Lessons

Lesson Info

Video Fusion

I'm gonna close with video fusion and I'm gonna try to be quick about it because I'd rather end and answer some questions one of the things that we were mentioning the tour one of the pods that we'll be teaching is video fusion so if if you like this brandon who does all of our video work and creates all the awesome stuff that you're going to see he is actually teaching that class and he's a great instructor so this is definitely a springboard so video fusion why should you make the jump why is it something that you need teo you know eat meat even consider because I know when originally dslr cameras came out with video capture a lot of people we're completely turned off and I don't know if you know the history of that it was totally accidental it wasn't when the first this first happened it wasn't that somebody said hey we should put video in here it was really truly one of those well we could do that too it might as well throw it in there it was like a bonus kind of item well very qui...

ckly those cap capture devices cannon I think being the lead in this industry uh very quickly all of the sudden cinematographers and videographers we're looking at these little captured of us going no way this is faster better cleaner easier to manage and so all of a sudden there was this huge demand now the capture devices that were originally that originally came out weren't as evolved as they are now I have the cannon mark threes and oh my gosh you know everybody always ask me is it worth the upgrade I cannot even begin to tell you just the focus uh points that are now in the camera you know used to be you had six and now it's like thirty two or something crazy like that it's unbelievable somebody accidentally the other day I used the mark threes and I've only used them for a month and somebody grabbed a mark too and put it on the camera and with it and it's a great camera I'm not not it's an incredible camera but as soon as I lost all my tons of focal points I was like oh my gosh you know I can't even like all of a sudden I could not use that camera because I had had something better so so that original technology although it was accidental it was not evolved toe where what it was photographers and videographers especially cinematographers caught on really quickly the power and they found workarounds for problems like audio and things like that but now the camera manufacturers had have realised that there's a demand there and they have absolutely the mark three is just brilliant so we'll get to that let's start way back in the beginning now my first attempt this is kind of funny because my first attempt in video was long before dslr tze had video this is way back when the first little point and shoot cameras came out with video capture so and then you remember it was what was it one one met megapixel or something horrible but I saw that and I worked with a photographer friend and he was he's very innovative and he had been talking about implementing video and I thought well that's kind of a cool concept so we got these little point and shoot cameras and you can imagine we go out with their big professional equipment and this was we started with high school seniors are goal was weed start doing the session with a regular camera then we pull out this little point shoot we say okay now do me a favor just spin and dance and jump and you know here we have the sole tz camera and we would tell them don't even like think about it it's just just trust me on this and you know that was what we would do and it was it was kind of awkward but the product that we produced at the time there wasn't an emoto there were weren't software companies that you could implement video but I'm moving on the imac happened tohave an application to create slide shows and at that time we were creating slide shows I believe it was my movie and one of their slideshow templates had the ability to take a very short like ten second video clip and you could drop it in at the intro the play page and so we started doing this and I'll show you exactly what this looked like this is one of the original this is a little point she video and you can see the senior walks in she does a little spin she walks out of camera that's it that was my intro to video and I cannot tell you how people's minds were blown with this little I mean this girl goes over and over this all she's gonna do here is come in and spin and wait but this just had a huge impact what happened is we were producing dvds for the client's slide shows they would come in they would sit down and all of a sudden this would come up and you would see people go oh my gosh that is so cool and this little five second ten second clip was selling slide shows for us because it was it was movement and I caught on that people loved animation they love the movement they love to see that that that's like really being there and so it's really cold the problem with it is it was a huge learning curve for are not a learning curve it was a huge work flow issue I had to remember to take a point and shoot when I got back at it download both cards I had to remember that little movie file I had to make sure that I put it in the slide show and the wow factor was greatly loved it but very quickly like anything that has a heavy work flow it was slowly sort of put by the wayside and we just there wasn't a day that we said we weren't gonna do it we just got lazy and stop doing it because we were again this is way years before dslr camera so we kind of put it too bed now originally the first camera that had video capture we ii work with cannon as an explorer of light and so I was very honored that they selected me to have one of the first ones in fact it was the first one that ever came into the country it came from japan and so it was shipped to read to me directly from japan no instruction manual whatsoever and all of the functions were in japanese so I had to kind of guest to make my way through like I think that looks like this and I think that and eventually I found accidentally how to switch hit the english but my first video capture I was just messing around and I didn't know where the on button was I had to keep pushing things until I heard a click and a shutter and things like that so first thing I actually remember I wish I had that I can't find it I found it a couple months ago but I wish I had it because I have the actual first video footage and here I am the seventy two hundred millimeter lens and you can see me panning around my office and all you could hear is oh wow oh wow oh wow and you could see me zooming out and I you can actually feel me getting so excited about the fact that I this is when you look through us uh lens a camera lens and you look at the world we have big video cameras and we have camera lenses but when you could combine both of those and have the control that a handheld camera device a lens gives you and all the depth that ah long lens give you it was just incredible so I was you know messing around