Understanding what both parties are taking on in filming is essential.
I was asked recently to help a pharmacist and aesthetician create a YouTube channel to talk about the science behind Aesthetics to help people understand what is and isn’t possible, what the risks are and what expectations are realistic. We wanted to create a number of films each covering a specific subject in some detail and the clip below covers Botox.
Normally I try to work with clients to help them speak confidently to camera and unless they are used to teleprompters and can read and deliver a script from one, no easy task, I prefer to have a really good understanding beforehand of what they want to talk about and to be able to prompt them, but allow space for them to introduce anecdotes and stories that really help convey someone’s passion for what they do and what drives them.
With Joanna, she was covering a subject I have absolutely no knowledge of, so couldn’t really help other than to give encouragement, but as she got used to the camera, she got better and better at talking about her subject and spoke for nearly four hours in total.
From that we got a 33 minute clip and we had agreed that this first shoot would be a test to see what we could achieve and how realistic the whole project might be. And I firmly believe to do this is essential if you are looking to shoot something considerably longer than a marketing clip or interview.
The clip is broken into chapters and the viewer can access the menu by selecting the three horizontal bars at the bottom right of the timeline.
Things didn’t go quite to plan, Joanna was amazing and worked really hard but she was very keen to film the talk with her shown beneath a group of medical certificates to reassure the audience of her professional credentials. That made it difficult for me to shoot at the quality I would normally work at as I had to film from quite a distance with a 12mm wide angle lens to get them in and to show the salon as desired. The clip below is still significantly cropped in from what I shot.
We needed a number of takes to get the lighting to work and to get the best out of the lens and to find the best phrasing to cover a very detailed subject after trying to read a script and film it line by line, very hard to pull off even for an actor. Four hours under hot film lights also takes its toll on someone’s make up, it was perfect to begin with but film makeup is different and copes with the conditions far better and for longer. I do carry with me film suitable touch up make up to cover blemishes and similar but I wouldn’t know where to begin with a full face so I had to slightly over soften her face in post production to hide the make up as it began to look less than perfect. The lighting changes as the sun came in stronger through the windows as the afternoon progressed but that could be easily addressed in editing.
After we filmed I sent rough edits of the footage for Joanne to approve or reject and this is where the need to test feasibility really came out. She quickly realised that to produce what she wanted was not realistic, filming itself was exhausting and it is, but rewriting her scripts and working out where cuts could be made and which parts would need reshooting to convey something important better was going to be a huge job. She advised it wasn’t for her and though she did really well, I understood fully.
I started in filming as a scriptwriter on speeches and commercials and was asked to hold a live camera on stage just so I could prompt an elderly celebrity toward the end of his career, and be the butt of his jokes, but it worked and I’ve filmed ever since. Understanding the pressures of writing and delivering a script, the re-writes, the edits is what started me to prompt my subjects wherever possible and it really works to get them speak from the heart and I can make sure they don’t miss anything.
I am happy to film longer projects especially in training or in explainer videos but if you do want to do that, lets agree to test it first and see what obstacles come up and how we can overcome, or even if we should.
