On Sunday a friend and I had the shoot for the musician I was talking about a page or so back. Still a weird situation where the manager had set everything up, but the musician wasn't really sure what it was about and why we were even doing it. It was also the last show of his tour for a little while, so he was pretty burnt out and cranky when we got there, but we kept things easy and simple, he had a good show, so by the end he had warmed up to us. We got good footage, but there's sill so very little mandate of what we're supposed to do with it.
The friend who set it up may do his own thing with it, the manager was originally impressed with his ability to make good short promo clips with flashy graphics that are basically just templates inside Final Cut Pro. Me, I'm going to make a music video. I'm arranging with some friends to get together to shoot some "storyline" footage for me to edit into the performance footage, and I'll see what I can come up with. If they like it, fine, if they don't, also fine.
My friend keeps asking me to help him with other shoots he's been doing, wedding receptions, club events, just the basic videographer freelance stuff. There's some money involved with those, but I keep putting him off, and when he asked why, at the time I didn't really have a good answer. But thinking about it all, I realize that the problem is that they aren't MY projects.
There's really a lot of things I want to try to do with the skills and knowledge I've acquired, and while up to a point, I haven't minded helping out friends with their projects, I was basically doing it to learn different things. Well, one of the things I've learned is that I really have limited patience working on half-assed projects.
The bigger issue is still that I'm in this to create. My background is as a writer, but I wasted so many years letting myself get beat down by a retail "career" that I never properly took advantage of the skills I have in that area. Right now, the only thing I can think of while I'm on these other shoots is how it's all time I'm NOT spending on things I want to do.
The other half of it is who I'm working for. I could do a wedding for a stranger for $1000, or I can shoot a local musician playing their heart out at a local club for free. For a while at least, I'm in a position where I can choose the latter. There's a bit of mercenary strategy to it all, as I make contacts and grow the circle of people I know in the music business around town, but mostly it's because I want to work with people who deserve my energy and skills. Perhaps that's a bit arrogant, but being around such tremendously talented, positive, and motivated people who have become good friends is important to me, not only personally, but also as a driving motivation to be as good at this video stuff as I can be.
And that's more than enough rambling for now!
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Topic: Re: Blog Thread IIIb : Look Who's Blogging Now (Read 248465 times)