with us and playing around having a great time very quickly with this capture device I saw this opportunity to tell a story to actually create stories for my clients and now I have this tool that was going to allow me to do this now I I could never at that time have imagined how far we would actually take this how we've now turned these these products into very sellable items this is becoming a part of our income where originally it was just like let's wow people and make it cool now it's like hey there is a lot of money to be made here and if you are a studio who wants to branch out and find you know things and we'll talk about a lot of things that could bring you money in the slow season there is just so much here to be said so my first session though here I have this camera that was in japanese that I don't know what I'm doing but I know that there's something there and I'm totally clueless but I'm just so excited to use this video so I'm gonna go through this is the actual footage from my first session now the first thing I will tell you is that no clue what I was doing so I'm gonna show you the mistakes because honestly some of these all of you will make because it's an evolution process it's a matter of wear photographers so when we grab our capture devices we treat them like like cameras instead of video cameras so the first thing I did and this is just a little video footage you're going to see that I rotated the camera like you you'll see as it comes out so here I am it turns out that when you rotate the camera obviously that's what kind of video footage you're gonna get this is the actual first time I'm still this is still in japanese I'm just trying to figure out how to make this happen and I am struggling teo to make this happen so this one I didn't even notice I'm just shooting the whole video you know falling off the cliff here so then uh after this one of the things that I immediately assumed was that you could take pictures wall shooting video that just was like the coolest thought that we could get video and you could take pictures but the capture devices do not allow you to do that you have to do one or the other so when I'm shooting just so you know with video fusion when I'm shooting video I'm not shooting stills as well when I'm shooting stills I'm not capturing video we'll talk about how we play that out so you can see the little breaks in this video you're going to see where I'm photographing and you kind of see where it stops down and kind of shutters there when I actually snapped the shot that little hiccup right there is what you get when you push the shudder when you're actually filming video and so again I didn't know that so I shot an awful lot of video with these little hiccups so that was the first thing that I learned is you cannot shoot stills while you're shooting video you have to do one or the other and then it really kept going back to you as a photographer you know we shoot orientation based on subject not based on on video so I was constantly shooting like this is the same day first day I mean I was constantly shooting everything I wish you could hear the audio cause on this one this is the exact moment where I realized what I was doing because the actual voice you'll hear me say okay I'm gonna owe you know what I'm gonna go ahead and turn this vertical right now because you know because he ice realized holy cow this is not gonna work so this is the evolution I had done the fairies now I moved on to this little angel this is the exact moment that I went ok we could never do I'm sorry we never do vertical again and then the one thing that I will tell you that was my biggest mistakes mistake is that I got this capture device and I am one of those just you know jump and build the parachute on the way down kind of people so of course I took this camera right into paying clients and started shooting video and I was so focused on the tool and what was happening I really wasn't focused on the clients which is not fair to my clients because obviously they're investing money and the one thing I will tell you it's very important if you're going to swing into video you do need to practice practice practice and you need to do that with people outside of your client base because you know little things like this particular one wings don't grow out of your head they're actually supposed to come out of your back and I shook the whole session with donkey years coming out of this child because my priority was video I was so focused on figuring that out so I showed that not humiliate myself but just to let you know that there is a process you know with it with anything that's a learning curve you get I do things the wrong way lots that's pretty much you know and that's why I teach is because you know if you if you make a lot of mistakes you kind of want to help people not have to go that route so just little things like placement of wings and things like that that's where um you know I was making a lot of mistakes in the last thing I'm gonna show you is a little video clip because this is also another thing that when you go to video weah's photographers we love the zoom lenses and we love compression we love playing with them but you'll see in this video you could see that I'm rotating the camera but I'm also zooming in and out as I would normally but what and that's a stop you can see the stops there when this stills when I actually pushed the button but you can see when you zoom in on a camera uh that's a regular traditional lens there you're missing the fluidity that you would have in a video camera videocameras air built to have that slow transition where here it's our very jinky jerky kind of you know a hard transition on top of adding the stills that I'm shooting this is just a mess so nothing good came out of this video other than something to make fun of myself for years to come but otherwise you can see it just doesn't work I'm missing the shots I'm focusing on the tool and not what I'm supposed to be doing um still got beautiful images but I feel like this this was kind of a fail however in that siri's by going back and looking at this video video footage it was like a little check box of that's stupid and your stupid there and that was really dumb and I think I knocked out like ten things you're not supposed to do in the first two sessions so damage done but at least I least I understood my learning curve my favorite part about this was nobody because I didn't have the instructions told me that you can't your cameras that you lose the auto focus function when you're using video capability so your camera doesn't auto focus so if you really were paying attention nothing in that video was focus because I didn't realize that you had to manually focus and that is important when you're using a dslr you have to manually focus when you're in the video application well nobody ever told me that and so I was shooting video long time that was out of focus on dh I was actually teaching about video and somebody had you know I said