How to not suck at recording small film videos | Chicago Art Life Media

I recently just wrapped up doing a 3 part mini-documentary on a friend of mine. I worked with her before on a photo shoot when I was doing photography

I was documenting her journey on being a nominee for Best Spoken Word/Poet for the Chicago Music Awards. I also wanted to focus on her story and raise awareness for TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury.

It was a fun project to do, and it was great working with her and her family. I just wished that I could have done a better job with what I was doing. I made too many mistakes. But these are the lessons I have learned over the past few weeks.

Lesson 1: Plan and DO NOT go with the flow, ever.

Once we spoke about her being a nominee, I immediately knew what I wanted to record but after that I had nothing else. So I “went with the flow”.

And this is what I ended up with:

• too much random footage that I didn’t need
• not enough footage of what I actually needed
• missed opportunities of shots that I could have used

Lesson 2: Arrive Early

I was late to pretty much everything. Car broke down. Had to rent a zipcar, schedule a zipcar and travel to the zipcar. Finish working on other things. Finish meetings. Doctor appts. You name it and it pretty much got in the way of me being on time and I suffered for it. I even forgot the location, date and time that the event was taking place.

On the day of the Chicago Music Awards, the location was literally 10 mins from my house. Literally 10 minutes.

I was 2 hours late. Why? Because I had to physically print my tickets, my phone died and I was on an hour long search for a FedEx that was still open on a sunday night. Closest one was 30 mins away, I was livid.

What I learned: Schedule the actual time you need to tape everything or setup everything or in my case print everything you need. Which goes back to planning, scheduling is definitely part of that.

Lesson 3: “I’ll remember your face”….

In my so-called plans… Step one was to get a press pass for the event. Step two was confirming that I actually had a pass.

First Interaction with the guy in charge: I met with him and asked about retrieving the press pass and I was told that he will remember me or my name and when I give my name at the event I will be good.

Second Interaction: Reception remembered me and mentioned that another photographer was rejected because he wasn’t associated to anything that would benefit the Chicago Music Awards, I panicked. I asked him about it, didnt recognized me but recognized my 8 month pregnant belly. He said it will be better for me to get a seat and he will remember my face so I can document what I need to get. Feeling exhausted at the moment from taping, I agreed that getting a seat would be best

Third Interaction: I get to the music awards, grabbed a seat, starting taping and was told that if I get caught again, I’m getting kicked out. Guess who was the man that told me to stop taping -_-

What did I learn: If I cant get a press pass for an event, find another way to get what you need

Lesson 4: If it failed you once, more than likely it will fail you again

I am currently the proud parent of a Samsung Galaxy Camera, had it for about 6 months, never really used it too much until I started doing YouTube videos, before this project I maybe used it max 5 times. So I knew that I was going to use this camera at least 2 more times and then try to upgrade, at least that was the plan in my head.

I went to the press conference for the award show and it worked fine I was able to get what I needed. Then I scheduled to meet with the nominee’s mother to get some footage. I taped what I needed the shoot was perfect. The only issue that I knew I was going to have was audio, so I used my phone as a recorder.

The next day, I wanted to upload the footage. Camera refuses to turn on. It took hours to get the camera to turn on and when it did, it kept turning on…and off…and back on….and back off. The only way I was able to restore it was to factory reset it. #DEAD #SALTY No footage. Luckily I was able to use the audio on my phone.

So what do I do, I use the camera again for the next 2 events and luckily I actually bought and brought a backup camera. Next day, I uploaded my footage to my computer and I used up too much space on the mac, so I connect a hard drive and moved files over, then I deleted all my photos and videos.

What I didn’t realize was that my hard drive and my home directory on my computer had the same exact name, GENIUS, so I was moving pictures to the same spot, and when I deleted EVERYTHING vanished and I pretty much did this.

And then, after wiping the tears from my face, I had hope. I had hope that came in the form of a Samsung Galaxy camera that I despised for so long. I turn it on and saw videos so I knew that the quickest way to get the videos were to save it to google drive. I started moving videos to google drive and let the camera rest. I didn’t want to hurt it. I checked my camera an hour later and failure. I cant get the camera to come on.

Til this day I am still trying, still hoping and it still wont come on.

What I learned is in Lesson 5

Lesson 5: This is why they make SD cards in the first place

I told myself numerous times to get a micro SD for that camera, but I decided to argue with myself and say “Well I’m going to sell it anyway, why buy one” This is why my friends, this is the exact reason why. So now I have a malfunctioning camera and I have no footage…..

Lesson 6: Get back up as soon as possible rather than last minute

This means cameras! This means auto backup/ sync with google photos! This means lightbulbs, led lights and light kits! Oh and batteries and chargers. I waited til things started to fail to get what I needed.

Lesson 7: Starting over

Use what you have, make it work and yes do it again. I can’t wait for my next project.

Until next time……….

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However, there is a part one to this project and you can subscribe when I muster up enough courage to put up part 3 since I accidentally deleted part 2.

Heres part one, I will update soon