I want to share with you how I spent 10 days with family in Dominican Republic. I had minimal equipment and was able to still tell a compelling story. I’ve said it in the past, don’t let the amount of gear you have limit what you do. Get out there, shoot, edit, learn and explore.
Check out the video below:
Pre-Production:
The original concept I had was to have the video portrait cover three topics: Becoming a life long tourist, her compassion for animals, and her real estate business. Because I was traveling, I didn’t have much space for gear so I decided to leave the mini ursa at home and travel light. Would the video quality have been better with the new camera? Of course, but I didn’t want to sacrifice mobility and the talents comfort level with a ton of gear. So Let’s list out the gear I had on me.
- Canon 7d
- Zacuto Viewfinder
- Helios 58mm
- Jupiter 85mm
- Rokinon 14mm
- Manfrotto monopod.
The Process ~ So I defined the three stories I wanted to tell. I thought with my wife about the overall tone and feel of the film. Also, we wanted to leave the viewer feeling like they truly sat down with Andrea, having a few beers as she talked about how she came to the island and turned to real estate.
Production
I want to first mention that I had filmed a couple of things for my mom before so approximately 25% of the covers are from previous visits, specifically the house transformation. I thought filming the interview first would help assist in not only get great coverage later, but truly defining the story I wanted to communicate. I also, filmed shots of the property that she had knowing I would use a lot of coverage for the real-estate portion. I didn’t take any lighting so everything was natural. There were some slight lighting modifications when I could, but very few. Shooting lasted over the course of three days. It was raining most of the time there so I had my hands full with adjusting iris. (I used a bokeh cut out on the lens for the interview. It was dog prints and thought it turned out really cool.)
Post-Production
Editing took approximately 10 hours. My current NLE of choice is Adobe Premiere. I used Davinci Resolve to color the film and applied film stock emulation, via Vision Color Impulz for a more organic feel. The most time spent in editing was cutting down the 30 minute interview to 6 minutes and still have the story make sense.
Behind The Scenes:
If you are ever wanting to go to the Dominican Republic, consider staying at one of the villas mentioned in the video. You can like the Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/BestSosuaVacationVillas/