over the one thing you find an interest that you really love and you move on. Um, then in terms of actual people on the set and then going to go over this later to this is something a little bit. I'm gonna go a little bit deeper. Dive on this, in terms of the production aspects of this is that a lot of things you bring to the table will help you decide whether you get funneled in one area or another. And I'll tell a story. Is that, um, the woman who mentored me as a director? She said to me, I think you're she was a director and she said to me, Oh, I think I would love to help you develop a za director. And my question to her was, I don't She was a producer at that point. If you were director, why do you wanna be a producer like I didn't get it? I didn't understand why anybody who was running the production as a director on set would want to be behind the scenes. And now, five years later, as a producer who has the choices to do either production or get get behind the monitor and be the director, I totally get it. I totally get why she'd want to do that. So like being involved in it taught me some lessons that I did not quite understand. It doesn't mean I don't want to direct anymore. I absolutely want to direct. But I also see the value in understanding and being a producer, because there's also something about being the guy behind the guy about getting your ideas to translate. You have to also, as a producer, a lot of times you have to be willing to let other people take the credit, which is totally cool. But it's really rewarding when you see on idea that you had that you whispered into the director of the year or sat out a script meeting and it all, and it makes its way onto the screen. It's a very powerful, intoxicating feeling when that happens, and I totally understand now why Sabrina I wanted to be producer and mentor director because now I'm entering a director through a new pro, a new project that I'm working on for this summer. So is it It's a very intoxicating part of the business. Um, Dp's clearly as a cinematographer sound these camera department, meaning this lots of roles in camera before you become the DP and in post for those of us with good skills in post production in photography. Because the software is made by the same companies, it's very intuitive. You're gonna use photo shop in filmmaking regardless, and a lot of these things like being a colorist. If you're really good photo shop operator and you decide I want to go into film and become a colorist, you already have really great instincts. But we'll talk more about all of that stuff later on. We're going to go a little dive a little deeper on that, so the paths that we can take from photography are not limited. And that's one of the main things I want in part here Is that your path? My path may be very different, but they may be equally rewarding. So So here's how I spent my summer vacation in the heat with those two guys standing behind a monitor. So this is this is Giulio on my laugh on my left and Sam on my right, and ah, we Sam was producer on Marco Team Marco, our first feature film, and Julio's the writer director and the owner of Borrow Five and you get to meet him rather shortly. But it was about 100 degrees every day we shot for 28 days. Everybody on our set was either under 14 or over 70. So think about the challenges there, and you understand how, in terms of creativity at that point, it's just keeping people alive. So we had amazing shoot an amazing experience. And, um, I learned a lot about my own transition and how it's sort of culminated in this experience because before we actually stood there on a set and before we actually looked through a monitor and look to reframe, we were in pre production for a year and 1/2. So the writing process, the raising money process, the, uh, casting all of the things that we had to do before we actually roll the camera and sore frame. So there was that part of the process was the best part of the education from me. Being on set was also amazing, but I've been on set before, but I've never been in a writer's room before and have never been in the script meeting before. before any of this process, not a script meeting for a feature film. So all of the things that I got to do over that the course of the year and 1/2 prep to get into this first feature has led to these experiences. And also, um, the thing about understanding what I brought to the table and watching it play out in real life. And I'll show you, um, this is a crazy set up, a nears Devin, my longtime friend and collaborator. So this is a crazy set up we did for a big Thanksgiving shoot, and it's just a test shot that wasn't the surface or anything like that. But I bring this up because I thought about this picture when I stood in this room, and we let this room for a shot that you'll see later on. But the reality was that the techniques that I use toe, light food and table top were blown up to whatever the 200% 300% 500% whatever this represents. But I'm standing there looking at it going. Boy, that that looked familiar and it made me feel really good, right? It just It made me feel so much more confident and comfortable when I watched it play out in real life. Now shooting, lighting for photography and lighting for film clearly or different. But lighting for food photography and lighting for film are not as different as you think. And I'm gonna talk about that later because it's really, really interesting, because when you're talking about trying toe light, a three dimensional situation that's film. Most of the time when you're lighting a person in a portrait situation or you're taking a landscape photo, it's fairly two dimensional. But when you're shooting food on the table, particularly from a lower angle, it's always loud look, three dimensional. That always has to be depth. And that was a really big lesson for me watching these gaffer's light and grip this out. And then I'm saying to myself, I I belong here, I get it. So that was a really, really great learning experience for me, and, you know, another one like this is a little bit more contained, right? But it's so crafted, and that's exactly what we do on a table top, right? You have the big key light. You gotta bounce card. You got a neg, Phil. And all of a sudden it looks just like what you would do if you had food on that table instead of a person. Right? And I have a lit a list of things later on we're gonna talk about in terms off. What are the things that are similar about lighting for food and lighting for people in a in a film setting? So that was very exciting to me. Um, so I'm gonna take a seat for this part eight. I would love to. Yeah, you've talked a lot in the past about using photos, how you use photos to tell a story. How does your mindset of telling stories with video differ? How's that? I think in terms of the out, the goals at the end really matter to me and also had a transition in between those scenes with something I never had to think about before how to get in and out of a scene. It's like OK, well, it's not this as simple as telling a narrative story with five pictures. Now you have to make those pictures move each one of those moves and every all of the camera language has to speak to the viewer. You have to combine all of those things and then transition them together. I think the Link Prada linkage process of moving storytelling was probably the thing I had to learn the most about because I knew how to make a frame. I just didn't know how to connect it to the next frame. And other than just go bang bang, which you can't do in film, it has to flow. So it's about that that I think that was probably one of the the bigger transitional elements of learning how to do this.