something about if you're having trouble with focused on it and somebody raised their hand and they were they said something to the effect of well you know that you you can't use auto focus right and I'm like oh yeah of course I know that I didn't know that because I felt so stupid but I had to totally play along I'm like okay one more check box stupid I got that one down so you know it took me I mean I was stupid video a lot longer think happens on brandon who actually knows how to focus and knew that but some of these things like either you're gonna make a mistake and figure it out or it's kind of nice for somebody just to tell you because when we did the video tour this is long after I had learned video it was interesting that you know when I would say that to an audience I would see you know a hundred people two hundred people not in there like oh I didn't know that so you start to have those connected peace is there a lot of things I didn't know when I first started with video a stability how important it is to shoot on a tripod handholding with video is really not an option for ninety nine percent of the things that we do so if you're not a tripod user mono pod user that's the first thing you're gonna have to look at if you want high quality video and you're gonna see my progression of how we did really crappy videos all the way to what we consider high end production now stability is so important I understand the manual focus now audio was the second thing that I knew nothing about and the original dslr capture devices audio was like it was like a third tier thing of okay you know we gotta put some sound in there to a very crappy you know on camera might just really wasn't so now the brand new mark threes they have total sound capabilities you could hook headphones and I mean it is mind blowing I'll let you guys play with the tomorrow but just from the yeah she's like you can't take one home but it will not be apprised but uh just again I am blown away I'll never go I don't I don't know how they could come up with something better how can and could do that but I'm very very happy with that so audio problems have now been solved but we found workarounds for those audio problems and we'll talk about those as well then of course the advanced things that I did not know where like the dslr functions crop factors how the difference in crapping between lenses and video and then of course the really in depth filters styles picture styles um and then of course the back end which is the workflow in now we have trained lots and lots of students how to do the work flow in do I do it I don't have to because I have associates that do do it but I learned enough to know how to do it the basics but after watching students I wish I had a copy of this video that one of my students did she did such an amazing job and she said that she had bought the video kid and she had made this whole commercial and I was just blown away because sometimes like when we produce these things I know that there's a lot of content in there but I hope that people like them when I see success I'm always amazed that you know that somebody could actually you know listen to me or something like that I don't know um most of the tools and the words in the products that we are going to talk about they're all familiar two photographers I think that's the biggest thing is people get really nervous like it's a whole separate thing we as artists are already dealing in all of those elements the lighting concepts exposures color compensations are all very familiar so we have a huge advantage because it's not a learning curve like as portrait artist in fact I have had so many video people tell me that photographers are actually lucky that go into video because one of the hardest things is understanding lighting and composition and that's what we do that's how we make our living so they we find that that dumb that's good for us and honestly the biggest skill set that you need with video is relating to people I mean honestly when you're creating the types of things we're talking about it's that emotional connection whereas photographers we don't get the shot unless we emotionally connected people so we're weak we've broken down as photographers we've broken down that wall that barrier so for us to get that communications is actually a lot easier so um I don't think you need to be a cinematographer this is not something that you have to think like I am not suggesting that everybody out there should pick up a camera and run video but you already know posing in lighting you understand composition and you know relationships so it is something if I could tell you that you could add ten to fifty thousand dollars to your bottom line if you just produced some commercials in your slow season you would consider it I think because for us on dh that's what it took it took you know selling a few jobs and going wow that's that's pretty amazing in fact the wedding I'm shooting in a couple weeks I'm not even shooting it's a still photographer we're going in his videographers because I love that I'm so passionate about life and movement and people now that when I had this opportunity I could have had the stills but we actually recommended another photographer and I want to go in and create the story I will still shoot stills to incorporate in but it's interesting how do I want to be a videographer no but if the price is right and if the client is right I want to create the most premium package that I can so now let's go to the evolution so now we wanted to start to implement it into the studio we've gone to the learning curve and we thought okay how can we make this a sellable items well what I started doing is implementing video within my sessions now how I do it is number one I never tell the clients I'm shooting video if I can help it because I want to have that element of surprise that wow factor so when I'm shooting a typical session let's say I have a five year old little girl it will be ok sweetie go ahead and stand there all I'll check the lighting I'll get everything set up and I'll have her jump and dance and sing I might do twenty second thirty second clip of video and then I'll have her do the same thing and catch capture the stills there are some transitions though you're gonna have to change the maya so's you may have to change your appetizer apertures so you become very cognizant of how to make that transition if you practice it becomes very fluid so it's ok I'm set up for video bam bam bam re meter I'm resetting and now I can capture that but when I do this I don't say I'm shooting video hold on a second I just they think I'm shooting stills the whole time yes so I was gonna kind of ask before does the aperture and whatever have any kind of bearing on the video which I was thinking it didn't but it actually does mean it doesn't mean like if I'm shooting an effort on video I can still shoot a deaf aid on stills but it may be that I have to change the isos um you know to give myself more light for video