The PF Bentley Workshop Report

 

One thing I liked about my first video workshop, the 10 day Platypus training, was that I was so inept at video. I flailed. I had no idea how to think in sequences, or how to manage the technology. I invented never before seen ways to screw up. It was great. It meant that anything I was going to learn was going to ramp up my competence immediately. 

It's harder to have those steep learning ramp-ups when you have more experience under your belt. I just came off of P.F. Bentley's first 5 day “intermediate level” workshop. Anyone can organize one of these—get 7 or 8 other videographers together, and he'll come to your town. In a way, we were all beta testers for the format. 

In this instance, I was probably the most experienced hand at video in the room. Because the workshop had several Final Cut virgins, it took awhile to get to the level I wanted.

P.F. organized it like a mini Platypus workshop. The first day we covered the basics of DSLR video and Final Cut, and we each pitched our story ideas. I initially wanted to do an author's video to promote my wife's new book. For B-roll I had staged a psychotherapy session. When I reviewed the footage I realized that therapy is, visually, not all that interesting. Or perhaps I didn't know how to make it  interesting (I'm going to have to look again at “In Treatment,” the HBO series, to see how they did it.) I didn't have the goods to put together the quality video I wanted to produce for this workshop. 

My backup plan was a contra dance video, a story on my local dance organizer and the Thursday night dance. Thursday was our shoot day, where we all dispersed to shoot our projects. 

Friday was our edit day. Since it was now a “basic” workshop I didn't need much attention, and I worked from home for much of the day. By 10:30pm I had a rough cut.

The workshop started for me Saturday afternoon, when we showed our projects. This is where PF's skill as a teacher really shines. You learn as much watching other people's mistakes as you do getting feedback on your own. This also began the deep technical immersion that I'd been craving. 

One of my biggest challenges is audio. PF showed us a workflow in Soundtrack Pro to fix the things you always need to fix—noise correction, Limiter settings, the secret sauce for Fat EQ. He used my bad audio capture at the contra dance as the cautionary example. And then he fixed it. Cool. 

I'd been craving a clear approach to Color Grading. I basically ignore it in my work. Most of the time my whacking away in 3 Way Color Correcter makes things worse. His solution: Magic Bullet. The application with the “Make Your Work Look Like a Hollywood Blockbuster” hype, which always kept me from looking any deeper into it. But it has far more capabilities than merely to plaster an oversaturated, vignetted fix to make your work look like every other music video out there. Who knew?

The price of this workshop is going to be all the toys and software that I now covet. I want a crane. Cobra make a 6.5lb “Backpacker” crane. I want it. I have no reason for it. It is not my style at all. But it could be. I'm going to stick a camera on one the next time I go to a contra dance, I swear. 

I'll need a real video tripod now to put the crane on. I need Magic Bullet, of course, and SonicFire for my music, and Sorenson Squeeze for compression (I wanted an exegesis on the minutia of Compressor, but he quickly dismissed it as an inadequate solution for prepping files. OK then.) 

And I need another five years to figure out Final Cut. 

Comments

[Jeff Lansing]

And after 5 years you will long for the simplicity of photography. I started my career as a photographer and finished as a multimedia specialist (I'm not sure what that means either) for a state agency. A 30 year career. Retired now and you could not make me produce another video if you held a gun to my head yet I'm more excited by photography than ever before. Just an old curmudgeon's view but don't say you were not warned.

[Doug Plummer]

There is certainly a point on what you say. I am, however, excited by the storytelling capacity of video that stills can't touch, and that keeps me energized. I find I rarely take photos at contra dances now; that personal work has migrated entirely to video. The after-the-shoot post production slog is an issue, and I prefer to photograph every day than produce a daily film. The still photograph is immediate. Film is for a message that requires a greater commitment to get across. I plan to always do both.

[anon anon on on anon an on]

your still work looks very fresh and open and accessible to me, and i just looked at your videos and feel the same way. i really like what you've done with the college stuff, especially st johns. you've made huge progress.

questions from a fellow (and, yes, anonymous) photog: can you earn as much $ doing these video assignments as you can shooting stills?

do you hand hold all of these shots, using just a zacuto finder and a shotgun mike? do you work alone or with an assistant? do you light?

seems like EVERY photographer i know is moving to video, it's odd... but i guess that's the future...

carry on mr plummer

[Doug Plummer]

As far as the business--nearly half my income this year is going to be from video production. I appear to be reinventing myself, again.

I'm doing all this solo, actually, and ramping up the complexity as I acquire fluency. I started with just an external mike on the hotshoe, and gradually expanded the stuff. It's important to not get too complex at the outset, keep it simple and learn the basics of storytelling.

I'm still keeping it beneath video production company standards, deliberately. I am only lighting my interview subjects if I need to. On location, I want to be as responsive and reactive as with my still work, and the intimacy of working alone is important to me. Story trumps gizmos.

[anononon]

Thanks for your reply. Might be time to start that reinvention myself, before I suffer the fate of those who never bothered to learn photoshop. A sad bunch they were.