One Man Video Shoot

One man – One Camera – One Editor – One Deadline

This is the first post in our new blog series entitled, ONSIGHT.

Let’s start by saying on any given shoot you will encounter production challenges, the trick is to get over these challenges with the least amount of impact to your quality, time, and budget (QTB).  We will talk more about QTB in a later blog but for now I assume you know what those are. So the challenge today is the deaded one man shoot.

What is the deaded one man shoot?

The dreaded one man shoot is when you have a client who has a really tight budget and a production company who doesn’t leave money on the table. (Ok this is the Rich Barber definition.) So to make a long story short, you do what you have to do.

I hear you asking, well what does that entail?  Planning. A whole lot of planning.

I know a lot of people who do a lot of planning when it comes to a one camera shoot because you can do a lot with one camera.  However, at times you may feel like it is what it is. They could only afford one camera, so that is what they get.

That should not be how you look at it. If we go back to our QTB – the first letter is the Q. Quailty over everything else. If it cannot be quality then tell the client you don’t wanna do it. I say this because you don’t wanna first build a bad relationship by over promising and under delivering.  Secondly, you don’t want to associate your skills with a bad final product.

How do you over come this challenge? There are a couple ways to handle. Some are better than others and you may also want to combine 2 or 3.  Below I have listed them in the order of worse way to my best way.  Understand, this is MY list and thought process.

1.  Plan

2.  Shot list

3.  Shoot multiple times from multiple angles

4.  Go back to the client ask to up the budget

5.  Use unmanned cameras

The whole intent is to get the highest quality final product you can with the budget and equipment you have at your disposal.

Be on the look out for our next set of post in our ONSIGHT blog.

Let me know in the comments what you think about this post and the information included.  Until next time.

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