video tends to need more life so it really depends having a meter to me is really important understanding how to meet her and how to control light in theory you would think that okay turn on the video and the lights the same as the stills but it's not there is a loss of light when it comes to video carries a light meter ring up the same correct you leave can you see what you can in the video on the camera you can see the difference in lighting a curl rack and we want to teach that you need to do it with a meter so that you I believe in meters because it's not I know I could meet her off the back of the camera and that's actually the fastest way to do it but what a handheld meter does for you is it actually turns your brain into a human meter after you meet her for so long your brain starts to go I bet this is gonna be f ate at s o two hundred and you start to connect to the lighting but it's through that training um that I think you get that so yes you could do in the camera I'm a meter person by trade just because I think it teaches better but you could do it either way so we started implementing little clips of videos and they were always in surprise element so a client would come in we get in a little five year old spinning and dancing and then they would come in and we would take an emoto and we would add they allow you now to add little clips of videos so we would add those little clips within the show clients would sit down and all of a sudden there's this huge uh oh my gosh the co cute and there was this big you know this big wow factor now they're gonna ask you if you sell this and we're gonna address that later now this particular I'm gonna show you this is an early evolution this is me practicing and this is one of those that I decided one day that I wanted to do a birthday cake session those air very popular we talked about him last year now they're huge sellers it's about a four hundred dollars add on sale on top of the regular sale so I got up and we set up our white background we set up for studio strobes and I was going to do this birthday cake session surprise mom well I got two cameras two tripods side by side I was gonna use one for stills one for video not tell mom and totally surprised them well this is again one of those learning curves that I always shoot the birthday cake sessions on high key background with studio strobes well when the client walked in and this baby is here all of a sudden I realized you can't mix studio strobes with video because first of all when you fire the strobes they're going to disrupt the video and they create kind of like a freezing motion number one number two the lighting style would be totaled the light style would be a total different because I would be using natural light for the video because you can't use drugs and then strobes created different color of light color temperature of light so the color temperatures weren't gonna match up so here I've got mom and dad and everybody standing there and I'm kind of in panic mode without saying anything I told my sister I said no you know what put the hiking back around away put the lights away and I said we're gonna do this natural so I've never done a birthday cake natural because they just had always done it one way so real quickly there's this little fence I had I flipped it on the floor it's not I would not say this is the best choice and backgrounds and everything but they're already in the room and I have twenty seconds to make some changes to make this happen so we went ahead and we shot this now there was a point I don't tell them I'm shooting video but either dad or mom and I can't remember now had said why are you using two cameras and I said I'm just trying something for fun I did not say what it was because I wanted to see the reaction so of course we do this siri's and don't say anything to them and another thing I should tell you is the reason I had two cameras normally I would do dance around be cute video dance around be cute stills back and forth but I realized when I went into this with the birthday cake you can't say okay and I'll stop do that again it's like you got five minutes to get this whole thing so I realized that I would have to have two cameras makes happened so for me it was just a creative exercise I just wanted to see what would happen so two cameras one is running video one I'm capturing stills and we're telling the story well mom and dad come in and you're only going to see the end clip of this but before we did the birthday cake we had all the regular traditional outfits the cute one year old birthday stuff I'm just gonna show you the telling because there was no video in the first part and then all the sudden this is what the client all the sun and this is what they see these I told world so silly girl don't you cry everything's better when you're here by my side just blue skies as your worries die so dry those eyes because everything's better when you're here by my side no more trying times no more hiding those sweets little secrets and dreams because everything's better with your hair by my side um that little slide show with a little bit of music I was in the room watching this client of course you see them go through the you know they're watching the pretty slideshow on all the son of the wow factor is just magnified when they see something like that so of course they get all excited and you know it's funny that particular session of the very end of the session the dad turned to me and he said oh my gosh that's amazing I can't believe we didn't even know you did then I said yeah he's not cool and he said yeah do you sell that and I looked at him and I said actually we don't I said however you can get it as a complimentary gift at certain purchase points now you know I'm huge we'll talk later about bonus items and how to do this now the reason I said no we don't sell it is because I don't want to sell that that's me animal does a great product but it's a low end product with lo rez files that don't have all the artwork and everything so in order for me to give all of the images from a siri's what kind of price point would you put that can you sell one of those for two thousand dollars no way I mean but it's all your work everything you did is in there so what is the breaking point for me it's my images have value and I'm not going to give them away um you know I'm not gonna give away at a low price point just allow people on the other side of it I want people to get that in their hands because I want them to show it off and post it on facebook and whatever they want to do to get my name out there so there is value there so the bonus structure and we'll talk about that and I believe the third day is that for this dad it was okay so what do you have to do to get it then and we and I told him I said it certain price points we offer these as bonus items and you can actually get a complimentary I said the value on it is you know when I stayed a value three ninety nine or eight ninety nine or something ridiculous