tired after midday

David shot on Silver Shade Impossible Project film

Montmartre shot on Silver Shade Impossible Project film

I’m really tired of photographers posting about THE NEW VIDEO they made and how proud of it they are…umm, I know there’s a learning curve with video, but your video needs to be more than a long photograph.  These people are taking video as they would a picture—but who wants to watch that?  Sorry, I don’t want to watch a 60-second video clip of someone’s face, not moving or talking.  I did so today, and it wasn’t interesting or compelling.  It would have been interesting as a single image, which it basically was except that the guy twitched a bit.  I was uncomfortable.

The thing that makes video compelling is a story.  Some kind of story.  It doesn’t need to be a overwrought Inception-esque saga, but it needs to be something more than, well, long photographs.  I keep seeing this with fashion videos too—nothing is happening in the video, how am I to be engaged?  As a viewer, someone who enjoys quality film of most genres, I say nay. 

I am a photographer, if you didn’t know, and I’m sure if I tried to make a video it would probably be similar to these boring, ill-conceived, painstaking videos I keep seeing (crappy music, too—what is with that?) because…I have no training or experience in motion!  Photographers think that just because they now have cheap cameras that make decent video that it’s an easy jump from shooting stills, but it’s clearly not quite that easy.  

Having said this, photographers who really do learn motion create amazing work.  Anton Corbijn’s The American with George Clooney?  To say nothing of his first film, a film-noir about Joy Division, Control?  You can really see how Corbijn’s sensibilities as a photographer inform the cinematography and mood of these films.  The American was just beautiful, might as well have been right out of the Italian New Wave.  Then there’s Autumn de Wilde, a music photographer who eventually moved into making music videos that work, for bands such as Rilo Kiley and Death Cab.

My point is, it just might be a bit of hubris to think you can jump from photo to video just because your camera allows this.  Photographers are always whining about digital dummies and bored housewives who think they’re photographers because they bought a Mark II, and now many of them are doing the same thing to videographers and filmmakers.  So…yeah.

Needless to say, if I ever post any video I’ve made, there’s a carte blanche to rip it to shreds if it’s crap.  ;)

moi, je veux le voir.