One Day at a Time
Even though I’m not a professional photographer by any stretch of the imagination, I’ve been able to learn to make videos by simply trying things out.
The Vimeo Weekend Challenge has helped by pushing me toward taking chances I wouldn’t normally.
There’s a very easy way for anyone to learn to make videos. Just pick up a damn camera and start!
That’s essentially what I did when I started making my own original videos for the Vimeo Weekend Challenge.
Learning how to make a video started for me with non-copyrighted footage. I hadn’t even reached the point where I had the guts nerve confidence to simply point and shoot a simple video on my iPhone.
As a writer trying to learn about video, I started off slow. Among other things, I used the intro to an old TV series and added (what I hoped were) funny captions to it.
I worked on a project at Docs in Progress that culminated in this documentary, using standard camera and audio equipment.
A few years back, I had a notion of going into film production. I was already involved in screenwriting and thought I had the organizational skills to pull it off. I started getting to know camera and sound equipment, but realized after time that all you need to be a filmmaker is an iPhone.
That’s simplifying things a bit, since quality sound is an important component of filmmaking, as are a few other matters, such as choice of lens, postproduction colorization, and editing skills.