I don't want them to buy it but I want them to get it for free because that means they're going to spend a couple of thousand dollars to get it and you would be surprised how many people will push a fifteen hundred dollars sales to two thousand just to get that that little dvd or to get that little piece of history so so I saw families you know I watched a new way to take people's breath away I've been doing slide presentations for probably fifteen years now I was way back in slide the purser's to slide projectors so I mean I've been at this a very very long time I know the hardest ways you could do it I know it's very easy to do it now but I also went through the progress of when we went digital like the wow factor is good but now everybody expects that it's not as I used to be the on ly person that was projecting and it was it gave us this presence of wow this is really nice and formal everybody doesn't now some version or another and so this was my thing to separate myself and it worked really well now the next reason I want you to start thinking about video capture is how can you use it to promote yourself you guys have access to facebook and youtube and all your blogging creating your own commercial is not that complicated I promise you we talked in the bellies of babies about the santa charity but having a camera on hand and capturing some video of some of these things that you're doing whether it's a limited edition special or you know santa charity to grab two minutes of footage of you shooting or you know of of a child being photographed or something like that all of a sudden you can create these comprehensive pieces I'm going to go ahead and show you a sample of a commercial that this is just a little quickie that we shot during our santa charity wait I totally love santa larry oh my god that's santa larry by the way and um he's been are so gosh hold on he's been our santa for since the beginning of this special this special was actually created when my son I was born my second son was born he was very sick and we didn't think we were going to keep him be able to keep him and so I talked about this last time but basically we created this after his first year when he came off oxygen week uh sorry way created this hold on wheels on the bus go way created this special to thank the hospital for being there for him because by the time he was just under eighteen months he was taken off oxygen and we realize that he was going to make it and it was just a tremendous relief and I promised myself I would spend the rest of my life uh thinking the hospital so that original charity was created as a thank you to them we do it every year um we raised tremendous amounts of money over the years but I always say you know it's we make the donation but I truly believe that it's all of my clients that make impossible and the reason I get so emotional is those children that you see in there they've been photographed with santa larry since they were babies I mean everybody grows up with santa larry it we don't call him santo larry by the way but he's really he's the real sand I'm not kidding you and he's just the most incredible he's in his eighties he lives in alaska he comes down to do this and um he's just amazing and and that event is so riel uh even tow me sorry I believe in santa claus ok on it's just it's really incredible my own children have been raised since nick was born uh send has been a part of their life and it's just been really incredible so so each year I mean we've raised as muchas I think our best year was like eleven thousand something dollars but we also had six photographers and multiple studios and sometimes it breaks my heart that I can't do you no ten thousand dollars a year but I also realize that I have peace and time with the people I love and it's remember its sacrifice and choice and that's you know those are the traits that made but overall over the years on we've donated probably I believe over one hundred thousand dollars teo those types of events just in that realm so I think it's something that you know I'm very proud of us well so when you start these things uh they start his ideas and concepts and if you believe in them they become very very big real things so that particular little video clip was something that we just did that we threw it up on facebook and youtube and it's neat to see the client's response in tow have people you know talk about how they feel about it and these little commercials if you're coming to the tour you gonna learn all about b roll but all those you know those pictures of trees and all that stuff that's that's your saving grace and you're gonna learn the b roll is critical in what you two when you create these so from those commercials we started producing then I started my wheels you know me and marketing everything is about how can I turn this into something awesome and so I started working on marketing concepts how could we tell stories for clients like the commercial only make it for a client and we came up with a sweet moments campaign and sweet moments was our was we have several of them the senior version is my story the children's version is sweet moments sweet moments is adding video into the session my story is actually a much more comprehensive uh full you know telling a senior story and what's what's important to them so so this campaign came out of that and just like any campaign it's fully comprehensive with facebook and social media and posters and everything tied into it but after we had some experience and I felt like we were at the level that we could produce thes we produce the marketing campaign and we started offering this as a service now we learned ah lot about this because you know when you go into producing video you have these amazing ideas like uh one of the things we did for high school seniors as we would interview them and we would have you know all this philosophical stuff come out of these seniors in it you have to prepare them and we could talk a lot about how to make that happen but the bottom line is you know you get these really powerful stories which will show you one but so then I wanted to do these for children I thought how cool to give you no children this this particular things so this is actually one of our first attempts at photographing doing a video of children and I had this wonderful client that they tried for fourteen years to have children and couldn't and couldn't couldn't and and then through help they were able to get pregnant only that pregnant with four children so that quads and of course these are miracle babies after fourteen years of trying you can imagine how excited they were and we met them right at this junction when the babies were brand new and so we've been photographing them since birth and now they're five in this particular video there five years old and in addition to those four um the the dad had a daughter from his first marriage that had a daughter that she couldn't take care of so he actually adopted her so they have five