Permission To Suck

I recall perhaps one professional moment when I felt like I really knew something – I was a master – yet, within short years easily accessible skills-de-Photoshop shattered momentum. What I honed on the view camera in the studio with lights, filters and finessing the process over 20 years was nearly worthless commercially. I wasn’t alone, except for purists mostly found in the masters of fine arts – aka – not me – creative destruction picked up its pace.  From that point on, my lesson was learned.

I’m a beginner  – at everything. My forced realization back in ’98 caused me to dive into Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by the Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki. Don’t mistake me for a deep follower, but rather a man with a new attitude. No longer do I own the luxury of working the requisite 10,000 hours at anything for expert status.

Previous post on Beginner’s Mind

“Shoshin – It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner in that subject would.”

That leads me to this: Film making; motion making perhaps since film isn’t any more involved in my “films” than in my stills. A year ago I knew nothing (I mean REALLY nothing) – I asked friends, “what does this and that mean. What do I need to post to Youtube. What editing program should I buy?

Beyond story, I started watching movies differently; noticing technical things like camera movement, transitions, editing points and most importantly, how they all that make me feel about a scene. Damn – now THESE guys are masters.  Yet, I read somewhere that Spielberg feels like revisiting breakfast on the floor of his car the first shoot day of a big feature – could this be?

This music video for singer song writer Jeanne Jolly was shot by DeBoer Works LLC (Bruce DeBoer) and a small crew in 7 locations. We used DSLR’s – Canon 5D II and 7D. Additional live show footage was shot by Draw Bridge Media on two RED One Cameras. When we lit scenes we used Kino Flo Divas and Arri 650 Fresnel. It was edited at DeBoer Works using Final Cut Pro and graded using Apple Color and Red Giant Looks. The first 2 minutes of the song was recorded with Jeanne solo on her guitar at Burlap Palace in Raleigh. The full band recording, beginning at time code 2:30, was imported from her CD. Sound effects were added during final edit.