Wheels and Waves: The Power of Action Cameras

Posted on by Bob Gillen

DOWNHILL SKATEBOARDING

Wheels and Waves: I’ve been thinking about the powerful capabilities of action cameras and action filmmaking. Three years ago I did an interview on this blog with Roberto Studart, a Brazilian filmmaker. The interview remains one of my favorites. His shots of downhill skateboarding on mountain roads are breathtaking. Here’s the clip again, for your enjoyment:

CURVAS E LADEIRAS T2 from Roberto Studart on Vimeo.

Roberto has done more, including some incredible surfing shots. Catch his work on Vimeo.

ACTION SURFING

Action cameras and underwater camera housings allow big wave surf photographer Sachi Cunningham to capture stunning visuals of surf. For more on Sachi, see Inside the Mind of Sachi Cunningham on Vimeo.

Surfing at Ocean Beach, San Francisco
Bianca Valenti alone and deep in a beastly wave, right at the very edge of one of the most populous places on the West Coast: Ocean Beach, San Francisco. Photo: Sachi Cunningham

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Passionate visual storytellers

Posted on by Bob Gillen

Have you seen the Storyhunter website? Check it out. Storyhunters are “award-winning video professionals ready to go on assignment for you. They are passionate visual storytellers. They are filmmakers. They are editors, creative directors, video journalists, producers, sound recorders, animators. They tell authentic stories. They are on the ground and they never back down from a challenge.”

passionate visual storytellers

Storyhunter recently posted a conversation with three documentary filmmakers on their shooting styles. Here’s an excerpt:

S: Do you have any advice you’d give to young filmmakers still trying to figure out their style?

Nehemiah Stark: Putting yourself out there to work with other filmmakers that inspire you is huge because we can only learn so much from the work we do alone. I learned the most working in a collective. It’s great to have people to look up to, to get feedback from. Mentors can be people you’ve never met. You can study the style of filmmakers and emulate them. Imitating them is huge and it takes a more discerning eye to see what’s being done technically.

Allison Otto: Don’t limit yourself to learning from the work of cinematographers. Check out the work of still photographers and photojournalists. Don’t feel like you have to travel far and wide to tell meaningful stories. Powerful stories can be found in your own community, and with your knowledge of your community and its rhythms, you’re the best one to share them.

Property – Trailer from Allison Otto, Thought/Process Films on Vimeo.

Storyhunter describes its mission: “We make it simple to create high quality original video.  Whether you need event coverage, mini-docs, aerial drone footage, branded content series, or just to supplement your in-house production team, our platform connects you instantly with the best specialists on the planet. We also help you seamlessly manage your projects, contracts, and payments in one place.”

Looking for story ideas? Try the supermarket.

Posted on by Bob Gillen

Looking for story ideas? Try the supermarket.

Writers welcome story ideas. Often those ideas come from inspiration, from notes, from good old ass-in-chair work. But sometimes you’re just plain stuck.

shopping cart - look for story ideasTry looking and listening while you’re shopping in the supermarket. The other day I spied a man in a kilt in Trader Joe’s market. It was the second time I’d seen him there. And the staff knew him. He talked to them about being out of town for a while. So I wondered: what’s his story? Why the kilt? It wasn’t a costume. It was an authentic, styled kilt. Why?

A while back I asked the woman who was checking out my groceries, how is your day going? She began talking about her plans for the evening, ready to celebrate a young woman’s one-year sobriety. She herself was a recovering alcoholic. What’s the story there?

So many stories among the everyday.

You don’t get to skip to happily ever after

Posted on by Bob Gillen

“I understand small moments of joy on a page, like a slave receiving a Christmas present, because I can place those stories into a broad landscape and see them as the exception, not the norm. I knew what it would be like to be black today because I learned what it was like to be black yesterday through books that respected my identity and recognized my intellectual capacity even in elementary school.”

writer Sarah Hannah Gomez
Sarah Hannah Gomez
Credit: Emma Mendenhall

So writes Sarah Hannah Gómez  in the School Library Journal.

Gómez, who is bi-racial, talks about absorbing stories of slavery, prejudice, disenfranchisement as a child and a young reader.

“It was made clear to me that even fictional narratives were based on painful truths, and there was an enduring heritage of prejudice and disenfranchisement that would affect my life anytime I left the house. What good would it do me to have no understanding of where it came from? You could say this is a heavy weight to place on a child’s shoulders, but you have to start lifting weights if you ever want to lift heavier ones.”

Gómez, a former librarian, studies middle grade and YA books. “My not-so-secret dream job,” she says on her web page, “is to work in TV development and turn the best middle grade and YA into the best (and diverse) TV shows and miniseries. In the meantime, I’m getting a PhD in that stuff because I’m good at racking up degrees.

“People whose cultural memory includes oppression, genocide, or disenfranchisement don’t have the luxury of avoiding those topics with their children, because they have lasting effects into today. It doesn’t lead to raising victims, but informed citizens.

“You have to earn hopeful stories about horrifying events, and you can only see what hope means if the horrors lurking nearby are visible. You don’t get to skip to happily ever after. You don’t get to show the sweet without the bitter.”

Find her on twitter: @shgmclicious

Create colorful female characters

Posted on by Bob Gillen
Geena Davis on creating female characters
Geena Davis

Here’s a recommendation from actress Geena Davis on inhabiting your scripts and stories with female characters:

“Go through the projects you’re already working on and change a bunch of the characters’ first names to women’s names. With one stroke you’ve created some colorful unstereotypical female characters that might turn out to be even more interesting now that they’ve had a gender switch.”