under the age of at the age of five I think therefore in this video but the whole point is you know I photographed him for years and years and years and dad came to me he said I want to do something really special I want to do something uh for my wife I mean you know here is she went from no children toe five at one time you can imagine the stress in the chaos and and it was really cool so here we wanted to produce this and he had kind of heard about the video we wanted to produce something special for him well we kind of got a rude awakening cause I had this vision of interviewing the kids and getting all these you know really in depth thoughts well when you're interviewing five year old you say so what do you love about my mommy you know what does your mommy do because she loves you band aids you know I mean it was like the's interviews were one word interview so all of a sudden we've got this whole set up we've taken all this I mean we're not getting anywhere so you kind of learn to ad lib like originally we had not planned on putting dad in the show but I needed you start toe be a problem solver and so we you know we interviewed dad a little bit so he could create the content and then the kids are adorable and this is early but what you're seeing here is the evolution you're actually seeing how we're getting better and better and better s so let's take a look at this video hi honey the kids and I wanted to do something really special free for mother's day hey I hope you enjoy what we've come up with wait my baby me you play outside with home go to the party she gave you cario kiss me hug me kiss me she tells me to go on tv dandy I'm taking my cliff she makes many faces because she hey it's mother's day and you know there's just so many things you know about a mother that nobody else could do but a mother I just want you to know that you were just one of the best moms that our kids could ever be blessed to have waited so long to have children have all these children all at once and I know it's very difficult struggle of times but I managed to keep it all together and keep us all together because that's what moms do you you really are a hub of our family and I know you don't think that anybody notices all the things that you do for us once too often taken for granted because it's just expected of them to do all these things you just do it without ever complaining and do it so gracefully just hope that is the kids get older and years go by we can just continue to grow as a family and you know our love for you discontinues to grow to just do so much for us and we are so thankful and you are awesome awesome way love you oh and by the way honey I think the kids think we need to go to disney land again no all right so um you know what's funny is when we produce that I thought was the most amazing thing I've ever done now I'm looking at going on but emotionally I know you can hear it in dad's voice you can hear how important these kids are to him and how much this really means to him if you could have seen his wife when she saw for the first time talk about a puddle on the floor for him to acknowledge how important she is because you can imagine with that many children life is very busy and chaotic and I'm sure is a mother we all know that you even as a father and getting acknowledged is not always an option but you know tohave her husband take the time to create something so special that was just for but you know when your kids are in that age and they're driving her crazy she could go back and watch that over and over and over and I think you know and remind herself why we have all these wonderful children so when we did that honestly I remember thinking that was like I could never do anything were amazing than that and now I just I look at that and from a from a production standpoint there's a million things that are wrong with it and I just I think we've gotten so much further but it's it's still to that family it's the most beautif thing they have that we have to remember so the question is can you really do this now if I had two days and believe me there I'm sure there are better instructors for video out there braden's excellent he will he'll be on tour I love the artistic side of it I like to play I could do the back inside of it but I liked other people to do that if I can you can learn this it's something you definitely could do um I feel like it's something you can't ignore anymore in fact as ironic as it was I was doing some research last night like I needed to be doing that but I was reading about the world social media it was just getting a little more my head wrapped around a few things and it was talking about video application and it made it I mean these thieves were some surveys and cem to statistics that made it very clear that even the world the world of text is going away we will live in a video world very soon where there won't be anything to read because it's ten times faster to get your message out by saying your message and when you really think about that and you think about your jobs how can you say your message better how what better than having a father tell his wife that she's the most important thing in the world and what better toe have children tell their mother why they love them and and you know it's something that there's just so much power there and from what I don't have time to teach you is that commercial aspect where we took that and we evolved it into looking at our client base and seeing things like we have orthodontists and dentists and doctors and we started doing video commercials we have one up dr holt that we produced a video where he's talking about his practice and that engagement because he's looking for clients to how do you have a pick a dentist well obviously if you go to dr holt site and dr holt tells you why he loves what he does and tells you why those smiles are important and literally emotionally takes you through the process of when you're young how it can affect who you are and by having a beautiful smile you could be a beautiful person you want to go to dr hole because you know he really cares about the people that he works with so so that emotional connection is totally next level and I think for industry it's something that we have to consider um and do in this industry this was one of the quotes I read moving pictures of the new products the future is now we must embrace this change or we will be left behind as photographers as photographers we have a better chance of success this is not doom and gloom this is not you have to be a bit of videographer or die trying um what I'm looking for is a spark of creativity I'm looking for the there's only and this whole audience there's just a few of you that are going to say holy cow I could make money with this two years ago I could have never imagined what I know now it took me just so you know it took me about a year of evolution of really trying hard to understand the tools to overcome it and that's the number one fear is the learning curve but