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/