guess what guys photography was a learning curve photo shop was a big learning curve you need to treat video instead of being a big a big ugly monster under the bed just treat it like another learning curve put a year into it little by little as you go from a little clip in an emoto video to a small presentation to your own studio like practice on your own studio commercials to something that's totally sellable that product that you just saw that starts at two thousand dollars it's twenty five hundred dollars for what that just to start right there for that video and that didn't include the ad on sales and the stills and all that stuff so there's really truly a lot of potential there I'm going to show you I'm not sure what comes up yet I believe it does I'm gonna show you one more this is the last show I'm gonna show you and then we will cut for the day but this is a year ago so this is to kind of show you the evolution of look att the creativity the use of templates the strength because tomorrow or the next day I'm going to show you what we consider our best piece of the year and you'll see how far we've taken it but I at least want you to see this is a year ago so you can kind of see where we've uh where we've evolved teo I've been raised around horses all my life my grandma had racehorses since I was pretty much born and she was probably one of the top riders in colorado I had my first of course that I didn't really have a ride but you're mine and I go in russian and ride on and sometimes when I was probably like eight and I go right on in doctor as I could I never really had time to like go out there riding but I was always like mom when can we go riding when can we go riding woke up london yes daily from myself from the city that way you know I got killed I got some pictures on my phone new names and numbers that I don't know I just two places like I been rode in tonight that's way more time at the barn then I do with my house and all my friends were like what are you doing this weekend riding yeah and your point is that's what I do every weekend wait when I ride it probably one of the coolest sensations I've ever felt it I think the thing I like about it the most of it to be good at it at least you have to have a connection to your horse especially if the competition is in the show I love all my boys so they're like my friend ugo I got him and my lord he's definitely cocky but he's still very sweet do just about anything to do but he loves to tell you when you're wrong you do something wrong use the wrong like signals to come to goa direction that's something we'll definitely let you know but I built a strong bond and over the last couple months wait but he definitely is the suite of course that anybody has ever met that they tell me that he doesn't have a mean bone in his body no way you can't hear anything else around you all of you here is your horses footsteps your horse is breathing just like your your head down when you're like actually jumping it's like you're up their new thing and it's just like you and the horse just like you're flying horses in life they definitely were like together a lot a lot more than people were thinking a lot more than I ever thought basically I'm their mom so I have to like make sure they have blankets in the winter so that they stay warm make sure they have like all their medicine and that's what they need and make sure they'll get exercise every day and get new shoes I mean because of them I think I've become a better person and they've wears to complain about um so you can kind of see that for us it was a matter of way haven't evolution going you can see we're get the products are getting better and better and of course um you know tomorrow or the next day I'm going to show you sort of where we've taken that to a session like that as I said we have several when I come back this month we have one I think it's a gymnast and another one that's just out of the lake I think it has something to do with water the session just a book it is twenty five hundred dollars these are our five to ten thousand dollars high school senior cells do we do tons of them absolutely not we don't even want to the production side of this we want to make sure we do high quality so you know if you can get four or five or six of these a season that's to me a good income and it's something that people wouldn't invest if you didn't have that products which is something to think about their this life is yours take the power to choose take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of nature take the power to control your um what does that say you're all I think you have to say oven from here it looks like control your oven in your life no one else can do it for you to take the power to make your life happy I will leave you on that note and we can answer some questions great way only questions the night's a couple just going back to the video fusion yeah you um generally have like a script that you would have friends seniors fill out that is such a good question and again I wish you know on all of these things I always say I wish I had one more hour to tell you everything and it's not that I'm trying to hold back I just I'm trying to cram every thought concept I can't so the answer to that is yes with seniors we absolutely have a script in fact for us we tell them it's like homework you need we tell him your show's gonna be a cz good as the effort you put into it if you if we give you a list of twenty questions and who won the video kit did you win the big you have those questions so you'll it's it's a list of sliding here live bodies their questions that we ask the scene we basically say I haven't answered all of them but pick a few that you really want to talk about like you know what was your greatest experience in high school what what's the one thing your what what did you get in trouble and each child will pick their own thing but they will sort of emulate if you give it to them it's home work and you say be prepared um and have what you're going to say be prepared because otherwise before we had scripts he said a senior down and we'd say okay go ahead and tell us what was your greatest experience in high school then go um um uh you know and we just got this horrified deer in the headlights look so we learned to script the kids where with the children there you saw that was our first learning curve because we've been doing all these beautiful emotional seniors and we get these kids were like you know what does your mom do when your said mandates you know it was like you just couldn't you couldn't draw anything out of them so scripts do work for some things when we're doing commercial work however we do not have a script because we find that there's that icebreaker like if we were interviewing you were an orthodontist the first part you're gonna be a little stiff and a little uncomfortable and then what we're gonna do it's kind of a formula in the sense that we know the types of questions they're gonna ask but the more you talk to somebody the more they relax the more it becomes conversational and they forget the cameras so in that the commercial side of it we don't use scripts because we know that if we use the script they stay that wall stays up of oh I'm doing a job here if we just sit back and say okay just tell me about your job what do you love about it okay and you know and laugh and converse with them all the sudden you get these incredible clips that aren't so that are more candid that aren't so canned which is really nice so yes we do it's not that hard exactly and that's what b roll we're gonna learn a lot about be real if you come to this tour all those little you know panels of different things and that's where if they make a mistake you just slowly fade in something background ish and you're gonna have a strong presentation so hopefully that helps him I have a comment in the chat room from christina strong photography who said sandy is amazing she was my inspiration to really become a photographer she took photos of my son when he was born family photos and maternity photos so nice big shout out thank you that was exciting all right we have several people asking this question just pick one here um it's tammy snyder would like to know what you're using to put the videos to get their final cut my movie finally we've used everything but final count for the big three presentations that we do but an emoto for the simple people air starting out I really recommend just looking at an emoto and putting those little video clips in because there's no editing it's clip your video dropping in and there's not a huge thought thought process but when you evolve into producing something that's gonna have that type of content then you're gonna have to hit that learning curve with final cut or something like that but it's honestly if you dedicate I say a year it's six months of learning and six months of doing and I think that's you know you'll get there for sure and so this video that last video we watched this final cut yes it wass correct thank you and a lot of like you saw those stills with the moving images those are just templates and they're for cell just like you you can do has templates their video companies that had video templates which again any time you can get something one hundred dollar investment in a template you can recycle over and over and over again and it's gonna pay for itself every time so those are the those are definitely some of the things I'd recommend cool um another little quick question about that mary from costa rica what would you say the average length of your little video clips are well in the animal toes it's just ten seconds ten seconds ten seconds but in a feature like that it's five to eight minutes we feel like that's about enough time ten minutes would be a long one because remember these air emotional connected pieces but you don't want to bore anybody and have them you know go to the family reunion and have to watch the really long video however I produced one of my mother in law and it was ah lot more comprehensive because I personally knew the people that were going to see it and we were having her tell her children's life story so this is something that long after she's gone you know our kids and that's going to be their direct connection that's their mother talking to them about them and it it was probably a twenty something minute piece but for that particular case that's what it works but with commercial work honestly two minutes two to five minutes would be enough for commercial if you if somebody was hiring you five minutes is actually pushing it if you were a web browser looking for an orthodontist you're not going to spend five minutes listen damn so it is important to learn power and those connective you need a couple of strong statement so that the viewers going to say oh he's nice oh he's skilled oh he's you know a good guy and that's your closer right there so depending on what it is is depending will depend on how long it will be okay last question of the day we're bringing it full circle back to the beginning ok lot of people have been talking about you commenting on being an introvert um so cat tankersley photography from plano texas asked how do you overcome being an introvert in a business like this I'm one as well it isthe such a fake it till you make it honestly I have suffered just years of you know painful experiences and a lot of it comes with age and maturity because remember I started at seventeen and although I believed I could do what I was very afraid of everything but there are two ways you can do it you could do it the wrong way which I kind of did which was suffer and suffer and suffer and then lose a lot of time and lose a lot of perspective or you have to just really force yourself to overcome the fear confidence comes from within there's no you can't buy it you can't find it you can't learn it it just comes from within within you and what I found that the driving force the reason I could stand and talk to thousands of people and teach photography is I'm truly passionate about it it comes from here and so it's just it's it's like breathing it just has to happen where you know if you were to talk to me about mah jong or whatever one of those tupperware parties or whatever I wouldn't have a clue so I think it's a matter of once you khun look somebody in the eye and tell them how you feel they connect to you on that level and having something that you believe in something that is personal to you like photography we're very blessed we have a job that we can look people in the eyes and emulate passion you know any other job in the world you don't have a mean there's very few jobs that really give us the tool that we have for so those give you millions of introverts out there like me just understand that if you're passionate about your craft it will come to you but if time is important to you and people you love are important to you you're going to have to push yourself more because you will learn that if you learn toe walk into an auction and not only have you donated up prize but you can go around and meet people and have conversations instead of getting one client you realize that if you take an egg the same thirty minutes here there you talked to four people and create for connections that you potentially open the door to four more cells that time that you spent equals five times more time with the people that you love so you start to learn value in time and pretty soon you're excited to get out there and talk to people because you know man if I could be in an auction and I could talk to twenty people tonight and get my cards and ten people's hands and I can't give out ten certificates and sell one big certificate that's thirty contacts and I did it in the same thirty minutes that I could have been hiding under the table going please don't look at my work you just you just learned that you know that time's important so just go for it they could tell you make it honestly that's really true this bacon